In all of East Africa, especially where tourists are found, visitors are faced with brightly colored paintings of birds, animals, urban and village scenes. Its art form is not exactly traditional, but it is certainly part of modern East African culture and an important element of the tourism industry.
And very much, its source can be traced to one artist, Tinginga.
Edward Sei Chintinga was thought to have been born in 1932 in a small village called Minz near the Mozambique border near Nakapanya in the Tandur district of southern Tanzania.
In 1957 he left the village, sought for property, first travelled to the Tanga district, and worked on Sisal plantation in 1959 before testing his luck in the metropolitan city of Dar es Salaam.
He was fortunate to have Salum Musa (aka Mzee lumumba), a cousin who worked as an expatriate European chef who lived outside Upmarket in Oyster Bay, north of Darès city centre.
Tingatinga found employment in the same household as the gardener, but when the employer left Tanzania, their two cousins ​​were obliged to move to Msasani in the Mikoroshni district.
Genginga also loved traditional music. Many nights he was able to find drums and dances along with a group of young Macondos who met his wife, his first child, Agatha Mataka, who had his son, Doudi.
In 1968, Tinginga found a job as a “ward attendant” at Muhimbili Hospital, a public hospital run by the government's Ministry of Health and Human Services. It was a modest salary, but it was a step away from being a government employee and gardener.
He worked mostly in the evening or night shifts at Muhimbili Hospital, but found plenty of free time during the day. So he rubbed some money together to buy a bike and became a street vendor. Every day he would visit the main fruit and vegetable market to buy produce and circulate to the Oyster Bay area to sell door-to-door.
He also began embroidering home linens such as tablecloths and bed sheets, and weaving baskets and mats for his living.
During this period, he began to offer his skills as a painter, adorning his homes and creating several murals. From this activity he was able to collect cans of unfinished paint and hardboard scraps, and in his spare time he began to paint animals and other scenes for his own entertainment.
His wife was helping her household income by selling fruits and vegetables, his crafts and paintings at the Oyster Bay Shopping Center. His paintings were soon in high demand thanks to tourists who purchased one of Tinginga's paintings and began to promote his work.
Chinginga quit her job at the clinic and drew full-time drawings. He could even afford to hire some young relatives to support him. His paintings were also on sale. Thanks to the government's high-ranking advisors to the National Development Corporation, Tanzania Co., Ltd. (NAT) was established to promote and sell Macondo's wood carvings and chingate paintings.
His paintings were mainly of wildlife, remembered from his childhood upbringing in the countryside: birds, monkeys, lions, zebras, water buffaloes, and farmers and fishermen with their catch and his favourite tree, baobabs. He also painted scenes from memories of the hospital where he once worked.
A tragic end
Natt bought a fixed number of his works each week, and life was good for the artist, but fate was to make a tragic turn in 1972.
Tinginatinga loved to drink occasional nights with friends at many bars at Dar Es Salaam.
One night he was in the car at a bar with two friends – his cousin Tedo and another man, a driver, auto mechanic Daudi Issa Ndia.
Unknown to Tingatinga and Tedo, the car actually belonged to a customer of an auto mechanic and was taken to an “evening test drive.”
The city had a fierce police presence searching for a gang of bank robbers who had separated from a bold attack in downtown Dar es Salaam earlier that day.
They faced police obstacles when the car reached the city centre of Dar es Salaam and turned into Independence Street (now known as Zamora Avenue).
The NDIA was panicked as he had no driver's license or insurance and was not even given permission to ride the car. As they passed the police, the driver tried to speed up from the obstacle.
Police fired fire at the tire, but were attacked by Chinginga, sitting in the back seat. He later died on his way to the hospital. He was only 40 years old and left behind a wife and two children. After his death, his studio helpers continued to paint and earn a living by continuing to paint Taka Island at the Oyster Bay Shopping Centre, until the mid-1990s, when the Swiss International Cooperative held a successful Swiss exhibition sold in Switzerland.
Legacy lives on
Other exhibitions have been held in Australia, Denmark, France, Germany and Japan. As a result, sufficient money was raised from the sale of paintings to build an art gallery at the Oyster Bay Shopping Centre.
Today, the Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society has a gallery and workshop very close to the Morogoro store where Tinginga paintings were once sold by his wife.
Co-op secretary, Logger Zabri, explained to African businesses that 80% of the painting sales are paid to artists and 20% are heading towards maintaining the gallery.
Oyster Bay may not be the exclusive suburbs it once was, but the shopping centre gallery still attracts many tourists. It's relatively easy to find. Depending on your budget, you can rely on Haile Sarasi to take a taxi or lazy (minibus) from the city centre towards Musani's penis and along Ali Hassan Mwiniri. Pass the US Embassy on the right, then the Nigerian Embassy on the left, and arrive at the Peninsula Hotel. Just 50m from the hotel there is a small side street on the left.
At the end of this short road, perhaps 100m long, there is a Tinginga Co-op gallery, but along the road there are many small studios where the Tinginga painters work.
These artists not only paint in different styles and different themes, but also produce a variety of painted objects, such as house signs and door numbers, enamel boards and mugs. If you don't know what you want, you can commission one of the artists and prepare the piece in a few days.
It's interesting to visit where the entire Singatinga phenomenon began, but there's very little need to travel to Oyster Bay to find examples of art. No matter where you are in East Africa, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of artists who paint in all kinds of styles and cover a vast number of subjects. But they are all Tingatinga painters and are part of Africa's most vibrant and successful contemporary art movement.
