Gravediggers
Trip Start
Jun 02, 2008
1
28
143
Trip End
Jun 09, 2009
Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Emmanuel is a 22-year-old refugee from Burundi. His family fled the Interahamwe (Hutu militia) some years ago, escaping down Lake Tanganyika. His mother died on the journey. His father and his brother went missing, leaving only him and his sister to settle in Kigoma, in western Tanzania. Emmanuel's dream is to work in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Sanctuary. He is working toward that goal through studies sponsored by the Jane Goodall Institute. He is currently in Dar because his sister is receiving treatment at the Muhimbili Hospital.
That's how he described himself yesterday as we walked the streets with him; the glint in his eye and his happy smile at odds with the story he told
Minaret with Antennae
. We parted with handshakes and an exchange of e-mail addresses. Bo and I walked back to our hotel thinking: what a brave fellow, another stranger in a strange land, he lived through all that tragedy, and all he asked for was a little companionship as he walked. If only there was some way to help him out!A few hours later Emmanuel calls for us at our hotel. I go down to meet him and, with tears in his eyes, he tells me that he has just lost his sister. She died in the hospital while we were out walking.
This is tragedy heaped upon a man who is already laden with it! This is an outrageous horror!
Or is it?
I comfort this man as best I can, with nothing in my personal experience to draw upon that will bring me any closer to him. I am also a little reserved and skeptical. The reasonable part of my mind is telling me that this is a scam and asking: when is he going to ask me for money? Eventually the story comes out: he needs some money to pay for mortuary fees and what he calls "perfume" - what I can only assume is some sort of embalming chemical
Colourful Kangas at the Fish Market
.Bo and I consult one another and agree that we will cancel the dinner plans we had made with a lovely British couple we had just met, go with Emmanuel to the hospital, and meet this doctor who is forcing him to pay for all of these things before signing a death certificate that will allow him to sleep in the hospital tonight.
Now, confidence artists' schemes work for a variety of reasons. I don't wish to discuss them all here in some long-winded analysis, but I do want to explain the reasons we went as far as we did with this game.
At any point while you are being conned, you have two basic decisions to make: either the con artist is lying or he is not, either you walk away or you continue. Based simply on probabilities, the decision is easy: this situation is highly improbable, therefore the con artist is lying, thus you should walk away. But the decision isn't based on probability alone. It seems to me to be based somewhat on the probability of each situation, but more on the harm (to any party) that will result from of each course of action in that situation.
Ray at the Fish Market
In our situation, there were four possible cases:
-If the improbable situation were false (Emmanuel is lying) and we stay, then little harm results (we lose some time in our evening, perhaps some money).
-If the improbable situation were false and we leave, then we possibly save some time and money and do our best not to have Emmanuel pull a knife on us as we walk away.
-If the improbable situation were true (Emmanuel's sister has indeed just died and he now needs the two people he just met to pay for her mortuary fees and embalming chemicals so that a doctor will sign a death certificate that will permit him to sleep in a hospital) and we stay and go along with him, then little harm results.
-If the improbable situation were true and we leave, then we become atrocious, jaded monsters, leaving a poor child alone to bury his sister in a strange city. We can't do that!
Anyway, before this digression gets too long and turns into a brochure for con artists entitled, "The Back Alley Guide to Markov Chains," let me get back to the story.
Huge Spider
We get to the hospital and the doctor is on rounds. We will have to wait for him. Emmanuel explains that the doctor has allowed him a small area behind the hospital in which he can bury his sister tomorrow morning. Some of the security guards currently on duty have agreed to help dig. We can help, too. We must arrive by seven if we are to complete the ceremony by nine, the time when the guards go off-duty. Emmanuel asks us, solemnly, to bring some incense and plants that we can purchase cheaply in the store across from our hotel. He will find a shroud and a bible and we can have a small funeral.
It seems the doctor, at the end of his rounds, has been called to an emergency at another hospital. Not wanting to stay all night, and doubting, but just believing enough, we give the small payment for embalming chemicals and mortuary fees to one of the security guards who (somehow) can now accept them on behalf of the doctor. After a quiet, quick meal with Emmanuel, we depart with sincere promises to return the next day to help him dig and to participate in his sister's funeral.
Back in our hotel, we sit in silence, unable to process the touching, horrible evening we've just experienced.
The Beach at Dar
Eventually, though, our hindsight focuses and a lucid overview of what has been presented to us allows us to walk away from this creep and his phoney situation without feeling any guilt. To recap: In Tanzania, when a woman dies in a hospital, her family is told to pay all associated fees before the attending physician will pronounce her dead. If the family is too poor for a funeral or cemetary plot, then the doctor is authorised to permit them to dig a grave for the deceased on hospital property, in proximity to the sick, using whatever forces they can muster. If the only surviving family member is new to town, he will enlist the help of the foreigners he has just met, who know nothing of his funeral customs, to purchase ceremonial herbs and dig the grave.
No, false! Although Tanzania is a country where not many things work in what we would consider a logical way, we have been here long enough to know that a system such as this cannot exist here.
So, we are not digging a grave right now and we are not at the hospital. We are safe and sound and enjoying our holiday.
Sincerely,
Jeff the Atrocious, Jaded Monster
Comments
Maybe not
..perhaps just a learning experience from another culture.. A Mother.