repairs was proper maintenance of the machines, a good projectionist “coddled his projectors like his babies,” I was told.20 Machines had to be cleaned, adjusted, and oiled daily. Mirrors and lenses needed to be spotless, and the distance between the mirrors and the aperture had to be precise; otherwise, the projection would be distorted. Tensions on rollers, valves, and springs had to be checked and adjusted. Amplifiers needed to be regularly cleaned of cockroaches, since, for some reason, the bugs found them to be extraordinarily suitable places for building nests. But no matter what a man did, his equipment eventually broke down. Consequently, in addition to understanding how his equipment worked, a projectionist had to be able to tell a metalsmith or electrician precisely how to fix it. Simply going to the store to get a new part was out of the question, and if a new one needed to be ordered, it could be weeks or months before it arrived on the next boat. There were no trained projector technicians because there were not enough cinemas in the region to support such specialization. So managers and projectionists had to be jacks of all trades.
Ally Khamis Ally, mentioned earlier, was a precocious child and an avid movie fan, and having weaseled his way into the projection room in Wete as a youth, he delighted in helping the projectionist find both the cause and the cure whenever equipment broke down. When he was a grown man, he managed two cinemas in Pemba and also ran a repair shop fixing radios, sound systems, appliances, televisions, water pumps, small engines, and of course projectors.21 As an engineer, Ally traveled as far as Tabora and Bukoba to help other managers modify and fix their machines. Often managers were forced to take their equipment to a local fundi (repairman), who typically specialized in auto or bicycle repair. “Every time something went wrong you had to hunt around and get it fixed under a mango tree. You know how it is, local, local,” said one manager, Nitesh. “If the guy is good, it will work. If not, your parts are in worse shape than when you started out.” Nitesh’s troubles were compounded by the fact that the theater he ran in the 1980s was the only one in the country that had Soviet projectors, making the odds of finding original spare parts next to impossible. Most theaters had some model of British Kelly projectors, and parts were frequently interchangeable with only slight modifications. One man with an auto repair shop regularly fixed the projectors for the Shan theater in Morogoro, and for him, modifications were no problem: a sprocket was a sprocket, a shaft a shaft. Length and thickness mattered; what it went into did not. In exchange for his services, his family members got complimentary tickets to the movies whenever they wanted.22 It helped that he, his father, and his uncle had all worked in the projection room at the Majestic Theater in Tanga before moving to Morogoro to open the auto repair business in 1954.
. . .
One did not have to be wealthy, highly educated, or technically skilled to benefit from the social capital that came with being affiliated with the show. Small vendors, black marketers, and concessionaires—men who otherwise may have remained small fish in a very big urban pond—became, according to them, central movers and shakers in town. Dozens of men attached themselves to every local cinema. These relationships were mutually beneficial but typically informal and unpaid. Part of the social capital owners and managers acquired resulted from their ability to provide a space where others could create opportunities for themselves. They did not necessarily condone or get involved in all that took place outside their doors, but they tolerated and even welcomed it because it added vitality to cinematic life. The streets outside theaters were humming most of the day and at least half of the night, and the owners and managers generally appreciated the buzz. People gathered there to look at movie posters, share news, drink coffee, and peddle their wares, making the theater a vibrant node of urban life.
Men earned their livings and built their reputations through their affiliations with the show in myriad ways. Those who sold peanuts, fruit, coffee and dafu (coconut juice) outside the theaters made claims about how their connections to the cinema put them at the center of the town’s social life. They had front-row seats to the evening promenade, and no rumor, scandal, or accomplishment passed them by. They also had ample opportunity to chat with men from all walks of life and thus expand their social networks of people with people. The man who sold coffee outside the Cine Afrique in Zanzibar in the early 1990s said that, the area in front of the cinema was an attractive venue for making sales and getting to know folks he otherwise would not encounter. Haji, whose uncle sold fruit and dafu outside the Majestic in Zanzibar, said that the connections his uncle made through the cinema later helped Haji himself secure credit to open a small shop.23 Haji’s family was poor, and even if all his father’s brothers had pooled their resources, they still could not have mustered the capital required to open a regular store and help the young men in their family get started in life. But in the course of a casual conversation outside the cinema one night, Haji’s uncle mentioned the family’s conundrum, and one of the wealthy men who regularly stopped for coffee after prayers offered to supply the money they needed. Over years of mingling with men on these barazas (seats or regular hangouts) in Zanzibar, I witnessed firsthand how the personal connections made there helped men negotiate the familial, legal, bureaucratic, and political trials and tribulations that life threw their way.
Black marketers were another group of men who attached themselves to the show in an informal way that allowed them to earn a living and simultaneously helped the theater earn prestige, for black market sales enhanced a venue’s cachet. Though black marketers often came from poor families and had only a rudimentary formal education, they amassed incredible esteem, and often, they literally held other people’s fates in their hands. A thriving black market for cinema tickets existed in Dar es Salaam from the early 1950s and well into the 1980s.24 In Zanzibar too, avid fans would pay whatever it cost to be part of the opening-day crowd for hot new Indian releases. Markups varied depending on the stars and the films, but patrons were so insistent on seeing these shows that black marketers found they could easily charge two, three, or four times the face value of the tickets they held. I spoke to several men who lived their entire adult lives—building homes, raising and educating their children, and clothing their wives—on nothing other than what they earned from selling cinema tickets on the black market. Khamis told me he could readily make in one evening as much as the monthly minimum wage for an unskilled laborer; he also recalled earning more in a weekend than most people in Dar es Salaam earned in a month. Rashid said he earned between thirty and one hundred shillings a month as a casual laborer in Zanzibar, but he could make two or three thousand shillings in a single day if he held sought-after tickets to a popular film. And it was his earnings from dealing in black market tickets, not his regular wages, that allowed him to build a home. Msafiri claimed that one of his friends earned enough from one movie to put a new roof on his house.25 As Kasanga said of black marketeering, “This was a great job! It was pure joy. It is rare to find work that is both profitable and highly enjoyable. How many lines of work are there where you make a very good living while hanging out with your buddies, watching a movie or two each night, and taking Monday and Tuesday off?”26
Working as a black market dealer in cinema tickets was also a highly prestigious way to earn a living. According to the men who sold these tickets, people respected their ingenuity and adored them for providing a way to see popular shows without having to fight the crowds at the ticket window. Those who wrote to the newspapers complaining about black marketers clearly disagreed, of course, yet the homes of ticket dealers were urban landmarks, almost as well known as the cinemas themselves, said the traders. People dropped by all the time to get tickets for upcoming shows or seek advice on which film to see. Black marketers had many friends, and if they had unsold tickets, they gifted them to those who would otherwise not be able to go. It was like the film Robin Hood, observed one black marketer: “We took only from the wealthy, redistributing cash and tickets to those of us who were poor.”27
Being a black marketer was a skilled job, and like projectionists, these men often learned their trade by watching others or working as an assistant to a professional in their youth. Kasanga began learning the trade when he was in the fifth grade. His school was next to the Cameo in Dar es Salaam, and at the time, the government was in the midst of one of many short-lived, futile efforts to curb the black market. Under the new rules, each patron was limited to purchasing
