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Bongoland: a movie with Swahili on the Map

by Freelance writer: Tom Beers

This article previously published in the Minnesota Spokesperson Recorder

As red, yellow and blue disco lights, flashing to a Reggae beat, cut through a gauze of cigarette smoke, two young, black men stand toe-to-toe, fighting. The band leader signals the manager—video's rolling—police arrive. As the men are hauled off, they taunt each other—in Swahili.

On cue, everything stops, and director Josiah Kibira calls for another take. Bongoland, Kibira's debut film, a feature-length drama, tells the story of Juma, an East African immigrant living in Minneapolis in his chase of the American Dream.

Kibira directs his actors in English and Swahili, an East African language spoken by about 50 million people world-wide and the first language of most of Kibira's cast.

One of Kibira's goals is to "put Swahili on the map and make Swahili a legitimate language in which movies are made."

"There are very few right now," he says. The Internet Movie Database lists four feature-length dramas for the last 50 years with Swahili dialogue: Besieged, 1998, in English, Italian and Swahili; Maangamizi: The Ancient One, 1998, in English and Swahili; Nirgendwo in Africa, 2001, in English, German and Swahili; and Kamchatka, 2002, in Spanish and Swahili. One of these shares Kibira's goals—Maangamizi, co-directed by Martin Mhando and Ron Mulvihill, which tells its story in Swahili and from an African perspective.

"I want to make movies for a Swahili-speaking crowd," says Kibira. "Bongoland is about 40 percent Swahili if you count the spoken words. But the whole story is about a Swahili person from Bongoland. That by itself makes it 100 percent Swahili. This is what resonates with the people I am aiming at. They want to see movies about them, talking about their issues."

Juma, played by Mukama Morindi, wrestles with a question, Kibira says, that confronts many—Would you rather be a well-fed slave or a hungry free man? This conflict lies at the heart of Bongoland.

The title of the film , explains Kibira, appeals to his audience and evokes contemporary Africa. "Bongo" he says, is recent "code, or slang, for Tanzania." In broader usage, the term recalls the drum and dance that many associate with Africa. "We want to speak of Bongoland so that somebody will maybe think it's the whole continent."

Kibira says he chose Morandi partly because his accent appeals to a diverse Swahili audience. "When you're listening to him, you can't say he's from Tanzania." Morandi, the son of a diplomat, learned Swahili while traveling from teachers, he explains. "This guy can be from [anywhere]. Kenyans . . . , Ugandans . . . , people in Central Africa, Congo, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, all can speak Swahili."

Once he has grabbed his audience's attention with Swahili, Kibira wants to dispel the myths many have about life here.

"There is a very popular belief when you are in Tanzania, in the Third World, that once you get here everything is settled. The land of opportunity. I have seen through my own experience that that is not the case for a lot of people."

Adapting to the culture and technology here, he says, often makes difficult barriers seem all the more insurmountable. "You're coming into a world where it's well advanced . . . . The first time I saw a TV was when I came to college in '82. That was the first time I actually saw a TV program on television. So, if you expand on that and say, well, can I come to the United States and really be successful in TV? I don't know. This is new. This is all new. So, I will have to run at supersonic speed to catch up with kids who started watching TV at . . . before they're born, even."

Martin Mhando, co-director of Maangamizi, sees Bongoland as an embodiment of this cultural clash.

"Making films for any Tanzanian is by nature an odyssey," he says. "A country that has only made two or three feature films that have been released commercially certainly needs more than money to get productions going—it needs grit, perseverance, and down right madness. I am certain that [this] is what Josiah will have experienced all through production to distribution."

Bongoland, Mhando says, also defies traditional film standards: "These types of films are like new marathon runners. They have no need of pacesetters, for they run at their own pace, pulled along by their need to succeed when no one else expects them to. Bongoland follows in that route and continues the struggle that is African film making."

Since leaving Tanzania, his home, to attend Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, in 1982, Kibira has caught up to post-modern living. In three years, he put his experience as an immigrant into words and, last year, assembled his team. With shooting finished and editing in progress, Bongoland is slated for release on May 31, 2003.

Releasing Bongoland, says Kibira, has its unique challenges. In Tanzania, he says, there are very few theaters and none like ones in the U.S. Instead, using portable giant screens, he will bring his film to the people. He is also negotiating air time with Tanzanian television stations.

After releasing Bongoland in Tanzania, Kibira plans to bring it to the largest Swahili populations in the U.S.—Washington D.C., New York City, and Columbus, Ohio. Afterward, he will bring Bongoland to the Twin Cities.

Kibira's film schedule includes a feature drama on AIDS in Africa. With script more than half complete, he is eager to shoot this project.

"I feel like it's a responsibility for me to do," he says. "I have lost a brother and a foster sister—everybody I know here has lost someone to AIDS."

Kibira remains confident that Bongoland, his AIDS drama and a Bongoland sequel will materialize. He refuses to let doubt and pessimism slow him down.

"It can't be a wishy-washy fifty percent—I believe, I think, I might. No. We're doing this. We're going.

"Believe. It just takes time, and you see it happening."

Bongoland is also featured on the African Movies website, http://crawfurd.dk/africa/africanfilm.htm#africanamericans