Mikocheni "B"

We ran a guest house there and a kind of club in a warehouse on the industrial estate to which, until the soft drink bottling plant was built, there was no real road. It was a place of theatre. There were big spaces, wooden offices built up on stilts in the centre and around the walls, sliding doors that could open or close parts of the cavern, making space or caves. The bright floodlights were rigged up by Eddie. There were lots of sturdy girders well studded with big rivets. We had chains, whips and canes, when asked I said, with some truth, the chains were for lifting vehicle engines, for we were a garage in the day time. The canes were to support the peas we grew in the rough grounds outside so as to feed our many spanner boys, the whips to chase off the goats who would eat our new pea sprouts.

On the ground floor at the house the restaurant served cracked crab in ginger, red snapper, mashed potato and fresh cucumber. It was rather formal with white table cloths and the discussion was usually about economics, development and other sober subjects. The second floor was darker, we played a video there, one hundred and forty nine nights in succession. It was entiltled Stop Making Sense by a band called Talking Heads. To play an video so often on a loop was a modern innovation in those distant times.

On the roof, the famous roof, there was poker, prawns, vodka, the stuff of illusion. The coloured girls served and really sang, d'do d'do. I played Walk on the Wild side and the clients stiffened. We did compromise, honey traps, mail set ups, always to order, mostly diplomats.

I think we stayed too long. There too many roles for me. The video played a song, "Life During Wartime" that caught my ear as I pounded the stairs between my floor and bed rooms. He sang, every night, "couple of passports, two or three visas. I have changed my hairstyle so many times I don't even know what I look like". In the club we spanked the waitresses.

You make enemies a plenty in that kind of trade. Every six weeks I was trucked off to jail, I met organs of the State I did not know existed. There were new contacts made in Keko and Sengerea jails. I complained to the Commissioner, maybe observed is better, that there was a lot of harassment. He was the landlord. We spoke in a container bar: plastic chairs set up by a converted container on any bit of open roadside, a place to meet where you, me, the container , the chairs could be gone in a moment. We often were gone in a moment, the girls still sung.

He said "Michael you should know this. My boys are the scavenging dogs. They come to your place looking for something to eat. Your job is to convince them there is nothing to eat. When you do they will look elsewhere. "

Cigarette, sunglasses, warm beer, big tummy. Being in the prisons came to be relaxation, Saturday afternoon beers in the courtyard.

The place flooded, there had been no rain for years but when those rains came it was apparent we were living in a swamp. There was a song on the video called Swamp as well. After we had gone the place in Mikocheni B was razed. Some of my several actors parts became famous, grew big in the retelling in the bordellos and parlours of Dar es Salaam.