Chawa Suga was no ordinary youngster, though.
‘You know that chawa means?’ said Adam. He had asked to meet in the Company’s Garden alongside Parliament, to be sure that we would encounter no mwiba mwitu.
‘No.’
‘It means “rice”.’
‘Rice?’
‘Not eating rice. I’m talking about a kind of dunkhas that lives in your clothes and your hair.’
‘Lice?’
‘Yeah. We call that thing chawa. Suga means you can’t kill it. So chawa suga means the lice that won’t ever die. The boy took that name in Durban after some sailors tried to dash him in the sea, a Chinese crew. He survived and now he wears his new name like a badge of respect.’
Chawa Suga had left Durban to link up with some friends in Cape Town after his major ally in the Durban community had become implicated in a drug deal gone bad, forcing him to flee to Maputo. It had been Chawa Suga’s intention to try for the ships in the Port of Cape Town, but his reputation had preceded him and he was soon a major dealer under the Foreshore bridges, hustling kattes for a middleweight Tanzanian dealer called Hassani Abdul and Adam’s old friend Mas Bato.
I’d met Bato. I visited his apartment in Walmer Estate about a year ago in Adam’s company. He’d been pleasant, but had seemed too flaky for his occupation – more interested in partying with tourists in The Dubliner on Long Street than growing his drug business. His passion, he’d informed me, was hip hop, and he had the face for it: a strong nose, sharp dreads and a soft chin à la Puff Daddy. He had played us his latest recording, a track called ‘Short of perfect’, composed in Sotho by one of his musician friends.
In setting up his heroin business, Bato had originally played to his strengths, using his charm to cultivate friendships with as many Beachboys – his customers and his hustlers – as possible. Owing to the regularity with which they moved between Dar es Salaam and Cape Town, they were also his primary mules. Freshly deported Beachboys tended to invest a portion of their bribe monies in unga for smuggling back to South Africa when the time came to return. Not many Cape Town dealers were interested in chasing after such small quantities, but Bato had discovered that these regular infusions – anywhere between 10 and 250 grams per traveller – ensured consistency of supply all year round, whereas the bigger dealers, who relied on larger but more infrequent deliveries, were often short of stock.
By all accounts, Bato’s relationships with his Beachboy friends waxed and waned according to how hard they were trying to stow away. Any Beachboy who looked to have become comfortable in Cape Town was of little use to him. And, since the younger Beachboys tried for the ships most persistently, it was increasingly the relative newcomers to Cape Town whom Bato sought out on his visits to the Grand Parade. Adam, who had once considered Bato a friend, warned him that such fluctuations in sincerity ran against the Sea Power code, and that he risked making enemies at a faster rate than new friends.
It has come to light that, after stabbing Aubadeeleh, Chawa Suga had fled directly to Bato’s apartment. Bato had sheltered him; in the morning, when the news broke that Aubadeeleh had not survived, Bato and his business partner, Hussen, had handed Chawa Suga enough money to flee the country. By the time this had leaked, the murderer was in the wind. Some said Maputo, others Maseru or Mbabane. Everyone had a theory.
For Sudi and Adam, Bato’s intervention was intolerable.
‘I know what Mas was thinking,’ said Adam. ‘He thinks by supporting Chawa Suga these other young boys will become loyal to him. But Mas don’t know nothing about loyal.’
Sudi has done little to alleviate the tension in the beach areas by declaring that he will kill Bato if he sees him. The bad blood between the two dates back to an incident last year. Sudi had used Bato’s phone to send some WhatsApp messages to Sauda, his wife in Dar es Salaam. Bato had continued sending messages to her for weeks afterwards – from the comfort of his apartment, while Sudi had been camped out beside the highway, metres away from the icy, stinking Atlantic, trying for ships every other night in the hope, one day, of providing a better life for his family.
Adam deems the situation the most dangerous he has known.
◆
Barak had gone ahead and called a meeting of all Beachboys, to which Bato and Hussen had been summoned so that they might answer the allegation that they had aided a Beachboy killer. The meeting had been scheduled for noon yesterday in Maskani, but it had never taken place. A group of mwiba mwitu had come storming in over the railway bridge. They had gone straight for Sudi and Adam, accusing them of stirring up unnecessary trouble and warning them to ‘stop talking shit about the dealers’. The gathering had instantly broken up into several vociferous factions; the meeting had been abandoned before it could be called to order.
‘The dealers beat us, I have to say,’ Adam admitted. ‘They bought the support of these young guys, and divided the Sea Power.’
I had never seen him look so grim. Both he and Sudi now walked around armed, and never strayed more than a few metres from each other. It is easier for Barak, who has been altogether less jingoistic. He clearly makes his decisions based on a very different set of considerations. Cape Town is his chosen home – he has no other – and this means making peace, ultimately, with whatever happens in the beach areas.
It was suddenly apparent just how unlikely the notion of a community comprising stowaways is, with its own set of codes and practices, distinct from the grubby laws of the street. The sub-culture’s strongest defenders – men like Adam and Sudi – keep vanishing over the oceans, leaving the meek, the uncommitted, the inept, behind.
As anyone who has spent time on the street knows, the underworld has no regard for transients.
◆
A further twist.
A little while back, the story goes, a jovial Beachboy called Ally had stolen eight kilograms of uncut heroin from the storehouse of a Tanzanian heroin syndicate based in Delft. He had approached Mas Bato with his score; Bato had foolishly chosen to raise the US$100 000 asking price from Cape Town’s informal credit system. The uncommonly large loan amounts had created ripples that the syndicate members had followed back to Bato’s flat. A few days back the genial, self-absorbed dealer had returned from the gym to find the syndicate members in his living room, the remainder of their heroin on the coffee table. Bato had pleaded that he had known nothing of the robbery, but they had broken his shapely nose anyway, knocking him out cold. They had then taken turns raping him in his own home; when they were done, they had dropped him outside the Departures terminal at Cape Town International Airport.
When I asked Adam why the gang had used rape as a punishment, he initially said it was ‘because some Tanzanians are pure evil, brother’. Later, he reckoned it probably had something to do with attitudes towards homosexuality in Tanzania, where sex acts between men carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
‘In Tanzania it is better to be known as a killer than a gay. It is the same here in Cape Town. The guys who raped Bato knew that Mas would be too ashamed to tell anyone what happened. They also knew that most of the Beachboys would think that, if Mas didn’t tell anyone, then he must secretly be gay. So they released this information, and now Mas don’t want to show his face. It sounds crazy but it’s the truth.’
To back this up, Adam told a chilling story about a nineties-era Beachboy called Obadia who has a reputation for preying on the young methamphetamine addicts within the Beachboy community.
‘He watches for boys who have been smoking tik for days, and follows them around until they finally pass out. When a tik addict sleeps, nothing can wake him. Obadia was caught last week in the tent of this one boy. He had pulled his pants down and his dick was out, but lucky for the guy who was sleeping somebody noticed what was going on and chased Obadia away. We had a meeting about it. Some of us were saying we need to punish this guy so that he will never do it to
anyone again. But some of the others said, “No, we must leave him, because he teaches us which Beachboys are gay.”’
Given the events of the past fortnight, Adam feels little sympathy for Bato.
‘I know he used the money from the stolen heroin to play politics and propaganda with us after Chawa Suga stabbed Aubadeeleh. But in the end snitch get stitched, that’s how it is. Now Mas has run away, I don’t know where. Hussen is in Johannesburg. Chawa Suga is gone, and the dealers caught Ally in Zanzibar. I’m not sure what happened there but I don’t think he is alive now. That’s where it is left. Allah knows best, he spreads the punishment.’
◆
An SMS from Adam at 11 p.m.
Memory card 2 c agen.
I debated whether to call, worrying that he may not have switched his phone to silent, but couldn’t help myself.
Adam answered in a whisper. ‘Yow Sean, how are you?’
‘Good.’
‘How is your wife?’
‘Good.’
‘How is Barkly?’
‘Where are you?’
‘I dunno, man. Big fucking ship. Sudi was with me, we didn’t see the name. I don’t know if he made it but I think so. The ship is leaving now, I can see Cape Town. It looks beautiful.’
I told him I’d check the Vessels Departing list on the Port of Cape Town website and call him back. Under the Ship Movements tab, eight vessels were listed. I went to the MarineTraffic website and, one by one, fed the names on the list into site’s live tracking facility. A figurative map of Table Bay appeared, the vessels underway represented by spade-shaped counters and those at anchor by diamonds. Only three of the vessels on my list were moving away from the harbour. I clicked on their symbols, and their recent movements appeared on the map as streams of green arrows. Two were bound for Lagos, Nigeria. The other was going nyuma mlima, bound for India. When I called back to give Adam this sobering information, I reached the phone’s answering service.
I tried again. And again. He was gone.
I looked back at the bay on the screen, where the distance between the ships had already grown. One click and the site would inform me where each ship had been yesterday, and where it would be tomorrow, in which country it had been registered and at which speed it was travelling.
But no resource on earth would inform me whether my friends are headed north or south.
AUTUMN
In the street, the citizens, men as well as women, rich and poor, known or unknown, waved at me as I left in the car. In response, I raised my fez. I was neither a leader, nor a legal man nor a council member. I was an ordinary man who lived in peace with them. This farewell was one of my finest hours. Even if this brief burst of fame were to be my last, I would not complain because I would have had my share.
– Shaaban bin Robert, Maisha Yangu na Baada ya Miaka Hamsini
The customs official who took my passport at Julius Nyerere International was called Happiness.
‘Are you here for a holiday?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Then why do you have two, two, two?’ She swept her hands over the electronic hardware I had been asked to unpack from my luggage: two laptops, two cellphones, two cameras. This was Adam’s doing. He had asked me to meet a friend of his before I flew. This friend, he explained, had been keeping his prize possession safe: a 2013 West Brom football jersey with the number 1 on the back under the arch of his nickname, Memory Card. He had asked me to bring it to Dar es Salaam, but it wasn’t in the drawstring bag his friend handed me, which contained only the electronic items. There had been no accompanying charger cables. Happiness looked as if she had noticed the same discrepancy.
‘I might do some work while I’m here,’ I said, feebly.
‘Then what you are telling me is that you are here on business? This means you are applying for the wrong visa. You must go back to immigration and get a business visa.’
My holiday visa had cost US$50. A business visa would set me back US$250.
‘Hakuna, no, no,’ a shrill voice interceded, which I recognised as belonging to Francis, the middle-aged man who had sat next to me on the plane. He repacked my bag.
‘She is just trying to take your money. Come, you have done nothing wrong, let’s go.’
The official glared but made no move to stop him. We moved off, pushing through taxi touts.
‘Here in Tanzania you must pay the equivalent of a year of your salary in advance if you want to be a government employee. Police, soldiers, customs officials – they have all paid dearly for their employment. You can imagine the corruption this causes as they try to win back their losses.’
With Dar es Salaam harbour in view through the plane windows Francis had struck up a late-flight conversation, saying that he was just returning from a stay of several months in South Africa, where he had received navigational training from the South African navy. He was employed, he said, as a second mate on an anti-piracy patrol boat, and would be shipping out in the morning. The thump of the landing gear on the runway saved me from having to say anything about my own credentials and movements.
But now, in the relative quiet of the airport parking lot, Francis picked up where we had left off.
‘What brings you to Dar es Salaam?’
I contemplated telling him the truth: about my years-old gentleman’s agreement with Adam, the stowaway from Tanzania, which I had forgotten about until he had called from Dar es Salaam last week. Being interested in his life I had promised Adam I would follow him to Dar es Salaam when next he was deported, so that I could meet the surviving members of his family and visit the significant sites of his childhood. Afterwards we would hitchhike back to South Africa, jumping national borders if need be. It was a fairly simple story to relate, but instead I said, ‘I’m visiting relatives,’ and marvelled at the economy of this lie. ‘Actually,’ I added, using one of Adam’s counterintuitive charm tactics, ‘I’m lying to you. I have no relatives here. It’s a long story.’
He gave me an interested look.
‘Where are you going? I’ll call you a taxi.’
Waking up my phone I scrolled to ‘Adam Tanzania’, pressed ‘Call’ and handed it over.
‘Please, if you don’t mind getting the directions from my friend?’
After talking with Adam, Francis relayed the directions to a taxi driver. ‘Enda kwa Sheikilango Road katika Sinza, Kinyume Camel Oil Petrol Station.’
Turning to me he said, ‘Your friend speaks a very interesting dialect of Swahili. Is he from the islands? Pemba, perhaps?’
‘I don’t have a clue, to be honest.’
‘Okay. Well, take care while you’re here. The city isn’t as safe as it once was. There are good parts and bad parts, and the bad parts are multiplying and the good parts are becoming extinct.’
‘Is the place I’m going to now good or bad?’
The navigator pursed his lips and waggled a palm from side to side.
‘Half half, I think we can say.’
In the taxi, I opened my notebook with the objective of writing down what I knew about Tanzania. I soon closed it, though, realising that my pre-knowledge wasn’t worth the dust billowing in from the air vents. My insight into the underpinnings of the modern state consisted of a slippery, schoolboy’s sense of the aims embodied in the 1967 Arusha Declaration.
The Dar es Salaam of the Beachboys’ stories was equally out of focus. My notebooks were full of local place names – Sinza, Temeke, Magomeni, Mburahati, Kigamboni, Ukonga, Mbagala – but these might as well have been slums in Mombasa or Lagos, for all the specificity I had to hand. In the accounts of the Beachboys these townships figured mainly as departure points, places it had been necessary to leave. Daniel Peter had come closest to providing me with a distinct image by saying that returned Beachboys tended to draw ships on the walls of the houses they stayed in. I had c
onjured entire residential quarters given over to the commemoration of stowaway histories: doors daubed with dripping container ships, like talismanic blood marks.
Being so completely ignorant I would, in the coming weeks, depend on Adam in a way I had not depended on anyone since childhood. Where he went, I would have to follow, because I had not arrived with enough money to exist in that other Dar es Salaam of multi-star hotels and revolving restaurants with harbour views. This was not some deliberate immersion strategy, but an inescapable imposition of my bank balance. Adam and Sudi’s sudden deportation, after being caught aboard a ship called the Warnow Moon, had caught me in a lull between paying work and, after purchasing my plane ticket, I had been left with just a few hundred dollars in ready cash. Adam was fully aware of my position, and had been nothing but encouraging.
‘There’s always a way,’ he had said. ‘Just get yourself here.’
My confidence in his assurances was not shared by all of the family members and friends I’d told about my impending trip.
‘Can you trust him?’ was the most commonly expressed concern.
My stock answer was equally testy: ‘Yes, of course. We’re friends.’
Most took the hint and dropped the matter there, but with expressions bursting with supplementary questions. Is friendship even possible when the terms are so unequal? I mean, does he visit your house? Would you go out to a bar with him?
My wife, who knows the answers to these questions – yes, yes and yes – needed little convincing. ‘Just make sure you’re back in time for Marcia’s wedding, please.’
Her feigned indifference has become a habit, almost an art. Our preparatory discussions follow similar lines: How long will you be away? Where’s the money coming from? Who can I call if I can’t reach you on your cellphone? Three days is the allowed period for zero contact, unless I submit that I will be out of range for longer and, in these cases, I provide as much information as I can about my projected movements: the names of towns I will almost certainly pass through, border crossings I intend making. When she is asked how she puts up with it all – and, being a hairdresser, in the tabernacle of frank talk that is her hair salon she is asked this all the time – her stock response (I’m told) is to tell her clients that this type of work, and these journeys, helped deliver the two of us from a troubled and often painful relationship into a happy and enriching marriage. Before, I had been impossible, squandering my energies in the same fixed position, like a Catherine wheel nailed to a post.
Under Nelson Mandela Boulevard Page 18
