The port city of Dar es Salaam – or Dar, as locals know it – named after Sultan Majid’s palace, the “House of Peace”, is said to be one of the fastest-growing in the world. If the all-day, slug-slow traffic, a favourite topic of frustrated foreigners and Tanzanians alike, is anything to go by, it shows. In a report, the African Development Bank projects that Dar’s current population of 4.1 million will leap to 6.2 million by 2025, an 82 per cent growth since 2010. Megacity status – 10 million people – is on the cards by 2030.
While Dodoma is the official capital of Tanzania, Dar remains the country’s economic, political and social hub. Its growing stature with African and foreign investors has rapidly lent the office buildings and high rises a sleek, modern look in parts – glass and steel twinkle against clear blue skies in the sagging humidity. The extensive expat community tend to congregate in leafy, gated communities serviced by nearby upmarket bars in Oyster Bay, mini malls and South African food chains.
But I’m not here to negotiate a business deal or to scope out private schools and housekeeper services for a move to the city. I’m in Dar to enjoy a slice of local life. To facilitate my access, I have hired Mejah Mbuya, a social campaigner and founder of Afri Roots, a tour and community upliftment organisation. The majority of locals live along the back roads of vibrant though ramshackle outlying neighbourhoods. Most business travellers and passers-by on the way to Zanzibar or Arusha and Kenya on safari don’t linger beyond the hotels, I’m told.
Mbuya, laid-back in a pair of khaki shorts, his dreadlocked hair hanging onto his shoulders, calls Dar a “dynamic city representative of most of the culture in Tanzania”. Dar is underestimated in many respects, he says. We start our exploration on a Saturday night at Mamboz Corner BBQ (Libya Street), with tandoori chicken hot from the charcoal grills that line the pavements of the street-side diner, savouring masala chips and cold, freshly pressed ginger-spiked sugar-cane juice on a hot evening, watching tables of friends in lively discussions as smoke curls from the grills. Dar is lining its belly for a long night of socialising. Fruit vendors park their carts across from Mamboz, enticing us to buy pink-red watermelon and juicy Bagamoyo pineapple wedges. I realise too late that a dab of mosquito repellent would have gone a long way as the creatures feast on my ankles while I tackle the spicy chicken choma (barbecue), ubiquitous in these parts.
Decades of cultural intermingling and the Arab, Indian, British and German influences (good and bad) that shape present-day Swahili culture present themselves at the pavement diner – in the varied dress of the diners, the smattering of accents amid the spoken Swahili and the flavours and aromas scenting the air. The 19th-century mercantile and slave trade that wove needle-drawn threads through the heart of Tanzania have left an imprint on the fabric of society today. I pick up the tinny beats of a Hindi song from a nearby stall, coalescing with 2Pac's California Love playing in a passing car with its tinted windows rolled down in the hot breath of night.
The next day, Kizito Lufunga, a guide trained by Mbuya, and one of 50 employees working through a development programme for Afri Roots, takes me through the Kinondoni district and its history. From the Arabs to the Germans and British, and the ambitious but unsteady period of Julius Nyerere’s African socialism to current-day Tanzania, he sketches his notes with a stick on the dusty ground.
We could cycle, which is a popular option with many of Afri Root’s clients, but we walk instead, slowly taking in the everyday life unfolding in Mwananyamala. Phineas Elieza, a kahawa seller from Dodoma, serves a generous cup of locally grown cardamom-infused coffee with a slice of kashata, a chewy peanut brittle, and Ma Amina sells us a breakfast of fried Tanzanian chapatti (different to the Indian type) and too-sweet milky chai from her container diner. Perfectly made up in a pristine kanga (the colourful head scarves and skirts preferred by local women), she sits on a low stool tending a small fire, a tender contrast against the neighbouring houses with missing windowpanes and broken patchwork gates.
Not too far away, in Morogoro Road in Manzese, there’s a thriving, competitive trade of mitumba or second-hand clothes, shoes and bags in makeshift “boutiques”. Planks are stacked over ditches holding stagnant water. We cross them, enter the stalls and admire the colour-coordinated rows of merchandise. This is where Lufunga used to work as a trader, before he joined Mbuya. He tells me that the second-hand trade is an important feature in local culture – wealthier businessmen purchase crates of clothes that arrive at the port, usually donations from Europe and the United States. Middlemen bargain for sorted bundles and boxes, and sell the goods either at the markets or at the informal stores such as those we’re visiting. A further trade may occur on street corners, though these are usually the poorest-quality items. “Everyone wants to look good, and the middle-class feel comfortable buying here,” he says. “Why should I buy this from the shopping mall when I can have it in good condition for almost nothing?” Lufunga points to his trousers on his lithe frame. “You know those celebrities on TV, they like to say they buy designer this and that, but we see them here,” he laughs, grabbing a pair of red seven-inch heels for effect.
Later that afternoon, we visit the sprawling Kariakoo Market in time for a lively clothing auction. Customers jostle for each shirt held up by an animated auctioneer. I notice how the assistants seated at the side rub a little oil with their fingertips over T-shirts that are neatly stretched out to erase creases – to make them “like new”, I’m informed. I’m after the pretty kanga and kitinge fabric, and don’t want to pay the tourist prices at the stalls around the Msasani Slipway Market on the Msasani Peninsula (though this is the perfect place for upmarket shopping and relaxing with a drink at sunset). The fabric seller is surly at first, but I walk away with a bag of gorgeous fabric and a better understanding of the cloth’s printed messages and associated meanings in the Swahili culture.
The next auction I experience is a few days later with Mbuya, who guides me on a historical tour of Dar. We start in the small botanical gardens behind the Southern Sun hotel, where I’m staying. After an amble down Ocean Road, past the tree-shaded parliamentary buildings with stern-looking armed guards, we’re at the fish market in Kivukoni. Waiting for the auction to start – one for larger seafood, favoured by restaurants and hotels, happens much earlier in the morning – are groups of women, who will bid hard for the small fish to resell or to cook at the food stalls nearby. We walk around the vendors frying the fresh catch in large pans of hot oil.
After a tour of the city’s landmark churches, such as the Azania Front Lutheran Church and St Joseph’s Cathedral, and buildings where revolutionaries such as Malcolm X and Samora Machel stayed, we find ourselves in Mosque Street downtown. At Chef’s Pride, a packed no-fuss diner that’s popular with locals, serving Swahili food such coconut fish, biriani and pilau rice, we find a seat upstairs and tuck in with our hands.
“I want Dar to become a more friendly city. I want people to be able to walk without the fear of getting knocked down,” Mbuya says of the city’s infamous traffic – be it bumper-to-bumper SUVs, dala dalas (shared minibus taxis) or bajaj (tuk-tuks). “The one way to do this is to revise our city planning; introduce bicycle lanes. But locals have to take responsibility, too.”
From my hotel, where he drops me off, Mbuya walks across to the bay, where he takes a ferry to his home in Kigamboni. Here, he says, he can spend time refuelling after his daily dose of the hum and energy of Dar.
Adam Fuller, general manager of the Southern Sun Dar es Salaam, who has made the city his home for the past 15 years, shares a similar view. “Dar is your typical big city – jam-packed with cars. It’s noisy and vibrant, so when I want to get away from it all, I haul out my kayak and go paddling in the Indian Ocean, where I can take in our amazing coastline in silence.”
He tells me to take a leisurely boat ride, from where I can catch the choicest views of Dar. The best I manage is a ferry to Zanzibar, watching the city shrink away, as a waitress hands me a drink. “Karibu,” she says. “You are welcome” – a phrase I hear said with kindness and sincerity all across Dar es Salaam.
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