Although Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s sprawling commercial capital, is notorious for traffic jams, most families don’t own a car. Working and middle-class residents rely on public transportation to travel to work, school and the market. Although the city is widening highways for a rapid transit system with bus-only lanes, most people have two options—the dala dala (minibus) and the three-wheeled bajaj (autorickshaw).
In Kiswahili, the word “dala” means five, so a dala dala is literally a “five-five.” No one I asked could explain the origin, although some sources claim it is a corruption of the English word “dollar” and may have referred to the original fare in Tanzanian shillings.
Before minibuses became widely used in the 1970s, a truck with benches in the bed was the most common private public transport vehicle. It was called a chai maharagwe, which literally means “tea with beans.” Again, the etymology is uncertain.
Before 1983, during the socialist regime of President Julius Nyerere, all forms of privately owned public transport were illegal. However, Dar’s government-owned transportation system could not cope with the growing population, so from the 1970s dala dala became popular as illegal share taxis. Between 1975 and 1983, the year dala dala were legalized, the number of city buses operating declined by a third while the population increased by around 80 per cent. By 1998 dala dala had almost completely superseded government-run public transport, with more than 7,000 on the road.
Dala dala run fixed routes allocated by the Tanzanian transport regulator. They pick up passengers at central locations, such as the park on Br. Patrice Lumumba, a few blocks from my hotel. They stop anywhere along the route to drop someone off or allow a passenger to board.
They’re colorfully painted, and many have names. You have a choice between “In God We Trust,” “The Dictator,” and “The Terminator.”
There’s fierce competition. When a dala dala stops, the conductor hops off and shouts out the destination and fare to prospective passengers. The conductor is called a mpigadebe, which literally means "a person who hits a debe" (a 4-gallon tin container used for transporting gasoline or water). It’s a reference to the fact that conductors hit the roof and side of the van to attract customers and notify the driver when to leave a stop.
A step up from the dala dala is the three-wheeler taxi, known in parts of Asia as an auto rickshaw or tuk-tuk, and in Tanzania as a bajaj. The Tanzania ones run on gasoline, but in other countries electric and compressed natural gas versions are sold. The name bajaj represents a branding triumph for Bajaj Auto Limited, the Indian multinational automotive manufacturer based in Pune that makes motorcycles, scooters and auto rickshaws. Most of the bajaj I’ve seen in Tanzania are manufactured by a rival, the Chennai-based TVS Motor Company, the third-largest motorcycle company in India, but they are still called bajaj.
Bajaj are used both for passengers (you can squeeze three Tanzanians or two well-fed Westerners onto the bench seat) and cargo. They provide deliveries to small shops and restaurants, although I’ve also seen them carrying building materials and furniture.
I absently wondered what it would take to get into the bajaj driver business, so I checked the price of a used one from an online reseller. Most have already been customized, so in the small sample I viewed you could go with a 2023 model sporting the portrait of Tanzania’s matronly president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, or a rap star, for around $2,300.
[Author’s disclaimer. My working schedule this week did not allow me to enjoy the dala dala or bajaj experience, but on my last trip in September 2023, I made several trips in Dar by bajaj and took a long-distance bus.]