The Meaning of Bongo

What does “Bongo” mean? This is a question that has been nagging me for a while now. Before coming to Tanzania, I understood “Bongo Bongo Land” to be a perjorative term for some generic African country. It confused me, therefore, to see the word used pretty freely here. In Tanzania, “Bongo” is a slang term for the city of Dar es Salaam- there is a local kind of hiphop music called “Bongo Flava” and a local radio station called Bongo Radio. Just like Cairenes always refer to Cairo as Misr (“Egypt”), the people here don’t live in Dar, they live in Bongo!

I asked a Tanzanian colleague where the word came from. Apparently “Bongo” is a slang word close to the English “nous”. If someone has bongo, it means they are streetwise and smart. Apparently when economic conditions reached a major low in the 1980s, jobs were hard to come by and many were penniless. To survive in these conditions, you needed that little bit extra- you got by on your wits. Dar es Salaam became the city of wits and has been called Bongo ever since!

You can still see that entrepreneurial spirit here. Although business conditions for large investors are challenging to say the least, I know plenty of people who have their own small businesses and swear blind that this place is a goldmine for the smart entrepreneur. Not that this always means that the business is either legal or ethical. One example of bongo I suppose is the thriving pirate DVD business. This is not illegal as far as I know, and traders seem to operate openly all over the place. For less than $5 you can get a reasonable quality compilation DVD with every James Bond film from Dr No to Quantum of Solace on it. I can honestly say that the day after its release in London I was watching a reasonable quality version of Slumdog Millionaire (cost $2.50) here in Dar. In fact the larger distributors of the DVDs have now convinced themselves of their respectability to the extent that they are even copying the attempts of the genuine producers to counter dodgy copies. The last DVD I got featured an earnest warning by the counterfeiter to only buy copies with a branded logo- any other pirate DVD would be substandard and would result in a poorer viewing experience! You've got to admire the chutzpah if nothing else!

Now before the pitchforks come out and I get accused of undermining young aspiring producers, I have to say in principle those accusations are totally right. I would always prefer to buy the genuine article; the problem is that after more than a year of scouring the city, I’ve not yet found an outlet here selling genuine DVDs. The most respectable shop I’ve found- in a highly respected upmarket expat mall on the Peninsula- sells the same Chinese copies as the guy I see in the car park outside- only with more of a markup for overhead.

I try my best to salve my conscience by making sure we load up on genuine DVDs any time we travel- the sad fact of life, however, is that the DVD market here seems to be benefiting Chinese GDP way more than that of Hollywood, Bollywood or even Nollywood.

Now we can’t assume, however, that everyone here is smart. As with anywhere else in the world, you always have the public sector to provide an antidote to any sense of wit and common sense.

The main story in today’s paper covers another loss from the Bank of Tanzania. Unlike previous losses, however, this does not seem to be a case of embezzlement or complex fraud. Quite simply, a major consignment of 10,000 shilling notes (total value somewhere in the billions) was delivered from the printers in Germany. Upon arrival at Dar es Salaam airport, you’d expect perhaps that the notes would be kept under armed guard, cleared and then taken under strictest security to the Bank of Tanzania. Right? Wrong!

Sadly, the notes arrived quite late on an evening- the evening before the Prophet’s birthday, a public holiday here. This being the case, the notes were left at the airport while everyone headed off for a day’s holiday. When they came back to pick up the notes a day or so later, they noticed that there seemed to be, well, not quite as many of them as they’d left. The image of some confused official saying “well they were there when I left them” would be pretty funny if it wasn’t for the case that this is a country that needs every penny it can get. Leaving billions of shillings unattended at an airport for a day is not what an impoverished country ought to be doing- not so much bongo as dumbo!

So, with one example of “Bongo” and one of “Dumbo” it seems pretty appropriate to finish with a story from another colleague of an example of both combined. Apparently there was a story that did the rounds in Tanzania a few years ago of a guy who managed to buy a pretty hefty amount of gold using fake money. He was very pleased with his achievement until he tried to sell the gold and found that it was fake gold- that surely has to be a good analogy for something going on around these parts!

Anyway, for good or bad, life here continues in its own way. We’re still waiting with baited breath to see what kind of rainy season we’re going to get this time. There are still ructions in the power industry but one thing everyone seems to agree on is that Tanzania is not in any state to cope with the power crunch that will inevitably accompany poor rains. Amid the recriminations flying around between parliamentarians, TANESCO and the Ministry, I guess everyone in bongo and beyond is fervently praying for good rains this year.