Life in Cockroach Villa

Marius Bosch’s mention of the great Maggie Wainaina’s role in obtaining the lease of the Reuters apartment in Dar es Salaam brought back memories of accommodation that may have been one of the company’s worst places to live outside a war zone.

I arrived in Dar in 1975, only three weeks after getting married. The flat’s abundant population of cockroaches nearly caused in an equally accelerated divorce.

Typically in the old Reuters, I had only a one-day handover in Tanzania with my predecessor Mike Fathers, who did his utmost to explain rapidly the basics of how to cover a country that was a centre of support for black liberation struggles against white rule in Rhodesia, South Africa and elsewhere.

The evening after he left, we went to the first floor flat to take a look before we moved in the next day. As we opened the door, after climbing a dark and dirty staircase, we thought the floor was moving. It was the cockroaches enjoying a night out before our arrival.

Every month or so from then on, we had to stand on the balcony while an unfortunate Rentokil employee, without mask, sprayed a toxic chemical everywhere to kill off the nasty brown insects. The treatment never lasted long before they reappeared. A favourite entry point was the overflow drain at the end of the bath where emerging long antennae would give advance warning of their arrival.

The tightly rolled copies of the Financial Times periodically delivered to the flat proved themselves the ideal anti-cockroach weapon – robust enough to kill or stun but light enough to avoid a nasty pulp.

No wonder my successor in Dar, Mike Hughes, still refers to the place as Cockroach Villa.

The cockroaches were one of several undesirable issues created by George’s Grill, the seedy bar/restaurant on the ground floor. After the headlights of the office VW Beetle (aptly named) were stolen from outside the flat a couple of times during the night, I started leaving it in the forecourt of a petrol station owned by a friend about 200 metres away.

I would walk home waving a metal pole to deter muggers but had to negotiate a dark alleyway down the side of George’s to get to the apartment building entrance. As I scuttled towards it, I was often startled by ladies of the night looming out of the darkness and whispering invitations unrepeatable here.

We used one bedroom of the flat as an office and, given those antique times, filed by our own highly valued telex. But the dilapidated air conditioner on the wall above had a nasty habit of dripping water onto the telex tape after you had laboriously punched out your story, resulting in its disintegration and a lot of swearing as it fed into the tape reader.

Reuters once owned a house on beautiful Ocean Drive, where most of the diplomats lived. But fear of being stuck on the wrong side of the Selander Bridge, the only route into town, in the event of a coup or army mutiny like the one in 1964, led a particularly dedicated former correspondent to move Reuters into the city. It is fair to say that decision was not popular with his successors.

Despite its disadvantages, the flat was envied for its telex and very central position. Visiting newspaper and broadcast correspondents based in more comfortable and better supplied Nairobi learned that a box of Weetabix – unobtainable like many other things in Dar -- was the accepted currency to gain use of the telex.

The posting had its attractions for a young reporter, with frequent visits by leaders of the Front Line States supporting black liberation movements, and diplomats including Henry Kissinger trying to negotiate a settlement in Rhodesia. But its challenges included a cumbersome bureaucracy steeped in outdated practices inherited from British colonial rule.

The city is extremely hot and sweaty, so it was no joke when the water supply stopped, as it did fairly regularly. This was sometimes a general problem in Dar but on one occasion I realised that the water meter at the side of the building had been sealed off.

I angrily repaired to the Dickensian offices of the water board near Dar es Salaam port where a man sat behind a caged window – presumably to protect him from irate customers. When I demanded to know why the water had been cut, he disappeared into mountains of paperwork for half an hour before triumphantly returning with a bill marked “Returned to Sender.” When this happens, we always cut off the water, he said.

Examining the bill, I saw that it was addressed to “Ltd.R”. “How do you expect that ever to be delivered?” I asked. He rejected my protests on the grounds that their practice was to use the surname followed by an initial. So, Reuters Ltd became Ltd.R.  A long discussion finally resulted in the account being renamed.

Soon after our arrival in Dar, the legendary salesman and Africa manager Shahe Guebenlian, or “Gubby”, came for a visit. I showed him the crumbling staircase littered with rubbish and missing lightbulbs stolen by the upstairs tenants that made it very dark, and requested some money for a clean-up. After returning to head office, Gubby wrote me a letter about the successes of his visit.

At the end he added: “Thank you for showing me the apartment. Why don’t you get some Bob-a-Job boy scouts to clean up the staircase?”

 It remained dirty and dark. ■