Two friends and I went to Q Bar some Friday nights ago.
In my opinion, Q Bar in Dar Es Salaam serves as one of the most wide-ranging and profound introductions to Africa, mainly because it includes all the stuff you would like to repress the existence of. Go sit upstairs on a Friday night and you have an excellent panoramic view of some of the most characteristic personalities acting out under the black sky.
First of all, it is real. Hard to believe; but real.
Some of the most vibrant personalities on the floor are the Tanzanian ladies on duty, the malaya, and the brassy selection of males who come in all colours, sizes and ages. Other bars have a tendency to favour certain - more trendy - looks, but here you can be an old, fat, bald, sweaty, sundried and overtly horny bastard, and still leave with a teethy smile.
(Pole sana for leaving that image with you).
This Friday three guys next to our table hit instant luck when three malaya dedicated themselves to sit on their laps, and shift between so-called fuck-me movements and allowing them to touch their breasts.
Q Bar certainly is 10 times more interesting than a Danish television prime time programme.
First time I found myself in the middle of a situation like this in Kapalagala in Uganda, I thought it cannot be right; I couldn’t believe that average male wazungu from my own tribe could take such pleasure in regressing to a variation of primal phases, and do things I had never seen them done back in Europe. At least not in public.
After some time I realised that this is probably closer to whom we all are if we were free of all conventions. It was also about that time I started looking at all men from a new perspective. Africa will never not fascinate me: It is the perfect place to get an idea of your own or other people's illusions.
This Friday two bosbefok Australians embarked on a conversation with me and my friends. One ended up at the same corner of the table as me, insisting to share his visions on Africa. He and his mate had just got back to town from four months in the bush at Lake Tanganyika where they had been looking for nickel. In other places and at other times they would be looking for gold for an Australian mining company.
As a true bosbefok he was in severe need for sharing his genuine impressions from the bush, and a conversation spun over the fragments below gradually developed:
- Before they threw stones after us. Now they wave
- They didn't like us at first, now they do
- We go and have beers with them, we give them money, we go to their funerals in the village
- We make people happy
He was referring to the villagers on the site, which they went to research for nickel. He kept going about the fact that he and his mate contributed to change, how rewarding that was and what good this would bring on to Africa.
I quickly noted that his selection of ‘indicators’ went from ‘stones’ to ‘waving’: Less stones + more waving = happy people, equals change.
As much as I enjoy the diversity of the company you can come across in Q Bar; – from the Saffricans in two-tone shades; assecorized tourists; loud, alpamale Chinese; Scandinavian volunteers with red faces; Libyan gemstone dealers; the Tanzanian Indian living with his family on top of their shop in Zanaki Street; the mzungu mzee trying to get two ladies with him home at once, - I simply cannot stand listening to crap like this.
And it is at moments like these where I know for sure that Africa hasn’t made me less of a socialist.
You don’t really need a degree in rocket science to know that if a foreign mining company ever finds nickel, gold or tanzanite, the primary outcome isn’t meant for the villagers. The same goes for timber, oil, gas and a lot of other natural resources. The list is long. What is likely to happen, is, that it will mess their village up big time, and the profit ends up in other people’s pockets. Usually outside of the country.
The Aussie called me rough, indicating between the lines that he liked that, and besides; ‘This is my last night in Africa, before I go and look for gold in the Solomon Islands.’ Then he went on blaming me for not openly expressing the change I make for Africa. I told him that I find it hard to believe that my pure presence (just because I happen to be white) on the continent offers vital change. That things are more complex. That I believe I'm one little brick, who occasionally gets things done which then might stirr things off in a good direction. But I have absolutely no illusion that my contribution are bigger than that; and men who have a need for making me confirm their illusion that they contribute to change in Africa (especially when they boil it down to waving African villagers), makes me outright unresponsive.
In an ideal world, yes. But at the moment Tanzania doesn't live up to its own legislation. Its natural resources are being taken out of the country, leaving almost no visible difference to the average villager. (Gado on Arabs, land grabbing, silly Africans and their leaders here).
Even me, working for a Danish NGO, do not live in an illusion like this. And sometimes, I simply cannot grasp how little some people know of the vastness of Africa and their own part in it; how huge differences there are from the ones who have, to the ones who haven't; and how much is build on illusions in our heads.
On the other hand, Africa also makes you spacious, you open up for the fact that the world is not fair, that is has to comprise people you don't agree with, and you learn to find a way to cope with it. And as well as I now accept the buzz on the floor in Q-bar, the loud inequalities of the relations being established here on many Friday nights, I have no problem telling the Aussie:
'Leave me alone. Go find some other women to play with. Safari njema.'
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