If you see me on the streets of Dar es Salaam, call me Jesus. You might as well. They all do. Whispers avalanche down trash–heaped streets: Look! There goes Jesus! In the flesh!
If you stare at one too many stained–glass windows, it’s not hard to mistake my visage for the tangly–haired messiah bequeathed unto the world by medieval narcissists.
I was called Jesus the day I arrived in Tanzania and rode a daladala to the university. A daladala is a commuter van. It is also an experience. Dozens bumrushed the oncoming van. An anxious morass of elbows shoved me to the back of the inchoate queue. Commuters ducked through slid–open doors, the way kids leap into those inflatable palaces at street carnivals. A rough man in oversized blue overalls jutted his head out the window and hollered a swirl of Swahili, waving us inside, four bodies at a time.
Somebody came slinking through the crowded hull, bodies parting before him. A palm stacked with coins rattled itself at me. I proved my urban acumen by ignoring it, just like I do at home to any subway hobo without a song and dance to show for himself.
But a voice behind that hand groaned at me, a barrage of Swahili. Despite three years of Swahili class at Columbia, it took me a few beats to translate. This guy who looks like Jesus doesn’t want to pay the fare!
The van rumbled with laughter. I scoured my mind for a riposte and said, “Jesus was a black man.” My afrocentric proclamation caused an even greater reverberation of mirth. Now I had my ticket. I was crazy whiteboy Jesus. Even though I was still searching my embarrassingly thick fascicle of bills for the smallest denomination. Even though I started every time the conductor’s percussive palm of coins jiggled at another passenger. Even though, when he flipped me my change, I suspected he was ripping me off. But what price is too dear to pay for a brand new alias?
I rode that daladala all the way to the University of Dar es Salaam and rode my sobriquet all the way to minor celebrity. For six months I basked in the whispers. Look! There goes Jesus! I rehearsed my routine: turn around, give them a Buddy–Christ thumbs up, and decant in my increasingly unctuous Swahili, “I have heard your prayers, my friends!”
I had my act nailed like stigmata by the first day of classes, which is when I noticed a dozen boisterous men in the corner of the cafeteria, accumulating amber beer bottles on their table. “Hey! Mzungu!” White boy, they called me over. Introductions had never been easier, “My name is Richard, I come from America,” I answered their queries, and then giggled, gripping my hair and stretching it into demonstrative pigtails. “But everybody here calls me Jesus.”
“It’s true!” “He’s Jesus!”
“Oy! Oy! Oy!”
“You have returned! To save us Africans!”
“Somebody get Jesus a beer!”
The university disburses stipends to students upon their arrival on campus, my friends explained. “We’re eating our money!” one shouted, a phrase I would learn is euphemistic for participating in government corruption.
“We’re eating spinach!” another riffed, which was euphemistic for getting plastered. I would never get used to that, having been predisposed long ago by Popeye the Sailor Man to far more wholesome associations with the vegetable.
It didn’t matter that we went through a few more tables full of beer on the first day of class, because teachers wouldn’t even show up to hand out syllabi until next week. So we threw their stipends away on Safari Lager, then filtered out to local kiosks and speakeasies, resorting to putrid banana wine or illegal moonshine. Twilight often found us at some leery hole–in–the–wall, cracking endless jokes of dubious theological accuracy. Jesus! We have no money left! Turn this soda into gin!
It took me an entire month to learn that one of my companions, Sajo, was a pioneer of Tanzanian hip–hop. I excoriated him for withholding his celebrity. Though pleased that I finally knew his story, he feigned dismissiveness, “Jesus, that life is over. There’s no money in music here in Africa. That’s why I’m getting my degree.”
Sajo didn’t reveal the real reason he left the rap game. The group’s lead singer, Ferooz, had struck out on a solo career, skyrocketing into stardom with a song sung from the perspective of a dying AIDS patient. It was the top single in East Africa in 2006. Rumor has it that former president Benjamin Mkapa rewarded him with a car for the cautionary hit, a rumor that Ferooz stridently denied while driving me to the bus station in his posh SUV.
How did I wind up on tour with the legendary Ferooz Mrisho? Sajo tried to impress a female acquaintance of mine by introducing her to a celebrity (she refused to recognize Sajo’s fame, knowing him only as the pool shark from the university cafeteria). Ferooz, rather than playing wingman, decided he wanted to marry her himself and invited her as a VIP to his performance in Dodoma for World AIDS Day. Her cautious answer—only if Richard escorts me.
At the bus station, I got a rare respite from being called Jesus, as everyone hailed Ferooz instead. A mechanic stopped in his tracks, “Hey! You’re Ferooz! Give me five! I have electricity too!”
Electricity is slang for AIDS. Ferooz has even become slang for AIDS in some circles. The epidemic is so stigmatized that new euphemisms and diversions are invented every day.
Ferooz didn’t treat me like a buzzkill, although I sat between him and his prospective wife on the six–hour ride to Dodoma. Not speaking much English, he bashfully entreated me to translate various Swahili folk tales in oblique courtship of my friend. Then he proposed marriage, promising to follow her home to America. I aided her in translating the concept of platonic friendship.
Giving her the silent treatment, he asked me what I do.
“I write.”
“For a newspaper?”
“No, I write storybooks, and poetry.”
“Poetry! So you will perform with me!”
In Swahili, every word ends in a vowel, so it’s an easy language for rhyme. Freestyling is thought of not as an exclusive talent, but a pastime. Whenever my friends dropped verse over drinks, and expected me to take my turn, I’d recite slam poems I wrote in high school, feigning extemporaneity. But that wouldn’t be good enough for Ferooz. “They’ll go wild to see a mzungu spitting Swahili!”
There was about an hour left before we reached Dodoma; I began whirring rhymes like racecars through the tracks in my brain.
Ten thousand people had flocked to the town square for Ferooz’s free show. A queue of street urchins solicited fist bumps as we strode towards the stage. Picture–snapping reporters were body–slammed by the brawnier members of our entourage. A tall British lady shook Ferooz’s hand and thanked him for performing.
But how perturbed those legions must have been when a long–haired mzungu wearing a yellow dashiki took the microphone instead of their beloved virtuoso. I dispelled their doubts with a mischievously colloquial Swahili greeting. The crowd swelled with applause, which was only distended as Ferooz introduced me, beatboxing into his microphone. And so I began blustering my hastily composed rhymes. The theme? Don’t call me Jesus, because Jesus was black. There I was, some bizarre afrocentric missionary, throwing in a few knee–jerk snipes at neo–colonialism for good measure. I concluded my performance with a few snappy couplets, shout–outs to my favorite hangouts in Dar.
Then the hook of “Starehe” sounded and Ferooz dove headfirst into the crowd, singing the opening lyrics as they carried him. I turned offstage, but his manager was shouting for me to just dance, stay on stage, the people want me there. So I had to monkey around for the rest of his set, posturing and dancing, shaking my hips like an East African and throwing up my arms like a make–believe thug. I paced towards to slap the dozen hands reaching up to touch me. Fortunately, Ferooz was only contracted to sing three songs; when we rushed away to save him from the mob, shouts trailed me, “Look! It’s Jesus himself, he has returned!”
My linguistic dexterity failed to persuade them to forswear alien prophets; it only confirmed my holiness.
Back in Dar es Salaam, I’m treated to more green glass bottles of banana wine than I can stomach, because all my friends saw me on the evening news. Apparently a rapping mzungu was the highlight of World AIDS Day. They propose a toast to me as Tanzania’s very own Jesus. Rather than protest that the entire world has missed my point, I smile, and sip, the creased corners of my lips buoyant with mirth.
Above: Messianic stirrings in Dar es Salaam
RICHARD PRINS is a Columbia College Senior. He hopes to retire to Tanzania and write the great un-American novel. rap2112@columbia.edu.