Tanzania

The SEABUS

My first glimpse of Dar es Salaam, the capital city of Tanzania, revealed little. It appeared another overcrowded city with pollution, and many other, problems. However, this obscures the, remarkable history of a country and region that is home to the oldest proofs of human beginnings: East Africa. Science lists the fossilized remains of ‘Lucy’ as 3.6 million years from Ethiopia and ‘Paranthropus Boisei’ about 2 million years old from Tanzania. The divisions of Afrika came much later. However, my trip concerned more recent history: Panafricanism and, more specifically, Walter Rodney in Tanzania. This formed a major part of my documentary on Rodney's life. But one cannot study Rodney without studying the 'trade' between Europe and Africa.

My visit to the dungeons that housed captured Afrikans at Bagamoyo on the mainland and also Mangapwani and Stone Town in Zanzibar spoke to the horrors of slavery. But it never reached the pain and longing felt on my previous visit to Afrika. Perhaps, I had been desensitized. That is until my return boat trip from Zanzibar to the mainland on the Sea Bus.

Dhows of the coast of Bagamoyo

Thirty minutes into the 2 hour trip, it seemed more than half the passengers were seasick and more succumbed each minute. The trip to Zanzibar aboard a similar boat went smoothly: a real pleasure cruise. I did not mind standing for the entire two hours. I am told Bill Gates owns an island in the area. I kept looking for a glimpse of this modern day trader. I saw nothing but miles and miles of postcard-aqua seas punctuated by a few lonely islands and dhows: local sail boats. The return trip however proved a different matter.

The rocking and rolling of the boat, a modern and well appointed catamaran-type ferry with huge engines and lots of power, sent many to the bathroom. Some never made it. Their breakfasts made its return trip before they did. Others were close to the point of delirium, disoriented and helpless. The crew seemed prepared, if a little bored. Black plastic bags were distributed but to little avail. “Double-up the bags”, the crew suggested in Swahili, as the waves flipped the boats bow in the air and slammed it back into the now grey Indian Ocean. A child, who earlier squealed with delight at the trash of waves against the porthole, now lay in his mother's lap crying. She too held a bag to her face partially covered by her hijab.

Traded and Traders

This was not a storm. It was just some drizzly rain with some highish winds and waves.

It struck me then, that two hours of this hell, was little compared to 3 to 6 months, chained to each other without bathroom or bags, on the way to the 'new' world in the hold off a boat moving at the mercy of the wind. To add to the ignominy as Rodney observed.. stolen from Afrika and now an outlaw..