Mzungus at Manda Hill

If you've been reading my blog thus far, you can probably discern that my time in Zambia has been great and moderately wholesome so far. Yes, it's been punctuated by a ton of annoyingly redundant catcalls of "MZUNGU! MZUNGU" from babies up to older men, and a few potentially scary run-ins (crazy man in Kaoma), but that could happen anywhere, right? For the first time last week I felt specifically targeted and sneakily duped solely because of my mzungu status (and I'm not including being overcharged for taxis or food bought in markets - in my mind that's a given).

Alice, Lena and I went food shopping Saturday afternoon after the final VCT Challenge Day of 2010 (we got soaked in a torrential downpour, but that's another story). We hit up Manda Hill, a newly rebuilt American-styled mall that houses Shoprite - the mecca of international food products (we all salivated at the sight of Philadelphia cream cheese and smoked salmon, but that's another story). We stocked up on supplies for our ThanksChristMukkah dinner and trekked back to the car, bags and bags of groceries in tow. Manda Hill is an odd place - expensive by Zambian standards, it draws an expat and international crowd. At the same time though, wealthy Zambians and upwardly-mobile (or wanna-be upwardly-mobile?) Zambians hang out there too. Anyways, we loaded our stuff into the car, I hopped in the driver's seat, and slowly backed out of the too-narrow parking spots that are ubiquitous in Zambia, careful to avoid small children and people walking by.

Just as I was about to turn my wheel and pull into drive, a loud SMACK thuds on my roof. WTF? I thought to myself. There was no one there! I was being purposefully careful and perceptive! Maybe I just didn't see someone and this was a warning SMACK? I turn to the left and see a guy couched over, not screaming or crying, and a different guy comes over and says, "You just ran over his foot. You have to take us to the hospital and to the police." I kept on going with my three-point-turn, the dude wasn't even expressing pain. But then part of me panicked - what if I HAD really run over his foot? I could see the headlines already: "Mzungu Charged with Hit and Run at Manda Hill." The second guy who approached the car (with a strange, golf ball-like protrusion at his eyebrow, probably from a fight no less) continued bugging us to take them to the hospital, so I finally got out and went to look at the guy's foot.

"It hurts, oh! The pain!" he said several times. Right. That's why you weren't screaming in pain earlier. "Take off your shoe," I instructed. He did. "And now your sock." He began to pull it off and then stopped about halfway and continued, "Oh, I can't, I can't! The pain." "Take it off, NOW," I commanded. He did, attempting to shield his foot from my view, and... it was TOTALLY fine. this was approximately 4 minutes after I had apparently "ran over his foot," and there was no swelling, no blood, nothing crushed, no weird indentations...your body reacts very quickly to something like that, so I just said, "You're totally fine, stop lying," and brusquely walked back to the car, turned to the second guy and asserted, "Get OFF of my car, you're full of shit," and drove away.

Upon further pondering and discussion we realized that it had all the makings of a scam - first of all, I was driving a low-riding station wagon, there was absolutely NO way I could have ran over his foot if he were behind me, he would have had to be to the side, which he wasn't. Secondly, a second guy jumped in and did the talking. When Lena and Alice asked who he was he hesitated and said, "Uhhh, his brother." Thirdly, the "brother" switched from insisting we take them to the police and the hospital, to insisting we drive them to their "family doctor." Right. So we can pay him and then you can split the sum. Or so you can hop in the car with three white girls and then rob us. Or so you can make us feel like idiots. Either way, they were full of shit, and thankfully we were all savvy enough to avoid their sneaky little ploy.

Lesson learned? Be careful backing out of Manda Hill. Scammers are lurking...