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Information on Tanzania
Bagamoyo
History
This small town has played various historical roles in Tanzania. Apart from being a slave and ivory port, it was also a German headquarter in 1891. Explorers such as Burton, Speke, Grant, Livingston and Stanley all passed in this town. The name Bagamoyo comes from Swahili words "bwaga moyo" (throw down your heart), a despair expressed by people who were captured as slaves of knowing that they face a long uncertain future. Lies 75 kilometers north of Dar es Salaam.
see also Kaole Ruins in Bagamoyo
The Bagamoyo Church: It was was built in 1868 and considered to be the first church in East Coast of Africa . A cemetery, where the early missionaries were buried and a small shrine which was built by freed slaves in 1876 are all seen. "We are told that between 1934 and 1991, 35 Dutch priests worked here” The last of this long line of priests from the Netherlands was Father Frits Versteijnen who stayed in Bagamoyo for 30 years and started the first museum in the old Fathers’ House in March 1968. The second Fathers’ House in Bagamoyo, constructed close to the Mother of all Churches in East Africa, has also fallen victim to the corrosive effects of the coast region’s relentlessly humid climate. Its ground floor was built in 1873, the first floor in 1877 and the second floor in 1903.
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