Dar Street-Economiks, The Wild Web, & the Currency of Trust

One of the things that annoys and delights me the most about Dar es Salaam is how everything can be twisted into a business venture, into an opportunity for profit or pleasure.  Everyone is an entrepreneur, and everyone (in every context) is a potential consumer.  

Entrepreneurship in TZ can look whimsical: there's a guy near the ferry who put a scale out on the sidewalk, along with the sign, "Upime Mzito, 100/-."   Learn your weight for a mere six cents!

Or it's kitschy: in Zanzibar's eastern beaches, there are some Masai guys who dress in full warrior attire and walk up and down the hot sand, faking nonchalance, totin' spears and smeared in paint, hoping that a tourist will be like "omg look at those warriors on the beach we're so lucky can u believe this crazy photo op???" 

Or it's extraneous: If you've ever tried to park a car in Dar, you've had like 3 guys magically materialize from the bushes to "help" you park by waving furiously for you to reverse, then screaming "Stop! Stoooop!"  And in their magnanimity, they only expect a minor return for their efforts.

Or it's actually helpful: In Kariakoo, the major fruit/veg market in Dar, kids will wait until some poor lady is juggling all the food she just bought, and come running up to sell her a convenient plastic bag.  

I recently watched a TED talk by Rachel Botsman called "The currency of the new economy is trust."  Her focus was online economies, and she talked about the "third wave" of human trust in the internet: First we shared our personal info online, followed by our financial info, and today, we trust the internet to connect us with real-life strangers. We rent rooms and cars from each other, buy books and appliances from each other, and even run errands and pet-sit for each other -- all through connections formed on the web.

She talks specifically about an economic value shift taking place, in which human connection and trust can translate into quantifiable benefits:"At its core, [collaborative consumption] is about empowerment.  It's about empowering people to make meaningful connections, connections that enable us to rediscover a humanness that we've lost somewhere along the way, by engaging in marketplaces (like Airbnb, Kickstarter and Etsy) that are built on personal relationships versus empty transactions.  The irony is that these ideas are actually taking us back to old market principles and collaborative behaviors that are hard-wired in all of us.  They're just being reinvented in ways that are relevant for the Facebook age.  We're beginning to realize that we have wired our world to share, swap, rent, barter or trade just about anything."

In Tanzania, more than anywhere else on earth, people believe you can "share, swap, rent, barter or trade just about anything."  Whatever tiny resources people have at their disposal can be flipped into business-schemes, resulting in the daily emergence of thousands of impromptu translators, mechanics, chefs, valets, fundis, guides, bodyguards, etc.  And what Botsman calls a new shift toward trust & human connection, and a "return to old market principles" is already operative and flourishing in Dar es Salaam -- here, business has never been divorced from the actual human beings who are profiting and paying.

One thing that sometimes annoys me about Tanzania's economies (both formal and in-) is the absolute imperative to barter, for everything from peanuts to hotel rates. Bargaining and heckling is not optional -- it's totally necessary in nearly every context where money is involved.  Like, when I'm trying to get a ride back from town, the conversation sounds like this:

-Itakuwa bei ngapi kufika ubalozi wa ufaransa?

-Ehhh... shingi elfu tano tu rafiki

-Ah ndugu, nimekuja kwa elfu mbili.. nadthani hii ni bei ya kawaida

-Eh dada, lakini bei ya gesi inapanda siku hizi. Elfu mbili haifai

-Sawa bana, hamna shida, ntachukua basi ya Mwenge.  Asante

-Eh sawa, fanya kwa elfu tatu dada

-Tafadhali fanya kwa elfu mbili.. ubalozi sio mbali

-Eh, sio mbali

-Kweli siwezi kulipa zaidi

-Ahhh unanishtuka dada

-Ni kweli tu, siwezi kutupa hela zaidi.. unakubali kwa elfmbili?

-Hiya, let's go

So during an average conversation about the price of the ride (which always ends up being the exact same, though it takes 3-5 minutes to settle on it), we talk about the price of gas, the economy, the distance to the Embassy, the city traffic, our respective financial situations, and we've probably referred to each other as "brother" and "sister," all before I hop onto the motorcycle.  We have a relationship, however provisional.

Botsman says that through collaborative consumption, a shift is taking place in which "instead of consuming to keep up with the Joneses, people are consuming to get to know the Joneses."  Well, Tanzania beat everyone to the punch in that respect.  A major facet of any business transaction here has always been the relationship between buyer & seller, the rapport between provider & consumer.  Throughout TZ's history, the "humanness" of business never once fell by the wayside.  So is Tanzania ahead of the game economically?  Hardly. But we do have something worth hanging onto.  As Tanzania becomes more digitized/ technified in the coming years, our goal should be to move toward web-aided "collaborative consumption" without passing through that impersonal, sterile middle-phase of "empty transactions" that dominated Western business for decades.

Tanzanians usually place a high priority on people & relationships, and I love that -- I think its rare and beautiful.  We can fault TZ's economy for a ton of things, but not for its inhuman-ness!

Myth & Meritokracy: Fight Like a Woman

Also published on Vijana.FM.

The Citizen recently published an article on the deficit of female artists in the music industry, entitled “Divas: What’s Wrong With the Conveyor Belt?”  While it suggested, controversially, that many Tanzanian women had an unfocused or “half hearted approach” to making music, the article placed most of the blame on systemic problems in the industry – problems that make it “practically impossible for young girls to break through.”  At first I was appalled at the “conveyor belt” metaphor – it seemed supremely disempowering syntactically, as if female artists gained success through some kind of machinated, factory-like process beyond their control, rather than through their own effort, talent and willpower.

But on second thought, I think the title was reaching toward something true: I think it’s right to turn a scrutinizing eye onto the system, onto the endemic and often hidden workings of the music industry.  What factors, beyond a supposed lethargy among women, could account for such lopsided gender representation in the TZ music scene?  Here is where meritocracy loses its credibility; no one can tell me that Tanzania’s guys are simply 200% more talented than its girls.

The article, though brief, touched on some of the most daunting roadblocks for Tanzanian women who are trying to become recording artists.  Dar’s music world (like most others) has limited equipment, low airspace, and profiteers at every juncture; so, competition for radio-play, stages and promotion is fierce, and it’s not so much a matter of talent as it is a complicated game of politics and profit.  Who you know and how much you can pay will determine your time in the studio, on the radio, and what concert slots you get.

Women, unsurprisingly, are pressured into paying through “alternative means,” fostering what the Citizen calls an economy of “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.”  If women balk at swapping special “favors” for studio-time, their careers will likely come screeching to a halt.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of talking with Yvonne Mwale before one of her shows.  Yvonne is gorgeous, gypsy-spirited reggae singer from Zambia, now based out of Dar es Salaam.  She has a newly-released album Kalamatila, and recently collaborated with hip-hop artist Fid Q on the song “Sihitaji Marafiki.” During our interview, she talked candidly about her harrowing career path, which involved rape, abuse and displays of blatant sexism from industry curators.  Her journey began at age twelve, when her parents passed away suddenly.  Yvonne spent the next several years doing piecework to get by – laundry, cleaning, anything that she could find.  She sang in tiny venues when she got the chance, but people seemed to take advantage of her at every turn.

She recalled her earliest days as a musician, when she couldn’t find a single Zambian studio that would record with her.  At studios, she begged to be allowed to record just one track, but was “treated like scum” by every producer she met.  The few producers who didn’t turn her away told her to stand in the front lounge, where she waited until 11:00 pm or later — unacknowledged until all the other (male) artists had been attended to.

In the midst of her story, Yvonne recalled one group of artists who treated her with respect and kindness.  Several years ago, a Zambian band led by the legendary guitarist Jones Kabanga held auditions for a female vocalist.  When Yvonne showed up, she looked unimpressive – “useless, a dirty orphan,” she says.  But they handed her the mic to see what she could do, and her freestyle vocals worked well with their music.  She didn’t get a job offer immediately, but the band took a liking to her and began to help her with voice training.  Yvonne talks fondly about “Uncle Jones Kabanga,” who became her musical mentor and a father-figure in her life. When she was young, she’d always tried to sing like Mariah Carey, twisting and straining her voice to match the diva’s.  But Uncle Jones advised Yvonne to sing more naturally and just “use the voice that you have.”  She says, “I realized then that you don’t have to imitate anybody – if you have the feel and the passion for music, you can do whatever you want.”  As she started making her own musical and aesthetic decisions, she opted for her traditional home sounds, and usually sang in Nsenge, her home language.

Later that year, Yvonne entered Zambia’s major Music Crossroads Competition, where she won first place.  First prize included a sponsored 8-country tour of Europe, after which she had less trouble finding studios who would work with her.  But her early experiences of intense prejudice left deep marks on her mind and her music; the gentle woman I met in a Dar es Salaam dusk also writes indignant, ignited songs like “Fight Like a Soldier.”

I watched a TED talk recently by Alain de Botton, in which he probes the pros and cons of a meritocratic society — or of a perceived meritocracy, since he concludes that no such thing exists.  He says: “What is a meritocratic society? A meritocratic society is one in which, if you’ve got talent and energy and skill, you will get to the top.  Nothing should hold you back.  It’s a beautiful idea.  The problem is, if you really believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication and in a far more nasty way, believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.  In other words, your position in life comes to seem not accidental, but merited and deserved.  And that makes failure seem much more crushing.”

De Button essentially believes that an ideal meritocracy is a myth.  He says, “Meritocracy, this idea that everybody deserves to get where they get to, I think it’s a crazy idea… it’s an impossible dream.  The idea that we will make a society where literally everyone is graded, with the good at the top and the bad at the bottom, done exactly as it should be, is impossible. There are simply too many random factors: accidents, accidents of birth, accidents of things dropping on people’s heads, illnesses, etc.  We will never get to grade them, get to grade people as they should be.”

I agree that we’ll never get to evaluate others “as they should be,” but where de Button suggests that “random factors” dilute meritocracy, I think it makes more sense (at least in Tanzania) to look at systemic factors that chronically preclude any kind of real meritocracy.  Let’s recognize those factors and biases working against East African women who dare to venture out of their domestic spheres, and into male-ruled domains like muzik and entertainment.  Maybe someday it will just be accidents preventing a meritocratic society, but for now, success-distribution is anything but random.