/ 3 August 2009

It’s raining men, hallelujah

Enterprising youngsters have found an interesting way to make money in Tanzania's rainy season, writes Neema Nduguru.

In Swahili ”bongo” literally means ”brain”. But in the past 15 years or so the word has come to be coupled with other words to form colloquial terms that refer to Tanzania (bongoland), its people (wabongo) and even its music (bongoflava).

Why? Because this is a land where people really make use of their brains to survive — albeit not always in the most effective way. There is no shortage of daily events and experiences that amaze and challenge even the most adventurous of us.

Today it is pouring in Dar es Salaam, as it has been for the past three days. Because this capital city of four million inhabitants has, as have most other African cities, been built on an ad-hoc basis, it comes as no surprise that a number of streets and houses in residential areas are flooded or muddy.

Areas that on sunny days are known as streets — though they generally don’t have names but are referred to by the presence of a shop, bar or their proximity to an influential person’s home, such as ”kwa Nyerere” — are all of a sudden transformed into muddy rivers that flow with the neighbourhood sewage. For those with heavy-duty 4x4s, this is the time of the year when you are really satisfied by the purchase of your showy vehicle and probably grateful for the privilege of being able to afford one.

But for the vast majority of those who depend on travelling by foot, daladalas (minibus taxis) or bajajs (three-wheel vehicles), this time of year simply reminds you of why you detest the rain. It costs you time, as traffic always seems to get worse when it rains in Dar es Salaam, but worst of all is that the river in front of your home needs to be crossed. You can’t show up at work with muddy shoes, socks and bottoms. So what do you do? Think.

Lucky for you, the strong young neighbourhood boys have the answer. These young men, who are generally unemployed and desperate to make money, offer a service: to carry you across the river so that you do not get soaked.

At first, you try to appear as though this is not an option — a tactic for lowering the price. No sooner do you say no than you start negotiating the transportation rate until you come to agreement on the cost and the conditions of this piggy-back river crossing.

No matter what your physical size, these boys will get you across the street. Without wasting another second, a young man swoops you on to his back or his shoulders or across his chest — depending on what mode of delivery you’ve agreed on — and begins to navigate across the waters. Again, depending on what you’ve agreed, there may be a second young man to carry your bags as you get carried across.

As you are being hoisted to relatively dry land, you look towards the next street and catch a glimpse of your neighbour’s saloon car being pushed by four young men through the mud. They probably convinced the poor driver that his car could make it across the road, knowing full well that it couldn’t — not without their services, anyway. As you pay your young man his duly deserved transportation fee, you sigh with sympathy as you think of the hefty shillings that will be spent by your neighbour when he gets past the porridgy patch and has to pay his four helpers.

Waiting at the bus stand for the next daladala, shielded by your umbrella, your thoughts wonder upon futile wishes for the proper authorities to fix these roads once and for all so as to avoid such unnecessary (and somewhat humiliating) excursions in the mornings. But for these young men their wish is for every day to be a rainy day. This, after all, is bongoland — where there is always give and take and where one man’s challenge can always be turned into another man’s opportunity.

Neema Ndunguru obtained her MPhil in development studies at the University of Cape Town in 2007. She returned to the country of her birth and now works at a regional development bank in Dar es Salaam

 

M&G Newspaper