The African Mafia

           In April we had 3 holidays in a row off of work so a big group of us decided to take some of our personal vacation days and go on a week trip to Mafia Island, right off the east coast of Tanzania.
The vacation did not turn out as well as planned. From the start we knew the trip was doomed when the guards at the entrance to the marine park where we had made our reservations were trying to charge us an ungodly amount of money. Now we are used to getting screwed out of money for being white, but this was beyond the norm. They tried to charge us not 2x, not 5x, but 13x the Tanzanian price! For days we had to argue with them in a futile effort to explain we were residents. Even with an exemption card to prove our status, we still had to pay a ton of money. Strike one.

        In addition to that the weather was not the best. With wind, rain, and a bunch of clouds constantly looming, it was not ideal for working on a solid base-tan. Strike two.

        Lastly, on our penultimate day on the island, as we had begun to settle with the fact we had to pay tons of cash and dealing with the bad weather, one of our friends was robbed! One of the girls in our group went on a walk down the beach and a Tanzanian guy jumps out of the bushes and goes for her camera. The man grabbed her from behind and wrestled her to the ground where she proceeded to bite his hand and escape. The man got the camera and ran away. After she returned and told us what happened, of course, all of us boys men couldn’t stand for this and ran into the bushes to apprehend the camera snatcher. We eventually found the guy and chased him for a good 5 minutes. It was at this time, for some peculiar reason, the man got the genius idea to run into the water to escape. But of course, as with most Africans, he couldn’t swim. So there he was, standing 30 feet of shore in the middle of the Indian Ocean with 20 guys waiting on the shore to kick his ass.

             The man eventually came back onto shore where he proceeded to get beat like I have never seen before. I am no stranger to mob justice, I have seen it a few times in my village, but I’m usually far away and try to avoid watching. This, however, was the closet I have ever been to the action. I don’t usually get shocked or offended by most things (go figure,) but this was different. I was five feet away from this guy who was lying on the ground getting kicked, punched, spit at and beaten with a stick. At one point a huge man knelt on the guys back, grabbed his hand and began trying to break the man’s arm! It was nuts.

          Usually, the Tanzanian judicial system (and American for that matter) would take an extremely long time to process the case, but since we were on a small island with not much going on I’m sure the cops had nothing better to do, it was an expedited process to say the least. Long story short, we took the guy to the cops, he went to trial, my friend testified and the man was sent to jail. Dare I say strike three?

          On a lighter note, we did have a chance to party, relax on the beach and even do a little snorkeling…

Cheers,
Jayce