Dark Continent my Black Arse

by Shile Khumalo

On our way to the bus rank we did not converse because of the language barrier, but as I got out of the taxi I turned and said, ‘Asante.’ The cab driver was so surprised that I could thank him in Swahili that he responded, ‘Oh! Goodbye, Mister.’

  I was about to close the door when he gave me a piece of paper. Yes, it was his postal address. That was another major motivation for me to implement Resolution No. 5 (to learn Swahili).

  Although it was still very dark, the bus station was a hive of activity. Loads of people with loads of luggage – mainly agricultural products – milling around. It soon became obvious to me that the bus company I was travelling with was one of the worst at the bus rank; the other buses looked far more comfortable. There was no way, however, that I was going to forfeit 55 000 shillings and buy another bus ticket. I realised that I should never have judged the bus company by the appearance of its tout.

  I boarded the bus and, to my surprise, saw Paul entering the same bus at that early hour of the morning. He stood in the aisle next to my seat in the first row from the back and said, ‘I am also going to Dar and my seat is in front.’

  It sounded strange, but I did not take much notice. A few minutes later he finally came out with it: ‘Look, my man, I have to buy rice for my wife in Dar. She will give me the money when we get there. Can you please borrow me 200 000 shillings?’

  I gently refused and he soon walked back to the front of the bus. Meanwhile, other passengers were boarding the bus amid the (for me, at least) deafening sound of the morning-prayer call from the mosque. It made me think that if you are born in a country where you are exposed to this noise every morning of your life, you are drawn into Islam from birth.

  When the bus left Mbeya it was still dark. I soon realised how wrong I had been in my pre-judgement: that old piece of machinery was moving at great speed and it was not all that uncomfortable either. Like the bus from Lusaka to Chipata, it stopped in the middle of nowhere about three hours into the journey. There we did it again: passengers jumped out, men and women going in opposite directions into the long grass on the side of the road. It was then that I discovered that Paul was not on the bus and began to suspect that the hotel and a pick-up car in Dar were empty promises.

  In no time everybody was back in the bus and we continued on our way to the coast. Moments later the driver’s assistant came to the back and said a few words in Swahili to the people in the last three rows. From the guy who sat next to me I gathered the gist of what was happening. In the few words of English that he managed to string together he told me that most of the land around Mbeya was used for growing crops and that people from Mbeya and surrounding areas traded their agricultural produce with people from the coastal region. The government was against buses being overloaded with agricultural products, hence it encouraged traders to use trucks for transportation to the coast. To make sure that their fruit and vegetables were not transported from Mbeya to Dar by passenger bus, buses were weighed.

  It was for this reason that the driver’s assistant came to ask us to stand in the aisle at the very front of the bus at the next weigh bridge, in order to ‘balance’ the load – apparently most agricultural produce was loaded at the back of the bus. The trick must have worked because our bus had no sooner been put on the scale than it was given a print-out as proof that it was within the weight limit and was given the green light.

  Between Mbeya and Dar, we went through three weigh bridges in total, and each time the passengers in the last three rows had to go through the same procedure. I wondered if the authorities genuinely did not know about this trick. Also, try as I might, I could not figure out, technically and practically speaking, what the ‘balancing’ of the load meant. But the driver’s assistant believed in it and so did the passengers, who moved to the front whenever the bus went through a weigh bridge.

  Soon after the first weigh-in we stopped at Iringa Hotel, the only hotel in Iringa, to give passengers the opportunity to buy something to eat. Although it was still early morning, people bought full meals: rice and chicken and portions of chips and chicken, all of which were served in really large portions. Half an hour later we were on our way again. From time to time, police in white uniforms stopped us to check the weigh-bridge print-outs. With big speed humps between Mbeya and Dar, my Business Idea One, i.e., going into the shocks-and-exhausts business, was reignited.

  Ten hours, 829 kilometres and nine roadblocks after setting off from Mbeya, we disembarked in hot, humid and badly maintained Dar es Salaam, a typical African city with a sprinkling of skyscrapers and lots of dilapidated old buildings.

  Once known as Mzizima, Dar is one of the oldest cities on the east coast of Africa. The Arabs gave it the name Dar es Salaam, meaning ‘abode of peace’ or ‘haven of peace’ in Arabic. Although it is not the capital of the country, it is the trade and economic hub of Tanzania, as is Blantyre in Malawi. That explains why the once medium-sized port has grown into a sprawling and overcrowded city.

  Dar is both hot and very humid, more intensely so than my home town of Durban. The feeling of discomfort is made worse by continuous traffic jams and the vast numbers of people who seem to walk, non-stop, up and down the severely potholed streets. Legend has it that people had to become street smart to survive in the city during the Nyerere era, hence Dar’s nickname Bongo (‘brains’ in Swahili) and Bongoland, for Tanzania.

  As I suspected, Paul had just been blowing hot air. There was no pickup car for me at Dar’s bus station; I had to take a cab. Something I found really strange was the distance of the bus station from the city centre – 11 kilometres – almost as far out as the international airport. This, I was told, was to alleviate noise and traffic congestion in the city centre.

  When I arrived at the hotel, where Paul was supposed to have reserved a room for me through his brother, I was told that it was fully booked. It didn’t take long for me to realise that all the promises he had made were nothing but an investment in winning my trust so that I would give him the 200 000 Tanzanian shillings he had asked for on the bus. Since even the budget hotels nearby were fully booked, I ended up in a mid-luxury hotel in a scruffy neighbourhood.

  It was the first time on the trip that I had a room with a fully enclosed bathroom, TV, air-conditioning and a mini fridge. It was already evening when I booked in and I decided to have dinner at the in-house restaurant. After enjoying scrumptious fish and chips, I asked for the bill and was given a beer. I am not a complaining type, so I enjoyed the beer. When I asked for the bill for the second time, I received another beer. Although I drank the second beer, I used a hand signal to ensure that on the third request I got the bill and not a beer. Of course I paid for the beers with a broad smile on my face. After all, I was a bit tipsy.

  Just before I went to bed, I checked for email on the free internet service for hotel guests. I was relieved to know that my fiancée’s concern that the thug who had broken into my car might return was unfounded. However, she informed me that my friend Vukani Hlatshwayo, known as Merv, had died in a car accident.

  The last time I had seen Merv was at my bon voyage party two days prior to my departure. As he said goodbye he wished me well and asked me if I had taken all the necessary vaccinations. He warned me about malaria as well as the importance of using a condom in case I got lucky. Before I left Merv had been involved in two accidents, the second within 24 hours of collecting his car from the panel beaters. After the second accident, the car was written off and he bought a new car – the one that killed him.

  Merv’s death made me realise, again, that life is both fragile and short and that we must get on with it and do the things we want to do without procrastinating. It was a sobering note on which to retire.

  Lala ngoxolo qhawe. Rest in peace, our hero.

  Financially speaking, my grand plan was to separate my Cape to Cairo trip into stages. Logistically and practically speaking, it meant that I did not travel as the crow flies but sometimes followed the meandering line of my own interest, with Cairo my
ultimate but not direct goal. My first stage was scheduled to end in Zanzibar.

  As the US dollars I was carrying on me had run out, I needed a swiping machine to draw enough foreign currency to take me from Dar es Salaam via the ‘spice island’ to Nairobi. At the black market at the Songwe border post I had changed my last couple of US dollars to Tanzanian shillings, all of which I had already spent.

  I could not find a swiping machine. Only foreign-exchange bureaus in Dar, I soon learned, provided forex, and they only changed one currency (either in cash or travellers’ cheques) to another. I ended up going from one bank to another, trying without success to buy just enough Tanzanian shillings with my credit card to get me to Nairobi.

  In the process I procured the services of an interpreter, who referred to me as Bafana because of our national soccer team, Bafana Bafana. He took me to different banks and foreign-exchange agencies. Everywhere I received the same response: I could not buy the local or any currency using my credit card. The only place with such a facility, someone in a bank suggested, was at the domestic terminal at the airport. I took a bus to Julius Nyerere International Airport and was promptly sent back to town.

  I was so desperate I even considered flying back to Johannesburg to attend Merv’s funeral and get all the cash I needed before flying back to Dar. Eventually, after about three hours of solidly looking for a swiping facility, I found an official foreign-exchange bureau where I could buy foreign currency by swiping a credit card. It was right next to the bank that I had tried earlier that day! The commission was high and it had a relatively small daily maximum allowance, but the relief was great.

  Since Dar was so hot and humid and the traffic so congested, I decided that I would cross directly to Zanzibar by ferry. It was high season and the one reasonably-priced ferry on which I could book a seat was leaving only later in the evening. Since the difference in price between taking a ferry and flying was only US$15, I decided, instead, to book a flight to Zanzibar and return to Dar by ferry. I had about three hours to kill before my flight, so I left my backpack at the booking office and went to the National Museum of Tanzania.

  The museum offered an insight into the history of Tanganyika/Tanzania, along with a graphic commemorative display by a Japanese NGO of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. After two hours of looking around the museum, I went to wait for the cab at the main entrance, having agreed with the driver that he would pick me up at a fixed time. I waited and waited but the cab driver did not turn up.

  Accepting that I had been let down was a horrible moment for me. My backpack was at the booking office and, although I had paid for my plane ticket, the ticket had not been issued yet. I was supposed to collect it together with my bag. My other problem was that I really had no clue where this office was located. Even worse: what if the cab driver had gone back to the office, picked up my bag and disappeared with it?

  The only thing I could remember about the office was that it was not far from a church.

  Given the language problem, the two cab drivers I approached had absolutely no clue as to what I was talking about. It was I who was now ikwerekwere (the derogatory term used back home to describe our African brothers and sisters who come looking for a better life in South Africa). It was at that moment that I made Resolution No. 6: not ever to call another person ikwerekwere.

  By then I was in a state of panic. The third cab driver I spoke to looked as if he had a faint idea of what I was so urgently gesticulating about. I got into his car and after a few minutes discovered, little though I knew Dar, that we were going in the wrong direction. We had to turn around.

  I tried making the hand signal for praying and the sign of the cross to describe the church to the cab driver. I even tried to hand signal a ferry sailing through water. That confused the poor man all the more. I was still trying to figure out what hand signals to use when, from the corner of my eye, I saw the church I was looking for. Not far from the church, I spotted the office. I shouted ‘Stop!’ and hammered on the dashboard, leapt out and rushed over to the booking office to find my backpack quietly waiting for me inside.

  From an old, grey-haired man at the office I learned that someone would be waiting for me at the airport, so I didn’t need to be issued with an air ticket. At my insistence (I was not taking any chances at this stage) he phoned to confirm that this was so. It sounded confusing but, relieved more than anything else that I still had my bag, and without time to ask any further questions, I jumped into the cab waiting for me, as agreed, in front of the office. When I got to the airport, there, indeed, was a young man awaiting me at the domestic terminal drop-off zone. He hastily ushered me through security, as well as through the only passenger gate, all the way to the waiting area without anyone ever asking for any documentation/ticket/boarding pass.

  We waited for about 15 minutes before boarding time was announced. As we were approaching the boarding gates my companion suddenly remembered that I had to pay US$10 domestic departure tax. Since I did not a have US$10, I gave him a US$20 note to change. That was the last I saw of him.

  I continued walking and went through the exit/boarding gate and still nobody asked me for anything. I could not believe that there I was, carrying my heavy backpack, walking towards a small airplane without a ticket or boarding pass. Quite a few passengers were in front of me. From what I could see when I boarded the Cessna Caravan the other passengers also didn’t have boarding passes.

  I chose a seat right behind the pilot. There was only one seat left unoccupied when a white couple, obviously tourists, came on board. Without being asked, a gentleman, a black Tanzanian wearing a black suit and carrying a briefcase, volunteered to leave the plane to make space for the two tourists. As the plane lined up on the runway the pilot turned around and asked, ‘Is everyone here going to Pemba island?’

  Before he could finish, I was already screaming at the top of my voice: ‘No, no, I am going to Zanzibar!’

  ‘We are going to Pemba via Zanzibar,’ he replied, with one hand on the joystick and the other on the headphone so that he could hear what I was saying. It turned out, meanwhile, that the person I thought was the co-pilot was, in fact, another passenger.

  The aerial view of Dar from the Cessna as we flew off was just endless square kilometres of corrugated iron, clear water and picturesque shoreline. Although it was a cloudless day the turbulence in the small plane was strong. But I was already shaken enough not to worry about such a small matter. Besides, it was a very short flight. In no time we were descending to Unguja, as Zanzibar is called by the locals, and I caught my first glimpse of the palms for which Zanzibar is world renowned.

  I learned later that ‘Unguja’ is Swahili for ‘So you came?’ or ‘Oh! You came?’– the first question asked of a person coming to the island from the mainland. Visiting Arabs only later called the island Zanzibar – ‘land of blacks’. The rest, as they say, is history.

  Zanzibar, Honolulu, Fiji, Timbuktu – these must be some of the most exotic place names in the world. Zanzibar is certainly one of Africa’s top tourist destinations.

  Three events have put the island on the world map. One, it boasts the shortest war in recorded history – the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 27 August 1896, which lasted a mere 45 minutes. Two, it was one of the most active slave-trading centres on the East African coast. Three, a boy by the name of Farrokh Bulsara, better known as Freddie Mercury, was born there on 5 September 1946.

  From the airport I took a 1960s Peugeot cab to Stone Town. I really felt like a tourist in Zanzibar, which looked completely different from any place I had visited before. Stone Town is a conglomeration of innumerable small alleys, and the drivers of all manner of vehicles were hooting all the time. I learned the following day that one of the biggest offences on Zanzibar’s roads is to have a car/bike without a hooter. In fact, it is required by law to hoot so that other road users will know you are around.

  After checking into my hotel, I thought it fitting tha
t I should have a drink at Mercury’s. While sipping a Kilimanjaro beer in this restaurant, I was treated to one of the most beautiful sunsets I have seen in my life. I had begun to see that the trip was making me appreciate the simple things in life: sunsets, waterfalls, a good conversation with a stranger. Perhaps it was the beer attacking my central nervous system, but I was greatly moved by the thought.

  Lazing away the hours, I watched the international tourists, who all seemed to be madly in love, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes instead of looking at the scenery, and the youngsters playing soccer on the beach and the heavily covered local women, dressed in black. I was blissfully content until I discovered that I had completely forgotten the name of my hotel. I had gone completely blank. To jolt my memory I walked around the night flea market, where I spotted a few tall Masai men in red kikois selling art and beads. I was still blank but then, all of a sudden, it hit me: the name of the hotel was Gavu.

  Being an arrogant male, I did not want to ask for directions to the hotel, even after getting lost in the tiny alleys of Stone Town. Various people had told me that all first-timers get lost in Stone Town and, wanting to disprove them, I kept on trying to find my way about. Eventually, after an hour, I had to swallow my pride and ask for directions. It turned out that the place I was looking for was, in fact, not the Gavu but the Vuga Hotel.

  I blamed it all on the Kilimanjaro.

  Naturally, on my first morning in Zanzibar I had to join a tour group for a one-day tour to the spice plantations, which are on the northern part of the island. Prior to joining the tour, I dropped off my laundry at the hotel’s reception desk. I had been on the road for almost a month and my clothes were really dirty.

  There were about 15 of us on the tour. On our way to the plantations, which are all government-owned, we drove past David Livingstone House. While the tireless explorer was outfitting his last expedition to the mainland of Africa in 1866, Sultan Seyyid Majid placed this big, square, triple-storey house at his disposal for a few weeks.