Soko ya Samaki

Tuesday, a day of "sun and showers", otherwise known as alternating torrential downpours and blistering heat, (with no time to adjust to the change), was when we went to the fishmarket. There are a number of these around Dar es Salaam; the one the tourists go to is on the Kivukoni Front, and has recently been properly set up with Swedish or some other Nordic Aid money. Previously it had been a malodourous and quite hassling place to go. I haven't been since it has been modernised.
I went to the fishmarket at Kunduchi Pwani, a village near the old Swahili town of Kunduchi, which was part of the Swahili trading empire, and which has a ancient cemetary with apparently some interesting Muslim graves. However, as you need to get a police escort to go there, I have never yet been. The village is cheek by jowl with Wet'n'Wild, a water theme park popular with the (very) well heeled youth of Dar. What, exactly, is the logic of manufacturing water experiences when the Indian Ocean is a matter of yards away?
The fishmarket at Kunduchi is not on the tourist circuit, and from the look of the (largish) village is not benefiting much from its neighbouring theme park. I saw no school in the immediate area, there were a lot of children working on the beach round the boats and with the fish, and despite being there until after 4pm I didn't see any children, at any time, in school uniform. There was a one/two room building advertising itself on the clay external wall as a madrassa with a Dar PO Box no. Madrassa in kiswahili means classroom as well as Islamic religious school.
We got there well before the auction started and went down to the beach, where there were a lot of boats in, as well as dugout canoes up on the sand. We were offered one calamari (squid) at 2000 shillings (80p) Jamila's snort was enough to tell me that was not a good price. I would have liked to get some photos, but it is a very Muslim area, and there is a belief that the camera steals your soul, so I had to be careful how to ask. One fisherman with a huge fish let me take a photo of him holding the fish, as long as he wasn't in it. However, fate or his deity intervened because although I thought I had taken it, (sweat obscuring my specs not withstanding) it's not on my memory card.
We went off for some lunch at the Swiss place nearby the village, whilst the heavens opened again and when we returned there were other cars in the village (ours having been the sole one in the morning.) The auction had already been set up. It starts every day at 3pm (saa tisa or 9 0'clock in Swahili time, as the day begins at 6 in the morning and so 7am is saa moja or 1 o'clock).
There was a large crowd in, but a couple of "minders" who had attached themselves in the morning, soon sought us out again! The buyers were Arabs, Indians, market traders, restaurant owners and Mama lishas - roadside fried fish vendors, both young and old. There were three separate auction areas - each outlined by a rectangle of sticks and twine surrounding a piece of sacking or old tarpaulin on the sand. Everyone congregated around these. Again I would have loved to get some photos but apart from the risk of causing offence in this very Muslim area, I didn't need to draw any excess attention in the crowd to my handbag, by flashing a camera around. In each of the auction areas there were 2 or 3 auctioneers operating simultaneously, so it was very noisy! Each transaction took no more than about 20 seconds, and immediately the auctioneer moved on to the next one. The catch would be brought in by basket or bucket and a shoal of small glistening rainbow coloured fish strewed on the sand, or sometimes up to 20 fish strung together (by their mouths)in a circle made with twine or a strip of (banana?) leaf would be held up by the auctioneer. Large Rays or Red snapper would be sold singly. Changu fish would be sold two or three together. Prices varied from 500-700 shillings (20-30p) for a half bucket of the small fish to 8,000 shillings (3.20) for a monster Red Snapper about 5 foot from head to tail. Keeping tabs on the prices the fish were being sold for was difficult; apart from there being some slang or dialect words for numbers being used - and Jamila wasn't able to interpret these - all the prices were in hundreds of shillings. So whereas normally you would say "shilingi elfu nane" for 8,000 shillings that price was called out as "mia thermanini" (80 hundred). It was also difficult to see who was bidding. Although the occasional person would call out bids, most of the time it looked as if the auctioneers were dementedly crying out numbers on their own. Part of the time we were with a young woman Jamila knows, who sells fried fish and soft drinks from a kiosk opposite a bar in Mbezi Tangi Bovu, not far from where we were living in 2002. She was murmering "tano" or "sita" ( 5 or 6) so low I could hardly hear her, but the auctioneer obviously knew and somehow could hear or interpret his customer, as she got her bucket of fish for 600 shillings. Some times it was clear from the auctioneer's demeanour that a pitched battle was going on between 2 bidders, but stare as I might, I could not guess who was doing the bidding until the fish was deposited with a buyer. As soon as one lot sold, the auctioneer moved on to the next heap of fish flung out on the sacking, and men would run and collect up the sold lot, scooping it into a basket with a couple of billy cans, and others would come in with a new bucket spilling onto the floor, or dragging a Ray behind them in the sand. It was nonstop. The auctioneers take a percentage of each lot sold but how the sums are kept I haven't the faintest, it seemed so hectic to me. It's a gruelling job, after an hour I saw one of them, the most showmanlike of them all, (although it is not a job for the retiring type), and the sweat was running off his face, and his shirt was soaked.
Now neither Jamila participated in this except as spectators, but our minders were keen to see that we did not go away empty handed; they had tried to sell me the huge red snapper before it went into the auction but what would I do with a fish that big? We did a side deal with a buyer who had bought a red snapper with some other fish and paid 8,000 for this one, and I was well satisfied especiallyas my minder also cleaned and filleted it for me ( they are big bony monsters)Iwas still left with a lot of fish and have frozen about two third of it. Luckily I keep my Jane Grigson fish book here because I hadn't the faintest idea how to cook it! Very tasty it was too. Jamila and I also split a lot of calamari between us, 2,500 each for which we got a lot more than one! This is my share waiting for me to clean them. All in all - a good day - and it was fortunate that because I knew I was going to a conservative area I covered up and dressed very modestly, because every part of me that was exposed got sunburnt.