Into Africa by Craig Packer

Author:Craig Packer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

THURSDAY, 14 NOVEMBER

At 9:00 A.M., cousin Rasul arrives at the Mawenzi Hotel in a Toyota pickup truck. We make our way down India Street, toward Morogoro Road, to the heart of the business district, past Bigdeal, Ltd., Bojak Store, Jal Ram Traders. Many of the interiors are dark—the power is already off for the day—but the goods shine through the gloom of each open doorway: hardware, clothes, medicine, tinned food, and farm supplies. The fruits of imported enterprise lie glittering in the rubble of a lost civilization.

The city streets are as pockmarked as the road to Jane’s house. Rasul fumes at each crater. “The streets haven’t been repaired in over twenty years. The government sets aside money for roadwork each year, but the road commissioners put it all in their pockets. Cars, buses, lorries—all are being torn to pieces!”

Rasul parks by a busy corner. Nearby, half a dozen men stand beside various large stacks of cardboard. This is the box market. The street merchants invite us to inspect flattened, bundled boxes that brought pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and machinery to Africa.

“How much?”

“Two dollars each.”

Rasul objects, “That is too much; you should only pay half that.”

A proud old man shows us his fine German boxes—precision cardboard, no doubt. One dollar fifty apiece. Rasul makes a face, but I haven’t got all day to save a few bucks. Besides, the old man is a Green entrepreneur.

The sky is dotted with cotton clouds, the air crystal clear, the sunlight sharp and hot. We wedge our way between pedestrians and potholes, past mosques, shops, and more shops. Vegetable stands line the pavement of one street; another is heaped with burlap bags of charcoal. None of the traffic lights work. A large orange bus stalls in the middle of an intersection, the slogan on its rear window reads “Really No Problem.”

Rasul wants to know how much it costs to live in Minnesota. How do rents compare with salaries? He has family in Canada, but it is too expensive. He has family in England, too, but there are no jobs. Things are changing in Tanzania. “There are plenty of opportunities here these days. It is such a mess, but somebody has to fix it. There is a lot of work. I have a large family here, and we have new business every day. If the government goes back to the old foolishness, I may go to Uganda. I have family in Kampala.”

After surviving the final few miles to Jane’s house, Rasul and his African assistant follow me upstairs to the data room and help refold the boxes. We stack file after file of intimate biography into each carton. The social intricacies of famous personalities: who mated with whom, what they ate, where they went, the battles they waged. The chimp equivalent of War and Peace, the baboon equivalent of the Domesday Book, but unedited, scattered. Raw material.

Files from the ’60s, then the ’70s, fill one box after another. But then somewhere in the middle of 1975, a repressed anxiety forces its way to the front of my mind.

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