Dodging the police

I have every intention of avoiding the police. But they’re not easy men to dodge.

It all started when I drove to the Kigoma police station to apply for a licence. Yes, drove. And went in and asked to see Big-Bellied Traffic Police Officer to explain to him that I had no licence whatsoever with me, not Norwegian, not international, nothing, but had been issued a licence at that very police station ten years ago. He helpfully explained the procedure to get a new one and asked for my number and suggested we have a drink at a bar in town, did I like ugali etc. So I had to smile and do the fake-number trick and leave without him seeing me driving, and come back on someone else’s shift to ask the same question. The next time I met the Bigger-Bellied Chief Traffic Police Officer(BBCTPO), and all he seemed to want in return for a licence was the usual small talk. Until I came to pick it up a week later, and he asked when I would be back to see him and if I wanted to go for a drink. Of course I would come visit as soon as I was back from Ilagala, and I very much liked ugali.

In the meantime, driving without a licence, I did some very successful police-dodging: U-turns, subterfuges, smiling, smiling, smiling …. I even hired an out-of-work taxi driver for the longest trips. But then bang! One day they stopped us. A skinny, bleached-face woman in her blue skirt, blouse and cap. It turns out she knows the driver.
“Yes! You are carrying people! That’s an offence.”
I’m in the back seat and let my assistant and the driver in the front do the initial kow-towing. But it seems she’s skipping the pleasantries and has already started writing “Name of the accused…. Age….. Tribe….”in her book.
Carrying people? I think to myself as I see the usual overloaded pick-ups whizzing past, with chickens holding on by their beaks and kids clinging on from the outside. I have allowed three women who asked for a lift to sit inside the pickup with their bundles of cloth. Is a car not allowed to carry people?
“Now, offence number two: where is your insurance sticker?”
My assistant points to the sticker in the window.
“Your vehicle registration book! You are not carrying it in the car. Second offence! And also you have no emergency triangle. Third offence!”
We dig out the emergency triangle and show it to her, but she’s on a roll: “Too late!” Also your reflectors are very old: Fourth offence.”
I’m waiting to explode at her till she’s had her notepad-filling fix, but now even the driver is exasperated:
“Is it all you ever do every day, wait for me to pass? Ok, stop me one day, but the next day stop someone else! This thing of, of - always stopping the same person…!”

Apparently what one should do in this case is insist on going to the police station so as to get a receipt for the fine. This gives them some juggling work come audit time. But when we got there the guy on duty recognised me as the good friend of BBCTPO, gave me his number for me to call, and promptly tore up the charges against us. Thus instead of 40,000 shillings, it cost me more fawning and another promise of a date. Or, as all my fellow-passengers explained to me, they realised they had made a mistake. They send out their underlings to the Checkpoints, aka Highway Robbery Sites, to collect money from people. Like Mafia bosses they sit at the station and wait for the loot to be brought in. Then – oops! – the underlings made a mistake. They brought in the wrong one, they tried to rob one of their friends. Big faux pas, bad strategy, could become an incident. If they had fined me, they would have been reprimanded as clumsy and tactless. But not as corrupt. Robbing people is their job, robbing the wrong people is not.

So that was police encounter number one. After that I heard the skinny lady who stopped us is HIV positive. It might be true since police are usually the epitome of ‘watumbo’ (big-bellied power-holders in Swahili) and that would explain her skinnyness. Does her positive status change things………?


Police encounter number two

Driving back into town from the villages, I am stopped once again. At the traffic police checkpoint. You’d never guess there are these many traffic security checkpoints when you look at what goes on on these roads. Anyway, the guy stops us. Signals for us to pull over for a check.
And gets in the car.
“Don’t worry, you are fine. I just need a lift into town. Let’s go.”
???!!!
Ok everyone knows they do this. Fewer people know it’s a criminal offence, but still, it’s no skin off my nose. But honestly! I think: The nerve! And no-one to call them on it. He does it because most people, ordinary people, are powerless to say no, would never dare to say no. Or maybe because only an idiot would say no?
Idiot is usually my call. But everyone else in the car wants the No Trouble option. So I compromise. I smile like an idiot. Smile with my mouth, my eyes, my whole face, turn around and look at him and say I ‘m very sorry, I would love to help, but I cannot, I simply cannot (siwezi kabisa) and start moving the car to discourage him from climbing in through the door he has opened uninvited.

I drive back to town in silence as all the Tanzanian passengers ponder over what I assume they see as my unnecessary rudeness and hankering after confrontations, ponderings I have no wish to confront them about.


Police encounter number three

My mum is an expert. The fundi.

We are stopped on the way to Jomo Kenyatta airport. 2 minutes before latest baggage drop-off time. I have a fantastic ability to be late for every plane I ever catch, and this is no exception. My mother is driving and she’s left her driving licence at home. Moreover, I’m in the back seat without a seatbelt. Two offences, real ones. He has the law on his side, we have time against us, and he knows his game. Ok, he says, she can go back to the police station to pay after having dropped me off, but it has to be at one specific police station, and names the police station of an area of Nairobi where many better-off residents are afraid to go. Moreover, these are riot days …..

But he hasn’t reckoned with my mum. Unruffled she takes down the name of the satation and asks some location questions to suggest she knows exactly where it is. She’ll go straightaway, she says, and really she is so sorry for our offences: “See this girl, she is my last-born, she is my smallest, and she is flying now to Ulaya (Europe) all alone. So we are almost at the airport and we decided to pray for her. You know, she will be living all alone, and I was praying that she would be safe, that things will go well for her… So she took off her seatbelt to be able to lean forward to pray, and then we saw you. She has been working in Tanzania you know, and we drove from there yesterday in this car. So yesterday, I was driving in the car, with this bag with my Tanzanian money, and my Tanzanian licence – you see? – and we arrived late last night. Then, this morning, we got in the car to drive to the airport, and now I see- kumbe! I still have my Tanzanian bag! No Kenyan licence! So I’m sorry. We will go straight to this police station to pay. Thank you.”
The smooth police officer is disarmed. Of course he still plays the next step of the game (ok I forgive you, you can just pay 200 Ksh here now instead of going to the staion to pay more), but his heart is no longer in it and when she says her usual ‘no, I cannot do things like that, I feel bad inside if I pay like that, I want this country to do well, to endelea’, he’s already decided to let us go.

After all, he got the wrong people. My mother didn’t tell a single lie. She just overwhelmed him by our common humanity. He stopped the wrong people. He stopped people who were just like him.

Plane conversation

Fat man in Armani suit, blubber spilling over the armrests : “Ah! Kigoma! Finally we are going back!”
Stewardess says nothing, fastens her seatbelt after giving the security demo.
Fat man: “You don’t like Kigoma?”
Stewardess : “Mmm”
Fat man: “So you don’t like Kigoma – where are you from?”
Stewardess:” Arusha.”
Fat man: “Arusha! All of you people you like Arusha. Tell me, what does Arusha have that Kigoma doesn’t have? “


The Precision Air flight to Kigoma was packed and I got the back-to-front seat next to the stewardess. She was pretty and the men sitting opposite her were watumbos – rich men who show their wealth by the size of their bellies (literally ‘bellied people’). One of them fixed his eyes into a lover’s proprietary gaze on her which would last for the duration of the trip. In other words, I had a front-row seat for some full-on flirtatious (or sexually harassing?) banter. This guy was ready to show his rhetorical muscles. Everyone prefers Arusha to Kigoma. Arusha is where the big bucks come in, where all the good schools are, Arusha is just like Europe, Tanzanians have told me in other parts of the country. Kigoma is Siberia for civil servants – the posting nobody wants. To argue for Kigoma over Arusha is to take on a devil’s advocate’s role so ludicrous it displays not only eloquence but humour. Tanzanian flirtatious banter at its best.


Stewardess: “Arusha has better climate. The soil is more fertile. You can grow many things.“
Fat man, poker-faced : “Oh. I see. Are you a farmer?”
Stewardess smiles – gives him the point. Hearty laughter all the way back to row 3.
Stewardess: “But for tourism. Not just farming. Also for tourism Arusha is good. What is there in Kigoma? Nothing!”
Fat man: “Tourism! Yes, the tourists from these cold countries, they like Arusha! But where do the rich tourists come from now int eh future ? From hot countries! From Qatar! The rich tourists now from the Middle East! Will they like this cold Arusha climate? They will freeze! “
Guffaws even from row 4 now. The guy himself is from Moshi, just near Arusha, and even I can’t help laughing.
Fat man to me: “And you? You think Arusha is better?”
Me: “Well, I was in Arusha and I left to go to Kigoma.”
More laughter: the plot thickens! Fat man’s neighbour’s laughter is incredulous! The way this conversation is going! So far he’s been delighted by Fat man’s sheer genius in finding arguments for the inarguable: Kigoma over Arusha! And now an mzungu leaving Arusha to go to Kigoma! What a tickle!
Stewardess: “Then you also have something to add!”
Me (passing the baton to the star, unsure I can rise to the occasion) to fat man: “So why do you think life is better in Kigoma?”
Fat Man:” Everything is cheap! And you can do business! In Kigoma, you have everything. You have the lake, you have the borders….”
Me:”… you have the immigration officials…”
I did it. Shrieks of laughter.
And so it went on. How we had fun on the way from Dar to Kigoma. The passengers in the front half of the plane were thrilled, delighted, tickled to death by these straight-out ludicrous arguments being made with such dexterity, their laughter like the applause for a gymnast or magician who does the undo-able. Kigoma over Arusha! Hah!

Imagine if I’d told the watumbo the truth. That honestly, seriously, I’d take Kigoma over Arusha any day.