We arrive in Dar es Salaam late at night on Wednesday. Everything in downtown Dar is just as I remember it, except that the dark and empty alleyway leading down to the Safari Inn doesn’t alarm me in the same way it did on my first night in town last year. Jay and Leah suggest debriefing in front of the camera after we walk up the four flights of open air steps leading to our rooms. Using the cameras is new for me; it is beautiful medium through which to re-experience and reflect on the project.
The next day we are up early. I am still actively working on writing up data from Vancouver, and all of us are jet legged. I had emailed two of our youth participants – Kindo and Ninja – telling them when we would be arriving and where we would be staying. But, they aren’t waiting for us as we leave the hotel. I assure Jay and Leah that if we start walking, we will probably run into someone I know, as these young streetwise hustlers (masela) cover tremendous ground in a single day. We embark on a wondering tour of the city, relying on my somewhat tedious sense of direction. It feels like cheating, but after only forty-five minutes out on the hot dusty pavement, we duck into the air-conditioned five-star Kilimanjaro Kempinski Hotel to greet a friend of mine.
Later that day we are still wandering through town. Suddenly I see Ninja standing directly across from me while cars are passing by on the road between us. He is wearing a traditional African robe, oversized eighties sunglasses and has a laptop bag slung over one shoulder. He throws his bag down on the street and both of us are gesturing frantically while we wait for a break in the traffic. Over a year has passed since I conducted fieldwork in Dar es Salaam, and reconnecting with this group of young men is one of the most meaningful moments I can imagine.
Since I’ve been away, the physical appearance of maskani (meeting place) Amazoni has changed dramatically. The surrounding dense foliage that inspired the name Amazoni has been removed in favor of urban development, and this stretch of roadside dirt where these young men work, rest and relax is now edged by two gated and guarded lots. Yet, the group of young men who congregate there has remained much the same: Kindo, Dotto, Khamisi, Mwinyi and Gideon are all there when we arrive with Ninja, along with several other masela who are new to me. Our reunion includes the usual barrage of greetings and slapped handshakes. I struggle to converse in Swahili, but I am able to present photos from last year and a bound copy of my MA thesis. Producing the thesis was paramount, as a knife fight between competing groups of youth had been threatened only months before over the copy belonging to my MA supervisor.
Of course I am eager to show Jay and Leah the city I fell in love with last year, and to introduce them to the masela with whom we will be working for six weeks. I am somewhat horrified, then, when at lunch on our first day together Ninja jumps up to engage in a fist fight with another masela while Jay and Leah look on, trying to enjoy their first taste of ugali (an East African dietary staple). Using broken Swahili, I eventually calm things down. In the end, we decide to call it a day.
On Thursday we return to maskani Amazoni and connect with ten of our youth participants. We take a packed ferry the short distance across the water to the Kigamboni district of Dar es Salaam, where Jay and Leah experience their first ride on a daladala (public transit). Like many of Dar’s outlying areas, Kigamboni has almost a rural feel in contrast to the dilapidated concrete that overwhelms the city center. We have a lively and successful day of filming the youth making music, first accompanied by a group of local Rastafarians and an entire elementary school worth of children looking on, and then on their own in a vacant field overlooking the ocean.
People keep telling me that I should get out of Dar. While a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro or a week in on the beaches of Zanzibar both appeal, I love it here. Dar’s streets are noisy, polluted, and at the moment, extremely hot. Yet, the city’s architecture is a collage of traditional mosques, brightly colored shops and faded apartment complexes that glow as the sun sets across the city. Dar es Salaam’s street vendors, shop owners and sidewalk dwellers are a vibrant mix of Indian and Swahili (Black) people, and this has to be one of the only places in the world where you will find a Muslim and a Christian married and living together under the same roof. Go just outside of the city center, and you are bumping along potholed dirt roads lined by lush vegetation, ocean views and sporadic uswazi (lowest income) housing sprawls. Dar es Salaam is a study in contradictions, making it an ideal backdrop for a project about the power of art and music in the context of hardship.
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