MAN, GROVEY SWAMPS
In addition to being home to several thousand descendants of slave traders, freed slaves (presumably), caravan traders and outfitters and various other people whose ancestors also lived in the area, Bagamoyo has some fine mangrove swamps which sit between the shore and the edge of a wave-cut platform about 200 m offshore.
Some of the current residents still believe in earning their living by violent means and we were strongly advised by employees and managers alike not to wander down to the swamps on our own for fear of being robbed at "big panga"-point.
The rocky edge of the platform is fully exposed at low-tide and completely covered at highwater with the mangrove going from having their roots completely exposed to submerged under a metre of water every 12 hours.
Mangrove swamps have a fascinating ecology and provide homes to thousands of crabs ranging in size from pinheads to 15 cm across the carapace - well, those are the extremes we saw, although they may get bigger or smaller. They also offer safe haven to numerous bird and insect species while the waters nearby host sea cucumber, giant earthworm-type slimy slug-thingies, hermit crabs and other assorted shoreline dwellers.
Mud, glorious mud
Walking through the mangrove swamps is similar to negotiating an ice-rink full of prickly pears without ice-skates - while trying to avoid the 10 cm long breathing roots which stick up through the ooze from the mangrove roots below the surface, you run the very real risk of either slipping in, or being swallowed by, the glutinous black mud.
The roots are what make it possible for the mangrove trees - there are three types, red, white or black, but they are differentiated in the same way as rhinos are: definitely not according to their colour! - to colonise and survive in the places that they do.
The environment in a mangrove swamp is very saline and exceedingly harsh in terms of environmental change - drowned at lunch and dehydrated by dinner. The three types of mangrove tree - all from different genera - have all adapted to this environment by developments of their root systems. The white mangrove (Avicennia marina) has breathing roots which grow up through the ground surface to enable them to breathe, the red's (Rhizophora mucronata)roots start halfway up its stem and grow down into the soil from there while the black's (Brugueira gymnorrhistem buttresses start nearer to the soil and dip into the soil but re-emerge regularly as breathing roots.
All three species are viviparous with the seeds germinating - sprouting - on the parent plant and, when the growing tip of the root is long enough and the seed resembles a six-inch nail with a swollen head, dropping into the mud below, there to hopefully stick fast and begin growing.
The obvious danger for the seedling is, of course, that it will be washed away by the next high tide. The mangroves also support and enable numerous other plants to survive as well.
The next most obvious thing in mangrove swamps are the veritable armies of crabs, of a variety of species, which live in them. There are fiddler crabs which hump their way through life, lurching forward under massive effort as the heave one hugely oversized pincer forward. The pincer is almost the size of the rest of the crab and can be really colourful - the one's we saw all had pincers which were bright orange at the top, fading to milky white below.
Tree-climbing species with purple pincers led Tigger a merry dance as they scuttled around the stems trying to escape her hot, enquiring breath. Most of the smaller crabs live in burrows they excavate in the mud and as soon as they are disturbed (by us blundering in there, for example) they all scurry for safety.
Sit quietly and they begin cautiously re-emerging but will scurry off at the slightest movement.
The shallow waters - at low tide - around the mangroves support a variety of creepy, crawly, slimy creatures, not all of which we've been able to identify, this not being my forte and our books being strangely silent about the riches we saw. There are schools of tiny rock pool fish, more crabs - two in particular caught our attention. One is a red crab with orange eyes which scuttles for its hole but creeps out soon afterwards to see what these clumsy giants are up to.
One we trapped in the open was able to turn itself almost completely onto its back in order to bring its pincers to bear on inquisitive fingers, giving a fast, fierce snap to unwary digits. The other was a browny-grey colour with blue-greens in its pincers, growing quite large - the carapace on the one we saw was about 12 cm across - and the hindmost pair of legs was modified into paddles to enable it to swim.
The sea cucumbers - they really do have the shape of cucumbers and are about 15 cm long and 5 cm in diameter - are black and white striped with orange/yellow spots of colour in the black sections. They are harmless and when you pick them up the muscles begin contracting in what can only be described as an excruciatingly slow wriggle - with a period of about 10 minutes! The waters they inhabit here are really warm - the pools typically reach 35 or 40 degrees C - and the cucumbers move slowly through the seaweed beds, filtering food and detritus bits from the water.
There are also long earthworm jobbies in oranges and browns. They have a ring of short tentacles around one end but I still haven't worked out whether that is the head end or the arse is used to anchor it while the rest is washed around by the water flow and the head end grabs what it can in passing.
Feathery feast
The mangrove swamps and the mud pools nearby support a large variety of birds, from the fish eagle we saw perched atop one of the outermost trees to the egrets, herons, whimbrels and black-winged stilts wading through the rock pools.
There were pied kingfishers, little egrets, grey herons (the black eye stripe in birds in East Africa is far more pronounced than in southern Africa, appearing like a robber's mask), plovers of varying denominations, sandpipers and pied wagtail.
Go visit a mangrove swamp near you - and if there aren't any, get off your lazy butts and travel to where there are some.
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"Slavery Days"
Bagamoyo, 22 January 2002
For those of you who don't listen to much Reggae, the heading comes from a Burning Spear song and the reference here is to the fact that Bagamoyo was the mainland terminus for most of the slaves who were shipped off to Zanzibar, there to be sold and shipped off to Arabia and parts north and east, primarily, but also to the New World.
Bagamoyo - the name is not, we're told, a bastardisation of the old English press gang's cry of "Bag em, boyo!" - was also the site of one of the more bizarre happenings during the scramble for Africa, when European nations were scrabbling to grab chunks of Africa. Emin Pasha, who had been with General Gordon at the fall of Khartoum to the Muslim forces of the Mahdi in 1884, escaping southwards with Sudanese troops while Gordon went down the front steps of the government buildings to his slaughter at the hands of the jubilant "invaders".
Emin Pasha was later "rescued" by a British expedition which travelled up the Congo River and across southern Sudan to find Pasha and his troops in perfectly good health, living like kings with their own slaves and area of control. His rescuers were in worse shape than he was when they found Pasha but shortly afterwards, the whole tea party went arse over tip as Mahdist forces arrived and the Sudanese troops decided they weren't in the mood for another fight. Pasha eventually arrived in Bagamoyo in 1889 and the Germans, who'd recently decided they wanted to own a colony in East Africa and bought or bullied the rights to the area from the Sultan of Zanzibar, threw a giant party for him.
Pasha, a short shit who couldn't, apparently, see as far as he was tall, had been born in Europe but adopted his new name after arriving in Africa, was toasted liberally. Later he wandered around the two-story boma where the banquet was being held, chatting to other guests and, one can only surmise, imbibing liberally before falling from the upstairs balcony and almost killing himself.
He spent the next four months recovering in the local Sewa Haji hospital, vowing to return home to Europe until a missive from the German Kaiser persuaded him to head back into the hinterland and persuade locals they would be better off as German colonial subjects. It was during this expedition that, while short-sightedly examining his butterfly collection, he was surrounded by slavers and had his throat slit.
Things have changed significantly in Bagamoyo since Pasha's time with the slave holding pens (admittedly largely disused by the time he visited) being replaced by tourist pens, ranging from down at heel but up in atmosphere resorts like the one we're at to a fancy jobbie just down the beach that looks like something out of a Emirates Airlines advertising brochure, complete with satellite dish on the roof which would do the former Soviet Union's embassies proud.
Getting here took a whole day, even though it is only 70 km north of Dar es Salaam. Admittedly, we did spent most of the time shopping and sitting on the Internet in Dar before hitting the road late in the afternoon. It was like a breath of weird hominess, walking into the Score supermarket in Dar - we had a choice between one several Scores or the new Shoprite. The Score supermarkets have the same feel as Pick 'n Pays in Seffrica, right down to the fonts and style of their billboards and signs. The only difference is that the prices are higher and the selection is smaller, but the prices are individually marked on each item - yippee, no searching for badly printed shelf pricing!
If you're bringing a dog through Africa, expect to pay through your nose for doggy's din-dins when you find it!
Poor side of town
I did realise several things while in Dar. One is that I don't like big cities in Africa, especially the inner cities which is where we tend to spend most of our time because shopping is cheaper and places to stay are closer and cheaper. The outer suburbs may be more spacious and comfortable and offer a truer comparison with what we are used to in Seffrica (where we avoided the inner cities as much as possible) but the inner cities up here show the decay and lack of reconstruction with everyone struggling to make a living as best they can but with little new money for new projects or repairs and upgrading to the existing buildings.
I find it depressing to look at these cities and see people walking the streets with smart clothes and cellphones but having to dodge the cracks, holes and mineshafts - often water-filled - in the pavements. That is where they can get on to the pavement, most of it having been usurped by hawkers who've set up their semi-permanent stalls and the rest being craters waiting for the next downpour to start and the waterfalls off the buildings to fill them up.
There is so much vibrancy in the cities and people seem to find every possible niche in the market to make money but the city council doesn't seem to be getting off its fat, bureaucratic arse and developing a solution which will benefit all the inhabitants.
The 'burbs are islands
Venturing out into the suburbs - upmarket ones, naturally! - to find a bookshop which had closed down years ago (damned guidebooks don't auto-update via the Internet!), I realised my impressions of, and distaste for, Dar was due to our concentration on the cheaper side of downtown and its crowded hussle for survival. But the 'burbs are not much better (anywhere in the world, I suspect!), with every house surrounded by high fences and secure compounds and little interaction between neighbours unless it is organised by telephone first and the necessary security arrangements and passwords exchanged.
Fortunately, we got lost while trying to find the main road again (street maps are produced by liars, I'm convinced!) and found another shopping mall (God, Doll! Let's go shopping!) where there was a bookshop with a good selection of books.
The downside is that the books were marked not only in 'burb prices but also in British Pounds, conversion being done at that day's exchange rate. The price they were asking for "Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania" (the local, it appears, equivalent of "Robert's Birds of Southern Africa") could have bought us a small game park!
We did find, however, a single volume which, tough as the task sounds, gives an overview of Africa's history "From Olduvai Gorge to the 21st Century". "The African Experience" by Roland Oliver is well-written - and we all know how critical I am of bad writing - and deals with some of the major themes which arise most often in questions about Africa. It's written for the interested layman and has a good bibliography for further reading.
Get Outta Here
When we did find the correct road, appropriately named the Bagamoyo Road, we headed north-east in what passes for rush-hour traffic up here. Not that anybody rushes, you understand, there are just more cars on the road and a great deal more confusion.
This included, at one point, all the traffic being held up (never halted, that would be too orderly!) by a 25-seater bus which needed a push start after stopping to fill up with whatever smokey fuel it was using that day. Five men were straining to push the bus, uphill and across the flow of traffic, onto the main road so that they could push start it on tar. The fact that the men could only just move the bus didn't hinder them or the driver from forcing a way into the stream of traffic and then running out of steam, taking a rest and moving the 25-seater bus another metre.
I'm sure it would have been a lot easier and faster if the 35 passengers had climbed out of the bus and helped!
The road was also straddled by a series of well-disguised speed humps which you only recognised when the vehicle ahead of you shot skywards, stopped, waited for the passengers to land back in their seats and then carried on.
Once out of town the traffic thinned out and the roadworks started with the detour following the main road - you can see the smooth sections wide road just waiting to be driven on while you bounce and hop along the "diversion". Every so often, just to tease you, the roadmakers allowed us to drive on the new portions, getting up to 90km/h before having to swerve off onto a jungle track to skirt another unfinished bridge.
Get lost, mzungu
But the trip, which took 90 minutes, was better than the tales we've heard since arriving in Bagamoyo. Before the construction work, the trip took 4 hours in dry weather and 7 in the soggy season. The road builders had one last surprise for us, digging a large ditch across the main road at the entrance to Bagamoyo, closing the road completely but failing to give any indication of which way one should go to get around the diversion!
We eventually, after touring most of the town and sparring for at least 15 rounds over whose fault it was, which way to go and how ugly I was, found the Bagamoyo Beach Resort, parked and drank beer.
Tomorrow we're off to tour slave pens, old forts (fort and prison being the local, it would appear, euphemism for a slave pen!) and German buildings before heading north to we haven't yet decided where.
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