I went to town about a week ago, where I met Isaac.  It is a chronic problem that if you want to eat alone and you are an mzungu woman, young Tanzanian men will heft up their pants and sidle over to sit with you.  Sometimes they can be deterred.  Isaac barely asked my permission.

“Can I sit with you?” he asks, already sitting down.

In an effort not to be rude I sort of shrug and say, “Sure.”  I’m almost done with my kiti moto (literally means “hot seat”, but it’s just fried pork and part of my efforts to stock up on protein when in town) and figure I can leave soon.  Isaac, titillated by my use of Swahili, wants to impress me by only using English because, “See, my father is Zulu.”  Apparently, Isaac just got back from South Africa.  According to him, South Africa is better than Tanzania.  There is more money there.  He wants to go back to Cape Town as soon as he can.  I agree that it is nice, though I’ve never been to Cape Town.

“I want to start a business,” he says.

Me: “Oh really?”

Isaac: “Yes, I want to be a dealer.”  Thinking he means in cars (though I have no earthly idea why I thought this), I nod politely.  “I want to sell drugs and alcohol.”  I don’t hear him properly.

Me: “Wait, what do you want to sell?”

Isaac: “Drugs.”

Me: “Why?”

Isaac: “You make a lot of money selling drugs.”

Me: “You also go to prison.”

Isaac leans back knowingly and shakes his head with a big grin.  “Not me,” he says.  “Yes, you,” I say.  “But I’m magic,” Isaac says.

Of course he is.

Isaac then explains to me how he paid some witch doctor in the south of town “A LOT of money” so he can be invisible when he wants to be.

Isaac: “For example, if I wanted to take that piece of meat from your plate and I didn’t want you to see me, you wouldn’t see me.”  I almost say, “Try it,” but don’t want to feel embarrassed on his behalf when he fails.  Embarrassing people is a big taboo in Tanzania.  He continues: “Even in the airport, if they check my suitcases, they will find nothing.”

Me: “Because you are magic.”

Isaac: “Yes.”

Me: “Why don’t you get a good job that isn’t illegal?”

Isaac: “Because you can make so much money selling drugs.  I can go to Pakistan and bring back (I can’t remember the amount here) kilograms of cocaine and I will make a million dollars.”

Me: “Do you know what happens if you get caught with drugs in Pakistan?”  I make an illustrative gesture of drawing my finger across my throat.

Isaac: (matter-of-factly) “They cut off you head.”  I didn’t mean the action literally, but, yes, Isaac, they will kill you.  “But they won’t catch me.”

Me: “Because you are magic.”

Isaac: “Because I am magic.”  He pauses for a moment, clearly believing me impressed.  Then he says, “So, I want to go back to Cape Town soon, but the difficulty is money.  I need money to start my business.”

Me:  “That is a difficulty.”

Isaac:  “But where can I find this money?”  He looks at me hopefully.  I shrug.

Me:  “That is very difficult.  I don’t know what you can do.”  No, Isaac, I will not bank-roll your nascent drug-trafficking business.

Then the guy who cooked my kiti moto, clearly believing Isaac is making headway, decides to come sit with us, and now I have the attentions of not one but TWO young men (actually the kiti moto guy isn’t really all that young).  I tell them my boat is leaving in 10 minutes.  This is a lie.  Then, miraculously, my phone rings and it’s Ashura, the woman who cooks for me, and she tells me that I am late for my boat because we are leaving early and suddenly I have an air-tight reason for evacuating the table immediately.  I wish Isaac luck, but more in the I-hope-you-don’t-get-killed vein of things, and rush out of the restaurant, entirely comfortable that I have denied a man his entrepreneurial dream.