Bagamoyo Historical Day Trip from Dar es Salaam

Bagamoyo: the port where the caravans ended

Bagamoyo lies 65 kilometres north of Dar es Salaam on the coast facing Zanzibar, about an hour and a half by road. In the nineteenth century it was the mainland terminus of the caravan routes from Lake Tanganyika: ivory, and for decades enslaved people, were marched hundreds of kilometres to this beach and shipped across to the markets of Zanzibar. The name is usually explained as lay down your heart, a reference to the despair of those who would never return inland. In 1888 the Germans made it the first capital of German East Africa before moving to Dar es Salaam in 1891.

Today Bagamoyo is a sleepy town of coral-stone houses with carved doors, a fishing harbour, an arts college and long beaches, and its historic centre is on the UNESCO tentative list. A Bagamoyo day trip from Dar es Salaam is the easiest way to see Swahili coastal history without flying to the islands.

The Kaole Ruins and an ancient mosque

Five kilometres south of the town, among baobabs and mangroves, lie the Kaole Ruins, remains of a Shirazi-Swahili trading settlement that flourished from the thirteenth century. The site holds two mosques, the older of which dates from around the thirteenth century and is counted among the oldest on the East African coast, built of coral stone with its mihrab and ablution well still visible, as well as pillar tombs and graves from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Kaole declined after the Portuguese arrived on the coast in the fifteenth century and the trade moved to Bagamoyo.

A small museum displays pottery, coins and Chinese porcelain found on the site, evidence of Indian Ocean trade centuries before the Europeans. Allow about an hour with the guide; the paths are flat and sandy. Is Kaole worth visiting? For anyone interested in the Swahili coast it is the highlight of the day and a peaceful, atmospheric place under the baobabs.

The caravan serai, the old fort and the slave-trade sites

Back in town the guide walks you through the sites tied to the caravan era. The caravan serai, a walled courtyard built in the mid-nineteenth century, is where porters and traders rested at the end of the long march and today houses a small museum on the caravan and slave trade. The old fort nearby, begun by an Omani-era trader and enlarged by the Germans, served as a holding place and later a police post, and its thick walls and dark rooms make the history tangible.

The old town streets around them keep carved Swahili doors, merchants' houses from the Zanzibar era and the Indian traders' shops that supplied the caravans. The guide explains how the trade worked, who profited and how the abolition campaigns and then German rule ended it. These are sobering places, visited with respect, and photography is allowed in most of them.

German Bagamoyo: the Old Boma, the customs house and the cemetery

Along the shore stand the buildings of the brief German capital. The Old Boma, a grand two-storey administrative building with arched verandas completed in 1897, housed the district office and later the British administration after the First World War; it has been restored and dominates the seafront. The German customs house of 1895 at the old port handled the goods that still passed through Bagamoyo before Dar es Salaam took over, and the stone jetty beside it is where ferries once left for Zanzibar.

A short drive away, the small German cemetery holds the graves of officers and administrators who died in the 1889 coastal uprising and in the First World War. Together these sites tell how the town lost its importance when the Germans moved the capital and built the railway from Dar es Salaam instead. The seafront is also the best spot for a photo of the dhows at anchor.

The mission museum and the beach

On the northern edge of town, the Catholic mission founded by French missionaries in 1868 was the first on the East African mainland and became a refuge for freed slaves, with a village, school and workshops. Its museum, in the old mission house, displays the story of the mission, objects from the caravan trade, early photographs and the tower where a cross was raised to mark the first Christian settlement; the tall mango-lined avenue leading to it was planted by the mission's residents.

The day ends at the fishing beach, where wooden dhows and outrigger canoes are built and repaired by hand and the afternoon catch is landed. There is time to rest on the sand before the drive back to Dar es Salaam, arriving around 16:00. How to get to Bagamoyo from Dar es Salaam independently is possible by public bus, but the sites are scattered and need a guide to make sense of them, which is what this tour provides.