From On Air - Winter 2003

Moving with the Times

“Salaam Aleukum,” I call out to the old man selling batiks. “Aleukum salaam,” he answers. “What brings you to Zanzibar?”

I tell him I’m traveling with a group of actors from a radio program called Twende na Wakati (Let’s Go with the Times), and the old man blinks. He peers into my face and studies my Radio Tanzania T-shirt, which sports the Twende na Wakati logo. Then he chuckles and claps his hands.

“Eh heh!” he calls out to the other vendors. “This one works for Twende na Wakati!” Within se-conds, a large group of vendors gathers around. The old man beams and says, “That’s the show that teaches us about AIDS and social change!”

The crowd begs me to tell them what happens in the next episode. One look at the faces of the men and women surrounding me and I get a pretty good idea of the program’s listening audience. I can almost see them in their daily lives, gathering around the radio in the twilight, waiting expectantly for the opening bars of the soap’s theme music. I can see them poised over the fishing net they are mending or the beans they are sorting, intent on every word. I can see them leaning over window ledges and pausing in the marketplace to rehash the juicy story from the night before.

These images became a reality as I traveled across Tanzania. I saw how deeply Twende na Wakati — or TNW — has penetrated Tanzanian society.
In one village, calling someone “Mkwaju,” the drunken, promiscuous truck driver on the show, is a searing insult. In another, the actor playing Mkwaju was nearly stoned when women found out who he played. Examples like this illustrate the effectiveness of PCI’s method of getting people to identify with the characters and issues.

Saying that I worked for TNW was my first-class ticket to the best gossip on the block, the dream of every budding journalist. A group of midwives on Chole Island spoke with me about the alarming rise in the area in teenage pregnancy, and referred constantly to a character on the show as a role model. The tough young bus conductor in Dar es Salaam told me that TNW was helping him understand his wife better. A woman selling mandazis (a sort of Tanzanian doughnut) proclaimed that TNW was helping men understand how to be more responsible in their sex lives. I remember her exact words: “Women have carried the burden of AIDS for too long. I say enough!”

TNW is reconfiguring the way people relate to each other, which is evident in the way they talk about the show, and about themselves. As awareness of sensitive social issues builds, listeners change their attitudes and take action. PCI’s soap operas for social change truly work.

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