Reading into Riding Culture: Messages and Sayings on Daladala Vehicles in Usa River, Tanzania

Abstract

In countries with limited state-supported public transportation, privately owned vehicles—regularly exceeding a safe speed and a safe number of passengers—have oftentimes arisen to fill this void, and some scholars have considered in different ways the numerous slogans on these vehicles of the African continent. In Eastern Africa these vehicles arrive in a variety of forms, including the pikipiki (motorcycles), bajaji (three-wheeled cars), and daladala (minibuses). While most studies result in the amalgamation and analysis of such messages, others consider the historical transition from messages on material culture to a variety of vehicles, resulting not only in semantic categories but also in a demarcation among the archaic, modified, and innovated. Nonetheless, this study qualitatively identifies 140 unique tokens—collected over a period of three weeks—listed on the typically brightly colored daladala vehicles in Usa River, Tanzania and attempts to provide a taxonomy of larger discursive categories that delineate these messages and sayings, which are believed to present a metalinguistic commentary on relevant, salient topics of everyday conversations.