Cars and Trucks and Things that Go, Part 3: Caving in to the Car

My last entry, on dala-dalas, is something of a elegy.  About a month ago, we bought a car—this lovely 2001-ish Toyota Cresta with only 35,000 km on it (the proverbial grandma car that was only driven to the mosque and the market).  It was less a desire to have a car than a desire to stay healthy during this time of no electricity and no running water for most people.  We didn’t like dala-dalas enough to want to risk riding on them if cholera or some other public health risk breaks out.

So we’re car owners, and the American part of me does love the freedom that comes with being in control of our own transportation and being able to zip over to a beach on a weekend.

But it does come at a price.  Now, rather than being with everyone on the dala-dalas, we park our car in the public lot several blocks from our apartment, and we tip the guard there to watch our car, and we pay the car-washer there to keep our car looking spiffy clean.  We’re contributing more to the local economy, but we’re also separated from it to a much greater degree than we were for the first five months we were here.

And although our new car has air bags and seat belts, I’m not sure that we’re safer from road hazards than we were in the dala-dalas—or vice versa.  Dala-dala drivers have been on these roads since they were riding on their father’s bicycles. I’ve had a driver’s license since I was 16, but I never learned in driver’s ed what to do when the car behind me is nudging me to pass between a well-populated bicycle and dala-dala on our side of the road and there is an oncoming army truck, or what to do when the ox in front of me suddenly breaks free from its cart and driver.  All things considered, driving on the left side of the road is the easiest part of driving in Tanzania!

So we’re now right there in the midst of the gritty, scary, Richard Scarry world, but it’s hard not to feel like there’s a loss, as well.

Cars and Trucks and Things that Go, Part 2: Dala-dalas

My favorite modes of trans-
portation here are the ubiquitous dala-dalas, the public buses that transport the preponderance of the people and produce on the island.  Dala-dalas are pickup trucks that have been converted into buses with wrought iron bars supporting a roof that has drop-down plastic sides for when it rains.  Inside, there are benches on three sides, and on the back there’s a step and hand rails for the conductor (and sometimes a few extra people) to hang on.  The buses are all numbered with the routes that they drive, and there are regular stops where people know to catch the bus—although it’s often difficult to find space on a dala-dala if you try to get on in mid-route.

Each dala-dala is licensed through the state, but it’s operated by an indepen-
dent owner who is licensed to drive on a particular route at particular times of day.  Each dala-dala has a driver who sits up in the cab with two or three passengers, and a conductor, who rides on the back step, collects fares, and signals to the driver when passengers want to get off—usually by rapping loudly on a metal bar with a coin (handy, since the fare for most routes is 250 Tshillings, consisting of the large and noisy 200 Tshilling piece, plus the smaller septagonal 50 Tshilling piece).

Because the drivers/
conductors keep the money they get on the routes, it’s in their best interest to have a full load at all times.  So the dala-dalas don’t move until they’re full, and they generally will take as many passengers as are willing to get on—and that’s a lot.  The legal limit for most dala-dalas is 20, but I’ve been on ones with as many as 30, if there are kids and babies on laps.  And that’s not counting chickens and 5-gallon drums of smelt or anchovies on the floor or bicycles and bundles of sugar cane on the roof.  Early on, I was surprised when a bunch of people got off a crowded dala-dala seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but it made sense in a minute when we got to the police checkpoint where the people were counted.  Then, a few hundred feet down the road, the same passengers (a little winded this time) got back on the dala-dala and we continued on.

The dala-dalas are sweaty and dirty, and they sometimes break down on hills or have smoky exhaust, but I’ve found them to be among the most comfortable places here.  Unlike in taxis, where the price is however much the taxi driver thinks you can pay, the price on a dala-dala is fixed.  And even though we wazungu (foreigners) sometimes get odd looks on dala-dalas, the people who regularly ride our route to the boys’ school know us and accept us and have even stopped laughing at our inexpert Kiswahili.  It’s sustainable transportation.

Cars and Trucks and Things that Go

For those of you who haven’t been or encoun-

tered children in the past forty years years, the title of this post pays homage to one of the great works of children’s literature, Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go. I read the book hundreds of times with my brother when I was growing up, and I have read the book at least as many times with my own children.  The frenetic action of the book, along with the pleasure of finding where the character Gold Bug is hidden on each page, never wanes.  So much is happening!  There are so many different ways to get around! Bicycles!  Double-decker buses!  Pickle cars! Hammer trucks! And the hazards in the road are equally prominent.  Watch out for the oranges spilled all over the road!  Watch out for the nails! 

Much as I love this book, it had never occurred to me that the world of Cars and Trucks and Things that Go might offer a representational view of any real-world setting. . .until Zanzibar. 

The modes of trans-
portation here are among the first things that struck me—literally—in the first week that we arrived, when I was bumped into by a car on the road (a not-so-subtle reminder to mind my status as a pedestrian and to keep my feet on the dust rather than on the pavement).  There is a distinctly Darwinian philosophy of traffic safety here, and we learned quickly to be survivors, pedestrians though we are.  On the narrow streets of Stone Town, the adept pedestrian knows to listen for pikipiki (moped) motors in the near vicinity, as well as for the bicycle bells and the kissing sound that is the equivalent of saying “beep beep.”  Watch out!

Beyond Stone Town, out in the wider roads of Zanzibar, there are not only pedestrians, bicycles, and pikipikis, but also hand carts, donkey and ox carts, cars, trucks, presidential motorcades, trucks with AK-47-toting soliders, and dala-dalas.  A gritty version of Richard Scarry’s world. 

The vast majority of travelers on the road here make very efficient use of resources—out of necessity.  Most wheeled vehicles have at least two passengers—including bicycles. During commute time, especially, it’s common to see a dad and three kids on a bicycle (two on the cross bar and one on the wheel guard) on their way to school.  Or, later in the day, a dad and a mom and an infant on a motor scooter. 

Given that my own children are still (at ages 8 and 10) skinny enough that they’re required in the United States to sit strapped into booster seats, it took some getting used to to see wee babes here on motor scooters—the lucky ones strapped into 1980s-era Baby Bjorns.  And I’ve yet to see anyone wearing a bicycle helmet. The traffic police here are, like Richard Scarry’s Officer Flossie, unarmed and out in the open rather than in their own cars.  I’ve not seen any speed limit signs anywhere, which is just as well, as the police could never catch up with a speed violator.

But, despite the extreme contrast with the American sense of trans-
portation safety, people here know the system and it mostly works, even if the traffic lights don’t.  

Reading the Writing on the Wall

Now that the power blackout makes Internet, television, and radio hard to access, it’s helpful to be able to read the writing on the wall—literally.  And all over Stone Town, there is writing on the wall—in Kiswahili, English, and Arabic, and sometimes all three.  Plastic lighted store signs here are very rare, and wooden signs are only at posh tourist places.  But many corner stores have painted signs, sometimes with pictures representing what the business does or the soccer team that the owner supports.

There are also painted signs with religious messages in a few places—some very stylized, like this one outside Hamani Baths, one of the many ruined relics of the 19^th century and better economic times in Stone Town.

What I find most fascinating, though, is the chalkboard-style writing on walls.  There is a black paint here that’s marketed as chalkboard paint, and there are large and small black squares around town that serve as newsboards, usually with soccer scores from the British Premier League.  Our favorite of these is the one by “Tulia” and “Poa,” a large chalkboard space that is meticulously updated with soccer match times and, later, scores.  Recently there’s also been a witty update on how many more days of “trial in error” there is predicted to be until the electricity is to be restored.

Until then, the writing on the wall will be updated constantly, while there will remain the static banana leaf picture posted over this public outdoor television by some industrious banana leaf art entrepreneur.