Category: General

Dancing my weight away in West Africa

The year is 1985 and somewhere in the United States, Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and a posse of their pop star chums huddle into a studio to sing for Africa’s supper.The song is the heart-stirring We Are the World.

Recorded to raise funds to aid citizens of a drought- and poverty stricken Ethiopia, the charity song du jour was accompanied by pictures of desperate-looking African others and ash-skinned children with torsos as thin as spaghetti, very large heads and bones you could count one by one. These were not just people in need of a meal; they were so starved they barely had the strength to breathe, let alone muster the strength to wave away the flies that congregated on their mouths.

There was famine in Africa. So God bless the pop stars.

More than 20 years later those images seem to have raised more ignorance than consciousness. Because, years later, people still perceive Africa as the starving continent. So much so that pop tart Mariah Carey once said she wants to visit Africa, if only for the circumstantial dieting that would be bound to succeed.

Meanwhile, the news that I was planning to travel to West Africa was met with concern by family and friends that I would be afflicted with all sorts of diseases or even starve, though some in my circle seemed to feel that it would help me to shed the excess weight I have carried all my life.

Indeed, after spending a year and five months in West Africa, I am 40kg lighter. But it was not from starvation.

On the contrary, West Africa turned out to be the land of plenty food. There is food around the clock here: from the street chow standard of rice and meat sauce to kebabs, braai meat, fried fish, chips and plantain. The region has so much food, I began to feel as though I was starring in Supersize Me: West Africa.

In Senegal I piled on the lard by way of schwarmas and the nation’s beloved and addictive rice and fish dish, tcheip djenne.

Mali has as many braai and roastmeat outlets as it does mosques. And here, people will chase you down the street to invite you over for lunch. Though polite, Malians do not take no for an answer. They also do not accept that you have had enough to eat unless they see you flatten the mountain of food they put in front on you.

In Burkina Faso tasteless local food forced me into a staple of fried chicken and chips.

This was a mere five weeks into my trip and already I was starting to swell up.

Then came Ghana with its jollof rice, a rice-and-bean dish called waatchi, fried rice and much more that I was only too happy to sample.

Jollof rice served with plantain and meat. (Rosalyn Davis/Flickr)

On to Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire. It is said West Africans spend a whack of their money on clothes and food. Ivorians are over the top in this regard with Abidjan being Frenchspeaking West Africa’s capital of food, booze and partying. Here, everyone who sells food does it around the clock. And it is not just your standard kebabs and sandwiches.

Some nightclubs have fully fledged outdoor restaurants. And if a plate of grilled chicken and attieke (cassava) are not your thing, take a few steps on to the streets and you can have even more of food you would never associate with a post-clubbing binge, like pork stew.

I was now six months into my trip. My French was starting to pick up. So I could at last understand what Salif Keita was saying in his song Africa. The song is a declaration of the good times that are rolling in our continent, which he reiterates by stating “manje beaucoup” (“eat lots”). He then has a verse in which he lists some of West Africa’s culinary delights, including tcheip, fufu, alloko, yassa, peanut-butter stew and attieke, which also doubles as a breakfast staple served with fried fish, raw chilli and a splash of oil.

Spicy West African peanut stew. (leshoward/Flickr)

I was in trouble.

I even started wishing that there was some truth in the prevailing stereotype of Africa being the land of starvation.

I had to act. This journey started in April 2009. The results have convinced me that anyone with lots of lard to push and some cash to spare should indeed head to West Africa.

The region has hundreds of robust traditional dances and I started to learn them on a rooftop in Bamako.

Thinking I was alone in fighting my lard, I was wonderfully surprised when a teenage girl walked up to me to offer her services as a “jogging partner”.

There is also zero privacy here. So my afternoon dance sessions were a daily spectacle for the neighbourhood, which made people offer tips and encouragement at every turn.

Random strangers in Guinea, Conakry, Ghana, Togo and Benin, where I was scattering my fat, had advice to offer. The region is obsessed with fitness. Noting a fat person attacking her lard, people would invite me to play beach soccer, join their troupe for an afternoon, tell me where to find fresh produce and offer me their kitchens so I could cook my own food.

They turned into a colony of personal trainers and gatekeepers I had to account to. Especially the children. They demanded that I spend many hours chasing after them or teaching them dance routines that they already knew better than me.

I left South Africa open to the journeys that I knew would come out of the act of booking my ticket out of the country. Yet losing weight was far from my mind. And it struck me, as the kilos started peeling off, that Africa is indeed the land of clichés.

The most enduring are of Africans as loving, humane and selfless.

My waist is a case in point.

Lerato Mogoatlhe is a South African journalist travelling around the continent. This post was first published in the M&G newspaper.

Accra to Ouagadougou: A long, winding road

We had just settled down to enjoy the journey to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital city. We were over the bumpy part of the road outside Accra and the luxury bus was air conditioned. But it wasn’t the long distance ahead of us that began dampening my spirits. It was the driver.

When he got to a shopping complex near a town called Nsutan – just 50km out of Accra – he slowed down, turned off the road and stopped. I did not know it was common for luxury buses to stop for passengers to refresh themselves during a journey. And even if they had to stop, I felt it was too soon. But the driver and his assistant got down and went into the complex, the passengers following on their heels. Thirty minutes later, the driver came and announced: “Let’s move on.”

I was at the beginning of my journey to Ouagadougou to attend a conference of international journalists, which was starting the next morning. I did not want to be late and we still had more than 720km to go.

After the passengers got back into the bus, the journey continued. Buses like the one I boarded abound everywhere in the West African sub region. They are supposed to be comfortable, slow to break down and quick to get to passengers’ destinations.

But things were not going as they should have. At Kumasi, 200km from Nsutan, the driver drove the bus to a filling station and stopped once again. When I asked why he could not just go on, he snapped: “If you’re so desperate to get to Ouagadougou, why didn’t you take a plane?”

It was clear that this was going to be a tiring journey.

After the driver finished refuelling the bus, we headed for Tamale, a town more than 200km from Kumasi. As the bus crawled on, the driver stopped briefly at Tetina to pick up passengers. I discovered this was normal practice for drivers along their routes. I wanted to ask him whether the money would go into his employer’s coffers but I did not. Like bus drivers everywhere, the driver would oppose anyone who questioned his behaviour.

A few hours after we left Tetina, we encountered another bad piece of road. There were gullies, potholes and loose stones in and on the highway. To cope with them, the driver slowed down.

After two hours on the bad road, the bus got to a transit spot called Sawara in Katanpon, about 96km from Tamale in northern Ghana. The driver, who had been behind the steering wheel for 12 hours, stopped the bus, got down and sneaked into one of the joints in the place. After 30 minutes, he emerged, refreshed. His assistant took his position behind the steering wheel. This too, I discovered, was standard practice.

Now that it seemed we were making progress I felt better disposed to appreciate the buses. A 40-year-old Ghanaian acquaintance told me in Kumasi they had been around since he was a young boy. He told me a luxury bus could make as much as 3 500 cedis (more than $2 000) from an Accra-Ouagadougou return trip.

Our bus was typical of thousands of luxury buses that ply their trade in the region. They provide employment for drivers, ticket issuers, managers, clerks and canvassers, rescuing many young men and women from unemployment in the villages or from perpetrating crime in the cities.

Besides, when the buses stop at transit points, they are besieged by hawkers, who offer passengers all manner of goods for sale. The buses also carry traders and their goods around the region. They provide a reliable, regular service and so boost business.

By 8am we had crossed the border. When we drove into Po, a small town in southern Burkina Faso, the driver slowed down and stopped. He said that armed robbers were fond of attacking buses a few kilometres further up the road. He would not continue unless escorted by policemen through the area.

An hour later policemen escorted us past the trouble spot and we closed in on Ouagadougou, thinking there would be no more problems. But there were – the bus hit an enormous pothole just before a narrow bridge some kilometres from our destination. I hit my head against the window, bruising it. But the driver steadied the bus and crossed the bridge.

He stopped the bus at the Ouagadougou International Bus Station at 12 noon, 29 hours after leaving Accra. I was late for the conference, but I nodded to the driver and he gave a thin smile. As I moved towards a street, I sighed. It was the longest journey of my life.

Adetokunbo Abiola is a prize-winning Nigerian journalist and author. This post was first published in the M&G newspaper. 

Beauty salons and the beast

There is a new kind of man on the streets of Tanzania’s biggest cities. In Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Mwanza, these men wear designer clothes, shoes, belts, bracelets, rings and chains. They talk about their new Calvin Klein jeans and Fila shoes and see no problem in buying a pink floral shirt and wearing it with light-blue sneakers. They do not bother with the big Tanzanian musicians. It is Hollywood names that roll off their tongues as if they were speaking about a neighbour.

These men, who work for private companies or non-governmental organisations that pay them well, leave work early on Fridays so they can rest before starting another shift in the nightclubs, where they drink expensive cocktails instead of beer. You can smell their expensive imported fragrances from several metres away. You will find them with a Blackberry in their left hand and an iPhone in their right.

Spending a lot time at their local barbershop has become a must for these metrosexual men, for whom a simple haircut without oiling, massaging and scrubbing is just not enough. Gone are the days when men would get their hair cut or their beards trimmed by an old man with a mirror, a bench and a chair under a big tree. No, our metrosexuals spend more time in barbershops than women do in beauty salons.

Because of the metrosexual, the modern barbershop seems to be one of the fastest-growing businesses in the cities. A friend of mine recently sunk about R40 000 to open one in an upmarket suburb in Dar es Salaam. He has no doubt that in the next few months the business will pay him well.

From the interior of these modern shops, you get an idea of the services provided and what they cost. The nicer the place, the more expensive – and expansive – the selection. But in most you will find a big flatscreen television – or two, depending on the size of the shop – to entertain those waiting their turn. A fancy sofa and a music system are essential, as is a shelf full of creams, oils, powders and other male-centric beauty products.

The basic service is, of course, the cutting of hair and the trimming of beards, which are done by male barbers. The customer can decide whether he prefers to have his beard shaved with a razor or with “magic powder”. This special mixture is used with water and is more expensive because it leaves a man’s cheeks softer that a razor and it can take up to four days before the beard starts growing again. A normal haircut can set you back R15 but using the magic powder costs you double.

After the barber is done with his customer, a beautiful young lady will approach service available on the menu.

“Are you scrubbing?” she will say in a very polite soft voice. Any man will agree to the proposal, even if it sets him back another R8.

The scrubbing process starts on the face and the neck and usually takes 15 to 20 minutes. And then, as a customer waits for the next step, the girl will ask again: “Brother, what about your nails? Would you like a manicure and a pedicure?” Another R5 for each of those services. At the end of all this, a man will be taken to another small room with sinks for the cleaning process. The young lady washes the customer’s head and face before applying creams and sprays.

Women do not really like the idea of their partners going to these new barbershops. After all, the beautiful women in cute outfits who work at the barbershops might easily steal their partners from them. Some women wait outside for their partners to finish so that they can protect them from the beauticians. They might be right in one way or another. The young women try hard to make sure that they keep their customers happy so that they are left with a tip after the service.

Still, every modern woman in Tanzania would die to have her very own metrosexual man. Most of them do not mind having men who look as beautiful as them. After all, their good looks do not come cheap and the metrosexual man has the flash and the cash to keep the barbershops, and his woman, smiling.

Erick Mchome is a 2011 winner of the David Astor Journalism Award. He lives in Dar es Salaam. This post was first published in the M&G newspaper.