December marked one year since my grandfather passed away. I wrote an ode to my dadaji. Visits to Tanga were a step back in time, not only because of the lethargy of the small town, but also because he was a collector of antiquities. Not in the traditional sense, but from a practical perspective: why replace / upgrade something that was working perfectly fine? His house was littered with artifacts from another time: it was there I learned how to use a kerosene stove for the first time and grew accustomed to rotary telephones; he could be seen driving that Mitsubishi Suzuki long after they had faded from the streets of Tanzania; and the sofa we spent many hours laughing together on was 40-odd something years old. Tanga was a happy place, usually where family reunions were held. On these occasions we would chat late into the night, retelling stories from the past and he would sit and listen and laugh along, deriving pleasure from the joys of being surrounded by family. We passed our time in the small things: daily visits to the beach where he used to swim and fish (yes, using those old but unfailing fishing lines with the still-writhing worm as bait on the end); trips to the fish market to haggle for fish; walks around town or drives along the beach in the old Mitsubishi; watching Indian serials or a cricket match on TV; reading together - he was an avid consumer of newspapers; praying namaaz at exactly the right time; or just sitting in silence. He loved to cook and I would be amazed at how homemade butter and yoghurt were constants on the dinner table. One of my fondest memories is of laboriously making samosas together - from scratch - on the old kerosene stove. His visits to Dar-es-Salaam restricted him. He was too used to being independent, going where he wanted, when he wanted or being able to fix things around the house / add extensions. Those hands toiled constantly: he did all the work himself, never hiring a fundi. So in Dar, he would often sit in the garden and smoke cigarettes, the ones that he had cut in half and would have filterless, stored in a little metal container. I was as mesmerised by his hands as I was by his eyes, never realising that that deep blue was a sign of cataracts. He believed the more one ate, the better. At mealtimes, if sat next to him, your plate would soon be piled high, and you learned to eat food slowly lest it diminished too quickly from your plate and more was piled on. He liked talking about cooking, long discussions on how to concoct a new dish. It was harder to reach him when you were away: he didn't enjoy phone conversations much but relished hearing from his grandchildren. If he caught a hint of illness in your voice, then five minutes could turn to forty as he would explain tirelessly the best home remedy for everything ranging from the common cold to something much more severe. Of course, all remedies involved Vick's in some form (once, he even told me to put Vick's in my throat!), another item he refused to buy and would spend hours at home making his own. Like every human, he had his faults too. He was stubborn, sometimes at risk to his own health when he would refuse to take medication or use a walking stick. But sometimes, gentle prodding from a grandchild would melt his resistance. He had trouble expressing himself in words. But he never showed a truer sign of his love than when his life partner passed. From there his health, while less than stellar, declined rapidly, exacerbated by his depression. None of us could have expected that someone so stoic, who bottled it all up, could sit for hours on a balcony with tears streaming down his face. None of his children, who he raised with absolute discipline but who each grew up strong and accomplished in their own right, could have been preared for him losing his will to live. He died from heartbreak, but it gives each of us comfort that he is now reunited with his life partner. I call him my Dadaji. One year on, and I grieve for the stories I never got to hear, for not asking enough, and for a language barrier that prevented me from being able to understand. One year on, and he makes me want to give it up and focus on what's important: recording the oral histories and reaching back across the generations to tell the tales and document the wisdom of my forefathers. In his lifetime I only scratched the surface, but perhaps it's not too late. Perhaps my tribute to him is to ensure that his legacy lives on through the written word.
