Amazingly enough, I have been in Africa for nearly a month.
Having gotten past my initial panic, I'm back to being really excited about the time I'm going to spend here, although I'm still a little daunted by how much I have yet to learn. Today I will have my first language lesson in Chichewa--hopefully that will go well.
On Friday, I walked into town to to buy credit for my cell phone from a street vendor and to commission a skirt from a sidewalk tailor. This routine (though not for me) errand was interrupted by an interesting citizens' arrest drama.
Just as my friend Mary and I were leaving the tailor's table, a young man came flying down the hill chased by another man yelling something in Chichewa. He rounded the corner and was kicked by a bystander, nearly falling in the path of a (slow) moving truck. He bounced right back up, but the moment he was on the ground was long enough for two more men to get close enough to grab him. A third man darted across the street from one of the shops on our side and, surprisingly, handcuffed the fugitive.
By this time people were swarming around the kid, all chattering in raised voices, although not exactly shouting. The mob marched him back up the hill, headed who knows where.
Mary asked someone what the shouting people were saying, and learned that the young man was accused of stealing cell phone credit from a vendor. The vendors stand on the corner wearing tunics with the name of the phone company they represent, and they sell little scratch-off tickets with a code that you enter into your phone to add more minutes.
Since he wasn't in uniform, I assume the man with the cuffs was a shop owner who has had occasion to take the law into his own hands before.
Other than that one kick to keep him from getting away, the mob wasn't particularly violent. Hopefully they stayed that way.
