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Sights and Sounds of a Techno Dar es Salaam

I was visiting some friends in Dar es Salaam last weekend and we were driving around the city looking for a place to have a late lunch.

 

We came to a set of lights where there was a road to our left, which my friend wanted to turn into. The road was designed with a slip way to allow for easy traffic flow for cars wishing to turn left, but there was also a zebra crossing right before the end of the turn. My friend hesitated a little, as the lights were red and she was wondering if she could make the left turn since there was no oncoming traffic. Seated by the side of the road were a male and female traffic officer. The 5 pm sun was smoldering hot as it languidly set in the west and the traffic officers were clearly marking time under the shade of a scrawny tree waiting to clock off. My friend and I both turned at the same time to look at the police officers as she wondered out loud whether she could make the turn. The female officer began laughing and whispered something to her male colleague, who simply shrugged his shoulders.

 

She stood up slowly, stretched her arms and then ambled to the car. “Madam, umefanya makosa,” she mirthlessly informed the driver of her error. “Failure to observe zebra,” (sic) she said as she pointed where to park on the side of the road. But what happened next is what amazed this Kenyan passenger. My friend removed her driving licence and walked to the traffic officer. She was invited to take a seat on the makeshift bench under the scrawny tree and the traffic officer proceeded to type furiously into a hand held device. 15 humid minutes later, my friend came back to the car carrying a little slip of paper the size of a credit card receipt. She started the car and we drove off.

 

“So what was the verdict?” I asked, making the very Kenyan assumption that a kangaroo court had been held as was atypical in both Tanzania and Kenya where any traffic stop occurs. “I have been given a ticket and seven days to pay it via mpesa” was the matter-of-fact reply. It’s just as well that I was the passenger doing nothing more than spectating when such East African shattering news was being relayed as calmly as if one was picking ticks off a dog’s back. My friend who has lived for many years in Kenya quickly realized that her nonchalance was misplaced. “Oh, yeah. Things have changed in the new regime. Traffic cops have to give you a ticket which states your offence and then you can pay it via mpesa within 7 days. They have to charge you there and then if you commit a traffic offence.”

 

I grabbed the ticket and took a snapshot immediately for the sake of posterity. The little slip of paper had the name of the driver and her licence details, car model, registration number of the car, the details of the owner of the car (may I add that it was a car hire and the car hire company’s name was recorded on the slip since the machine is connected real time to the vehicle registration registry) and the name and identity number of the traffic officer. The puny little document packed quite an information punch as the traffic offence that was committed was clearly stated, “Failure to observe a pedestrian zebra crossing Section 65”, as well as the mobile number of the hand held machine, location of the offence and various payment methods at banks or via mpesa.

 

My friend paid the fine the next day, as we headed to the airport. By this time I had observed how Dar drivers religiously stopped at zebra crossings and traffic lights even on a Sunday. I was informed that due to the numerous traffic cameras around the city, offending drivers who did not pay their fines could easily be traced. Law enforcement has changed the behaviour of Dar drivers. More importantly, even though I couldn’t get the information on time, it looked like the traffic officers had a daily financial target to meet which would then motivate them to issue tickets like candy at a toddler party thus enforcing the law zealously. If you’ve ever driven on Tanzanian roads in the past, you will recall that their traffic cops’ ability to extract “chai” made our boys-in-azure-blue look like wilted tea bags. That has changed. Significantly. If the Tanzanians can do it, so-help-the-corruption-tin-gods, so can we.

 

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

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Sights and Sounds of Zanzibar

About three years ago, we chose to spend part of the December holidays as tourists in Zanzibar. It was still at the time when the travel advisories against Kenya were in full effect following the Westgate terrorist assault. We flew into Zanzibar’s Kisauni airport, where, quite blissfully, there was a separate immigration counter for East African Community(EAC) citizens, contrary to the Dar es Salaam Julius Nyerere International Airport’s legacy of treating all arriving visitors as one heaving block of unwelcome travellers.

It took about an hour to drive to our destination in the northern part of the island, where we were going to stay at a villa belonging to a South African owner. We did however get pulled over twice on the otherwise uneventful journey. The first time was by the Zanzibar tourist police who wanted to check the “papers” of our van. The “papers” were found to be in good order and we were happily waved along.The next incident was not so easy. Two regular policemen wearing the full white Zanzibari police uniform, buttons agonizingly stretched across their corpulent bellies, asked Kiba our driver for his driving license, PSV license and rate card in that order after taking a long, languorous look at the license stickers on the windscreen and finding no fault. Of course, Kiba couldn’t produce a rate card since the van belonged to the villa’s owner, so he was told that the policemen would keep his driving license until he could find it. The cops were quite pragmatic and told Kiba to take down their mobile numbers and give it to any cop who might stop us ahead so that they could explain that they were in possession of the license.

After a few minutes, one cop asked Kiba to step out of the vehicle for a “conversation”. Money changed hands, the driving license was released and we were dispatched on our merry way. Total time taken for the transaction: 15 glorious minutes of our precious holiday. Kiba was visibly embarrassed and bristling with anger at the capricious display of greed in front of his visitors. We chuckled and consoled his morose spirit with the fact that we were coming from a country where our own Kenyan traffic cops would make his Zanzibari traffic cops look like omena at a Nile Perch beauty parade.

View of Stone Town, Zanzibar
Image from http://theseyyida-zanzibar.com/

Zanzibar is a beautiful island with a heritage quite similar to Lamu. Arab, African and Indian influences have melted into a traditional, conservative Islamic culture. Stone Town, which is the main city on the island is a tourist haven with several narrow winding streets dotted by the ubiquitous curio hustlers cajoling you to visit their shops that have the same kikoys, African traditional masks, paintings and batiks. I spoke to one boutique owner, marveling at how they were lucky to still have tourists in Zanzibar, as our villa owner had told us that they enjoyed bookings eleven out of twelve months in a year. She was not as bullish, however.

She told us that most of the tourists to Zanzibar were typically on a Kenya-Tanzania-Zanzibar circuit and the events in Kenya had significantly impacted the numbers coming through to Zanzibar at that time in 2014. This conversation was replicated two months ago when I was on a working visit to Kigali, shortly after the August 8th 2017 elections here in Nairobi. The general manager at the hotel I was staying at was lamenting at the impact the Kenyan elections were having on visitors to a city some 1,200 kilometres south west of Nairobi. He said the exact same thing as the Zanzibari boutique owner. A large number of tourists to Rwanda were usually partaking in a circuit that started in Kenya. Cancellations to Kenya therefore meant that the whole circuit, including Rwanda would be cancelled.


Image from https://www.neverendingfootsteps.com

That our fortunes (and our sticky-fingered traffic cops) are intertwined within the East African Community is an unassailable fact. The intangible but very apparent influence that Kenya has on the region’s economy should give some pause to the proponents of the monetary (and doubtful political) union for the EAC.Our seeming inability to arrive at a mutually agreeable political solution is one that is of our own Kenyan making, and should never be exposed to the wider, unsuspecting regional citizenry. Or perhaps the opposite is true: a regional constituency might require a very different big picture thinking at the political level, making Kenyan tribal issues the non-issues that they need to eventually become.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka