The difference between TZ and the US

The police here are not always the source of law and order. There are police stops on the streets where they pull cars over and look for violations. Sometimes they require fines to be paid that don’t actually make it back to the office. You have to be firm and ask for a receipt, which will require them to actually turn in a fine rather than pocket it. They don’t like that.

If you don’t have the money to pay on the spot, they will take your car away and take you to jail until you can round up someone who can pay.

If you yell “mwizi” (thief) in the market, people will chase that person down and beat them to death. Really. A recent picture in the news showed the police rescuing a would-be thief from “mob justice.”

There is no ambulance service. You flag down a car (or the police order you) to take the injured person/s to the hospital. When you get to the hospital or clinic, treatment will be refused unless you pay in advance. So if you are delivering the person, you will either have to pay their bill for them, find a relative who can come and pay, or leave them there and let whatever happens happen. You can imagine that it is not in most people’s interest, then, to stop and help someone who is injured. To those of who have been raised to know that hospitals will treat emergencies, and a general understanding that people will help those in an emergency (and that medical help is always close at hand) these practices (and the resulting effect on human behavior) make me angry and frightened.

You need to always carry/have lots of money. No credit cards or checks are accepted. We use an ATM to get our $ from the States and even though you’re not “supposed” to have large amounts of money in your house or on you, the fact is that you need money all the time. So you have to always remember to go to the ATM. Then, you get your money in 10,000 shilling bills. But then you need 100 shillings or 300 shillings for something and no one can make change easily for more than a few thousand shillings. So you have to try to break down the large bills into smalls, which you can do at the bank where the ATM is. Except the queues (lines) are always impossibly long. We are still getting used to a cash only life.