Weekender, Tanga July 2007

“I am going to Tanzania in June,” I tell the travel editor of a newspaper.

“Oh,” she replies, “wow, that’s great. You must be going to the northern circuit, fabulous; the Serengeti, Manyara, the Nogorongoro Crater. Will you be there for the stampede of the wildebeest?”

“Maybe, not sure, maybe I will, or as that eloquent poet, what was his name, said, maybe I will ‘take the other fork, travel the road less travelled’.”

“Well, the road less travelled doesn’t make a good story. Tanzania is in vogue these days, it is sexy; people want to read about raw African adventure in the Serengeti. People want to buy tourist destinations, week-end specials at fabulous lodges that have air conditioning and cocktail bars. People want the hyper real, a truly natural variety show. Think about it if you want to get a story out of this”.

On 1 June I get into an Air Tanzania jet. It runs on time these days as it has been taken over by one of its global competitor’s, South African Airways. As I sit in my narrow closed in seat and read Sawabona, the in flight magazine, I wonder why South Africa is referred to as the new African colonist. I order a Nederburg Riesling, a white Western Cape vintage, to accompany the white styrofoam meal that comes piping hot from the microwaves of progress. And on Air Tanzania I travel to a tourist destination where cowboys sit astride their 4X4’s outside the numerous bureau de change, where the dollars flash neon and the cowboys whistle at the passing pretty girls. Here the northern circuit begins and ends, Arusha. But from there I never did drive north, I never did get to the Serengeti, Lake Manyara or the Crater. I went to Tanga instead.

Tanga is on the west coast of Tanzania. It is a coastal town. An estuary makes up the harbour. It is ramshackle and run down. The overhanging German mansions that line one side of the shore front are not as white as they used to be, the plaster in the walls bubbles black from the sweaty salt sea, vivid green creepers grow up between rutted brickwork and decorate the handiwork of German conquerors. There is a wind that blows through the town, a wind that blows the watery saline sea humidity inland. Most tourists never go to Tanga, they may pass through it on their way to the resorts at Pangani, but even then they do not need to stop in this town, they can just pass it by; move on to endless beaches where the waves are safe and the pre-packed holiday resorts are clean.

Tanga – it takes a very long time to get there, maybe because it is the kind of town that never was, never has been and never is. From Arusha, the inland city of tourists and lights and five star European hotels it is approximately 370 kilometres. 200 kilometres of a single carriage tarred road that has wooden villages and petrol stations on either side of it, and then 170 kilometres of gravel road where cows and goats walk in a haphazard fashion. The journey by car takes 6 hours. You can, of course, fly to Tanga, but who flies to Tanga; it is not a tourist destination, so the flights are there, on the notice board.

We drive into the town on the main road, it is a gravel road, there is no tar. We drive slowly; partly as I want to watch the town walk by, partly to avoid the numerous potholes. On the side of the road, can it be called a pavement, I wonder, as it is made up of the same gravel as the road is, an old man sits on a chair. His spine holds him upright. His shirt has a gash that runs down his chest, across one hairless nipple lies the shadow of clothing, clean and white grey. There is a table in front of him; on it is a plastic milk jug, a plastic sugar bowl and a plastic cup and saucer. In the plastic are embedded crimson English roses. A woman with sloping breasts stands next to the table; children and gravity have worn her downwards. In her hand is a plastic tea pot. She leans over and pours tea into the old man’s cup. He lifts it to his lips and blows, the steam rises into the humid air. Tea in Tanga must be drunk with dust in your eyes and the sound of cars in your ears.

I need to find a drink. It is hot, and I am too nervous, too much of the tourist to ask the old man to share his tea with me. I am afraid of sitting in the dust and the heat. I need a shady tree and a waiter who will ask me what I want to drink, and then I can pay for it. I will feel validated by the money that changes hands. The man who is my driver, Juma, stops the car, “where can we find something cold to drink,” he asks a walking passer by who wears an oversize pin stripped jacket above a scrubbed grey vest and worn patent leather shoes; there are no socks beneath these shoes.

“At the harbour is a hotel,” the man replies, he waves the grey black wings of the flies from his face and scratches his black curled head.

We drive to the hotel, it is old, but it is being renovated. Maybe Tanga is expecting an influx of travellers; maybe it is expecting the economic regeneration promised to the developing world at Davos. Workmen carry baskets of bricks on their heads and smooth plaster onto the new walls. Outside the main entrance a group of people sit on suitcases in the shadows, I wonder if they are arriving or leaving, or if they are just sitting on the suitcases as inside the hotel lounge the chairs have all been removed to make way for the builders. They all looked downwards as Juma and I walk into the entrance, shady. I sit down on the outside lawn, newly planted. A grey stone bench overlooks the sea and the jade river mouth. At the confluence of the waters the river rushes to meet salty spray, a wave meets a wave. An oil tanker with rust on its sides lazes on the smooth reflecting cerulean; next to it is a small fishing boat. The river runs and the boats laze.

We ordered an orange juice, fresh orange juice. The waiter speaks in Kiswahili; he can not speak any language that I know. Is he less than me because he cannot speak to me? But I cannot speak to him. “It will take about 15 minutes to prepare,” the waiter tells Juma. “We have to pick the oranges from the tree that grows there,” and he points to the four orange trees that are laden with yellow balls. “And then we have to squeeze it and sugar it.”

“No problem,” I say, after Juma has translated this discussion for me. “What is the hurry in this serene and sultry town?”

Next to us is a table. Men sit around it. Four of them wear black turbans on their heads; their conversation is also in a language that I do not know. Two of the men have uncovered heads.

“They speak in Arabic,” Juma whispers to me. “And those two,” he points at the men with uncovered heads, “they are Somali’s. They are untrustworthy, they steal, they are also bandits.” A gold Cartier shaped ring with a pink amethyst centre flashes from a finger.

I look towards the men and wonder if they are planning a coup or a pirate oil scam, or maybe they are just talking about god and the weather in Tanga. At twelve o’clock the orange juice arrives. As the waiter places the glasses on the table the turbaned men rise in one movement. They walk to an open space on the grass and kneel. They bow towards Mecca. It is only then that I notice that one of them has a bruise on his forehead, a bruise of contrition and praise. The bruise of the holy. I move to sit on the stone bench and I sip my orange juice.

Tanga has no tarred roads. There are the main roads, some of which are one way, but no-one notices this; others are two way, but no-one notices this either. Along the side streets are shops and businesses. Clothing from Oxfam and Amnesty decorate the store fronts. I walk up to a brightly coloured frontage and lean forward to feel black silk cloth that hangs on a dusty railing. A woman with silver ringed eyes and enhancing scars that line her cheek bones comes forward. She wears a used up plum coloured Vivienne Westwood jacket. Gold and sapphire sequins line the shoulders. By her side Malcolm Maclaren hovers in his Sid Vicious cut outs, the pieces of the material pinned together with rusty safety pins. “Do you want to buy something,” the woman asks me in Kiswahili. While I cannot speak this language I know what it is she says. I shake my head, but I am not persuaded. I know that if I search I can find a Versace bag with long shoulder straps. A woman from Amnesty must have needed a Versace bag at the press conference where she addressed a sincerely fake audience on third world poverty. A photograph, the word ‘Versace’ faces the lens.

Next to one of the clothes shops is an internet café, the Tinga Tinga Internet Café. “We are only open for two hours a day,” the man at the entrance tells me, “because otherwise it gets too expensive, it is the phones here, they are very high-priced.”

Next to the Tinga Tinga is a sign that reads ’Freedom has a new meaning – Vodacom’, colonisation by the cellular phone, global democracy has penetrated Tanga. The sound of a mobile phone emerges from the shop next door, the Posh Spice Hair Salon. As I walk past I notice a picture of David Beckham pasted across a mirror, blonde African braids. A girl with an aquiline nose and pool black eyes sits forward on her stool as the hairdresser plats her hair. She speaks into the now silent phone. The girl’s headscarf lies on the chair next to her, red and yellow. A head scarf that will cover her redesigned hair when she leaves the salon, only her closest friends and sisters will know the secret of her new coiffure. I walk on. Next door, at the New Romantic Beauty Salon, three women grow artificial nails. As I pass the wind blows on their ersatz finger tips so that the pale pink Cutex nail polish dries quickly.

We drive along a road. In front of us, in between the Hunderdwasser myriad houses is a large German mausoleum. It is the court house. In the grave of the German colonial occupation resides justice. A woman soldier in a faded grey uniform that stretches tight across her shoulders and buttocks, rose shaded epaulettes, comes up to us. “You can look, but you cannot photograph” she says. “What are you doing here anyway,” she turns to me. She cannot understand why a tourist is in Tanga.

“Just looking around” I reply.

She smiles, “go down that way,” she says, she points towards the sea, “that is where the houses of the old and the rich are, you will like those houses very much”

I return her smile. “It is not the houses of the old and the rich that I want to find,” I tell her. “I just want to find the middle of the town, the end of the town, maybe just the beginning of it.” Juma giggles timidly, he is nervous of the bullets in the gun that the woman holds; tearlets of blood on the blossoms of a tree.

In the market place a man is selling spices. He smiles. “What is which spice,” I ask him.

He points to red dust in a basket and waves his hand in front of his mouth. The powder must be chillies. The spice has a mountain peak. He leans forward and dips his finger into one of the baskets, “you can taste,” he says in English. He moves back and lies on the bench, his hands behind his head, his eyes close.

A shell merchant sells sea shells at the next table, cowries that are found on the small islands in the ocean that surrounds the town. “The cowrie shell is a home to a live sea snail when it is taken from the waves,” the market seller tells me. “It would not have brightness and shine if it is taken out when the snail is already dead. I took it yesterday. You are not allowed to take them out of the sea, the sea soldiers chase you, you can be in jail” he whispers. “But no matter, the snail is dead now so you can buy it.” I smile at him, in Tanga I smile a lot.

Nearby a woman feeds her child a smashed banana. The child is crying; he does not like plain bruised bananas; he wants the chillies and the masala to heat things up. The woman brushes the child’s unblemished cheek with a gentle hand; she takes some crushed cardamom from a woven basket and spreads it on the banana. The child grows silent and eats.

Tanga, a town that few who travel to Tanzania visit. It is out of the way, far from the playgrounds of exotic Zanzibar, far from the ultimate wild and virtually real lions in the Serengeti who know that a Thompson gazelle is a marvellous supper. And yet in Tanga there is a feel of bustle and laughter. There is a fuck you feel. There is amusement and a gesture where the middle finger of the right hand points upwards at the West that has tried to make it emulate London, or even Johannesburg. There is pride in the sabotage of first rate designer packages so that they become second rate. The resistance to being first rate is the acceptance of being second rate; it is so much better, dusty subversion of pre-packed consumerism. There is pride in a smile, pride in taking tea on the dusty main road.

And this mood and this gaiety can never be described because, for those that write the description, this just does not make it into newspaper words; it does not ‘cut the mustard’, to use the phrase of the sultry cigarette stained voice of Marlene, the perfect German movie icon. Journalist words can only describe poverty and lack; there is no salvation, condemnation is final.

And in this wordless town I feel a smile.