dar 2 lagos 169videos is Johari—a film produced by Mtitu Game—and although none of
the Nigerian videos handed over to Kanumba is introduced by the title, he
comments on at least one of them (Chinedu Nwoko’s Private Affair) with
a smile and admits that it is “a very good one.” He is handed a package of
vcds, which he starts counting and calculates a total of sixty-three Nige-
rian and twenty-four Tanzanian films—a ratio of roughly two and a half
to one, which in mid-2006 (when the film was shot) was quite common
in the video shops of Dar es Salaam but which had already been reversed
about a year later.
As Mtitu Game told me, beyond its entertainment value, he had hoped
to inform Tanzanians about life in Nigeria with Dar 2 Lagos. Nigerians do
not have the best reputation in Tanzania, where they are typically seen
as argumentative and corrupt or as fraudsters with an inclination toward
witchcraft.^6 The film addresses these stereotypes directly in a scene in
which Kanumba talks to three of his friends about his pending trip to
Nigeria. One of them believes that Kanumba will surely meet his death
in Nigeria because the country is torn apart by religious war and witch-
craft, whereas the other two contradict him, saying that Tanzania is just
as “witchcrafty” as Nigeria (the video has English subtitles): “We have
many old witches here. How many people are turning into cats here?” The
film contains several other blueprints of Nigerian life and culture, which
the Tanzanian team encountered firsthand while shooting in Lagos in
June 2006: Steven Kanumba told me, for example, that Nigerian food was
much too spicy for his taste and that Nigerians “are only after the money”
(personal interview, August 31, 2007).
After experiencing a number of difficulties in Lagos, such as harass-
ment by the police and a three-week wait, in vain, for an actress who ab-
sconded with an advance of 3,500 U.S. dollars, the video film was eventu-
ally shot—in just one week. Dar 2 Lagos was released in Dar es Salaam
on November 30, 2006, with a big launch party in Diamond Jubilee Hall.
Four Nigerians, two of whom had participated in the film, actress Mercy
Johnson and director Femi Ogedegbe, were special guests. Together with
the two other Nigerians—actress Nkiru Sylvanus and actor-scriptwriter
Emmanuel France—they stayed on for several months, enjoying Mtitu
Game’s hospitality and working under his tutelage on four more films.