And Home Was Kariakoo (17 page)

He had come to Kazeh with his brother Sayyan from Surat, India, and had made his wealth starting from twenty loads of cloth and beads. Sayyan had since died. Musa dressed smartly, wearing a “snowy skull-cap,” and perfumed himself with jasmine and sandalwood. His abode was almost a village, with lofty gates, crowded with buyers and sellers.

James Grant, who accompanied Speke in 1860, was also impressed by Musa, who along with others came out a mile to welcome the party. “Guns were fired, jambos and salaams with shaking of hands followed, and we were lodged once more under a hospitable roof.”

He also never missed his opium pill in the afternoon, had several wives, and chatted all the while the Quran was being recited to him by a sheikh from Madagascar. He had slaves, like all men of any wealth, and, what is truly remarkable, he told Grant that “The Egyptian river flowed from the Lake Nyanza [Victoria].” So much for the Nile controversy.

Grant and Speke stayed with Musa for fifty-one days, at the end of which Speke presented the Indian with five hundred dollars and a gold watch.

I’ve learned much about Speke and Burton, and about Livingstone and Stanley, since elementary school, when the “I Presume” moment was firmly etched in my mind. Perhaps the first place I went to see, as a wide-eyed colonial abroad, of London’s many historic sites, was Westminster Abbey and specifically the exact place where Livingstone
lies buried. It was a moving moment for a variety of reasons. And then the question persisted, Where was
I
in all this history?

We can hardly blame the others for celebrating their own heroes, writing their own stories; the question is, why did “we” not produce our own stories? (If I may be forgiven the temporary distinction between “them” and “us” to make my point.) I was brought up with only the vaguest sense of my own history as an Asian African, much of it mythological or even recently concocted. As Asians growing up in East Africa we didn’t know how our forefathers had arrived, how they lived, or even what they looked like. It was later, while living abroad, that this information seemed vital for my sense of who I was. The stories of Ladha Damji and Musa Mzuri and Sidi Mubarak and Tharia Topan, the descriptions by James Elton of the Bhatias and the Khojas, lonely in their shops in the coastal towns of Tanzania—bare glimpses of these men (no women or children were mentioned)—were my stories; they were part of my projected completion as a person. To find them in the pages of the explorers’ accounts, therefore, regardless of ignorance and jaundiced perceptions, was a thrilling experience, and I was thankful to these men who wrote.

Who were these men
as people
? As fathers, husbands, community men? To some commentators, Musa was a drug addict and a greedy businessman. An easy enough caricature. I see him as an Indian who arrived penniless and went native in East Africa way back in the mid-1800s, whose mixed children spoke no Indian language, who welcomed the white strangers to his home, and who knew quite casually that the Nile began at Lake Victoria. And then he disappears from our view. Did he write home? What were his relations to India? There is even scanter information about Ladha Damji; I imagine him in his shop worrying about his mother as Indian men
are wont to do. Tharia Topan’s descendants are known. Once I had tea with a grandson in London, and he had some stories about the old man. A descendant was superintendent of a hostel in Mombasa.

A Question of Language, Understanding, and Truth

One obvious question that arises regarding the journeys is, how good was the communication among the various parties involved?—those who helped to organize the caravans, those who went with them, those in whose lands these strangers arrived. Burton, Speke, and Grant, having spent time in British India, all spoke Hindustani—the older and more vernacular form of Hindi and Urdu—and reportedly could communicate with Sidi Mubarak in that language. Yet none of these four men was its native speaker. Sidi had spent time with Kutchis and would have spoken Kutchi better, though hardly like a native. One can only imagine the confusion and misunderstanding that arose, the more so when whatever Hindustani was spoken was translated into Swahili or English, or even some of the other languages. One imagines a mixture of Swahili, Hindustani, and English used to communicate, along with hand gestures. Sidi Mubarak was a man of the coast and would have been fluent in Swahili. But until quite recently many peoples in the interior did not speak or spoke only a little Swahili. It is far from obvious that Sidi could make himself completely understood to a Mgogo or a Mha. And yet the problems of communication were entirely glossed over, by either the travellers themselves or their numerous commentators and admirers.

Burton writes the first name (actually a word describing Africans in India) of Sidi Bombay as “Seedy,” and in an article in
Blackwood’s
as “Sudy”; in
Zanzibar
, he writes it as “Sidi.” Grant calls him “Seedee.” This seems a minor point but it surely reflects the
levels of misunderstanding possible, simply on the basis of pronunciation. Burton’s Kutchi quotation in
Lakes
sounds marvellous, and one can only admire his linguistic skills, yet it is not entirely correct. Imagine Speke’s message in English and broken Hindi, conveyed to Sidi Mubarak, fluent in neither, and reaching a Mgogo via a Swahili in which
he
is not fluent.

And then, how good was the understanding
outside
of language; whose word do we, as modern readers, take? If Burton and Speke do not always tell the same story, and Stanley takes time repudiating Burton (concerning the features of Sidi Mubarak, for example), how much can we trust their accounts of the Africans, Asians, and Arabs? Burton was often contradictory; he was moody and depressive. Sickness made these men delirious. As Burton describes one instance, “I had during the fever-fit, and often for hours afterwards, a queer conviction of divided identity, never ceasing to be two persons that generally thwarted and opposed each other; the sleepless nights brought with them horrid visions, animals of grisliest form, hag-like women and men with heads protruding from their breasts.” At the same time Speke had a fainting fit “which seemed to permanently affect his brain.” And further, how much of what they report is what they saw and how much was overheard? How much was tall tale? How much was received or written down under the influence of alcohol or rage or fever; how much was reported to them out of fear, spite, a need to please? Did they always know when a native was pulling their leg, in the Swahili manner of “kutania”?

There was a clear power relationship during these long, arduous journeys: the white man was the boss, the black man the servant; obedience was exacted with punishment that could be cruel and humiliating. As Stanley says of Sidi Mubarak, when he hires him in Zanzibar,

Speke of course makes no mention of this incident. And although Stanley says he has black friends in America, he himself had Sidi Mubarak flogged on at least two occasions and even put in chains. We should not forget that Sidi, in Stanley’s time, was a captain of the caravan, an elderly man—a “mzee.” Stanley’s attitude, perhaps under stress, reminds one of a slave owner, patronizing yet harsh, the slave’s dignity at the hands of the master.

Animal comparisons demean even the most courageous and helpful of the Africans, reflecting perhaps Victorian anthropology; painting Africa in strictly black and white terms catered to the voracious appetites of a public for these accounts of heroic adventures. Twenty-seven years after the East African Expedition, H. Rider Haggard would begin to publish his wildly popular adventure novels set in Africa. At about the same time began the “Scramble for Africa,” when much of the continent was portioned off.

F
RANTIC
U
BUNGO
S
TATION
, early in a Dar es Salaam morning, hums with the growls of a dozen buses arrayed in rows, impatient like hounds to fan out across the country. It’s a vast terminus, outside the city; simply to arrive here is an ordeal. But the sheer volume of transport necessitates its location. Vendors weave in and out with their small goods, touts shout their destinations.

“Mwalimu, where are you?” I ask over the cell. “I’m here, Daktari,” Joseph informs me, “I’ve just arrived.” I tell him I’m waiting beside our bus and where to find it. Soon I see him approach, pushing through the crowds, a bag on his shoulder, and go to meet him. It’s been four years since we last met, in Nairobi, though we’ve corresponded in the meantime. “Let’s have tea,” I suggest, “there’s still time.” We sit down at a tea stall, renew familiarity, and then get on our bus and are soon on our way.

A thrilling feeling, a wonderful excitement, takes hold of us—the sun bright and the air cool, the familiar coastal vegetation rushing by, villages and farms in the midst of their morning rituals, and the wheels rolling on the earth beneath our feet. We’re headed west, our cares are behind us, and we chat like schoolboys. The entire country, the entire continent stretches out ahead.

The highway follows the Central Line, the railway built in the years 1905 to 1914 by the Germans. For some reason of convenience the railway headed out straight westwards from Dar, along a sparsely populated plain, instead of following the populous bend of the Ruvu (Kingani) valley, which route the caravans and the European explorers had taken in the past. Burton’s “Slough of Despond,” the busy station of Zungumero on the caravan route, was therefore bypassed. Instead there grew Morogoro, which if it had existed before was too insignificant to be mentioned by the travellers. Zungumero I cannot find on any map now.

I first travelled on this road in a rattling old green-and-beige Albion with my mother and brother, on our way to Nairobi. I was ten, he twelve. The month was December and schools were out. I had been promised a sea voyage to Mombasa, thence a train to Nairobi, but this road trip was all that proved possible. On the way to Morogoro the bus got mired in a muddy stretch, from which it had to be pushed out with much heave-ho, and we reached the town in the evening, twelve hours after starting out. We had travelled 120 miles. My mother had a cousin in town, so we washed and had dinner at her place before proceeding. On the northern branch road to Kenya the bus got stuck again, but there was another cousin somewhere who fed us. It was a memorable journey, my first one out of Dar; there were giraffes, zebras, deer, and elephants on the way, and I recall being restrained from sticking my head and shoulders out to watch the passing scenery. My brother never knew until the last day that he would be left behind at a “Boarding” in Mombasa on the way back. That changed us all.

Almost all the roads are paved now—thanks to the Chinese—reaching every corner of the country, and the bus terminals are as busy as airports are elsewhere. With efficiency, good roads, and
comfortable buses comes another modern development—we don’t have to enter the towns we pass. Time is saved, but something surely is lost. We say adieu to Morogoro without entering it, picking up passengers at the terminal outside the town. The Uluguru hills rise in the blue mists in the distance; the earth is red, the sky a trembling translucence in the heat. Past Morogoro we enter the land of the Gogo people; the terrain is flat, the vegetation sparse, thorny and nondescript. This is an arid region, prone to droughts, which is why not very long ago the Gogo would come to Dar in such large numbers to beg at the shops. The Gogo are a tall, lanky people who keep herds by custom. They were a feared people in the nineteenth century; caravans dreaded the prospect of crossing their land, for which they would be subject to heavy hongo, or tax, in the form of cloth, beads, and wire. In 1857, we recall, the Indian businessman Ladha Damji of Zanzibar did not put much stock in Richard Burton’s party advancing through this region. Burton says that while neighbouring peoples wrapped themselves in grass or skin, the Gogo proudly wore cloth; many wore leather sandals. They were doing well.

The urban centre of the region is Dodoma. It was made into the nation’s capital in 1996. In my childhood the town was known for two things: the nation’s best pedas—the Indian sweets—came from Dodoma, made by one or two Indian families; and all the “crazies” went to Dodoma, to the only mental hospital in the country. Dodoma was thus a euphemism for madness. But later, laughable Dodoma became for me a place of very special and vivid memories. I did the military part of my National Service in this area, at a camp just off the highway. Asian youths hated the idea of being forced to go into the jungle immediately after high school, to eat the most rudimentary food and march about aimlessly in the sun—but the experience turned out to be profoundly, positively
transforming. It gave us the opportunity to travel into the country and live with young people from different places and backgrounds.

Every National Service camp had its own peculiarities; Ruvu had lions lurking just outside. In Dodoma, a daily horror—until we hardened ourselves to it—was the sight of starving Gogo villagers waiting anxiously for us to finish our meals so they could get the leftovers. Sitting outdoors on the ground, we ate from aluminum mess tins. The moment you stood up, finished with your meal, a bunch of desperate Gogo spectators would come racing towards you, men, women, and children, grandmas, grandpas, and toddlers, arms stretched out, begging for the leftovers. You had to select from the staring faces whom to give your leftovers to. If you lacked the steel to face such a crowd and opted simply to go and throw the remains away in the grass, a crowd of the beggars would make a rush for it: maize meal and beans, boring but healthy food in generous government helpings for city-bred young men and women training to build and defend the nation. Our pathetic audience were skin and bones, barefoot and covered in rags and blankets, their faces unwashed and eyes often diseased. How more memorably awakening could our experience of the nation have been? How more humbling?