I was running up the stairs of the Dar es Salaam Institute trying to get to a card game on time, when I heard an exuberant, “Mervyn Lobo!” I will always recognize that voice. It belonged to Pinoc - the biggest liar I have ever met. Pinoc had relocated to Germany five years prior and I had not heard a thing about him since. Pinoc had one unique characteristic, when he spoke, you were sure he was lying. Pinoc knew that you knew he was lying but Pinoc’s lies were so interesting that you wanted him to go on and you definitely wanted to hear the end of his tale.
Pinoc claimed that he was now a trader of seafood and asked if I could take him to where he could buy prawns in bulk. I told him to arrange a Land Rover, or a four-wheel drive vehicle and I would take him to where prawns sold at a third of the price in Dar. This prawn market was in the Rufiji delta, 150 km from Dar. The first 120 km would take 2.5 hours to travel and the last 20 km, on dirt tracks, would take another 2.5 hours.
I was kind of surprised when Pinoc showed up early on Saturday morning to collect me. I asked if he had a cooler with ice and he replied to the affirmative, assuring me that it was filled with beers. I asked if he had water and he kept silent. I asked if he had extra fuel and food and he said yes to the former, so we started on our journey.
The real safari began the moment we turned off the tarmac road. The tracks to the fishing village had a white sand base. If you drove too slowly, it seemed that the sand would rise to grab your tires. If you went fast, you found a pool of water a meter deep after every slope. When that happened, you had to send a person on foot to find the shallowest passage and to also feel what kind of a bottom the pool had.
When the track did not have a sandy base, the base was usually the dreaded delta muck. You dared not drive into any such pool unless you could see a nearby coconut tree to attach a winch to, as the worst usually happened. Fortunately, coconut trees were plentiful and for some strange reason, the track seemed to weave in between them.
We got to the fishing village to find a fishmonger loading his vehicle with his seafood purchase. The way the system worked then was that if just one trader arrived, the trader could buy the prawns dirt cheap. If there were two traders, the catch was auctioned. Business customs meant that one trader would buy the entire catch in order to force his rival to return empty, incurring a loss. The alternative was for the out-bidden trader to sleep in the car for the night and hope that the next day’s catch was decent.
Pinoc inquired about the prices and figured out that even after adding all expenses, he could make a hundred percent profit if he sold the goods in Dar. He would make a two hundred percent profit if he sold the goods in Germany. Any mechanical mishap on the safari would mean a hundred percent loss for that trip, as these were perishable goods.
Just as we were about to leave the fishing village to return home, we spotted a 12-meter boat with an outboard engine, returning from the sea. We decided to wait and see what the boat held. It turned out that the boat was empty, but I spotted a Makonde man on board.
The Makondes were one of the most easily identifiable tribes because they had face and body tattoos. Christian missionaries made them drop their tattoo traditions around the period of independence but by then, the Makondes had already built their reputation as honest people. The men were and still are the best wood carvers in Africa. The women were in demand as domestic workers in the cities.
My nanny used to sing a Makonde lullaby to put my sisters to sleep and I knew the tune. So, I went close to the Makonde and started humming the lullaby. We started talking and he eventually asked me if I wanted to see the “Man-o-war.”
Did I ever want to see the man-o-war? The SMS Konigsberg was a German cruiser that sunk several British ships in E. Africa at the start of WW I. After a mechanical problem, the cruiser entered the unchartered, shallow waters of the vast Rufiji delta to hide. Unable to pursue it, the British blockaded the delta and then brought in an aircraft from S. Africa to locate the constantly repositioning cruiser. The aircraft located the cruiser and then gave live updates to the gunships targeting it, which resulted in crucial damage to the cruiser. This was a pivotal battle of the war in E. Africa.
The Makonde said he could take us to the ship’s grave in 40 minutes, if we could provide him with ten liters of petrol. He explained that we had to return to sea and then take another little used channel up into the delta. The wide opening at the new channel soon narrowed to passages that were just twenty meters wide, before opening again. The Rufiji River carries a lot of sand and its course changes almost every year. We noticed that the channel sometimes felt deep and sometimes we could see the bottom, just three meters below. “What sort of a German captain would sail his cruiser into these parts?” I wondered. Within a little while, the delta banks became crowded and featureless with 10-meter high mangrove trees dominating the shorelines in every direction. Only one who had travelled extensively in the area would know how to navigate into or out of here.
After rounding one bend, we saw what looked like the rusty outline of a steel vessel, just 50 meters in front of us. Silt and shifting sands had uplifted the vessel such that all but one meter of the vessel was above ground. There were mangrove plants growing on its former deck. Ten-meter-high mangrove trees guarded the back of the vessel, almost engrossing it. The steel plates of its side were rusted to the point that they were paper thin with holes in them. Most of the vessel’s steel ribs were visible. A huge gap on the starboard side of the ship suggested that opening was made by the entry of a shell. It seemed a miracle that the vessel still stood upright.
A thick anchor chain dropped from the bow but stopped just short of the water. Around the front portion of the ship was a stinky, five-meter wide, ditch filled with stagnant water that almost looked like a moat. Infront of the ditch was a white sandbank the size of a tennis court that had a dozen crocodiles sunbathing on it. Adult crocodiles in Tanzania are usually four meters long. The crocodiles on this sandbank were giants, at six to seven meters. There also were four large vultures sitting on what remained of the funnel. Nothing was moving. This bleak scene seemed straight out of a Hollywood movie.
Pinoc remarked that Indiana Jones would have to sprint across the sandbank, somehow traverse the foul water moat, clamber up the anchor chain, fight off the vultures, get into the hold of the ship and remove the gold before the vessel collapsed upon him.
Wait a minute! The vessel had just one funnel. That meant that the treasure this ship carried was coal, not gold.
SMS Konigsberg was also known in Swahili as “Bomba tatu,” because of it had three funnels. The shelled vessel in front of us could only be the S.S. Somali, the collier to SMS Konigsberg.
The first generation of my family that arrived in Zanzibar owned the S.S. Somali. In the 1890s, the steamer made weekly voyages between Zanzibar, Pemba and Mombasa. Once a month, the ship would sail to the Comoros. The S.S. Somali was not making money and had an affinity to running aground, so it was sold. Nevertheless, I felt a strange affinity to the wreck in front of me. It was inviting me to board!
When WW I broke out, the captain of the SMS Konigsberg figured out how to meet the S.S. Somali at high seas, without radio contact. When the warship was forced to enter the delta, the collier had to follow with the crucial fuel. The British got wind of where the cruiser was and blockaded the mouth of the delta. The SMS Konigsberg kept changing its hiding spot, advancing further into the delta and out of range from the British naval guns. So, the British sent for an airplane from S. Africa. When the airplane got the coordinates of the cruiser, the British fired upon and critically damaged the SMS Konigsberg.
The Germans dismantled the guns from their crippled cruiser and blew up the vessel. Then they fashioned large wheels of steel and rolled the guns all over Tanganyika, until WW I ended. With the best motor equipment, seventy years later, we were traveling at just eight kms an hour in the delta. Brute force and inhumane conditions were the only way the Germans could have moved those guns.
I looked at the S.S. Somali wreck and again the draw was immense. As a family member, I knew one thing that others did not know. In every property that the family owned, there were one or two gold sovereigns hidden in a round, yellow tobacco tin. This was to be used as an emergency fund, if you were in a sticky situation. So, I asked Pinoc if he wanted to board the vessel with me and conduct a quick search of the wreck.
A loud noise or a gunshot would send the crocodiles scurrying. Beyond that I had no plan. Pinoc’s reply was to assure me that we had cold beers in our vehicle and suggested that we should retreat there before we decided our next move. Our guide informed us that there was no way anyone could carve a track through the swamp as mangrove trees lined the banks for several hundred meters around the wreck. Before leaving, I tossed a coin into the moat to assure myself I would return to the place. I needed a picture of the wreck to share with family members.
I don’t know whether the coin landed on heads or tails but a decade later I was living in Toronto when I received a copy of the family’s history in Zanzibar. Ignatius Pereira, then based in Australia, had written to Lloyd’s of London to trace what happened to the S.S. Somali. It turns out that after the ship was sold, the new owners changed the name of the ship and it then plied off the coast of India. The S.S. Somali wreck I saw in the Rufiji delta was another ship with the same name.
The SMS Konigsberg was sold for scrap soon after independence and nowadays only divers, on clear water days, can see what’s left of it. The S.S. Somali still stands a hundred and ten years after it was shelled.
I always wonder if others get the summons to board it.
A loud noise or a gunshot would send the crocodiles scurrying. Beyond that I had no plan. Pinoc’s reply was to assure me that we had cold beers in our vehicle and suggested that we should retreat there before we decided our next move. Our guide informed us that there was no way anyone could carve a track through the swamp as mangrove trees lined the banks for several hundred meters around the wreck. Before leaving, I tossed a coin into the moat to assure myself I would return to the place. I needed a picture of the wreck to share with family members.
I don’t know whether the coin landed on heads or tails but a decade later I was living in Toronto when I received a copy of the family’s history in Zanzibar. Ignatius Pereira, then based in Australia, had written to Lloyd’s of London to trace what happened to the S.S. Somali. It turns out that after the ship was sold, the new owners changed the name of the ship and it then plied off the coast of India. The S.S. Somali wreck I saw in the Rufiji delta was another ship with the same name.
The SMS Konigsberg was sold for scrap soon after independence and nowadays only divers, on clear water days, can see what’s left of it. The S.S. Somali still stands a hundred and ten years after it was shelled.
I always wonder if others get the summons to board it.
S.S. SOMALI PICTURES
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