My every hypocritical evening commute

 My Bolt rides home typically expose me to the perspectives and realities of others, but they also allow me to learn more about myself. My most recent drive home revealed that I can be an absolute hypocrite, which is ironic considering I was aware of my hypocritical behaviour that evening. 

Ali picked me up from school at around 3:30 p.m. He had an Arusha accent (a Swahili accent mostly found in the North of Tanzania) and gave me a warm smile. He looked very youthful and welcomed me into the car. I got into the car and settled in.

“What form are you in?”

“I’m in form 6 kaka”

“Oh! So you’re going to be in university next year.”

“Yes”, I said with a smile.

He suddenly became quiet, I started to worry maybe I said something wrong. He let out an audible exhale and started to talk, He gave me advice about career progression and how the beginning is usually tough!

 “Vijana (The youth) these days like fast money. They want to complete university and get 1, 2 and 3 million per month (500 to 1500 USD) as their starting salary. It’s not possible, if you ask for so much for an entry level  job, the employers will think you’re greedy. Haiwezekani!”

I nodded to show that I got what he was saying. He continued to rant about today’s university students. He thinks that students these days only value glamour and material wealth.

“They want Gucci clothes and the latest iPhones, I have a friend who is in a lot of debt but he always buys the latest iPhone. He’s planning to buy the (iPhone) 15 coming out next month”

My friend Brian had always told me how my countrymen can be “glamour lovers and snobbish”, but I never took it seriously. Ali started to voice his dislike of iPhones. He told me he finds them very expensive but with limited functionality. The more he blasted iPhones, the more I hid my own. I think he didn’t notice that I owned one. He says when it comes to phones, he likes simple phones, phones that could do the bare minimum. He pointed at his Huawei phone stating that he could go online and communicate with his friends and family and that’s all he needed. “People are buying things for the sake of buying things”, he said “It’s stupid”. He diverted the iPhone talk to talking about consumerism as a whole. When he started to air his views on consumerism, I gladly joined in criticising it too.  

We continued to criticise our modern culture and its obsession with consumerism. The whole conversation was funny because I was still hiding my iPhone and I was laughing at consumerism while I owned a Macbook, Airpods Pro, an Apple Watch and a Playstation 5. I was being a hypocrite but laughing at my lifestyle was refreshing. Ali then shifted his attention to modern food culture and how it’s even more toxic than modern consumerism (quite literally). He told me that he drives around this Tanzanian lady who lives in America but visits Dar es Salaam with her children yearly. He told me that the lady would usually order ugali and other staples of Tanzanian cuisine when she visits, Her children on the other hand were American through and through. They would only eat KFC and Pizza Hut. Ali continues to say that junk food is a plague in the country and many of his medical professional friends think in the same way. 

I told him about my extended essay (a 4000-word research paper required to complete the IB diploma program) and he was astonished.

“Every 17 seconds, an American is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. This is because of their unhealthy diets”, I said.

“Acha uongo (stop lying). You’re joking right?”, he replied.

“Nope, and it’s starting to happen here too. Many people are starting to adopt Western diets in the big cities in Tanzania and we are starting to see the consequences” 

We both paused and there was a silence. I felt proud of myself for actually using my extended essay research outside an academic setting but I felt horrible because I was scrutinizing my way of living. I was talking shit about burgers but good lord, I’ll take a juicy burger any day of the week. 

“Why?”

The silence was finally broken.

“Why do we live like this then? We know we are consuming poison and we buy things that we don’t need. Why are we doing this then?”, he said. His voice was full of energy, he genuinely wanted to know the answer.

I pitched in my own views. 

“I think that’s what the economic system wants. Our lives revolve around buying and selling stuff, because of this everything we see and do has been designed to make us buy and sell stuff.  Look at TV for example, we grow up looking at men and women with a lot of cars and material things and we are told that they are successful and accomplished. We end up spending our lives trying to grow our wealth and buy as much stuff as we can. It’s like we’ve been programmed this way. I think we should review what it means to be successful as a species”

After I finished my mini-speech on my views on modern society and capitalism, Ali gave me a high five. It felt like my mini-speech was exactly what he wanted to hear..

“So tunafanyaje sasa? (What do we do now?)”, he said.

I answered, “I guess we choose the life we want. Either we live in this modern capitalist cesspool or we choose to live a different way. It’s a compromise we all have to take.”

There was another silence. We both seemed to be lost in our thoughts, contemplating the conversation we had. I think I have chosen my lifestyle with all its myriad of issues but it felt wonderful talking about the world we live in with another person.

Ali dropped me off, I wished him a wonderful evening. He left and I could finally pull out my iPhone in peace.