Bagamoyo to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Tuesday October 21st

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This morning we walked up to the Institute of Tourism and chatted to the students while we waited for our transport to arrive. Eventually our guide, Sammy, and we were ensconced in the back seat of a taxi which is like a closed-in tricycle with a motor.We drove out to Kaole, the original settlement that the Persians had established in the 13^th Century, along the roads that the guide book advised against tourists walking along alone or at night. I chatted to Sammy about my idea for Swahili lessons in the future, and he said that if we came back to Tanzania, it would be his pleasure to give me lessons for free. I had in mind to work on Swahili from books in Australia and then to stay in Bagamoyo, enjoying the beach, having Swahili lessons and practising speaking for a month or before venturing back to Farkwa to work in the school for a longer time.

We passed the present Kaole village, where people were busy with their day to day lives, and out to the site of the original Persian settlement.Religious wars between Muslim factions in Persia had led these settlers to seek new lands. A very fertile area, it has a well which never runs dry and has fresh water in it, in spite of its proximity to the sea. The water was said to be blessed, and people who came here and used it were able to solve their problems. Sammy made the interesting comment that, in those days, the Muslims were very religious compared to the people today, who do not always follow all the tenets of Islam.

The site has been studied by archaeologists, and a small museum houses and documents the finds. There are ruins of mosques from the early period and also from the 15^th Century.The original inhabitants had traded peacefully with the Persians, had learnt different skills for fishing, and the Muslim religion. House foundations have also been uncovered. A cemetery had twenty-two Arab graves, some with obelisk-style markers for those of Sheik Ali bin Jumaa who died around 1270 of malaria, his parents and his wife. The inscriptions have mostly worn away from the graves and the chin plate that was once set into the Sheik’s grave has gone. One, like a little house, was said to be the grave of Shalif, a young religious prodigy from the family of the prophet Mohammed, who died at only thirteen years of age. At the age of four, he could speak all the languages in the world and he was considered to be blessed. People, including Tanzania’s first President, Julius Nyrere, have come here to pray at times when they needed wise council. Another grave was of a husband and wife who were at sea when their boat capsized. The husband could swim but the wife couldn’t, so in a desperate effort he tied his wife’s kanga to his shirt. Their bodies were found, washed ashore still tied together and they were buried in the one grave. Their story is told as one of inspiration of a love so strong that it continued even in death.

It was not far to where the harbour had once been, but it was difficult to imagine boats ever coming up through this mangrove forest and onto the area of grass.The tide still brings some water in, but the open water is now more than a kilometre away. A four hundred year old baobab tree grows on, oblivious to the change, decay and human lives that had taken place here.

Our next drive took us to Stone Town, where we saw much evidence of the grand buildings that mostly dated from the time of German colonisation. A fort was built in 1860, with additions being made to an existing house. We walked all over this building, with its fortifications and rooms for common soldiers and for officers, and looked out of the slits that allowed the soldiers to see enemies approaching.There were uprisings, with a major one being led by Habashiri, an Arab, who rallied support against the Germans. That uprising was initially gaining ground until the Germans brought in reinforcements. Eventually Habashiri was caught, and he and his major African supporters were hung here in Bagamoyo. The hanging tree is no longer there but we saw the monument that marks the spot. In 1897 the German Boma was the headquarters for administration but it fairly quickly was moved to Dar es Salaam because of the better harbour there. A cemetery beside the sea was the final resting spot for German soldiers and nurses, a six day old baby who died of malaria in 1900, an explorer and a British District Commissioner. He had committed suicide when he discovered that his wife had been having an affair with an African actor, and his family had refused to take his body back to England. So in this one tiny cemetery, there lay participants from the two colonial eras, in the human tragedies of illness, of cultural division and of religious dilemmas, in fighting and healing and in the era of the opening up of the interior of Africa.

There were many buildings with Indian architectural features. Everything was in a fairly tumble down state, with recent renovations even beginning to fall into disrepair. This was surely a town which had had a golden past, and from what Sammy said, was beginning to realise the potential it had with its interesting past history. Sammy had been a very well informed and interesting guide.

We had lunch before we picked up our bags to walk to the bus station in the heat; not a prospect with much appeal. To our great relief a dalla dalla (minibus) soon came by and pulled over and the assistant asked us where we were going. Hooray! It was going to Dar Es Salaam so we jumped on board and away we went. Once again we stopped and started, added more and more people, jolted along past all the sights of markets, villages, people breaking rocks, and children walking home from school, until we were back at the Dar es Salaam bus station. It took no time to change buses and it was a quiet and sedate ride back to New Posta, near the port. From there we walked to the guest house we had stayed in on our first night in Dar es Salaam, five weeks previously but seemingly light years ago. It was unrecognisable from my description of it then, when we had arrived at night and left early in the rain and I had thought it to be on a dirt road on the outskirts of town somewhere. Now I really knew what the outskirts of a town looked like, and this was definitely not it. We were in the centre of the city, albeit with some buildings in bad repair, and the rod was a made one in the middle. The receptionist remembered us and we booked in and dropped the bags.

It was still light and I had such a craving for a coconut. It had been wearing me down since Pemba, but Keith was always saying that a coconut was too heavy to add to our packs when we saw them and didn’t believe that I was planning to eat it all in one sitting. As we wandered along the street, we saw fruit stalls and at last we came to one with coconuts. I insisted that my craving be indulged and we bought one. The vendor cut a circle out of the top and handed it to me to drink the juice. The flesh was a barely formed slimy mass which he scooped out for me to enjoy. Keith was laughing at my disappointment, and so was I after a while.

We had our dinner at an Indian restaurant where we had a very interesting conversation with the owner’s brother. He said that there were racist motivations for the actions of the government after independence and political motivations for the way the rest of the world responded. He saw Nyere as being beloved of the west for being a leader of ‘calibre,’ but with a blind eye being turned to some events. He told us that Africans loved Nyere because he united them by promising them everything. When people’s property was nationalised, which meant the property of Indians and Arabs because they owned the majority of businesses and buildings, if protests were made people disappeared. People whose grandparents had owned three large buildings were reduced to having to rent their former premises from the Government. He claimed that there was still racism now against Indians, and that it is possible to feel treated like a dog here. Many Indians whose families had been here long term left long ago. We talked about travels and other experiences as well, and we certainly enjoyed each other’s company.

This was our last night in Tanzania, and we had experienced so many different sides of the one country. Having already stepped out of our regular lives in Australia, we had taken a side step from our travels when we went to Tanzania. Now we were finding it hard to imagine life without Swahili, anti-malaria tablets, wild animals, the people of Farkwa, the dalla dalla squeeze and the Tanzanian Shilling. Tomorrow night we would fly back to France.

a scene in the main street of Bagamoyo