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They thanked her and declined. She was turning to leave when Sam asked, “Ms. Kilembe, how long have you been with the library?”
“Thirty years.”
“And how long in this area?”
“All my life. I was born in Fumba, on Zanzibar.”
“We’re looking for anything on a ship called Ophelia. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Ms. Kilembe furrowed her brow. After ten seconds of thought, she said, “I assume you’ve been to the Blaylock already?”
“The Blaylock?”
“The Blaylock Museum in Bagamoyo. There’s a charcoal sketch there of a ship. Unless my memory fails me, the ship’s name is Ophelia.”
CHAPTER 12
BAGAMOYO
OF THE TWO CITIES WITHIN EASY REACH OF ZANZIBAR , DAR ES Salaam and Bagamoyo, the latter was Sam and Remi’s favorite. With a population of thirty thousand, Bagamoyo is a microcosm of both traditional African and colonial African history without the big-city bustle of Dar es Salaam and its two and a half million inhabitants.
Founded by Omani nomads in the late 1700s, Bagamoyo has at times been home to Arab and Indian traders of ivory and salt, Christian missionaries, slave traders, the German East Africa colonial government, and big game hunters and explorers bound for Morogoro, Lake Tanganyika, and Usambara.
“Here’s something we didn’t know,” Remi said, reading from the guidebook as Sam drove. “David Livingstone, in all his years in Africa, never visited Bagamoyo—at least not alive. He was brought to Bagamoyo after he died and was laid out in the Old Church Tower, now called Livingstone Tower, to wait for high tide so they could ship his body to Zanzibar.”
“Interesting,” Sam said. “I’d always assumed he’d used Bagamoyo as a staging area just like everyone else. Okay, we’re on the outskirts. Where’d Ms. Kilembe say the museum was?”
Remi plucked the Post-it note from inside the guidebook and read: “Two blocks from the old German boma, a fort.”
“Which one? There are two, I think the guidebook said.”
Remi flipped over the note. “That’s all she wrote. Guess we’ll have to check them both.”
They found the first a few hundred yards north of three of Bagamoyo’s biggest tourist attractions: the crocodile farm, the Kaole Ruins, and a five-hundred-year-old baobab tree. They parked on the dirt road before the crumbling whitewashed fort and got out. A teenage boy walked by with a donkey on a lead. He smiled broadly and said, “Jambo. Habari gani?” Hello. How are you?
In halting Swahili, Sam replied, “Nzuri. Unasema kiingereza?”
“Yes, I speak little English.”
“We’re looking for the Blaylock Museum.”
“Oh, yes, Crazy Man House.”
“No, I’m sorry, the Blaylock Museum.”
“Yes, same thing. Other boma. One kilometer up. Livingstone Cross, yes?”
“Yes. Asante sana,” Sam replied.
“You’re welcome, bye-bye.”
With a click of his tongue, the boy continued on with his donkey.
“Your Swahili is improving,” Remi remarked.
“Just don’t ask me to order food. You won’t like what we get.”
“What did he mean ‘Crazy Man House’?”