A sense of place

Street Level is a delightful collection of drawings and creative writing on Dar es Salaam. It has been brought together by illustrator Sarah Markes, who produced all the visuals - drawings and paintings that convey more powerfully the atmosphere and sense of place than even the best photographs can do. Markes studied at Central St. Martin’s College of Art in London and has lived for nearly 10 years in Dar, a city with which she has clearly fallen in love.

The initial focus of the book was to record the range of historic and characterful buildings in the city centre and this it has achieved. An introductory essay by Karen Moon comprehensively and readably outlines the growth of the city from virtually nothing 150 years ago to a vibrant cosmopolitan city of four million people. Steps along the way have included an initial ground plan established by the Omanis, loosely based on Stone Town in Zanzibar, followed by German and British town planning in the colonial period, the flowering of an Art Deco-inspired style and the more recent widespread building and rebuilding arising from economic growth. A clear map helpfully indicates how to find all the buildings described and illustrated.

After this scene-setting chapter, the reader is treated to a series of beautifully executed line drawings of the principal buildings in the area covered (the city centre south of Bibi Titi Mohammed Road and west of Maktaba and Azikiwe Street). Each illustration is accompanied by a perceptive short commentary, drawing attention to the particular features of the building – for example, wrap-around balconies, an Indian pavilion, innovative German construction techniques, a Sanskrit motto, a Palladian window and Romanesque-style arcading.

Street Level is both a celebration and a wake-up call. It shows how the city has evolved into a relatively harmonious urban space out of three ethnically defined areas in the 19th and 20th centuries – European, Asian and African. In the Asian area, where many of the most interesting survivals are to be found, there was a long-standing tradition of building upwards, adding storeys, often with balconies and dated inscriptions that proclaim the name of the owner or the building’s function, the Vedic Church of 1928 being a good example. Buildings on corners seem to have attracted particular flourishes as their owners sought to increase their visibility and presence through the application of architectural style.

The wake-up call lies in the fact that a number of the buildings celebrated in the book (such as the Bajarang Building on India Street and the Habib Punja Star building on the corner of Aggrey Street and Indira Gandhi Road) have already been demolished and others are under threat. On the positive side, the recent restoration of the Jessa Rice Mill of 1935 shows how Dar’s historic structures , properly appreciated, conserved and maintained, can contribute to the city’s continuing and future character and vibrancy. This point is strongly made by the director of antiquities at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, Donatius Kamamba. In a thoughtful foreword to the book he writes: “As we plan a vibrant future for Dar es Salaam, let us recognise the historical wealth that is one of the key components of our unique twenty-first century city.”

If Street Level were no more than a homage to the architecture of Dar it would have been a very significant achievement in its own right. But it is much more than that. Other chapters look at street life, street trade, transport, food and the natural environment. Factual and analytical material is sensitively and imaginatively complemented by short stories, poems and essays by different invited contributors.

The essay by Amabilis Batamula on the hard life of a street sweeper, a grandmother who is bringing up her grandchildren and saves her bus fare to put food on the table, is touching and encapsulates the determination to survive of even the poorest. Other archetypal Dar characters are also caught in the sudden beam of light cast by the pen of the writer and the illustrator. Sarah Markes observes humanity with the same eye for detail and empathy that she brings to her architectural drawings.

The chapter on the people of Dar es Salaam is introduced by Abdu Simba, who remembers growing up in the city in the 1980s and recalls one friend who seemed to know every third person they met in their teenage haunts. This friend had always seemed to him to be of Arabic origin but he later learned that he was half African and half Indian. This for Abdu Simba is symbolic of the people of Dar, drawn from a wide range of backgrounds but essentially tolerant of each other. In the more people-centred chapters we meet many of the street characters – the fruit vendors; the traffic policewoman; the sellers of sunglasses, mobile phones and DVDs; the newspaper man; the shoe shiner; the merchant in his duka; the porter and the cyclist bringing eggs from shamba.

In the transport chapter there are illustrations of scooters, dala dalas, taxis, wooden carts and bicycles. For cuisine we are treated to mouth-watering pictures of roasted corn, chipsi mayai, chapattis, mchicha and kuku. The coffee vendors from Dodoma cover their beats on foot. Bringing us back to architecture are the New Zahir Restaurant (a hangout for political activists in the 1950’s and 1960’s) and a tea room on the corner of Morogoro Road and Jamhuri Street.

This is a book to treasure for its fine illustrations and its sympathetic portrayal of Dar es Salaam in its many aspects. It is strongly recommended both to those who know the city already (or think they do!) and those who do not yet. It is an invitation to “come on down” to street level and to go on foot, with eyes open, through the streets of Dar.

All involved in the production of this book – writers, illustrator and publisher – are to be congratulated on the high quality of what they have achieved. For this is a book that demands not just a Tanzanian audience, but a global one.

Street Level: A collection of drawings and creative writing inspired by Dar es Salaam

Illustrated and compiled by Sarah Markes, published by Mkuki na Nyota (www.facebook.com/mkukinanyota)

In Zanzibar, this book can be purchased at A Novel Idea bookshop in Hurumzi Street.