The seeds of contempt

Since moving here, I’ve been cognizant of a strain in my relationships with many Tanzanians.  Nothing overt, just a subtle undercurrent of something that I haven’t yet found a way to describe.  It’s something that I didn’t experience in either Laos or Singapore and because I don’t understand it, it’s something I think about a lot.

Here on the peninsula (the expatriate enclave), I regularly see people have grocery attendants carry their bags to their car.  That I am able to carry my bags myself has elicited more than one look of confusion.  I see house attendants walking family pets and a steady stream of domestic help making their way to our various households in the early morning light.   I’m not going to address the economics of this system, but the power differential is painfully obvious.

A word that has come to mind on more than one occasion is contempt.

This week was one of those occasions.

When I woke up Wednesday morning there was no power.  A transformer servicing Dar had exploded earlier in the week and our generator had been running non-stop, so my first thought was that it had broken down under the strain.  Given that most of my colleagues don’t have generators, I figured it was just my turn to experience some inconvenience.  Because there was an outside chance I’d used up my pre-paid credit I strained at my window to hear whether other tenants were also afflicted.

I didn’t have to wait long before I heard a raised voice directed at our night guard.  Since it was a building-wide problem and we don’t have running water when there is no power, I gave up on my morning run, dawned a headband and went to work.

That’s when the venom started.  The first email I read from a fellow tenant was the written equivalent of frothing at the mouth.  Capital letters, thirty-six point font, the works.  How dare we be inconvenienced?  Slowly an explanation emerged.  For reasons that remain unknown, the night guard had pressed the emergency stop, shutting off our generator.  Immediately the rallying cries began for his dismissal.

Now it’s true, this guard was not necessarily the sharpest or most dedicated to his job.  But let’s consider what his job is: he sits for twelve hours at our gate, opens it when we come in to park, theoretically protects us from some unknown danger.  Don’t get me wrong, there is value to this.  But when I come home and he is sleeping, my first thought is not ‘why is he sleeping?’ it’s ‘how does one endure such boredom?’  To me, sitting and waiting for twelve hours at a time to open a gate would be a form of cruel and unusual torture. 

Job performance aside, he was always entertaining.  In the mornings after I’d finish a run, he would always tell me sorry – for my voluntary exertions.   Every time I traveled for work, he would ask where I’d been and what the weather there was like.  On top of this, no matter what time of day he was always in a state of partial disrobe: boots untied, shirt undone, belt unbuckled, why!?! Totally hilarious and the type of comic relief that I was grateful for daily.

By the end of working hours, there was an email from our landlords saying that this guard had been ‘relocated’ by the company he works for.  Is this a euphemism for fired?  I hope not.  Think about what it could mean if this man lost his livelihood.  Would he be able to pay his children’s school fees? Would his family eat less? Would he be able to get another security job after being dismissed from one of the better companies in Dar?

All because some wealthy foreigners had to go to work one day without a shower?

When I got home Wednesday night, he was there, talking to another one of our guards and dressed (completely, for a change) in street clothes.  I went downstairs to tell him sorry and thank you.  But can there be much consolation in that?  It continues to trouble me that I didn’t speak out and say that it wasn’t that big of a deal to me.  I didn’t say that I think we are all a bit too spoiled anyway.  I did not argue for his second chance.  Since then, I’ve been reflecting on the seeds of contempt.