Just when I thought we were street-savvy...

We were in Dar es Salaam about a month ago.  The city, which has one of the county's two major airports, seemed to swarm with Peace Corps volunteers.  All of us who teach in Tanzania were on holiday, and many were either traveling or meeting families who came to visit.  We ran into one friend and her parents and the five of us decided to have dinner on the street.  In the towns and cities here, dusk brings the emergence of street food vendors.  These vary from very simple, a mama grilling corn cobs over a charcoal fire, to more elaborate, with tables, chairs, and printed menus.  On a parking lot near a hotel popular with PCVs was one of the latter, and we opted to eat there.  We sat down at a table and a man arrived and asked if he could help us.  We asked for menus and he brought them, and after a few minutes he reappeared and asked us what we wanted to order.  We told him in a mixture of Swahili and English, and he sat down with us and slowly and laboriously wrote on a piece of paper.  He then left to turn in our order.

At this point, everything seemed fine.  If the waiter seemed a little uninformed about the menu options, well, that was not unusual.  He may have been new at the job.  He was certainly friendly enough and seemed eager to be of help.  We were too busy chatting and sharing stories to pay much attention to anything odd about his behavior.

A few minutes later, the man returned chatted a while, and then totaled the cost of our order.  We paid him, and he left, never to be seen again.

Some time later, our food was delivered by different people.  There seemed to be some confusion about exactly what was ordered. Soon the proprietor came to our table, and we discovered that the man who so helpfully took our orders and our money was not a waiter at all, but a con artist.  He did turn in the orders, telling the owner that he was our guide, but he took off with the cash.  Well, our food was partially eaten by that time, and consternation was felt all around.  The owner graciously did not charge us for the meal.  Later, he returned to our table and told us that some of his employees recognized the man, and that he would be caught.  I am sure he was made to pay, in one way or another.  People in this country have no tolerance for thieves, who are often subject to mob justice.        

Lessons learned:  Always be aware of your surroundings, and never pay for something before you receive it.