A thrilling new serial. For the first installments, click here or check the latest copy of Boy’s Life (story name: “Tanzania! The Three Friends”)
14 Feb 2010 (Valentine’s Day) 1245 local Stone Town, Zanzibar
A cool ocean breeze skirts the aft deck of the AZAM BAKERIES FERRY™ as THE TRAVELER scribbles leisurely in this very log. As our metaphorical camera pans over him, the lines and creases are deepened from when we (metaphorically) saw him last, though nearly imperceptibly so. One imagines that these new wrinkles are from laughing at danger (double whammy), but one has no way to tell for sure, save for reading on . . .
It is a thankful thing that we have started well. Making our way through the erstwhile capital,[3] what struck most profoundly was the
Only in Tanzania!
feeling of utter familiarity embedded within the cityscape. The ubiquity of homogenous, international style architecture caused an unusual blending effect, as though the downtown had been pre-fabricated off-site and assembled all at once in the 1960s and 70s. Buses ran on the roads and kiosks at every street corner sold coca-cola, sunglasses or cheap imitation watches and jewelry (the kind a junior high student buys his mother for Christmas). But for the relative aggressiveness of the street vendors and the absence of anything resembling a ‘personal space’ norm, I could have felt myself to be in Atlanta or Jacksonville.
The planning meeting of the central command[4] had run until a late hour the previous night and we awoke with only an hour to catch the early ferry to Zanzibar. Before buying our ferry tickets, we stopped by Barclay’s Bank (Boots is a customer there) to exchange money. The conversion rate between the Tanzanian shilling and the American dollar being extremely favorable ($1 = 1,340 Tsh), we quickly found ourselves in possession of lots of paper.
We were sufficiently delayed in this errand, however, to have missed the ‘official’ issuing of tickets for the ferry; the boat was sold out (an elastic term, as we would soon find out). Our only recourse was to secure passage through one of the many ‘entrepreneurs’ loitering outside the ticket office waiting for the days catch of mazungu.[5]
In the ensuing chaos we were saved only through having Boots Himself in our band. His navigation of Swahili, both as a language and as a set of cultural protocols, is nothing short of a marvel. Negotiations for our admittance onto the ferry began smoothly enough (judging by body language and vocal tone, at least), but quickly took a turn for the agitated. As voices rose, a small crowd gathered around us, looking on with poker faces. When the argument seemed to reach an emotional crescendo, Boots shot a snappy rejoinder to his sparring partner. For a split second, the words (Which may as well have been gibberish for how well I understood them) hung in the air with no clear path forward. Within an instant, though, a small murmur of laughter rippled through the crowd and Boots’ interloper smiled and produced three ferry passes.
Afterwards, I asked Boots what the rise had been over. He said our supplier had originally quoted us one price and then when it came time to purchase the tickets tried to tack on an additional 2,000 Tsh per person. That runs to about $1.49 for those of you keeping records at home.
Once underway, the ferry trip proved a memorable one. The AZAM BAKERIES FERRY™ is a double deck catamaran, built and
The Dar Es Salaam Cathedral, as seen from the starboard rail of the AZAM BAKERIES FERRY. A fitting picture, as it was only through a small miracle that our band left port.
commissioned in Australia in 1990. Somewhat luxurious amenities adorn the interior (a few television sets, leather seats), but the craft’s attempts at modernity were swallowed up by the sheer volume of passengers crammed between its bulkheads. Automatic sliding-glass doors to the upper-deck promenade are indeed a stylish touch, though their effect is somewhat inverted when they are kept perpetually open by people sleeping on the ground between them. As mentioned previously, however,
“personal space” is an academic notion at best in TZ, so a little bravado and a lot of agility found our merry band on the outer deck, the Indian Ocean metres below our feet.
On account of the crowdedness of the cabin and a shortage of bravado (though not of agility, I take pains to remind you ladies in the audience), Boots and I spent the bulk of the ferry ride out of doors.[6] There, we made friendly with a pair of gentlemen goodly enough to indulge in chit-chat with a set of has-been explorers such as ourselves. There was Chu, a half-Chinese, half-Tanzanian artist covered in oddball jewelry of his own making. He offered to sell me a fork bent into the form of a bracelet.
The other chap on the boat was an engaging fellow named Shazar (ShA-zar). Shazar, as it were, is something of a local celebrity in Dar. You see, the man is a disc jockey for Dar’s hottest hip-hop and R & B station — 100.5 FM THE TRUTH. Shazar’s father had
been an engineer in the army and studied his craft for several years in Norway while his son was young. Having grown up in the fjords of the milky north, Shazar’s English was unaccented and truly excellent, and I must say that his worldliness dwarfed my own. We got to talking about every topic under the sun, with the conversation eventually leading to recording an interview for airing on Shazar’s show (4-7 p.m. weekdays, only on DAR 100.5 FM – THE TRUTH). So this is what diplomacy is like I thought as I answered Shazar’s questions on what kind of music I liked and how famous Haseem Thabeet is in the United States.
Following our conversation and interview, Shazar asked McBride and I to record some station IDs for his program. My voice held on the recorder for posterity, I realized in a way we had already met with great success. Even if, heaven forbid, we do not survive this expedition, we have left a tangible, indelible mark on this far flung part of the world that will survive us. Hudson never returned from his final voyage, yet millions of New Yorkers (and some unknowable number of Canadians) say his name each day.
Waves of sentiment washed over me as the waters we trekked through turned from deep oceanic blue to the distinctive turquoise aquamarine found throughout the archipelago of our island quarry. It was time to part ways with the most famous Tanzanian I had ever met. We had arrived in ZANZIBAR.
[3] While the political and cultural nerve center of Tanzania to this day, Dar Es Salaam ceded titular honors as Tanzania’s capital toDodoma in 1996, with the latter’s central location cited as the principal reason. For a similar case study in lackluster idea, I give you Brasilia!
[4] Boots Himself and Me (Myself). McBride was in the room but distinctly not included.
[5] White people; tourists. Mzungu = white person
[6] McBride did, too, I guess.
Absolutely hilarious! Felt like I was still there. I am surprised there were no incidents on the ferry but maybe you were wrapped up with the celebrities
Well, Erik and I have spent some time working in the Maritime industry, so we felt we knew how best to handle ourselves.
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