My Dearest Dar

In the evening the sun goes down behind the palm trees, slowly, like how the noises change. You won’t know how it went from hearing cacophonies from the streets to the sound of Bongo Flava blasting on speakers not far from where you sleep. If you’re still in the city center sunset will be the time when cars start excessively honking at one another. The smell of used fished oil is usually the same everywhere. I guess somehow the entire city decided to use similar oil brands. Walking along the Kivukoni Front I can’t ever help but overhear the many discussions going on among the vendors. Most times it’s about the latest government scandal to hit the news stands. Sometimes it’s about Ali Kiba and Diamond just after one of them releases a new music video. Other times it’s arguments between Yanga FC and Simba FC hardcore fans and these ones usually happen on Monday morning at the cobbler’s booth which also happens to serve coffee.

As I sat in the cold at the Schonëbeck station in November 2017 I realized how my world had changed in just three months. I remember going back home in August after spending a month in the US. I felt so angry when I got out of the plane. In my head I thought, “in comparison to JFK this looks like something out of an apocalyptic movie.” It was shock coming from having to face intense heat and watching “Tanzanians being Tanzanians”. It all started in Doha when I was waiting for the last of three flights back home. I sat at the airport with a big white pillow on my lap trying to distract myself from all the eyes that were looking at me and the fact that at that moment I realized how loud we Tanzanians could be. What annoyed me the most was that some Tanzanians there were complaining about something in a way that made it look like we’re all like that. It was government taxes, flights, heat, and I was silently complaining to my subconscious about them complaining about stuff.

So I saw my mum and dad at the airport, they were all happy to see me. I could see it in their eyes, they were excited to hear stories from New York and I had plenty all leading down to ‘Tanzania needs to get its act together!’ Why were we so awful at just everything? I spent the entire drive back home trying to avoid talking because I was so frustrated that after we get out of the car I would have to live without air conditioning for another month until I come to Germany. It was probably 30 something Celsius, who cares anyway, and this was supposed to be some sort of “winter” or the end of it, (HashtagTropicalClimate).

In that month I couldn’t get anywhere around the city without something to wipe my face every 2 minutes. It’s just hot and the worst thing is that most of the Tanzanian public doesn’t allow us to dress according to the weather. If we did that we would be beaten by “angry” men in the streets and humiliated on every gossip newspaper in circulation. That’s just Tanzania for you.

However, in that month, I came to realize how I love my city so much. I wouldn’t say I genuinely love my entire country so much because honestly, I’ve only been to three cities in the 20 years of living there. In August, after seeing a different side of the world for the first time I was now able to view Dar es Salaam from a new angle. The fact is Dar es Salaam isn’t the best there is, there are better things out there, but its uniqueness is what makes it special, what makes it home to 5 million people. There’s just something nostalgic about the strong smell of the Indian Ocean’s saltiness as you walk by the Hyatt Regency every morning to work or to catch a city bus at the main bus stop. Dar es Salaam might seem like this typical African city with thousands of street vendors among 5 million people living in a fully heated oven, most of us without air conditioning. But the beauty in all of it lies in the feeling of belonging to something that is greater than me as an individual; the struggle that the name ‘Dar es Salaam’ embodies in the eyes of the 50 million people in other parts of the country. Like every other country, Tanzania also has that place where people go in the hopes of “making it” and finding peace in life. After all, it does mean ‘haven of peace’.