Good bye Bongowood-style

Bongo is the Kiswahili word for brain and also the slang name for Dar es Salaam, telling us that the people living in this huge city have brains enough to come through any situation in life - in short, they are born survivors.

The film industry in Dar es Salaam, although small, is booming. Just as India has Bollywood and Nigeria has Nollywood, Tanzania has Bongowood. And it suffered a terrible loss last week, with the death of one of its most famous actors, Steven Charles Kanumba, at 28 years old. Knifed to death by his girlfriend, died of heart attack, overdosis? We don't know.

What we do know is that the whole of Dar es Salaam came to a stop on the day of his funeral. About 40,000 people came, blocked several roads, fainted in front of his coffin, threw flowers and stood on the heat for hours just to get a glimpse of his coffin. He was loved by everyone and his importance in every home means that he was important to the government also. Not only was the first lady, mama Salma Kikwete, attending, but also the Vice President of Tanzania was there... You could only compare the whole affair with the death of Princess Diana.

Now, back to Bongo. After the masses blocked several roads and only one leading to the cementery remained passable, some clever guys quickly put up a roadblock, telling everyone that they have to pay a fee of 500 KSh (25 Cents) if they want to proceed. People knew the guys were fake, but were rushing to the funeral and could not be bothered to call the police, they rather paid than to be too late... If I imagine that only 5,000 of the 40,000 people paid, those guys made more than 1000 Euro on that single morning! That is BONGO!