I was in a terrible panic. The sheets on the bed were dripping wet as if there had been a rain storm and gallons of water had poured down through the hole in my roof, the hole I have promised myself day after day to get fixed.
As I gathered my wits details of the nightmare came back to me from the shades of sleep. I know it was only a dream but these things tend to scar themselves on your soul so much so that I shiver as I write this for you.
I was, I remember, a prisoner. I could not move. The chains I was locked into were evidence of that. But who had captured me? And why?
I sipped some water sitting there on the side of my bed. Now I was fully awake and as these things go, the more conscious you become, the more the dream seems to slip back out of your memory and away into oblivion.
I struggled with my powers of recall and then I gave it up and crawled back into my soggy pit and went back to sleep.
Next day, I had forgotten all about my disturbed night. I went to work as usual, greeted my colleagues, exchanged some office gossip, and got down to my business.
It was much later in the day that the details of my dream suddenly flooded back. In front of me on my screen was a news agency story. It was about the port that is being built (or is it?) at Bagamoyo, just up the coast from where I sit.
Why did this particular report bring back those horrible dark memories? I went cold when I realised that it was Bagamoyo that featured so much in my dream.
This was why I was in chains. This was why I could not move. I had been enslaved and was about to be embarked onto a dhow and sent into forced exile in the Gulf. Or even worse, that vast expanse of sand and prejudice which nowadays calls itself Saudi Arabia.
Oh my God! ( as the youngsters say, only they are far more economic with their words and use the expression OMG) Saudi Arabia! What a horrid life I could expect there.
I would, at best, be treated abominably with all sorts of humiliations heaped upon me on a daily basis and, at worst, whipped or even, if I was truly unfortunate, stoned to death.
And to cap it all, there would be no booze!
But what had caused this wretched vision to infiltrate itself inside my skull? Had I just come back from visiting Bagamoyo? Well, I was there just a few months ago to discuss with my senior colleagues the future of this paper.
No, it couldn’t have been that. We had a pleasant time there.
So what had triggered my nightmare? Why Bagamoyo? Why was I enslaved? Was I perhaps experiencing what American psychologists refer to as RMS: Recovered Memory Syndrome.
This is a condition which accepts that some day, any day, the brain has the extraordinary capacity to bring back the details of some long forgotten experience. Which explains why I keep reading about a phenomenon called historic sex abuse whenever I have an opportunity to look at British newspapers.
Over in England the tabloids, or red tops as they are known, have been filled for the past few years with lurid court cases that feature the accusations of old women against even older men who are usually in the entertainment industry.
No, it couldn’t be RMS that had affected me. I can’t even remember where I put my keys most days.
And then it came to me. Why Bagamoyo? Of course, it was the port. The massive 800 hectare, $10billion leviathan like scheme that got underway last year only to have doubts cast upon its viability a few months later.
But why would the fate of the port of Bagamoyo give me the heebie jeebies?
I then got the connection? It was debt. The fact is that it wasn’t me who was enslaved in my dream. It was all of us, all 45 million of us who live in Tanzania and who will one day have to pay back a substantial share of this outrageous sum. I was a symbol of that debt.
What was it that Scottish poet, Robert Burns I think, said about forward planning? Ah yes: The best laid plans of mice and men go awry. Awry, a strange word that sounds exactly what it means.
Well awry they have gone, particularly with our financial prospects in this country. What sounded a good plan a few years ago does not make economic sense anymore.
Now there is a war in South Sudan which shows no signs of abating; there is another one simmering in Somalia, recession throughout the world which means China doesn’t have the same amount of cash to throw around financing capital projects that it once had; and of course the oil price is still sub floor.
And still our leader and the region’s leaders are bickering over another white elephant (yes there are more of these around in Dar es Salaam and Dodoma than the poor noble beasts of our bush who are being wiped out every day of the week).
This time it’s whether the planned $4 billion oil pipeline from Uganda should go to Tanzania or Kenya, to Lamu or Tanga.
Well, I can tell you that it ain’t going to go anywhere, this pipeline, because at the prices it is being sold for today it will take years and years for any of the investment to be recouped?
And then, sorry to bring it up yet again, but there is that Zanzibar question which this week has cost us a cool $470 million in foreign aid that has been cancelled.
Bagamoyo. Lay down your heart (Bwaga moyo wako ) as the old Swahili poets once wrote of that haunted town. Alas for Bagamoyo, alas for Tanzania, alas for the region. They couldn’t have chosen more appropriate words.
As my terrible dream has since proved.
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