1963 FUN AND GAMES AT MAKORONGONI

 

1963, my mother was busy with her work as Mama Maendeleo (Welfare Officer), her office was at the Community Center in Kitanzini better known as Olofea from the word Welfare, she would wake up in the morning and go to her office on her bicycle, me and my sister would go to school, in those days Saturday was  a working day so on those days sometimes  I would accompany her to work place, it was a fun place to be, many children gathered there, there was a teacher who took care of small  children who  wanted to just  sing and play, his name was Mr Mwambola, and for the older children there were so many games there, boxing, darts, card, some older children were practicing their choir music, the community center was a noisy fun and safe place for the children, all paid and run by the Government .

Back at  Barabara Mbili Street, after school hours we were busy, very busy. Let us take a typical Saturday, the day would start with a bowl of maize porridge with a slice of bread and that was the breakfast. Sometimes while drinking the porridge from afar you would hear,

Kikojozi kakojoa
Na nguo kaitia moto
Kidumbwe ndumbwe
Chalia

 This tune meant some kid in the street has a habit of peeing in bed, so his parents have invited his friends to parade him all over the street, with his wet bed sheets or his sleeping mat. This was a signal to rush out and join the fun.  Children would be joining from everywhere and the crowd got bigger and bigger, and we all ended up at the water stream where the last act is throwing this poor kid into the water. And for the next three four days he would be the butt of all bedwetting jokes. I wonder if that stopped them bed wetting, but I guess it did because I don’t remember seeing the same kid being paraded twice.

Where the Iringa main bus stand is now, used to be a graveyard, even by 1964 it was rarely used, for us that became our playground. We played hide and seek, built our secret hide outs, where we roasted birds we had hunted. When we got tired of playing here we would go down the road past the Mhabeshi’s (The Ethiopian) house to the water stream below to swim. Or we would go to Ilala to the main dump and search look for interesting things to play with. Another important dump was the one near the ‘European School’, St George and St Michael. At this dump we would find beautiful things, sometimes even toy cars, but it was very risky they had watchmen all the time to stop ‘African boys’ getting near the school, but it was always worth the risk.

It was the same with the risk we took going to Itamba to steal mangoes. The families of Nyamwezi a who came as soldiers in the German army, later went to settle at Itamba, and planted a lot of mango trees, now their grandchildren who identified themselves as Wahehe owned these trees, and did not like anyone stealing their mangoes. They had many dogs, but that was not enough to stop us going up those trees, a number of us broke our limbs falling from those trees when being chased by angry owners with their dogs.

One place where we were strictly forbidden to go but went anyway was down at the Ruaha River. We were told many scary stories of children who had sank and died and their bodies never found but that did not stop us going to swim and fish in that river. To go to Ruaha we would take the path that went behind the Iringa Prison and in few minutes we were down the river. We knew all the deep places and stayed away from them. At Ruaha apart from swimming, fishing, there were a lot of wild fruits. And we also went back to town carrying sisal leaves to make ropes with.
Some days we would just play near our home, making small drums using tin cans, singing songs by bands, I remember a particular song by Cuban Marimba Band that we used to play that went like this,

Mpenzi wangu siku hizi

Umenadili nia

Mpenzi wangu siku hizi

Umebadili nia  

One day  my friend Lester and I decided we had to have our own  band just like some schools had. So we first had to get a cow skin. We managed to get 5 shillings from his father, I will not say the story how we managed to get the money but we did, I guess you understand. At the end of the Makorongoni street there was a slaughter house and we went there and with our 5 shillings bought a good cow skin. We first had to soak the skin in water to make it soft so that we could make our drums. We went and soaked it at the stream where we also always swam; we want it to soak for two days so as to become soft enough to make drums. On the first day we checked it and it had started softening, on the second day we went to check it so as to start making our drums, the skin was gone. We started doing some detective work and sure enough a few weeks later we found out who took the  cow skin, but ………….
At one end of the street there was this very quiet guy who never talked to anybody, one day he tried to hang himself, luckily?? The rope he used gave away and he survived, after that we were doubly frightened of him, even though he never bothered anybody we were just scared of his silence and the fact that he had tried to hang himself.
To get make a living, this guy started a nursery school under a tree just near the Iringa Prison, he always looked funny him and his class of hardly ten children, sometimes parading and the children singing the songs he had taught them. Now someone tipped us that this was the guy who stole our cow skin, and sure enough a few days later his school had a set of newly made drums. We didn’t even try to ask him, that’s how scared we were of him.

When I think back, sure enough I wanted to form my first band in 1963.