Rushwa ya Kwanza

*Quick admission - this post isn't new...it's from probably 3 weeks ago but I hadn't been able to publish it for unknown reasons. Same with the next couple I'll try to post. But more current stuff from Zanzibar and our last week in Arusha coming soon :)*

Tanzania, like many developing countries (for lack of a better word) has a relatively prevalent issue of petty corruption. “Everyone wants to eat” as the saying goes, so people with even a little bit of power (like a police officer, a customs official, or in this case a grounds keeper) will abuse that power to extract a small sum from nearly anyone they can. Police will pull you over for speeding (sometimes even if you’re driving the speed limit) and rather than writing you a ticket, they just give you the run around until you cave and offer them a small bribe which Tanzanians call kitu kidogo (a little something), chai (tea), or rushwa (a bribe/kickback). In all my travels, I’d never directly paid one (knowingly, at least). Until Saturday, that is. Our homestay brothers who are now back home from college took Katrina and I on a couple hour hike to check out some waterfalls that are in a conservation area protecting the source of Arusha’s drinking water. There’s a gatekeeper there who charged us a few bucks for the whole group which we figured was standard, at least for people whose skin color makes it so evident that they are foreigners from a (presumably) rich country. We paid and carried on our way until we ran into the grounds keeper who refused to let us pass until we each proved our student status and produced a letter written by officials at our respective universities stating our purpose for being there since the gate keeper had called him to tell him we were students. Of the five of us, only one had brought his student ID along, and we definitely didn’t have a letter announcing our visit. After going back and forth with the guy for at least five minutes, we eventually just hinted that we’d paid a “student rate” at the gate and that instead we should have paid the usual price which was double that. So we pulled together another 5,000 shilingi ($3-ish) to line the guy’s pocket and went on our merry way. The right thing to do? Probably not. The only practical thing to do after having walked uphill for two hours to get to those damn waterfalls? Definitely so. To be perfectly honest, it’s an awful thing, but I’d probably do it all over again (it helps knowing just how worth it those waterfalls were). It’s easy to blame the person. Everyone knows that corruption is universally bad...it’s an abuse of power, it’s illegal, and it’s morally wrong, right? But when a groundskeeper or a customs official or a police officer gets paid next to nothing and rarely receives what he/she does get on time, maybe it’s the system that is to blame rather than the individual. Everyone has to eat, I suppose.

Success! And all it took was a 2 hour hike and a rushwa or two...

A couple of our home stay brothers playing in Mount Meru's waterfalls...and pretending that they're not freezing their asses off. I jumped in for just long enough to get my hair wet and for my whole body to go numb. I think we shivered for a solid hour after we were done!

Arnold and Sunday teaching Katrina and I a new Swahili word - tetemeka = to shiver!

Katrina thinking about it and Sunday's friend Victoria not even considering it