Bagamoyo

Bagamoyo grew from a small Swahili settlement near the much older site of Kaole, where mosques and pillar tombs date from around the 13th century. By the early 19th century it was one of the most important mainland ports opposite Zanzibar, and the place where the caravan routes from Lake Tanganyika and the great lakes reached the sea. Ivory, copal and enslaved people carried over months of walking were loaded into dhows here for the short crossing to Zanzibar's markets; one reading of the name — bwaga moyo, understood as laying down the heart — is associated with that trade, though its origin is disputed.

The town was also the doorway to the interior for Europeans. Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, Henry Morton Stanley and James Augustus Grant all set out from here, although David Livingstone, whose name is often attached to the town, never came here in his lifetime; after his death his attendants carried his body more than 1,600 km to Bagamoyo, where it lay for one night in the mission's church tower before being shipped to London. The Holy Ghost Fathers founded their mission in 1868, the first in East Africa, buying the freedom of enslaved children and settling them in a village around the church.

German traders and officials arrived in the 1880s. Bagamoyo became the first seat of the German East Africa administration and the base from which the Abushiri revolt of 1888–89 was put down. In 1891 the capital moved to Dar es Salaam, whose deep harbour suited steamships better than Bagamoyo's shallow roadstead, and the town declined steadily as the railway and the port drew trade south. Its old buildings were left standing, decaying but largely unaltered, and have since been protected as a conservation area.

Bagamoyo is a Swahili coastal town, mostly Muslim, with the rhythms that go with it: the call to prayer over the lanes, Friday as the day of the week that matters, kanga wraps and long kanzu robes, and long, formal greetings before any conversation begins. The Zaramo are the main local people, and their carving, drumming and initiation traditions are part of the district's identity.

What sets the town apart is its official role in the arts. The national college of arts and culture, known as TaSUBa, has trained dancers, drummers, actors and painters here since the 1980s, and its students practise in the open air around the campus. Ngoma drumming and dance from many parts of Tanzania are taught and performed, and the college's festival each year turns a quiet town into a stage. Sculptors and painters have settled nearby, and craft workshops sell carving and batik.

The town's history is a delicate subject handled directly: guides and the mission museum describe the caravan trade and slavery plainly, and descendants of the mission's freed communities still live here. Visitors are asked to treat the ruins and the graveyards as places of memory rather than curiosities, to dress modestly away from the beach, and to ask before photographing people.

About 80,000 people live in the town, in a district of just over 200,000 at the 2022 census, spread along the coast and inland. Fishing is the visible occupation — dhows beached along the shore, nets spread out to dry, boats under repair — and farming supplies the rest, with coconuts, cashews, cassava, maize and mangoes grown around the town and sold in the market and on to Dar es Salaam.

Salt works, small-scale trade, the arts college and a modest tourism business provide the other jobs, and a good number of people commute or migrate to Dar es Salaam, which is close enough to dominate the local economy. Plans for a large port and industrial zone in the district have been discussed for years and have shaped expectations about land and work.

The day starts early, with boats returning at first light and the market busiest before the heat; afternoons are slow, and the shore fills again in the cooler evening with football on the sand and people sitting out. Current issues are coastal erosion eating at the waterfront, the decay of historic buildings that are expensive to stabilise, unreliable water supply, and the question of how much the town will change if the port scheme proceeds.

The food is coastal and built on coconut, rice and fish. The catch landed on the beach — kingfish, snapper, octopus and prawns — is fried, grilled over charcoal or cooked into mchuzi wa nazi, a coconut curry, and eaten with rice, ugali or boiled cassava. Pilau, rice cooked with cloves, cinnamon and cumin, and biriyani appear at weddings and at Eid.

Street food follows the coastal pattern: mishkaki beef skewers and grilled maize in the evening, chipsi mayai for a cheap hot meal, and chapati or vitumbua, small coconut rice cakes, in the morning with spiced chai. Mandazi, lightly sweet fried dough, is sold from baskets around the market and the bus stand.

Local produce shapes the rest. Cashews grown along the coast are roasted and sold by the bag, mangoes and jackfruit come in season, coconut appears in everything from rice to sweets, and fresh coconut water is drunk straight from the nut. Sugarcane juice, tamarind drinks and strong sweet tea are the everyday drinks; alcohol is sold in the beach hotels and a few bars rather than in the old town.