And Home Was Kariakoo

by M G Vassanji

  “Thank you, Mama,” says Joseph in Swahili as we leave.

  “Welcome again, my son,” she replies.

  What a long way we have come.

  (Photo Caption 11.3)

  On our way back to the hotel through the street market, over a radio blaring music, a Jeep announcing a political meeting over a loudspeaker, we suddenly hear a burst of shouting and cheering from behind the shops and curiously walk into an alley towards the source, and come to a dead end where a man sits at a small table. We are told to pay a fee to go and watch mpira—soccer. It’s Saturday afternoon and the English Premier League is on. We pay and enter a long, dark shed, the air thickly pungent with the reek of male human odour and electric with a palpable excitement. Three simultaneous live games are being watched on three TVs by some two hundred men seated in rows on chairs and free with their commentaries and rejoinders. “Give it the boot!” “Go forward, you!” “I told you!” “Now will we listen to you or watch the games?” There are judgment calls, shouts of joy and frustration. A wonderfully raucous atmosphere, the sheer joy of watching football, but at one thousand shillings a ticket this is expensive entertainment for most. But the TVs are flat and wide-screen. How the three matches are mentally processed by the audience is a wonder. They must all have their favourite teams. And there can be no question, Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United’s manager, is better known than the British prime minister or the Queen.

  Passing through the bustling market, Joseph speaks of the “discourse on Africa” in the West. All around us here is abundance of life, moments of joy—which is not to deny there are problems elsewhere. But why don’t they show this side of Africa, the sheer exuberance that can also be here? It was impossible for his German colleagues and teachers to accept this idea. Their view of Africa as abjectly poor and starving was unshakeable.

  The Sukuma, the predominant tribe in Mwanza, he explains, are short and dark; they have a flattish nose, curved up front. They are related to his own people the Bukusu in Kenya. As we walk around, I look for confirmation of his statement without seeming obvious. The variety in the people we have seen has been a thing of wonder for me ever since we left on this journey; Africans are not simply “Africans”; they are as diverse as Indians. I think, not for the first time, how insular we Asians were, how little we cared to know about the lives of the people among whom we lived. Not that the Africans were aware of the nuances of Asian existence either. Once a Tanzanian African said to me, “I didn’t know Asians could have hard lives too.”

  Says Joseph—

  His father would not come to his home, doesn’t know where the son lives. No, they have not quarrelled, this is according to custom. He is an adult, has been initiated. Joseph himself would never live with his in-laws, even as a visitor. At his initiation he was instructed that he should see his in-laws at most once a year. When his wife came with him to his father’s home, she had to use the neighbour’s washroom, even if that meant knocking on the door of an irate man at 3 a.m. For his part Joseph, in this traditional setting, would not get on the same bus as his mother-in-law, even if that meant spending the night at a way station.

  But times are changing. According to Kenya customary law, property was inherited only by the male heirs. But the new constitution, which was ratified recently by a majority, is more equitable. There is a palpable excitement in Kenya, Joseph says, people feel it: “Not only are we facing the right direction, we are moving towards it.” It’s thrilling to be living in Kenya now, which is why he returned from overseas. He supports the incursion of Kenya into southern Somalia, it’s supported by the vast majority of people, according to polls. Blood is collected, food sent to families of fallen soldiers. This is an issue over which all sections of the country are united.

  The six-storey hotel has a reachable roof terrace, from which the entire city is visible. Mwanza sits in a basin, surrounded by hills and Lake Victoria. It’s surprisingly cool and dry in the morning. When I look immediately down at the street below, with its quiet pace of habitation and business, I am reminded again of Uhuru Street in Kariakoo, Dar es Salaam, as it was a long time ago. In fact there is an Uhuru Street nearby and it goes all the way to the lake. The street I am on is Rufiji Street, another Kariakoo name. On the hotel’s other side is Nyerere Road; the Khoja khano is clearly visible, with its fake dome.

  Later that afternoon we sit for kahawa at our favourite spot, on that shaky wooden bench for two. The corner, we now know, is called the Victoria Hotel Annexe. A troupe of African women in full hijab cross the road purposefully, leaving in their wake a whiff of sweet fragrance. We watch the men bantering with each other, the boys playing; we discuss the meaning of happiness and contentment.

  Two men loose on the road—Joseph and I—without those worldly attachments, at least for now, which in Indian spiritual thought go by the name sansara, we find ourselves in an atmosphere, a rhythm of sound and life in which we seem utterly at ease. Should I feel a hypocrite, deluded, when I actually live in Canada in a comfort and safety these three children before me can only dream about? I don’t. Living in Toronto has its own insecurities, with a fractured being and an in-betweenness that draws me into thoughts such as these, sitting on this corner on a wobbly bench, stifling my euphoria and questioning my belongingness. In Toronto I would ask myself, Am I a real Canadian? What is such a thing? And I would pull out my hyphens.

  A young man sitting nearby shouts out to a friend across the street, where there’s a strip of shops and a cluster of vendors. “You, Memedi’s father!” Memedi’s father, in a white T-shirt, looks away as though he’s not heard. The men around me laugh. Joseph explains: for Memedi’s father, a young man, to admit that he’s a father would spoil his chances of hitting on prospective women. Call someone “Mama Rehema!” and she’s likely to mutter, “Keep it low. Rehema only.”

  “Does that mean that philandering is common outside of marriage?”

  “Rampant.” He grins.

  I wonder if that explains his mysterious disappearances some nights. I don’t ask. Polygamy, of course, was the order of the day traditionally. Mainstream Churches have been losing support due to their interference in private lives, Joseph says.

  Over beer in the hotel patio that night, we get into the giggles. It’s time for father jokes.

  When he graduated from university, Joseph says, his father proudly took him to the village baraza (meeting) of elders and asked him to give a speech. Joseph began to speak in Bukusu, to his father’s chagrin. “Speak big words!” the dad scolded. “What did I send you to school for?” He himself would utter things like, “To your great comportment, I say with much alacrity …” And the elders, sitting around, stuffing tobacco into their noses, would look at each other and exclaim with satisfaction, “Educated! Educated!”

  There was the time when a young man who had found work in Kisumu, some distance away, would send a three-page letter in English to his father, who couldn’t read. A boy would therefore come on a bicycle to Joseph’s father with the letter to have it read and translated. Joseph’s father, without a qualm, would take out his pen and make corrections and add commentary to the letter, before giving it back with his personal interpretation to the boy to take home.

  He had been a liberal as a young man, worked in Nairobi, got married out of tribe to a Kikuyu. He did not believe in religion. His wife, however, had been a staunch Catholic, her family had been among the first to convert. After retiring, back in the village, contemplating inevitable death, the pull of ritual stirred inside the old man. And so he married a young woman thirty years his junior, from his own tribe, who would undergo the traditional rites with him that were required of the elderly. He wore charms. He had two “pure” kids with her, who would perform the required rites for him when he died.

  We have excellent lake fish for dinner at the hotel. The next morning we walk at the lakeshore. The area is surprisingly quiet and tidy. Across the road are some expensive homes. There is a mysterious stone monument
at the shore, with its brass plaque and inscription removed; the screw holes are still visible. What could have caused the removal, rendering this memorial anonymous? Politics? Theft? Could this be where John Speke stood when he first came to Mwanza and declared the vast lake before him as the source of the Nile? Bobbing on the water are two modern ferry boats that do not run anymore, having been declared unsafe. A conventional ferry comes in and spills out passengers from one of the nearby islands. Across the lake, to my left is the town of Bukoba, where I did the initial (farming) part of my National Service at the age of nineteen, where we worked on a banana plantation, marched and sang and learned discipline, and washed our uniforms and bathed in an ice-cold stream at the end of the day. Across the lake on the right is Musoma, where some of my friends went for their Service, and from where the best ghee used to come to us in Dar. Nyerere’s birthplace is not far from there either. One of the largest islands on the lake is Ukerewe, straight ahead. We inquire about times and fares. As I stand at the shore, looking out, I am sorely tempted: out there are Bukoba, Musoma, Ukerewe; and Kisumu in Kenya, where I visited a rich aunt once; and Kampala in Uganda, where I went on a high school trip. Not long after that came Idi Amin. If I went to Kampala, I could return to Dar via Kisumu and Nairobi. How long would that take? But then Joseph, standing a little behind me, tells me in a quiet voice, “Daktari, I think we’ve gone far enough. We should go back.”

  And so we go look for a bus back to Dar.

  The bus we take early the next morning is from a company called Dar Luxe. It is new and fast, and the seatbelts are a good idea, considering the driving. We reach Ubungo station at ten in the night, sixteen hours after departure. I decide to spend the night at a joint in Sinza, outside Dar, where Joseph usually puts up. There’s an open-air bar outside where we have a meal; it’s fairly crowded even this late, and a dubbed Chinese soap opera is avidly watched on the TV.

  The next morning we take a dala-dala to the city. I put away my luggage in my hotel room and we decide to tour the city—a certain part of it. We trek along Uhuru Street, reach Mehboob Mansion where I grew up—the intersection is surprisingly intact, in spite of the heavy new construction—take the stairs up to the roof terrace on the third floor. I point out a hole in the chimney made by the fire brigade when they came to dispose of the large beehive that had grown inside. Perhaps the bees were drawn to the terrace by my sister’s potted jasmine plants. We look down over the boundary wall at the length of Uhuru Street, the aorta of my imagination. I point below at the shops and at the apartments across, tell him about the people who lived and worked there. We then come down and proceed to Msimbazi Street, treat ourselves to cane juice on the way. The entire Kariakoo area has now the feel of an Old Delhi, teeming with people and with every sort of merchandise spilling onto the sidewalks.

  We end up at KT Shop, where he simply devours the daal bhajia, kababs, and samosas, saying, “Daktari, I could become a Tanzanian simply for the food.” His second wife, a Tanzanian, always complains that Kenyans are far too thin, they don’t eat well.

  We then say goodbye. He’ll be on the plane to Nairobi tomorrow.

  What do I recall of this journey?

  I picture a vast land, beginning with the familiar coastal plain—green, with large trees, packed villages—ending at the Uluguru Mountains and a bustling Morogoro, then the endless plateau: sparely inhabited, sparsely covered with thorn and bushes, short trees, the occasional baobabs, the mangoes at settlements; small clusters of huts; some subsistence farming. The semi-arid land has grown a green cover due to unusually heavy rains. The placid new capital, Dodoma, the new parliament building, the “mad” hospital, the impressive new university, the earnest young professor. Out of Dodoma, a thrillingly fast ride, we pass suddenly through a hilly region with a stream, a forest, and as rapidly come out into the flat land. Those mysterious geological formations, the tors. As we approach Nzega, the flat roofs turn to V-roofs. The bustle of Nzega, the junction town. The poverty of life, the hazards of the Nzega–Tabora route after a rain, with a partly night-blind driver. The gentle bustle and togetherness of Tabora, the enigma of its neglect; Livingstone and Fundikira; the bhajia shop with the Khoja woman. The indigenous forest of the alternative Tabora–Nzega route. The richness of the Nzega–Mwanza route, the frequency of the tors, their formations more and more fantastic. Finally Mwanza, the gently bustling city by the great lake: the shore, lined by stones, the mysterious memorial with the inscription removed, the bustling markets, the Indian bazaar on Nyerere Road, the khano with the false dome, and the Hindu temple; sitting on a bench at the kahawa corner, the vendor and her three kids. The bhajia shop of the old man and woman. Stories of witchcraft in Tabora and Mwanza. All the people en route: the Gogo, the Masai (the “doctors” of Dodoma), the Nyamwezi, the Sukuma; the Fipa taxi driver of Mwanza and his “chicken-leg” story, the Nyakyusa-Nyamwezi woman on the bus; the Baganda-Nyasa taxi driver of Tabora; the Indians. And throughout, the stories exchanged between Joseph and me.

  12.

  Bongoland: Something Is Happening

  THEY CALL IT BONGO, OUT OF AFFECTION, out of pride. If you ask a street vendor why he’s being obtuse, or a bajaji driver why he just ripped off some poor innocent from upcountry, they’re likely to reply, It’s Bongoland, learn to survive. There is a certain arrogance to the Bongo folk, a style; a sense of cool or, as they say in Swahili, poa. It’s been earned. Over the past few decades Dar es Salaam has seen much: the joy of independence and a popular president, massive street demonstrations and socialist austerity, food lines and spy scandals, a demographic upheaval and an aborted coup, war returnees and a period of banditry; it has matured from a come-tomorrow sleepy-town into a major African city of the region, with an identity to match—seeing itself as different and unique, in the way New York does. There seem to be no bounds here, in modern Dar, no limits to growth or possibility—but while there’s some truth to this outlook, much of it is also hype. For Dar retains its essential character, marching to its own casual beat. That is its charm, but also its handicap.

  As you come down into the city from the airport, or cross Selander Bridge into the wealthier suburbs of Oyster Bay, Msasani, and Kawe you might easily form the impression that you are in a world where business and IT rule, travelling is by plane, Internet is high speed, money is transferred electronically, the phones are smart—as are the well-bred kids who go to private schools in English. The billboards conveying this message are hip, not as garish as those of, say, Chennai. Dar’s English-language newspapers speak the universal language of the world’s business pages: stock prices, sovereign bonds, offshore banking, cloud computing, infrastructure development, the GDP (7 percent).

  For the first time after many years I feel that a new generation has arrived, ready to take over. They are aware of developments elsewhere in the world, they want to make things happen here. But the older generation is not quite gone: what world is it bequeathing?

  First impressions of Dar are soon quashed by the sight of the jammed commuter buses, the beggars on the streets, the vendors, and the idle. And then of course there’s the rest of the country behind Bongo. According to a Swahili paper, the World Bank puts Tanzania as the second poorest in the region, with 68 percent of the population earning less than $1.25 per day; 80 percent live on subsistence farming; more than 80 percent spend their nights in total darkness, without electricity. The national debt has tripled in the last few years, standing at 50 percent of the GDP, and the public education system is crippled, the health system rudimentary. In rural areas schools are either empty or overcrowded; there are no teachers or textbooks. The final-year failure rate for the nation’s high schools in 2012 was a shocking 60 percent. For those fortunate enough to be connected to the electric grid, there are frequent and frustrating blackouts. There’s a thriving business in electricity generators, which you can hear thrumming in all sizes along the top of Morogoro Road.

  Three years ago a new word was introduced into the Swahili l
anguage: vijisenti, meaning “little cents,” that is, mere pennies. It was introduced by a former, highly placed politician who was questioned by the media about the several million dollars found in his bank account during an investigation into corruption. Mere pennies, he replied, arrogantly. The politician was connected with two major scandals, one of them called “Kingston,” in which a large contract was handed to a foreign company to fulfill the capital’s electricity needs. A fraction of the power was delivered, and thus the power shortage. The American Secretary of State was in town recently and promised help.

  The Auditor General reports mass corruption in government: money from pension funds loaned interest-free to politicians and cronies; money allocated for development not released; lavish and unnecessary spending, “embezzlement of public funds … outright forgery … salary payments to ghost workers.…” The list seems endless, and is endlessly and quite wonderfully—you have to have a sense of humour—creative. Says my friend Kumar, a contractor, jestfully, “I can get you a permit to build on the grounds of State House.” Someone else repeats an adage to me, apparently a piece of advice that was given in all seriousness to a former president: Corruption is necessary for development.

  And this I overhear: We are governed by wahuni, meaning tricksters, and they go about shamelessly sporting a newly acquired title of “Doctor” before their names. When did they get the time to work for their PhDs? It’s embarrassing to possess a doctorate now.

  The situation is explosive, says Shivji, a professor with a real PhD.

  It’s explosive, says Charles, a consultant for a foreign NGO.

  You look at the desperate-looking, idle taxi drivers—there are hundreds on the streets—and you think, The situation could be explosive.

  Of course there’s hope, says Walter with a sardonic smile. There’s always hope. Where can it go from here?