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Loaning and Borrowing
Let’s say Jonathan lends Kenny his pocket knife. In Tanzania, it is now Jonathan’s responsibility to get the knife back. If he doesn’t mention it again, Kenny will assume that Jonathan doesn’t need it so he can keep using it. He will now have to ask for it back AND give a reason for asking. Jonathan should state that he needs to use the knife himself now. I asked the teacher, “So a good way to say it isn’t, ‘Please give me my knife back because it’s mine’?” He said, “Oh but it’s not yours. It’s ours.” Ah.
There is a sense here of communal ownership. There are some cultures where that would mean a person could just come in your house and take things without asking. Thankfully, it’s not like that here. But. If someone we know were to ask to borrow something we couldn’t, well, shouldn’t just say ‘no’. (In fact, ‘no’ is just never an answer in and of itself. That’s extremely rude.) We would have to say we aren’t able to lend the item and then give reasons as to why – even if the reasons aren’t quite… the truth. They referred a lot to “white lies” which they acknowledged was hard for missionaries. What a Tanzanian would do if someone asked to borrow something and they didn’t want to lend it is to tell them that someone else has asked to borrow it or they are going to need it for something specific and can’t lend it out or any other “white lie” they could think of. And it seems that even asking for the item back doesn’t guarantee you’ll get it. Loaning and borrowing apparently isn’t very successful here.
He then told us how the loan department of the bank works. They are very careful about who to lend to and only do group lending. That means that a group of families (usually 5-10) come together to share responsibility. If the loan isn’t paid back they find one of them and lock them up in a room until the debt is paid. You can see that room in town. If we can somehow do it, we’ll take a picture one day. The funny thing is that upstairs over that room is a church and they can get loud. God works in mysterious ways…