Lay my heart down in Bagamoyo
THERE is a song, it is said, slaves from East Africa sang when they reached the coastal town of Bagamoyo.
By Kalungi Kabuye
In Bagamoyo
THERE is a song, it is said, slaves from East Africa sang when they reached the coastal town of Bagamoyo.
Captured from the interior by marauding Arab and Swahili raiders, thousands and thousands of slaves, ‘chained one to another in huge lines’, were marched to Bagamoyo, where they would be put on dhows and shipped to various places in the Middle East and East Asia.
On reaching Bagamoyo, they would sing ‘My heart is bleeding/ bleed, my heart. On the fields at home we worked, singing and joking/ Cruel men surrounded us, caught us like animals/ chained us, one by one, like animals; bleed, my heart.’
Originally called Bwagamoyo (lay down my heart) by generations of porters coming back after a log caravan, the slaves changed it Bagamoyo, which meant “crush down your heart, there is no hope anymoreâ€.
Sixty kilometres north of Dar-es-Salaam, the town of bagamoyo seems to have been forgotten in time. Most of the buildings are crumbling, the roads are dusty. What used to be East Africa’s biggest port is now just a collection of rotting dhows and old women walking along the beach, looking for whatever it is the tide brought in.
But less than 100 years ago, this piece of the African mainland was one of the busiest real of estate on the continent. Starting in the late 18th century and continuing into the 19th Century, millions of Africans were brought here in chains and sent off as slaves, never again to see their homeland.
Unlike the better-known Goree Island off Senegal in West Africa, from where slaves to the Americas were shipped, no high ranking personalities have been to Bagamoyo.
Former US President Bill Clinton made an emotional trip to Goree and its Door of No Return, and was later followed by George W. Bush.
Hundreds of African-Americans have made a visit to Goree, an annual pilgrimage, where they get in touch with their roots.
There is no such pilgrimage to Bagamoyo, which is in a way surprising because since very little has changed, most of the structures of the last two centuries are there but in very poor shape.
The infamous Caravan Serai still stands, and looks like it will stand for the next 200 years. This was the first stop for arriving slave caravans. A plaque outside reveals the fact that at its peak, it held more than 50,000 slaves a year. Here they would stop for a few weeks, to fatten the slaves up, readying them for the markets in Zanzibar.
Then there is the old customs house, through which the slaves would be taken, counted, taxed, and when night came, loaded onto waiting dhows for the journey to Zanzibar and beyond, and a life of slavery.
The steps over which the millions went into the dhow are still there, polished smooth by the unwilling feet that passed over them.
Standing at the top of the steps, one can imagine the first frightening sight the Africans had of the Indian Ocean. At the bottom, looking back, one sees palm trees waving in the breeze, which probably was the last sight a slave had of their homeland.
Ten minutes walk from the old Customs House is what is described as the first Christian Mission built in East Africa.. Inside it is a small museum that attempts to keep the record straight, for people to remember.
It also tells the story of Siwema, a slave girl captured in eastern Tanzania, but who survived and became a big church personality (see related story). The story is published as Tears of Fear, Tears of Joy – the story of the slave girl Siwema by the Bagamoyo Catholic Mission.
It is not known exactly how many African slaves passed through the Customs House in Bagamoyo on their way to Zanzibar, where the largest slave market in the world was.
But for every slave that arrived in Bagamoyo, estimated Dr David Livingstone, who made Bagamoyo the starting point for his several journeys into the interior, 10 did not make it through the journey. They died on the way.
“To overdraw its evils is simply not possible,†Dr Livingstone wrote. “Slaves were obtained by kidnapping, incitement of tribal conflicts and by purchasing prisoners of war or tribal members from the chiefs. Villages were regularly destroyed and crops burnt.
The sight of slaves was shocking in Bagamoyo. Lines of several hundreds of people chained together from neck to neck were probably not uncommon, sometimes they were herded in pens.â€
It is estimated almost half of the population of East Africa was destroyed in this way. Some were taken as slaves, while others died or were displaced as a result of hunger and civil strife caused by the slave trade.
Now all these people are more or less forgotten. No visiting president or high-ranking diplomat puts Bagamoyo in his travel plans. No African-American will make a pilgrimage to see where his ancestors left Africa.
Where did all these people go? Where are their descendants? According to the BBC website, East African slaves “... ended up as sailors in Persia, pearl divers in the Gulf, soldiers in the Omani army and workers on the salt pans of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).â€
Others ended up on the French plantations in the Indian Ocean. So a great number of the populations of islands like Madagascar, Reunion, the Seychelles and others have their roots in East Africa.
The East African slave trade was abolished in 1873, when the Sultan of Zanzibar was forced by the British to end the sea-borne trade.
But slavery still continued, as the clove and spice farms of Zanzibar and Pemba required labour. It was not till the British occupied Zanzibar after World War 1 that slavery stopped in Zanzibar.
Will there be an Alex Haley for the descendants of slaves taken from East Africa?
Will someone trace his roots to the sleepy fishing ton that Bagamoyo has begun, and finally find a Kunta Kinte somewhere in eastern Tanzania or southern Uganda?
Do we have relatives that disappeared in the 19th Century, only to end up in the old Customs house in Bagamoyo, now broken and in ruins?
In Bagamoyo
THERE is a song, it is said, slaves from East Africa sang when they reached the coastal town of Bagamoyo.
Captured from the interior by marauding Arab and Swahili raiders, thousands and thousands of slaves, ‘chained one to another in huge lines’, were marched to Bagamoyo, where they would be put on dhows and shipped to various places in the Middle East and East Asia.
On reaching Bagamoyo, they would sing ‘My heart is bleeding/ bleed, my heart. On the fields at home we worked, singing and joking/ Cruel men surrounded us, caught us like animals/ chained us, one by one, like animals; bleed, my heart.’
Originally called Bwagamoyo (lay down my heart) by generations of porters coming back after a log caravan, the slaves changed it Bagamoyo, which meant “crush down your heart, there is no hope anymoreâ€.
Sixty kilometres north of Dar-es-Salaam, the town of bagamoyo seems to have been forgotten in time. Most of the buildings are crumbling, the roads are dusty. What used to be East Africa’s biggest port is now just a collection of rotting dhows and old women walking along the beach, looking for whatever it is the tide brought in.
But less than 100 years ago, this piece of the African mainland was one of the busiest real of estate on the continent. Starting in the late 18th century and continuing into the 19th Century, millions of Africans were brought here in chains and sent off as slaves, never again to see their homeland.
Unlike the better-known Goree Island off Senegal in West Africa, from where slaves to the Americas were shipped, no high ranking personalities have been to Bagamoyo.
Former US President Bill Clinton made an emotional trip to Goree and its Door of No Return, and was later followed by George W. Bush.
Hundreds of African-Americans have made a visit to Goree, an annual pilgrimage, where they get in touch with their roots.
There is no such pilgrimage to Bagamoyo, which is in a way surprising because since very little has changed, most of the structures of the last two centuries are there but in very poor shape.
The infamous Caravan Serai still stands, and looks like it will stand for the next 200 years. This was the first stop for arriving slave caravans. A plaque outside reveals the fact that at its peak, it held more than 50,000 slaves a year. Here they would stop for a few weeks, to fatten the slaves up, readying them for the markets in Zanzibar.
Then there is the old customs house, through which the slaves would be taken, counted, taxed, and when night came, loaded onto waiting dhows for the journey to Zanzibar and beyond, and a life of slavery.
The steps over which the millions went into the dhow are still there, polished smooth by the unwilling feet that passed over them.
Standing at the top of the steps, one can imagine the first frightening sight the Africans had of the Indian Ocean. At the bottom, looking back, one sees palm trees waving in the breeze, which probably was the last sight a slave had of their homeland.
Ten minutes walk from the old Customs House is what is described as the first Christian Mission built in East Africa.. Inside it is a small museum that attempts to keep the record straight, for people to remember.
It also tells the story of Siwema, a slave girl captured in eastern Tanzania, but who survived and became a big church personality (see related story). The story is published as Tears of Fear, Tears of Joy – the story of the slave girl Siwema by the Bagamoyo Catholic Mission.
It is not known exactly how many African slaves passed through the Customs House in Bagamoyo on their way to Zanzibar, where the largest slave market in the world was.
But for every slave that arrived in Bagamoyo, estimated Dr David Livingstone, who made Bagamoyo the starting point for his several journeys into the interior, 10 did not make it through the journey. They died on the way.
“To overdraw its evils is simply not possible,†Dr Livingstone wrote. “Slaves were obtained by kidnapping, incitement of tribal conflicts and by purchasing prisoners of war or tribal members from the chiefs. Villages were regularly destroyed and crops burnt.
The sight of slaves was shocking in Bagamoyo. Lines of several hundreds of people chained together from neck to neck were probably not uncommon, sometimes they were herded in pens.â€
It is estimated almost half of the population of East Africa was destroyed in this way. Some were taken as slaves, while others died or were displaced as a result of hunger and civil strife caused by the slave trade.
Now all these people are more or less forgotten. No visiting president or high-ranking diplomat puts Bagamoyo in his travel plans. No African-American will make a pilgrimage to see where his ancestors left Africa.
Where did all these people go? Where are their descendants? According to the BBC website, East African slaves “... ended up as sailors in Persia, pearl divers in the Gulf, soldiers in the Omani army and workers on the salt pans of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).â€
Others ended up on the French plantations in the Indian Ocean. So a great number of the populations of islands like Madagascar, Reunion, the Seychelles and others have their roots in East Africa.
The East African slave trade was abolished in 1873, when the Sultan of Zanzibar was forced by the British to end the sea-borne trade.
But slavery still continued, as the clove and spice farms of Zanzibar and Pemba required labour. It was not till the British occupied Zanzibar after World War 1 that slavery stopped in Zanzibar.
Will there be an Alex Haley for the descendants of slaves taken from East Africa?
Will someone trace his roots to the sleepy fishing ton that Bagamoyo has begun, and finally find a Kunta Kinte somewhere in eastern Tanzania or southern Uganda?
Do we have relatives that disappeared in the 19th Century, only to end up in the old Customs house in Bagamoyo, now broken and in ruins?