Butiama Beach
Mafia Island
Tanzania
Dear o,
At last, the president’s plane was spotted making a loop
around the airport. The stand-around
crowd, of which I was part, flocked to the edge of the little plateau above the
airstrip itself. The schoolkids in their
uniforms were first; and even those who weren’t snaked in between elbows and
hips to bulge the united front a little farther forward, a little closer to Mr.
President. His plane pulled around,
straightened out over the ocean for its descent, and took aim for the small
clearing atop the ridge. He better be
good, I thought. I’d been waiting for
hours in a dirt field under a sunburning sun for this guy, and I didn’t even
know his name.
Ever since my arrival on Mafia, rumours of a presidential
visit to officially open the refurbished airport, new dock and widened road to
Utende have floated around. He was
supposed to come at the end of August, then September, and then who knows. On the date of his last scheduled visit, the
gossip factory neglected to inform me of cancellation, and I wandered down to
the airport and then the waterfront to see people walking, merchants trading,
fishermen fishing and kids staring.
Maybe they’re indifferent to some chumped-up elected official in Dodoma;
maybe he’ll bring his own background crowd in that big plane he’s rumoured to
have. Well, no, I learned later. It seems that the Mafia Island Communication
Network does indeed distribute news, and everyone seems to get their phantom
copy – except me.
A few days before the president’s actual arrival, I received
some accidental word that was a little more promising than a mere date: a
government official was asking around at the lodges for space to host 30 guests
for three nights just two days away, something that the lodges laughed at for
the ridiculously short notice; some dignitaries had already started trickling
in, driving fancy cars and wearing fancy clothes. I confirmed the story at the New Lizu Hotel,
where Mama Shiraz told me that she was doing the catering in Utende, and that
yes, indeed, the president is coming.
Would I like to see the schedule?
Sure. Oh, never mind, she can’t
find it.
Of course I was suspicious that the great event would ever
take place, but there were other signs as well.
For each of the two afternoons before the president’s visit I heard the
roar of dozens of planes landing at the airport (the average is 3-4 per day),
one after the other as if in a convoy. I
got the sense that the whole island was turning into a giant school waiting for
the principal to make his inspection: walls got cleaner, street vendors brought
out their reserve selection, and the power stopped going out. I saw new faces poking around Kilindoni. They asked about prices, watched with keener
eyes than normal, and bought up military-green shorts and samosas off the street in high frequency. They looked different, too: the men had
clean, button-up shirts, and the woman did their hair up without a flamboyant
covering-scarf. Some of them even spoke
English to each other, though they laughed at every phrase.They must be from Dar, I thought.
Mainlanders.
On the morning of the president’s coming, I went out to the
airport. I’d heard this was his first
stop. After he’d visit the new dock (that’s why the lights were on for the first
time last night) and then Utende, so I thought I’d give myself at least the
chance for the full deal. And something
was astir. Green CCM (Tanzania's ruling party) flags waved high in the sky. A row of black and tinted
Land Cruisers were parked and turned on and made one think of a movie about
go-get-em government. Huddled against
the chain-link, razor-wire-topped fence were hundreds and hundreds of
schoolkids in their white-and-blue uniforms, hanging on the metal, expectant,
happy. They waved
fresh-out-of-the-box,standard-issue Tanzanian and American flags on sticks, and
there were three or four times as many as the latter. “Why do you have this flag?” I asked one of
the boys who said he spoke English. “To
show the friendship between the United States and Tanzania,” he said. “Which president is supposed to come?” I
asked. “Maybe both!”
I found a spot along the fence and hung out with the rest of
my new friends. It wasn’t long before a
man with a white hat and shirt told us we could go through, and so we followed
the fence to the airport entrance and joined the queue. White-shirted invitees (who I would later
learn got chairs), throngs of decked-out schoolkids, and the rest of us
lucky-to-be-let-in plainclothed plebs lined up to go through the single
metal-detector. A soldier told us to
file into a single line, and I laughed.
The man behind me asked what was so funny. “It’s the first time in Africa I’ve been told
to form a proper queue,” I said. “Yes,
but this is not just Africa – this is Tanzania!” He could have been the president.
Not everybody went through – the smart ones stayed behind to
jump up onto trucks for the best views of the whole thing, or to sell candy and
ice cream through the wire mesh. Those
of us inside were made to feel like the party had started already. The music was loud, people were dancing,
groups of schoolchildren were being ushered to strategic locations around the
ceremonial centre. On the two sides of
the sheltered, wooden speechmaking platform were lines of chairs with varying
levels of importance (blue plastic, white plastic, white plastic with
cushions), and behind it was a platform with chairs of other varying levels
(white plastic, black metal with cushion, and a single, tall, wooden throne for
you-know-who). Anybody could dance to
the African R&B in the middle space, though groups seemed to form by theme:
freestyling youngsters had a go, then the political-looking types went up to
“make fun” of the fact that they were dancing, and then the elderly women had
the most fun of all, jiving their massive hips with supreme rhythm. There was what I can only describe as a
conga-line, there was cheering and laughing and people greeting others they
hadn’t seen for years, and there was a sharp, bald, unsmiling American guy in a
suit (I wonder if he got sweaty?) who made me think the Secret Service had
already done their first sweep. Maybe
the president was coming, after all?
Maybe, but not just yet.
The sun got higher and hotter, and we seatless masses bunched up under
the edges of the temporary shelters above the assigned chairs. The MC eventually stopped the music and
started the superfluous parts of the ceremony.
Schoolchildren came up in groups to sing songs, do group dance routines,
show their rapping skills, and even host a mock debate in English which nobody
could really hear about the “merits and demerits of infrastructure
development”. Needless to say, the
“demerits” side, standing on the tarmac of a newly refurbished airport, said
little more than “development is bad” while getting trounced by their classmates
who made their best points to the tall, wooden, empty throne for you-know-who.
The MC ran out of things to do or say (and he had a lot to
say), so he put the music back on and those people who weren’t dead to the heat
started dancing again. A terribly obese
army commander, always followed by a cadre of skinny assistants, had finally
got tired of taking photos with his silver iPad and slumped himself into one,
or two, of the black cushioned chairs.
The sharp American dude had even stopped paying attention. Maybe the president wasn’t coming, after
all? I found a ceremony programme and
someone at whom to pose a few questions.
The reason for all the American flags was that the airport project was
funded by a US development project, the Millennium Challenge Account – hence
all the white shirts and trucks with the MCAT logo (T for Tanzania). The flags were both a way to say thanks, and
you can always send us more. But they
had stopped waving so fervently now, if at all.
Many were lying in the dirt.
Finally, the president’s plane showed up in the sky, and the
flags, Tanzanian and American both, shot up into the air again. Which president was this? The best part for me and the kids was seeing
the plane land, pull right up on the tarmac to the ceremony area, and come to a
halt. It was a good-looking beast, white
with two big propellers and the single, simple word, “Tanzania”; it is perhaps
the biggest plane to land on the island since the Second World War. There was cheering and whistling as the red
carpet was brought up to the door, and then a big rush of noise as the
president stepped out, preceded only by his six-man security detail and
followed by nobody. He was still, calm,
and regal, and was happy to wait a few minutes to receive a scarf around his neck
before moving on to shake hands with many of the dignitaries. The American Secret Service guy wasn’t so
Secret Service after all, as he removed his sunglasses and gushed out a smile
while pumping the president’s hand. The
procession went on, and many in the crowd left; they’d seen him, after
all. It’s not like he was going to
actually say anything. I wanted to hear
him speak, though, even if I couldn’t understand a word.
The president’s speech followed on the heels of four other
ones, three by petrifyingly boring men in suits and one not so bad by a bright,
joyous, riled-up woman with a whole skeleton of political bones under her
vibrant clothes. When the president came
up to the platform, his six-man team flanked out, with four forming a circle around
the box, and a fat general (not the obese one with the iPad) stood behind to
add some weight. One of the bodyguards seemed
to be staring right at me through his cool-guy sunglasses, though he many have
long ago learned how to sleep standing up.
While he might have been sleeping, however, the president wasn’t a
bore. He knew how to use the pause and
even silence, he knew how to stir his words without ever stirring his voice,
and he had a good sense of humour. When
the DJ pumped up the tunes as the president approached and did a weird
record-scratch to simultaneously show off his skills and show off the president
as a rock star (he is not a rock star), the president laughed and brushed it
off. He was good, he connected with his
audience even when, as a result of a very poor layout, his podium platform
faced the open airstrip and only about 20% of the crowd (all the chairs were
behind him, and the only ones he could see were those who gathered on the top
of the ridge above the airstrip, the same vantage point to see his plane land).
So was Mr. Jakaya Kikwete worth the wait, the sunburn,
and the 400 shillings for mystery-flavoured ice cream? Not really, but I don’t think I came to see
the president. I came to see how
Tanzanians welcome and relate to and respond to their president, and that was
worth it. Yes, there was that stupid
chair of his, but there was also the informal dancing, the getting-together,
and the lack of much seriousness at all beyond Mr. Secret Service and the
sleepy security team. I didn’t see a
single gun anywhere. The police truck
was parked outside the fence, more for people to stand on and watch than to
patrol anything. Surely only a few would
get to meet Mr. President, but he gave off the vibe that that was only because there
was so many people. So it was fun. But the plane was still the best part.
