An encounter with a goon

by Tejormai Bandi (India)

Making a local connection Tanzania

The driver slammed the brakes, the car screeched and came to a halt just a few meters from a tree. Dead end. Just as we were reeling from the shock of a possible car crash, there was a huge gust of wind and a low rumble. A few moments later, there was a sudden downpour. "Oh, this is not good, " said the driver in his deep African accent as he looked out the window and shook his head in disbelief. Frustrated, he revved the engine, turned the car around and drove, this time slowly. All of a sudden, my eldest sister screamed "there's a turn!" and pointed to her right. The road led into the woods. The driver looked at my father in the passenger seat and raised his eyebrows, asking for his approval. He nodded. We eventually entered the woods; not one electric pole in sight. I looked to my left and saw my elder sister - the middle child, fast asleep, sucking her thumb; She laid her head on my mother's lap, who was looking out the window. Yes, the four of us were in the back and were pretty comfortable. Hours later, there was a loud thud and I woke up to a stranger, a tall African man with a huge cloak draped around his shoulders who was sitting in the passenger seat with my father on his left. Startled, I blurted, "what's happening?" The man looked at me and smiled, displaying a set of yellow, crooked teeth. I gasped; it was the most sinister smile I had seen. He demanded to see our passports, but was brushed off by my mother; she told him that we didn't need them since we were visiting the Ngorongoro crater, a 14-hour drive from our house. Unconvinced, he asked her, "Then what are you doing in the middle of the forest at midnight?" "Visiting a friend", she said. "Only one man lives here." That's odd, I thought. "That's right. We're his guests." The man leaned towards my father and said, "I don't believe your wife. If you were his guests, you would have known the way to his house." My father nervously said, "It's our first time visiting him." The man grew suspicious. He asked, "so you're meeting your "friend" for the first time?" To convince him, my father explained the backstory of how we knew the man and why we were staying at his place even though we never met him. During this conversation of theirs, I glanced out the window and saw two men similar to the scary man in our car, standing outside. I looked back at the scary man and observed him. What I saw next shocked me to the core. Under the right elbow of the man, was a gun sticking out his cloak! My eyes widened and I pressed my back in the seat. I tugged on my mother's blouse so hard that she turned and saw me pointing at the gun. Her back stiffened. She saw it too! I whispered to her, "are we going to die?" She shook her head, whipped her phone out and frantically dialed a number. The man turned back to see what she was doing. A few seconds later, she started lashing out at the person on the receiver's end in Swahili. I didn't understand what she said, but I figured that she called "our friend". "This was not expected from you Babloo!", she said in English and angrily hung up the phone. The scary man was visibly convinced when he heard "our friend's" name. Babloo was a local man and the only resident of that area. Turns out he was popular among goons! The man volunteered to drop us off at Babloo's place himself. Twenty minutes later, we reached Babloo's house and saw him standing on the driveway, waiting for us. We were relieved. The scary man apologized to him for bothering us and took off. Later over dinner, I promptly said, "we would've definitely been dead by now if Babloo uncle hadn't received mummy's call." Everyone agreed. Perplexed, Babloo said, "what call? I never received a call." We suddenly turned to our mother. She smirked and said, "women are great actors, aren't they?"