Click!

On a visit to Tanzania, my parents wanted to see the market at Moshi. I’d been there twice with friends and when I tried to find it the third time on my own, I didn’t. My plan was to ask someone at the bus terminal and follow the pointed finger and then ask again if I needed to. I did not tell my parents this.

On the ride to Moshi in the college Land Cruiser, we rode with Spenciosa, secretary to the head of the humanities department, and it just so happened that she was going to the market. Embracing her role as market guide, she helped me buy several items at one stall. When my mother took the bag of items to carry, Spenciosa quickly took it back and explained that the mother did not carry anything, the children did. The children in this case were Spenciosa and me.

At one point, my mother stopped to admire the long row of women seated behind neatly piled mangoes, avocadoes, and oranges. My mother asked for her camera from my purse. She clicked a picture, and the row of mango sellers stood up in concert and began a long stream of angry charges with shaking fingers and hands on hips.

“Oh dear,” said my mother, “I think I’ve just started World War III.”

From the words that I could recognize, I understood that the woman whose image was now captured wanted ransom money. I could feel my mother slipping into the shadows, while my father watched in fascination.

My mother wanted to know what was wrong with taking a picture. I can only guess: to be clicked at by a wealthy foreigner is to be selected as an object of interest or fascination. If you’re tired or exhausted from carrying a huge bag of mangoes to the bus stand, tired of hauling the bag onto the bus along with 40 people crammed in there, tired of thinking of that journey back home, tired of wondering whether your ripe mangoes would be sold that day, whether you’d make enough money for that dayhaving someone merely fascinated by you as an object wouldn’t make you happy.

Then again, these women knew that foreigners will pay money for their picture, especially if they get angry. People of the Maasai tribe near Arusha have cashed in on this tendency. And everyone in Tanzania knows this. When I had friends from the States take a picture of me in class with my students, one student came up to me later and wanted to know when he’d be collecting the money. If the Maasai got money for their pictures, why wouldn’t he? (He was joking.)

Mixed in with all of that, probably, is a resentment that foreigners have money and the mango women do not. The finger of fate does not seem to care about justice when it chooses those for poverty and those for wealth.

So we were left to face charges of injustice and image theft by an irate mango woman. Spenciosa began to apologize, but it was clear that apologies weren’t enough. I walked over to the mangoes and asked the woman which one would be good for tomorrow. Immediately she began to press the mangoes one by one and selected a large one. I handed over the money. She had asked a fair price.

The camera remained in my purse for the rest of the journey through the market. We did not take a picture of the ladies now seated, clucking in contentment. We did not take a picture of the rows of small cages with chickens and roosters. We did not take a picture of enormous bags of lentils and flour, stacks of smoked fish.

The next day we ate the best mango we‘d ever had, fruit for the gods.