Road bandits?
 

After months of convincing family and my husband that a trip to Tanzania would be perfectly safe, I just read Amy H's report which mentioned road bandits robbing tourists at gun/knife point!

I realize this can potentially happen anywhere, etc., but is this a common worry when traveling to Tanzania? Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I kind of just thought that traveling within and between the parks would be completely safe.

Don't want to be an alarmist, but couldn't help being alarmed after reading that. :-(

"I just read Amy H's report which mentioned road bandits robbing tourists at gun/knife point!"

On her follow-up it sounds like the robbers were set up for a local van they knew was carrying money and the tourist jeep just happened to drive into the middle of it.

"is this a common worry when traveling to Tanzania?"

It's extremely rare on the main northern circuit tourist routes. Tourists are their main bread and butter and the authorities will clamp down on this faster than they will on local-on-local crime.

"Don't want to be an alarmist, but couldn't help being alarmed"

I was one who asked her for more details too, but that's because my wife and I had traveled almost that identical route 18 times the past few months going to/from our lodge on the rim above Manyara, half of those trips in the dark ... but sounds like it was a local-on-local one time deal ... I asked because if it seemed to be an on-going problem we could take a few steps to protect ourselves, like travel with at least one other vehicle, tell the driver not to stop for anything, and locking up some of our gear in the lodge or hide it in the van. But after her last post I didn't think it was a serious problem.

Bill

Things happen. As a sporadic reader of Arusha Times I can tell that there certainly are road bandits in northern Tanzania, though I can’t remember reading about any tourists being targeted. Car accidents are definitely a bigger risk. Though if I were a Tanzanian with criminal inclinations I’d certainly try highway robbery of tourists after reading about the kind of money people here on Fodor’s spend on photographic equipment.

When I was travelling from Nairobi to Voi in 2004 the bus was stopped by armed men and held up for an hour. They wanted everyone to get off and show the inside of their bags. A girl from the Philippines was almost crying and told me she didn’t want to die, but the “only” thing that happened was that they took a man and tied him up in the open back of their vehicle.

Wow - in that case, I'm surprised this topic doesn't come up more often. I wonder what happened to the guy they tied up??

I guess I will have to rethink my trip. As much as I want to see Africa, I'm really nervous now. I really had no idea that road bandits were a condsideration. Sounds from Nyamera's post like they definitely are.

Does anyone else worry about this? Or just me?

Tremizzle,
Don’t rethink your trip. As this almost never comes up on travellers’ forums the risk must be really small. It didn’t affect my 2005 trip at all. I don’t even know if the men who stopped the bus were real road bandits or just some vigilante group. People in Voi and Mombasa weren’t surprised that the bus had been stopped by armed men, but they found it strange that it had happened at daytime and that nothing had been stolen. Some thought that they had had information about a man travelling with lots of money and kidnapped him, and a girl in Diani said she knew they were “peacekeepers, people who aren’t the police, but who help the police”.
Anyway, there are road bandits; “highwaymen” is a more interesting word, in East Africa and other places, but tourists very rarely see them. I don’t like to be on the road at night, but the only thing that really worries me is not finding the money to return to Kenya.

Tremizzle...Nayamera's experience was in Kenya. Amy's was in Tanzania.

Don't know where you come from but it must be a very safe place to be so alarmed. Better stay there because I'm afraid every country I have been to has crime. :-(

Seriously, I find these stories reassuring, in that nobody was harmed (except the guy who was tied up, but we suspect he had done something bad) and that in both cases tourists were not the target.... but the authorities in these places don't mess around with

...people who mess with tourists. It would be a lucrative career to rob tourists, Nyamera but I don't think it would be a very long one!

I've traveled to Africa 7 times and have never had a problem. This includes two visits to Tanzania, where I'm planning to take a group of friends next year. I wouldn't do so if I felt it was inherently unsafe. Frankly, I feel more unsafe in American and European cities than in the African countryside.

Tremizzle,
There is so much awful news in East African newspapers. If someone would start posting links there would be lots of rethought trips. But, it’s exactly the same with most places in the world. And if you, while reading the newspaper, try to imagine being a tourist planning to visit your hometown you’ll probably rethink that trip too.
Kimburu,
I thought I had discovered a perfect way to finance a life in Kenya. If I were gunned down by the Kenyan police maybe at least someone would write a ballad about me, “The Highway Topi”.

That would be a sad song indeed! :-(

Hello Tremizzle,
I can't help but to always go back to the response I got when I asked my Tanzanian guide if he ever plans to go to the US - to this he replied "no it's not too safe, too much crime".
Sherry

A safari tourist is near the top of the value hierarchy in Tanzania (and several other African countries). Someone attacking a tourist group would be either very desperate or very stupid.

Because their actions threaten a key component of the economy, no one, outside their group, would hesitate a moment to turn them in or tip off the authorities to their activities.

A gentleman I met in Zambia told me he would be afraid of going to New York because of crime. I asked him if he thought crime in the US was more of a problem than in Zambia and he said "maybe not, but I would get no extra measure of consideration and not knowing what to say or where to go would be readily set upon by the bad sort".