Building a Ngalawa Double-Outrigger Logboat in Bagamoyo, Tanzania: A Craftsman at his Work

When the ‘Asset’ Is Livelihood: Making Heritage with the Maritime Practitioners of Bagamoyo, Tanzania

“…One partial exception to the dearth of scholarly engagement with Tanzania's contemporary maritime cultures is boatbuilding, where a limited degree of interest has emerged with respect to Tanzania's contemporary construction practices-mostly from European researchers [69,70] although more recently by the present authors (with other colleagues) [32,33]. Indeed, there has been a history of outsider interest in certain, lim-ited aspects of local boatbuilding since early last century, often focused on ostensibly 'exotic' technologies, such as sewn construction and outriggers, and their imagined origins [71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78].…”

“…Materially, these engagements are apparent through the number and range of wooden watercraft visible on the beach and at sea (Figure 4A-H). These include the ngalawa, mtumbwi, and mashua ndogo logboats, and the plank-built mchoro, mashua, ngwanda, and boti la mtando that we have documented elsewhere [32,33]. Most of these crafts use sails, most numerously the ngalawa and mashua.…”

“…Meanwhile, a fortuitous encounter with master boat-carver, Mr Alalae Mohamed, opened up an unforeseen opportunity for knowledge co-creation: he educated us in his process of building a double-outrigger ngalawa logboat-the region's most common fishing vessel-and allowed us to record this from start to finish (Figure 8B). We were, as a result, able to document Mr Alalae's craft both in the form of a conventional academic article and as a Swahili-language documentary film (with English subtitles) entitled 'Ngalawa Making Film', made by members of the UDSM team: each is openly available online [33]. This engagement served the dual purposes of recording a master builder's creation of this important vessel in unprecedented detail, while also publicly celebrating both his skills and the ngalawa as the region's most popular fishing vessel.…”

“…An etic heritage lens might make easy work of the contemporary maritime milieu of Bagamoyo, and of East Africa more broadly. There are few regions of the world where wooden watercraft-plank-built and logboats-continue to be built extensively by skilled artisans and used in such variety within the maritime economy [32,33]. Our documentation of watercraft in the Zanzibar Channel identified five types of logboat and nine types of plank-built vessel [32].…”

“…The word 'dhow' is notably etic spelt this way, while 'canoe' in this context is generic and inappropriate ( [84], pp. [33][34][35].…”