Mob justice

Yesterday my fellow volunteer and colleague at St. Theresia rode the daladala home and was relieved of his wallet as he was getting off the maniacally crowded van. When he alerted the other passengers to the theft one of them pointed to a man in a blue cap who had gotten off the bus with Nick. The man ducked into a house in an alley and a crowd ran after him. Minutes later they dragged him kicking and screaming back to the daladala, reached into his pockets and returned Nick's wallet. The man then tried to get back on the daladala, but a now very large crowd managed to pull him off the bus as he desperately clung to a railing. Then one in the crowd picked up a very large rock and slammed into into the thief's head. A crowd of about thirty surrounded him and proceeded to beat him. Nick, alarmed, begged people to leave the thief alone, but a few in the crowd advised Nick to leave them alone and go home. Which he did.

We have been told horror stories such as this by numerous people. Typically, we are told, a furious crowd will throw a tire around a robber and burn him alive. This happens at least once a week in Dar es Salaam, according to my colleagues at St. Theresia. Everyone we talk to here says that thieves spend one or two days in jail and then are let free, so people feel they have to take matters into their own hands. It's unfortunate, but it teaches a lesson, they say. This is only done, they assure us, when it is 100% clear that the person they are planning to burn is indeed guilty. From my civics book, I know that such acts are illegal here, but I doubt that people are arrested or prosecuted for such crimes. It's unnerving to even think about, much less witness. Rick was quite shaken up by the experience.

My guess is that people resort to this behavior out of extreme frustration. Life is hard here and people work very hard to meet the basic necessities of life. They have to save up for things like cell phones and head sets (two items two colleagues lost to thieves recently) and are enraged when things are taken from them.

At the same time corporal punishment is fairly widespread here. Children receive thrashings at school, not much fuss is made of domestic violence, and prisoners receive a certain number of canings along with their sentence for crimes committed.

In school, teachers are very stern and strict with students. They even take switches to class with them. It's no surprise then that students are very quiet and serious in class. This initially drove me crazy. My teaching style is informal and relaxed and I like to joke a lot with students and tease them to set them at ease. They have a hard time figuring out how to relate to me, and Nick too, for that matter. But we are slowly getting used to each other. The other day, I handed Nick a switch and suggested we bring them to class to throw the students off. The faculty burst out laughing at the absurdity of a Mzungu using a switch on students. I didn't do it yet, but I will just for fun one of these days. They actually would work quite well as pointers.