Ben East

A vaguely sinister mood hung over the Mbeya bus depot.

The dropping sun fed an air of desperation: find shelter or get out. Hucksters sought advantage against the latest travelers to arrive, exhausted by their journey from the border. The scavenging mongrels, even the roosters, made aggressive advances toward the blowing rubbish in the evening haze.

I had no business there, no business at all in Tanzania. And as I prepared for the swarm of hustlers and hooligans marching our way, I saw the side pocket of my pack. Unfastened. I reached in, felt for my leather folio. Gone.

And with it, my passport.

I had two thoughts: the chaotic stop just before this, when the driver disrupted everyone to off-load illegal sacks of Malawian sugar. And that solicitous fellow passenger, Marcus Mobutu, who’d ridden beside me the whole way from the border. I was incredulous that Mobutu would reach into my pack, help himself to my journal, even as he coached me on Tanzanian society and warned about tricksters.

I didn’t feel the usual sensation, no dropped stomach, no frantic panic, no sweaty despair. I felt annoyed and cursed my carelessness, grateful no one nearby followed the vile language.

Just that morning, without a visa, I’d talked my way across the border. A little patience, a little humility, small Kwacha, and Dunhill cigarettes solved the visa problem. That I presented a passport I was not authorized to use was not the agents’ concern. Now, even that shred of identity was missing. Stolen.

I felt alone, rootless, very foreign, and extremely targeted.

In this way I was in no condition to receive the swarm of hustlers surrounding our bus. They jostled and pulled, urging me in Swahili and broken English to book a bus out of Mbeya: to Dar es Salaam, to Arusha and Kilimanjaro, to Lusaka in Zambia. Even back to Lilongwe.

The crowd tugged and tugged until I stood inside a tiny booking office, the hustler who’d claimed victory over me by my side in the relative calm. With patience, I brought him to understand my situation.

As I saw it, I had three options. The most obvious took me to Dar, twelve hours east, and a visit to the embassy. I might get a replacement passport, but the officials would alert my masters in Lilongwe about their wayward man and I’d be shipped home in disgrace.

A more adventurous route took me back to the border, beating through the bush in some furtive crossing. That risked detention by rusticated guards on either side of the border and a night in a holding cell. An American official would drive up in a white Land Cruiser, pluck me out, and restore my path along the original option: sent home in disgrace.

I banked on a third way: this hustler’s car and his local ties. I hadn’t given up on my passport, had no desire to explain my carelessness to embassy people. There was also the frustrating irony of having talked my way into a passport stamp if I could have slipped across the border without it in the first place.

I haggled briefly over cab fare, accepting a high fee to save time. We jumped into a low, beaten sedan and sped toward the last bus stage, difficult to identify in the semi-urban sprawl, nothing distinct: concrete kiosk after concrete kiosk lining the single track road offering tyre repair, cheap Chinese products, and Coca-Cola.

The hustler—I forget his name, but he was my guy—knew where to stop. He headed immediately to a cluster of low concrete shops. From them echoed the sound of coins and bells: a slot machine joint.

A few young toughs sat on stools outside. My guy approached them without formality, all part of the same clique, under-worlders armed with the knowledge of small-time scams. After a brief exchange, he turned and said: “The one who cheated the Mzungu ran up that way.” He pointed across the road into a thicket of bamboo stalls, bottle stores, and people tip-toeing around trickling sewage.

“So what now?”

“We follow. Looking.”

“Looking for what?”

“These ones will show us.”

What a game! Three louts on bar stools outside a slot joint leading a chase, an unknown hooligan gone up a tidal whirl of fecal detritus. Undoubtedly I’d be paying everyone as part of the fun.

“How about telling them where I’m staying. When they find the guy with my passport”—I no longer thought this would happen— “tell them to bring it.”

I was banking on two things: there was nothing in my folio useful to any local except the pen, and I had money in my pocket. If the cheat wanted cash, he’d have to come get it. The plan was shared with the hoods, who nodded dumbly and looked at me for the first time.

I took a room across the street from the bus depot and waited beside my guy and his sedan. I bought an orange from a woman and sucked it, peeled to the white and sliced in half. Ten minutes passed, no talking, me sucking oranges, several hooligans idling curiously.

Finally, my guy told me to give 200 shillings to a gofer. “He’ll collect your passport book.”

“You’ll understand that I don’t,” I said. “I’ll give him double when he brings it.”

Something was happening I couldn’t see. People appeared out of nowhere and asked for money, claimed access to my passport. Yet we hadn’t moved, and we’d talked to no one but the slot joint crew. Mbeya’s underground was buzzing.

When the gofer pulled my folio from inside his shirt, I allowed myself the pleasure of looking surprised. Inside was my passport, my notes, even my pen. I gave the gofer his money. He asked for another 200 and I told him get lost. The crowd was patting each other’s backs and smiling, speaking a happy Swahili. I shook my guy’s hand and gave 500 shillings. He accepted, then asked for more.

I walked away, disgusted. I felt relieved, hungry, dirty. I wanted a bath, chicken, and as many Safari Lagers as the rest house could provide. And because it was a bus depot rest house at the edge of a restive and salty place, the owner was all too happy to oblige.

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