Mwezi, Mwezi!

Over the past couple of weeks, Wes has been steadily exploring every inch of downtown Dar. To the extent that he is now more conversant with the nooks and crannies of Dar than either Cristiano or I. On Saturday, Wes gave me an orientation to downtown Dar with an emphasis on Indian restuarants, the best place to get ice cream and traversing Kariakoo, a bustling part of town where goods of all shapes and sizes are sold. Kariakoo on a Saturday is similar to a disturbed bee hive with hundreds of people walking shoulder to shoulder in all directions. It was very alive.

While meandering around, we took a walk down the jewellery street. In Dar, like many other cities, shops that sell the same type of goods tend to line up together on the same street. For instance, there will be a stretch of hardware stores with brooms, plungers and mousetraps cheek by jowl for 500m and then there won't be another hardware store to be found anywhere else in the city. As we were walking down the street, this guy grabbed the bottom of my pants and started going off in Swahili. Naturally, I turned my body towards him to try to figure out what was going on. At the time, I was standing in front of a generator that was busily puffing out heat and gasoline fumes so I thought perhaps something from the generator had splashed onto my pants. As I turned, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. It was buddy's partner's hand snaking towards my pant's pocket. A quick yell and our "friends" quickly merged into the crowd. As it turns out, they tried to pickpocket Wes at exactly the same time. Talk about strength in numbers. At the end of the day, they were totally unsuccessful but it gave us a little adrenalin rush. It would have been rather amusing if the guy had got his hand in my pocket and made off with the large wad of forest green....toilet paper, an essential for every female traveller. Cristiano had a similar experience about a month ago, which was also unsuccessful. Both Wes and Cristiano have a well-developed "slap my hands on my pant pockets" instinct.

I am told that mzungus are frequent targets of pickpockets. My colleagues have advised me to keep my money in my bra in future. The theory is that even the most brazen thief is not going to feel you up to get your money. They have also advised me to shout "Mwezi, mwezi!", which means thief, thief. This time, I didn't have the presence of mind to shout anything, other than "No". Very useful hey. I have little doubt that people would come to our assistance if we shouted thief. However, I would be a little concerned as to the form that the assistance may take. For the Human Rights report, I have literally read hundreds of newspaper articles on various topics that are relevant to the report. One of these topics is mob violence. There have been a number of instances this year where a thief has been caught by a crowd and beaten or killed for his alleged crime (it is almost always a man). It is my understanding that people sometimes take matters into their own hands because they are frustrated with and have little confidence in the judicial system. I can understand their position, as the judicial system seems to leak like a sieve and it can take years for a person to be prosecuted. However, I'm a bit of a traditionalist and prefer doing it the good old way, which starts with a person's arrest.