During my internship I was living in a typical Tanzanian home in a very friendly community. Usually when I tell people at home that my home was not surrounded by big metal gates, they look at me in horror. No worries though my friends, we had a 'guard' an 80 lb 19 year old boy who would sit on our porch overnight.. talk about supreme protection. Anyways, we never felt unsafe until one day when I made a stupid mistake. It happened on a day where we woke up and the disgusting drain water had flooded our bedroom.. and we sleep on the floor and don’t have furniture. Our beds and all our belongings were soaked. Amidst this confusion we decided to invest in a new bed pad, so we headed downtown to make our purchases. I however, left the back door unlocked. Now, I am no paranoid person but, honestly the kids in our neighbourhood had been watching our place all day. Here is the kicker, not only did I leave the backdoor open; we had opened all the curtains in our bedroom to air out our shitter-of-a-room. Our next-door neighbour Hassan was then able to see what sorts of goodies we had stashed in our house.
We came home that afternoon, oblivious to the fact that the kids from our neighbourhood had came into our place. The suspicions only started when I went to go get a piece of gum from the kitchen and noticed that my roommates stash of cookies and chocolates were gone, and that I had in fact left the backdoor unlocked. I laughed it off thinking; oh Hassan definitely stole our candy. Later on that evening we discovered that they had also stole all our iPods. Ironically, we had left stacks of American cash drying on the living room floor, cameras.. all sorts of goods. Yet to them, it seemed like an iPod was not as serious a theft, and so they did us the favour of leaving our only money. This invasion had felt like a huge breech in our trust of the community as our other neighbours were laughing at us when we had gotten robbed. They always thought we were crazy for giving attention to Hassan, the 9 year old boy who lived next door. They would call him a thief whenever we spoke to them. Now here we were, our trust broken, and our shit stolen. We felt quite betrayed because we often gave Hassan small gifts of things he would not normal have access to.. stickers candy.. But we also made a special effort to go outside with him for a few hours and play with him and the neighbourhood kids. We even were working on teaching Hassan some English skills, and he had been doing well. We had in effect fallen in love with this boy. I thought he was such a sweet young man; he would always help me do my laundry without me requesting his aid and help me with the outside chores.
Here is where the horrible part comes into effect. The people in our community, mind you, let me re-phrase this, everyone loves gossip. Soon everyone near and far got involved in this drama. It had culminated into disturbing events such as a group of elderly men swarming one of the boys who had invaded our house demanding of him why he would do such a thing to people who come to help them, that such acts made them all look like thief’s and bad people. The situation heightened when one of them got out belts and were ready to beat the living shit out of this boy. While we had gotten most of everything back, there was one iPod that was not returned. My coordinators thought it was best to threaten him with the fear of being turned into the police station if he would keep refusing to tell us where he sold the last iPod. It ended in him being sent, and having a swift beating by a woman cop. All of this activity had left us feeling sick to our stomachs, because none of us had bargained for such events. The worst part of the entire story is that, the boys had sold our iPods for the equivalent to 3 dollars. The one boy who facilitated the sales comes from an 8 person family and neither of his parents have employment. It is quite hard trying to distinguish your feelings when you know the boy is desperate but that he should not have stolen from you. Anyways, lesson learned. Watch your shit! Keep things in check; keep doors locked, and windows covered. Tanzania is a safe place to visit and live in, but if you do not pay attention, you will be cheated.