Mwembetayari
JF-Expert Member
- Feb 21, 2012
- 333
- 125
The old saying, Cleanliness is next to godliness, suggests that if you maintain personal physical, moral and environmental tidiness you will sit on the right hand side of the Great Wizard.
God dont like ugly, and filthy sure is ugly.
Which means Dark es Salaam is a godforsaken place, a sprawling, unkempt, ugly mega-village that they call a city only because a proper name has not been found for it.
If there were a contest to choose the dirtiest capital city in Africa, Dar would be among the topmost contenders.
But there is something else about Dar that makes it a huge village with concrete structures in the middle.
Dar es Slum, the capital of the United Republic of Tanzania, is a collection of rundown neighbourhoods and shanty towns surrounding the concrete central business district, which also houses government offices, all without proper street names or plot numbers displayed.
Even where there used to be street names and house numbers before, like in the Swahili suburbs of Ilala, Kinondoni and Magomeni, these have disappeared.
You might think they were done away with because they were unwanted relics of the colonial era.
In the newly constructed posh suburbs such as Mbezi Beach and Mikocheni, where the rich and powerful have built themselves Malibu style villas, there have never been any official street names or numbers.
The excuse for a city council that sits in City Hall has not seen the need for irrelevancies like street names and house numbers.
These unnamed and unnumbered streets most of them ruts that turn to mud when it rains and to dust when it shines have struggled to give themselves an identity quite divorced from the absentminded City Fathers.
Concerned residents have taken it upon themselves to name their streets, hoping that this way they can direct their friends and relatives who want to visit.
These do-gooders, no doubt meaning to inspire good citizenship and ethical living, have chosen nice little names, like Hekima (wisdom), Upendo (love) and Afya (health).
Someone has been bearing the expense of having metallic signposts painted with these names and planted at street corners.
It goes to show that when the governors have gone to sleep, the people will govern themselves (Was this what Karl Marx was talking about when he wrote about the withering away of the state?).
Trouble is, though, that these people-generated street names do not have a central origin, as they are the creation of disparate groups of volunteers without a citywide organisation.
This has meant that the name given to the street outside your gate could be exactly the same name given to another street 20 kilometres to the south of you, and another 25 kilometres to the north
This has produced expensive jokes, such as when you walk up and down trying to locate the one-storey house with a light green façade, French windows and a brown gate on Hekima Street 10 kilometres away from the domicile of the person who gave you the directions.
Yet this marks progress of sorts. Its infinitely better than the practice in those areas where a benefactor has not emerged to put up street name signs.
There, the standard practice is to give directions such as this one: Get off the dala-dala at Makonde and take the road on your right; on the left you will see a pharmacy and on the right there is a butchers shop walk on for some ten minutes and turn right; you will see a broken down bus parked on the left, continue for five minutes then turn left to the ground where children play football; ask any one of them to bring you to Mama Salims house. They all know this place
Look over the shoulder of a Dar resident filling in immigration forms at some foreign airport and see what he gives for his home address: P.O. Box 10098, Dar es Salaam. Dont follow him there because thats not where he lives.
Jenerali Ulimwengu, chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper, is a political comentator and civil society activist based in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com
I live in Dar es Salaam on a street with no name... but hey, you can always find me - Comment |theeastafrican.co.ke
God dont like ugly, and filthy sure is ugly.
Which means Dark es Salaam is a godforsaken place, a sprawling, unkempt, ugly mega-village that they call a city only because a proper name has not been found for it.
If there were a contest to choose the dirtiest capital city in Africa, Dar would be among the topmost contenders.
But there is something else about Dar that makes it a huge village with concrete structures in the middle.
Dar es Slum, the capital of the United Republic of Tanzania, is a collection of rundown neighbourhoods and shanty towns surrounding the concrete central business district, which also houses government offices, all without proper street names or plot numbers displayed.
Even where there used to be street names and house numbers before, like in the Swahili suburbs of Ilala, Kinondoni and Magomeni, these have disappeared.
You might think they were done away with because they were unwanted relics of the colonial era.
In the newly constructed posh suburbs such as Mbezi Beach and Mikocheni, where the rich and powerful have built themselves Malibu style villas, there have never been any official street names or numbers.
The excuse for a city council that sits in City Hall has not seen the need for irrelevancies like street names and house numbers.
These unnamed and unnumbered streets most of them ruts that turn to mud when it rains and to dust when it shines have struggled to give themselves an identity quite divorced from the absentminded City Fathers.
Concerned residents have taken it upon themselves to name their streets, hoping that this way they can direct their friends and relatives who want to visit.
These do-gooders, no doubt meaning to inspire good citizenship and ethical living, have chosen nice little names, like Hekima (wisdom), Upendo (love) and Afya (health).
Someone has been bearing the expense of having metallic signposts painted with these names and planted at street corners.
It goes to show that when the governors have gone to sleep, the people will govern themselves (Was this what Karl Marx was talking about when he wrote about the withering away of the state?).
Trouble is, though, that these people-generated street names do not have a central origin, as they are the creation of disparate groups of volunteers without a citywide organisation.
This has meant that the name given to the street outside your gate could be exactly the same name given to another street 20 kilometres to the south of you, and another 25 kilometres to the north
This has produced expensive jokes, such as when you walk up and down trying to locate the one-storey house with a light green façade, French windows and a brown gate on Hekima Street 10 kilometres away from the domicile of the person who gave you the directions.
Yet this marks progress of sorts. Its infinitely better than the practice in those areas where a benefactor has not emerged to put up street name signs.
There, the standard practice is to give directions such as this one: Get off the dala-dala at Makonde and take the road on your right; on the left you will see a pharmacy and on the right there is a butchers shop walk on for some ten minutes and turn right; you will see a broken down bus parked on the left, continue for five minutes then turn left to the ground where children play football; ask any one of them to bring you to Mama Salims house. They all know this place
Look over the shoulder of a Dar resident filling in immigration forms at some foreign airport and see what he gives for his home address: P.O. Box 10098, Dar es Salaam. Dont follow him there because thats not where he lives.
Jenerali Ulimwengu, chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper, is a political comentator and civil society activist based in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com
I live in Dar es Salaam on a street with no name... but hey, you can always find me - Comment |theeastafrican.co.ke
