A blurred moment of frightened chaos

The other day me and Maggie were walking down to the Kanga shop when we saw this HUGE mob of people who all of a sudden started sprinting toward us. A few seconds after they started sprinting we heard 3 gunshots fired and all at once the whole street of people started sprinting in every direction hunkering down and covering their heads as they ran. Cars were stopped as people were running into the street to get away from the gunshots and mob of people sprinting away from where the shots were fired. Me and maggie naturally feeling the chaotic, scared energy of this huge crowd sprinting everywhere started sprinting down the street. The street the gunshots were fired was a dead end street that blocked the area where our guest house was and where the main street was so i thought it would be smart to go down the next street over (parallel to the dead end street) to get to the main street. As we were about to turn some guy grabbed Maggies arm and was like "no not that way bad things happen there" so we kept running with him one block further to figure out what had happened. When we stopped we asked him in Kiswaenglish what had happened and apparently some guy had tried to rob the bank at the end of the dead end street. The big mob of people were people throwing rocks at him and the gunshots had come from the police trying to break everything up. Although I don't think anybody was actually shot I'm pretty sure the big mob of people originally sprinted because the police were pointing their guns at them as well as the thief. Although looking back I realize that we weren't in any real danger because it is almost impossible for regular people to get guns but in the moment with everything happening in the Islamic community, being the only two white people in the crowd we were a little afraid that we were an extremely easy target.

It's interesting here in Tanzania because instances where civilians mob up together to beat up a thief happen a lot. Even our swahili teachers saw two banana thieves getting beat up on their way to school one day. In a way it is kind of cool the way people will come together to help each other punish people trying to steal. In the states I feel like a lot of times some people will call 911 and watch from a safe distance but here people come together to help each other protect their livelihoods which in a way kind of makes me feel safer...as long as I don't try and steal any bananas or rob any banks.