Lamadi, watertower with drums and other Tanzania Local Custom Tips

At the Lake Victoria near Lamadi Jan Willem our tourleader built a new lodge with two partners from Denmark.

At the moment of our visit they were busy with the water tower. The watertower had to be covered with soil. Afterwards it will be planted.

During the job a drummer was stirring up the hard workers !

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It looked like this drummer did the biggest job at the work site, stirring up the other workers with his drum.

Also in other parts of Africa people use to support and stimulate workers by singing and clapping hands.

We did it in Ghana - where I was volunteering for some weeks- especially if there were not enough tools for everybody to do the work.

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The traditional dhows became the maritime symbol of East Africa. The art of sailing was allready known for two millenia to the east Africans. The main dhow building centre was at the north coast of Zanzibar Island, where the teak forests were.

In Zanzibar town you can book an one-day cruise at a dhow, visitng a sandbank, a reef and two islands. Also common are the 8 M long mashua dhows, that shuttle between Zanzibar and the mainland. I didn't sail with a dhow myself, but enjoyed to see them sailing at the ocean.

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In the 19th century the doors and doorframes became the favoured means of expression the grandeur of one's mansion. The elaborately carved Zanzibar doors in the white-washed walls became the most important feature of the external appearance of the house. Its quality and size were a mark of status and wealth of the owner.

In Zanzibar are 277 such doors, the largest concentration along the Swahili Coast, allthough they were diminishing, sold to tourists and hotels.

Some doors plain with only decorated doorframes and lintels. Other doors have also carved centre posts and are studded with dhow nails and reinforced at the back with cross bars of iron and wood.

The design of the doors with iron or brass studs came from the Indian continent, originally used as defence against war elephants. Allthough there were no war elephants in Stone Town, the studs fitted well in the Arab ideal of defence of their residence.

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