Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

In all non-urban areas in the world, police enforcement tends to be sparse.  Farming communities, separated by acres of fields, evidently cannot be conducive to constant patrolling presence of uniformed officers.  In fact, police presence can be so distant that when crimes and disputes occur, reporting to the police may not even bring officers to the scenes of conflict in time for fruitful resolution.  In the case of crimes by stealth, it is highly likely that by the time the police can assess the situation, neither the victim nor the victimizer will be there for questioning.

Out in the village of rural Tanzania, "let me find some money to do X" is one of the most common phrases heard when conducting business transactions. Widely used among people who obviously do not have any money with them or at disposal in personal possession, it simultaneously denotes a desire to spend money to get what is wanted and a determination to find the means of getting the needed money through completely flexible yet currently unknown ways. As unsatisfactory as the phrases sound, most of the time, sooner or later, the money is actually somehow "found."

In rural Tanzania, cinemas are non-existent and TV access requires expensive satellite dishes that few people can afford. To entertain themselves during their free time, locals tend to buy cheap pirated DVDs for computer gaming , or more commonly, drama series and movies. Carts and shops selling these DVDs exist not just in market towns but even in some bigger villages, allowing common people to access some of the latest visual entertainment from the outside world at quite affordable prices (if not the best of quality).

In rural Tanzania, the locals have a habit of referring to any poor-quality product as "kichina," which, in Swahili, roughly means "a thing of China." Whenever something they use breaks or gets damaged when they think the product should not be, they just shrug and casually blurt out, "well, it's kichina." It is not particularly targeted toward Chinese products though; in fact, the saying is used for all products, whether or not the product is from China. The connotation, however, is pretty clear: it goes without saying that Chinese products, as they have elsewhere, acquired a negative reputation in Tanzania.