If you head due west through the archipelago of the Zanzibar islands you will likely see a line-up of container ships stretching into the distance as far as the eye can see. Floating islands laden with scads of cargo lie in wait for days, weeks, and even months, before gaining clearance to enter the port of the Dar es Salaam where they will unload and reload bound for destinations around the world.
In the bright blue, aquamarine waters that run beneath the ships’ gargantuan hulls, small dhow sailboats are skippered by barefoot fisherman. With ragged crews, these men work through the nights and into the early morning hours casting and retrieving nets and baited lines, guided by the lights of the ships towering above and the distant stars of the southern hemisphere. Around 6:00 AM, as the rising sun’s rays can be seen glittering and ref\cting off the glass sides of the skyscrapers that loom on the horizon ahead, the fisherman haul in their final catch before journeying back to shore.
Come closer and you may pass an overcrowded ferry boat bound for Zanzibar. These boats, always in a state of great disrepair, move humans along a passage that was used for centuries to move captured slaves from their homelands to their points of sale and ultimate demise.
If you look to the city and scan your eyes to the north, you may find yourself overcome by the pristine beauty of the white-sand beaches of Mbezi Beach and Msasani Bay. Here, mostly light-skinned people gather to relax on plump cushions overlaid upon hand-crafted beach lounge chairs placed in the shade of palm trees. They drink tropical cocktails made with fresh fruits and stirred with ice cubes in martini-style glasses. They escape the intense heat and humidity of the Swahili Coast by submerging their bodies in crystal clear waters that stretch off the shores of beaches that have been meticulously cleared of hawkers and are guarded around the clock for their protection. At modern, European-style restaurants overlooking the sea, they enjoy such delicacies as beef tenderloin, tuna tartare, veal scallopini, and fresh salads pre-washed in filtered water.
If, however, the people you see along these northern shores are not tourists from Europe, North America, Australia, or Asia, they are likely international residents. These “ex-pats” may live in pristine bungalows with gardens overflowing with scarlet flame and palm trees, purple bougainvillea, blue jacaranda, and red hibiscus. They likely sleep peacefully at night, tucked safely away behind well-fortified walls lined with broken glass and barbed wire. Their employers have engaged for them private security systems, which include on-call fire and ambulance services as there are no public services in this Place of Peace – the Arabic name for Dar es Salaam. These people, who are known in Kiswahili as Wabenzi (the people of the Mercedes Benz) may purchase their mangos, papayas, bananas, passion fruits, and melons from refrigerated cases within air-conditioned markets. They may drive well-policed roads that run along the outer edges of the city to meet friends at the Yacht Club and to drop their children off at the sweeping compound of the international school.
To the south of the city, you may see along the shore the Kivukoni open-air fish market where throngs of people come to buy and sell everything from tiny sardines to gigantic kingfish. Some have fished their catch legally. Others have dropped home-made bombs into the ocean waters before casting vast nets to scoop up their kill. In the market, restaurant owners, mamas, and money collectors gather around low fish-display tables to argue loudly over prices, and a roar of Swahili negotiations fills the air. At the far edge of the marketplace—where the stench is less pungent and the ground not fully blanketed with fish scales, blood, and guts—passersby choose pieces of octopus, squid, shrimp, and prawns to be roasted over open fires and eaten off toothpicks.
Straight ahead, from your position at sea, you may see the slender opening to the city’s natural, nearly landlocked harbor. This is East Africa’s largest and most powerful port for imports and exports flowing from around the world. Tugboats lead vessels coming from America, China, India, Japan, South Africa, Europe, and beyond to and from 11 wharves where massive cranes unload and reload containers. Everything imaginable moves through these 10 transit centers. Oil, machinery, wheat, palm oil, plastics, pharmaceutical, medicines, motor vehicles, and more flows in. Tobacco, coffee, cotton, cashew nuts, tea, cloves, and gemstones flow out. And once taxes have been negotiated and paid, goods pilfered, pockets lined, and mouths fed, the journey of the cargo can continue overland by lorry or rail to mainland Tanzania and beyond to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Malawi. (Calas, Bongoland. p. 315)
Move through the port and beyond the upscale neighborhoods assigned by the British in the early 20th century to the Indians, Pakistanis, and Asians, and you will reach the inner sanctum of the city. Here, sounds of the Islamic call to prayer and church bells fill the air. Limbless lepers lay on wet cardboard beneath huge flashy billboards for such companies as Coca Cola and Vodaphone. Wide-open boulevards that were once well maintained and flanked by the administrative offices of the German and British colonial rulers are now dilapidated and jammed with lorries moving heavy cargo; flatbed trucks top-loaded with harvested items from the interior; coach-style buses decorated with such slogans as “Jesus Loves Me” and “Inshallah;” dala dala minibusses with 30-plus people crammed into a dozen seats; and piki piki motorbikes that snake and squeeze precariously through the traffic with one or more passengers holding tightly on to the waist of the driver. Skeletal men push wheelbarrows and bicycles loaded high with goods. School children wearing matching blue and white uniforms make their way along busy roadsides. Women clad in colorful kitenge fabrics move in perfect unison with babies tied to their backs and heavy loads balanced upon their heads; and cows, goats, and chickens scamper between feet and wheels.
Continue west to the spider web of unpaved roads that move through such neighborhoods as Tandale, Tabata, Vingunguti, and Vituka. Here you will find swarms of grifters and hustlers who, after fleeing their rural villages in search of jobs, opportunity, and a better life, have found themselves in complete despair, with no options beyond theft and petty crime for survival. This is a world of yellowed, jaundiced eyes and stunted bodies living on top of one another in makeshift homes constructed in haste with tin sheets, mud, sticks, tarpaulin, and repurposed rubble, and it indistinguishable from any other slum in any other city on the African continent. Shallow streams of raw sewage and garbage stagnate between dwellings and fill the air with fetid smells. Street children sniff glue to tame hunger pains. Everyone here hustles to survive.
It is from these places that the fishermen you saw this morning at sunrise commute hours upon hours every day to their worksites at sea. Here, in this second-fastest growing city in the world[1], a tsunami of humanity is rapidly filling every inch of open space as the city creeps and sprawls further and further inland.
Article by Anne Wells.
Sources:
Bernard Calas (2010). From Dar es Salaam to Bongoland: Urban Mutations in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam. African Books Collective.
Jonathan Rosen, Tanzanian City May Soon Be One of the World’s Most Populous. National Geographic, April 5, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/tanzanian-city-may-soon-be-one-of-the-worlds-most-populous/
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/tanzanian-city-may-soon-be-one-of-the-worlds-most-populous/