1. Explore the Amboni Caves
Twenty minutes north of Tanga town, there’s a very small sign on the left side of the road: “Department of Antiquities – Amboni Caves”. The rough sandy track winds through scrub and low-hanging tulip trees, through the yards of several small houses, and dead ends in the thick copse of fig trees.
The caves are considered the “jewel in Tanga’s crown” – in fact, the only formal tourist destination. But there’s never anyone there. You will have the guide and the deep, creepy limestone caves to yourself. The system has never been fully explored, and so stories abound of its extent, which could be hundreds of miles or only a few.
In my book, Shame, I refer to the tale of a couple who went missing when trying to find their dog. This is one of many you will hear on the 30-minute, torchlight-only tour. You may want to bring your own incense and rosewater (and prayers) to make an offering at the small pagan shrine near the entrance. Outside, there is a small gift shop selling the usual trinkets. Please tip the guide. His salary is a pittance.
2. Wander through the European cemetery
Any taxi will take you. If you go by bike, ride up to the Bombo Hospital, take a right, poke around the sandy lanes behind the Popatlal School, and you will find this quiet, overgrown place.
During colonial times, the graveyard was reserved exclusively for Europeans and is thus a testimony of the white experience in equatorial Africa: graves for numerous infants, women who died in childbirth, men who succumbed to malaria. One section is given over to the British soldiers, mostly from the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, who died in the appallingly executed 1914 Battle of Tanga. (The German soldiers who died are in another graveyard; the Indian regiment has been altogether forgotten.)
The graveyard holds one great mystery: seven crew members of an American plane that went down off the Tanga coast in 1956 are buried here. I have never found out their story, not a trace of it. Who were they? Why were they buried here, not repatriated? My writer’s imagination runs to the salubrious: 1950s Africa and the cold war. Were they American spies?
