Why didn't I just keep my big mouth shut?!!

The next time I start thinking that life here is plain sailing, please just hit me! Thankfully all is fine now, but the last few days have shown me that expat life can show its dark side pretty quickly when the opportunity arises.

People often come out with statements such as “Africa isn’t for wimps” and “things turn sour very fast here”, but to be honest, I’d not given those statements much thought. Now, I can kind of see what they are getting at although still reckon they are a bit overdramatised.

The hassle I’ve gone through over the past few days all happened as a result of that most common and predictable African occurrence, a car crash. Saturday evening found Soma, the boys and me in our car heading back home from the shops. As I made the right turn into our road (having checked mirrors, slowed down and indicated before anyone asks!) a motorbike hit the side of the car and then ploughed into a wall on the other side of the road. To be honest, we’ve had near misses plenty of times before- cars coming at speed on the wrong side of the road, people pulling out of junctions just ahead of me. A biker without a helmet attempting a crazy overtake manoeuver on a blind bend was entirely normal- only this time he hit us.

After a split second of shock, the emergency training that my company has drilled into all expatriates kicked in. Looking around, I could see a mob forming (as normally happens here) so moved the car into our compound, just fifty metres away. Bad enough that this guy hits my car- no reason to put me or the family in danger of a mob attack. Predictably enough, an angry mob formed outside our compound gates. While I stayed with the security guard to try to reason with them, Soma called our security agency, Ultimate Security to get help.

For anyone not familiar with life in Africa, it is fairly standard practice for all expatriates to be connected to a security firm. These people act more or less as police force, breakdown support and emergency ambulance service all rolled into one. If anything happens, the advice is always to get to a place of safety then call them to deal with the incident- that is what we did.

The mob was claiming that the biker was about to die and that I had to drive him to hospital urgently. With my limited Swahili (and with a lot of help from a security guard) I told them that moving him would be dangerous and in any case an ambulance was on its way and would give faster, better help than anything. My neighbour, Steve- a Health and Safety Manager for one of the largest mine companies here- decided to head out and see how badly hurt the guy actually was. He returned a few minutes later with the very welcome news that not only was the guy not dead, but that there was very little wrong with him. The mob were not really interested in him at all- they just wanted to extort some cash out of me and knew they couldn’t do anything so long as a huge gate, thick wall and electric fence divided us. The biker was well enough to come up to our gate and claim he was injured. Thankfully for him, he did not speak enough English to understand the barrage of expletives I unloaded towards him! The relief at his not being dead had subsided and was replaced by a lot of anger at how his reckless driving then shameless playacting had put all of us at risk. I told him that Ultimate were on their way and that we’d called the police. As soon as he heard that final word (“polisi” in Swahili) he was on his bike and away.

As a precaution, I went, along with an Ultimate Security guard and a couple of colleagues, to the local traffic police station to file an incident report. We quickly met up with the officer assigned to our case and took him back to the scene of the accident. He took one look at the scene and the car and concluded that the biker had been in the wrong- you’re not allowed to overtake there so it’s kind of black and white. We invited him home where we drew up a formal statement and off he headed.

All seemed well for a couple of days until, like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, the issue reared its head again on Monday. I got a call from our people at Ultimate Security saying that a police officer had seen my statement and wanted to go through it with me the next day. Not sure what he wanted and why, I spent a nervous night contemplating the notion of life in an African jail cell!

Tuesday morning, I met up with a colleague, who took me along to the police station. The station is not really much like you’d see in England- it’s more a compound surrounded by a collection of ramshackle outhouses. After a long wait, the officer came to see us. From my basic Swahili, I understood that he wanted to talk with me alone and go through my statement. Much to his disappointment, my colleague told him that she would be staying with me and we headed off together to an office. Frankly given that his English was as bad as my Swahili, any interview between us would have been pretty laughable anyway!

I spent half an hour rewriting my statement after which the officer told us to head to the accountant and pay for the insurance report- why I needed to write the statement again I’m not sure- although I was given a clue on the way back!

We headed up some musty stairs to the accountant, carefully sidestepping a pile of thirty or so rifles, (carefully kept on the floor to give any escaping prisoner a sporting chance, presumably) and paid our cash. We then got the insurance report and headed off- a lot of worry about nothing.

I was pretty confused at this point and asked my colleague what had happened. She calmly explained that in all likelihood, the original statement had been submitted Saturday night and then spotted by another officer. He saw the mzungu name on the statement and figured there was one last chance for a bribe. He wanted to talk with me alone to try to get cash out of me but saw his chance disappear when it was made clear to him that a very legally aware Tanzanian colleague would be with me. He asked for another statement to save face then gave up!

I’ve learned a lot (or at least had a lot of stuff I’ve been told now hammered well and truly into my head)

Firstly and most importantly, the scene of any traffic accident in Africa is very dangerous- although it seems heartless to leave someone at the scene you simply have to do this to avoid a lynching by a mob who themselves care more about pilfering stuff from all concerned than actually offering any help. The advice given by our security people to just get somewhere safe was invaluable and meant that not only did we stay safe but we were able to offer real help.

Secondly, a lot of people are just after money. The biker who chose to carry out a lunatic manoeuvre without a helmet on a blind corner probably hurt a bit. However, he made the most of his ultimately superficial injuries to try to get some cash out of me. Once I started demanding cash from him for my car and mentioned the police, he couldn’t get back on his bike fast enough! The mob outside my gate were claiming he was dying, to try to get me outside and get cash from me. They were still claiming he was going to die as he ran back his bike and drove off! The second he had gone, they all left too- except the one bloke who tried to sell me a painting!

Finally you need to go into the legal system prepared. My visits to the police were always with a colleague who knew what was going on. It is also important to get there as quickly as is reasonably possible- especially if you don’t stick around at the scene. The personal safety justification only works if you make sure you get to the station at the first available opportunity. Here, perceptions matter. Generally, the first party to make a statement is believed- the other guy is always going to be on the back foot afterwards. Getting to a station and putting in your complaint is always going to be better than waiting for the other chap to give his side of the story then being dragged off in handcuffs! However, the police are basically fair here. The first chap was keen to get to the bottom of what had happened and, once he’d seen the scene of the accident and the car itself he drew a fair conclusion. The other officer was clearly out for a bribe but backed off pretty quickly once he saw nothing was going to happen- he could have made life hard but didn’t.

Anyway, as my boss told me, it is experiences such as these that make life here interesting. However, if the next few months are slightly boring I don’t think I’ll complain so much again!