Return to Mangapwani

In her autobiography, when recalling her time in Zanzibar, my mother wrote, "After church, Sundays were often occupied by picnics, out to Fumba or Mangapwani for bathing in a lovely warm clear sea."  I described Mangapwani, above, in an earlier blog here.

In 1950 the African Mercantile transferred my father from Dar-es-Salaam to Mombasa. Our house wasn't ready so my mother, brother and I went on a round of visits, to friends of my mother's in Tanganyika and Zanzibar. This picture was taken during the few days we spent in Zanzibar. My mother is at left, while her great friend, Bunch Jones, is at right.

This is typical of the picnic scenes I remember from my life on the East African coast. We would find a shady spot at the top of the beach, under something like a wild fig, where we would make camp. The tree also acted as a towel rail, the towels drying quickly in the heat. To the left is a woven basket, a kikapu, which contained our picnic. The beach is clean, washed by the last high tide. We alternated between swimming, sitting in the shade, and wandering along the beach looking for interesting things that had been washed up: just in front of Bunch is what I think is a large clam shell.  Look at me: I am blissfully happy.

Many years later, in 1976, Bunch and my mother returned to visit their old stamping ground. At the time, Zanzibar was under a communist government, so they felt they had to behave so their official guide, who accompanied them everywhere, wouldn't realise they had been there before.

They visited Mangapwani, above. My mother took few photos on her visit but this is one, of what was obviously somewhere very special.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like visiting places crowded with memories of the Zanzibar they knew in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The ngalowas were still pulled up on the beach and the sea was as warm and inviting as ever, but the people they had known had gone.