Read Online And Home Was Kariakoo by M.G. Vassanji - Free Book Online
Authors: M.G. Vassanji
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run, the streets were potholed, the sisal market had been destroyed first by the arrival of synthetic fibres and then by the nationalizations of the estates during the two decades of socialism. But it seemed the Germans still loved Tanga. There was a German program in place to preserve buildings from their colonial days.
The Asian population in Tanga had declined considerably. Half the Khoja khano, a large two-storey white building within afenced compound, was in disuse for lack of people and partitioned off. It was a bleak sight. The khano and the Khoja development consisting of modern bungalows—portending the great optimism and cheer of the 1960s—were in the neighbourhood called Ngamiani—“where the camels are.” Perhaps there was a camel station here a long time ago. But for the Asians who remained, business seemed to be fine. Samji’s wife spent a good two hours every evening counting out the day’s take. (To be fair, the counting took long partly because the currency had inflated so much.) They had four children outside the country. One of their friends, Ramji, had all his five children overseas. Both men were satisfied with their lives; they had cars, servants, remained busy. It was the wives who insisted on leaving. I couldn’t help thinking of men of their age who had immigrated to Canada only to become useless and lonely, waiting to grow old and eventually die in a nursing home. For the women, emigration often was a matter of prestige and status. The Nanjis have gone, so should we the Ramjis; we are not nobodys. I held my peace.
( Photo Caption 5.2 )
The next evening Samji and his son put me on the bus to Dar.
The name of the bus, painted with a flourish on one side, was Scud. (The first Gulf War was a recent memory.) It was also decorated with pictures of Indian actors and the action-movie character Rambo. It left the station at 8:30 p.m. and at around midnight broke down. Groggy from sleep we got off one by one and came to stand around the right front tire, where the driver and conductor were inspecting a leak—oil or water, it wasn’t clear. The mood was light, as though this were the order of the day, with joking, cussing, laughing. A bright moon lit up the pavement and the landscape. After some two hours, the driver gave up tinkering and caught a ride back to Tanga to fetch another bus. A young Bohra man borrowed athousand shillings from me, frantic to get to Dar on time for something; when an overcrowded bus stopped, he got in and left. I never saw him again. The rest of us slept in a row at the side of the road, in front of the bus, using our bags as pillows.
In the morning it was surprisingly, intensely cold. It was after five, and I saw that we had stopped near a village and a roadworks; women were going off in a line to fetch water, barefoot and wearing khangas round the waist. A roadside stall had sprung up and we had sweet black tea and mandazi. The talk was fast and free and the government was openly criticized, with that casual sense of coastal humour. The freedom of the people was refreshing after the sombre, repressive mood that I had witnessed in Kenya. Someone mentioned that there could have been lions prowling about in the night. Yes, and they always dragged off a person sleeping somewhere in the middle of a row, not the end. A nervous tingle crawled down my spine. I thought I had been clever when I placed myself third or fourth from one end. I could imagine those man-eaters of Tsavo who had so terrorized the railway Punjabis, dragging them off even from their tents. On the Dar–Arusha route, the men around me said, a driver had abandoned a woman with two kids on the highway for not having tickets; one kid and the mother were eaten by a lion and the driver was in jail.
The relief bus arrived at seven, much to everyone’s surprise.
A man complained, “Would the mzungus (white men) have made tools if you didn’t need them?” Apparently our previous bus had lacked the
The Asian population in Tanga had declined considerably. Half the Khoja khano, a large two-storey white building within afenced compound, was in disuse for lack of people and partitioned off. It was a bleak sight. The khano and the Khoja development consisting of modern bungalows—portending the great optimism and cheer of the 1960s—were in the neighbourhood called Ngamiani—“where the camels are.” Perhaps there was a camel station here a long time ago. But for the Asians who remained, business seemed to be fine. Samji’s wife spent a good two hours every evening counting out the day’s take. (To be fair, the counting took long partly because the currency had inflated so much.) They had four children outside the country. One of their friends, Ramji, had all his five children overseas. Both men were satisfied with their lives; they had cars, servants, remained busy. It was the wives who insisted on leaving. I couldn’t help thinking of men of their age who had immigrated to Canada only to become useless and lonely, waiting to grow old and eventually die in a nursing home. For the women, emigration often was a matter of prestige and status. The Nanjis have gone, so should we the Ramjis; we are not nobodys. I held my peace.
( Photo Caption 5.2 )
The next evening Samji and his son put me on the bus to Dar.
The name of the bus, painted with a flourish on one side, was Scud. (The first Gulf War was a recent memory.) It was also decorated with pictures of Indian actors and the action-movie character Rambo. It left the station at 8:30 p.m. and at around midnight broke down. Groggy from sleep we got off one by one and came to stand around the right front tire, where the driver and conductor were inspecting a leak—oil or water, it wasn’t clear. The mood was light, as though this were the order of the day, with joking, cussing, laughing. A bright moon lit up the pavement and the landscape. After some two hours, the driver gave up tinkering and caught a ride back to Tanga to fetch another bus. A young Bohra man borrowed athousand shillings from me, frantic to get to Dar on time for something; when an overcrowded bus stopped, he got in and left. I never saw him again. The rest of us slept in a row at the side of the road, in front of the bus, using our bags as pillows.
In the morning it was surprisingly, intensely cold. It was after five, and I saw that we had stopped near a village and a roadworks; women were going off in a line to fetch water, barefoot and wearing khangas round the waist. A roadside stall had sprung up and we had sweet black tea and mandazi. The talk was fast and free and the government was openly criticized, with that casual sense of coastal humour. The freedom of the people was refreshing after the sombre, repressive mood that I had witnessed in Kenya. Someone mentioned that there could have been lions prowling about in the night. Yes, and they always dragged off a person sleeping somewhere in the middle of a row, not the end. A nervous tingle crawled down my spine. I thought I had been clever when I placed myself third or fourth from one end. I could imagine those man-eaters of Tsavo who had so terrorized the railway Punjabis, dragging them off even from their tents. On the Dar–Arusha route, the men around me said, a driver had abandoned a woman with two kids on the highway for not having tickets; one kid and the mother were eaten by a lion and the driver was in jail.
The relief bus arrived at seven, much to everyone’s surprise.
A man complained, “Would the mzungus (white men) have made tools if you didn’t need them?” Apparently our previous bus had lacked the
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