The afternoon was hot and humid and flies buzzed inches from my nose as we drove along a rough track that petered out at a tumbledown stone gateway. A wooden pole barred the way, half lying across the entrance. Tall trees draped with creepers created a thick canopy and in the darkness below them a shadowy silence lay thick and dense. Leaving our car, we ducked under the barrier and edged along the overgrown driveway, only the occasional glimpse of sky and blue sea in the distance lighting the way.

Suddenly massive crumbling walls towered over us and I craned my neck to gaze up at moorish arches filled with leafy vines and fig leaves. Maybe it’s Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, I joked under my breath to cheer myself up as a sturdy thorn pierced my shoe. Ahead of me others, including John Da Silva, a friend and artist from Zanzibar, bashed their way through the undergrowth. John had brought us to a place called Mbweni - pronounced imbwaynee - which apparently means “the place of shingles” in  Kiswahili. He told us that over the last 70 years, no-one had lived here and the buildings have gradually turned into ruins, generally thought to be of a Sultan’s palace.

Falling behind, I turned in a different direction and soon their voices faded until I was alone. There was a steady hum of crickets buzzing in my ears. A dim doorway beckoned and I stepped into cool darkness. A bell was ringing insistently overhead and the air rippled past my face. Suddenly I could hear young girls singing in harmony. They were kneeling around me on woven palm mats and the music rose past tall columns topped by arches. Nuns and teachers knelt on either side in dark wooden stalls and black and white marble steps led up to an altar at the end of the room. A blaze of light flooded  white marble inlaid with greenish mother of pearl. Gold candlesticks and banks of flowers stood on the altar, fronted by a white cross. Overhead the ceiling was flat, of white plaster interspersed by dark poles and every so often a huge buttress spanned the room.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw two girls whispering and giggling. They froze as a dark shape loomed over them. An elderly woman in a black dress with a flash of white collar came close. As she leaned down I saw her lined face and kindly smile. The girls, subdued, adjusted their red headscarves and white embroidered caps and straightened their neat red dresses. “We know of course that these buildings were not a Palace, they were a Christian Seminary”, John’s voice intoned. Startled, I moved out into the sunlight and walked through a long narrow building with arched cloister-like verandas facing the sea, which lay below us in a blaze of shining turquoise. On the shady side was a garden with two enormous cycad trees. Their thick trunks were over a metre in diameter and branched at about the height of a man. Shiny narrow dark green leaflets feathered and cascaded every which way, shading two cows who had wandered into the garden and were cropping the rough grass.

We made our way down to the beach below the ruins and just before we reached the shining white sands we found ourselves wading through a deep layer of clam shells. Could these be the shingles after which Mbweni was named? The tide was out, leaving  flats interspersed with pretty green mangrove trees. I watched people walking, some of them quite far out near the coral reef which surrounds all of the islands of Zanzibar. They were bending down and digging in the sand - when I went to look closer, I could see that they had found “chaza”, a kind of baby clam. Back on the beach, two old ladies sat in the shelter of the coral cliff, boiling a pan full of the shellfish. When they were ready, they picked them open and ate them with gusto, flinging the shells over their shoulders afterwards. Looking up from the beach I saw the grey walls of the ruins rising from a cliff above the sweeping bay. To the north the bay came to a rocky point and in the distance was the Stone Town, surrounded by anchoring ships. The atmosphere of the place was serene and friendly.

Returning to our car we drove down the road to a mellow coral stone church with bell tower and steeply sloping red roof. In the cemetery was a forest of crosses. The sextant proudly showed us the grave of Caroline Thackeray, a cousin of the British novelist. John told us that the Anglican “Universities’ Mission to Central Africa” - usually known as the UMCA - had bought a large piece of land at Mbweni in 1871, and built a mission for freed slaves there. There was a village where families lived and the orphaned children boarded at boys’ and girls’ shools. The ruins we had visited were of the latter, and had been called St Mary’s. Caroline Thackeray had been headmistress for about 25 years. As we left, I looked over my shoulder at the crennellations overgrown by fig trees and felt a pang of pity for the neglected place.

Two years later we found ourselves buying the piece of land just to the south of the ruins. We made plans to build a small hotel and as we worked, excavating the foundations and watching the walls take shape, I glanced from time to time at the lonely pile next door, draped with clambering vines and vegetation. One day our neighbour asked if we were interested in buying the property as he didn’t have the time to develop it and the ruins were disintegrating daily. At first we were reluctant to take it on but eventually we went ahead and added it to the land we already had.

In 1992 I began to plant palms near the lovely old cycads. Now the total species of trees and shrubs in the gardens numbers over 800, including over 150 types of palm - more than in any other botanic garden in Tanzania. As it is forbidden to bring plants into Zanzibar, I had to send for seeds from all over the world and raise them painfully slowly. Palms can take from 3 to 12 months to germinate and after that it’s years before they reach a substantial size. However, all the seedlings and cuttings we planted at Mbweni seem to thrive in the good soil and pleasant atmosphere so that after only five years we have plenty of good jungly patches. Botanic name plates were added and have proved to be of especial interest to visitors. Zanzibar has many exotic fruit and spice trees, which were imported by the Sultans and by Sir John Kirk, British Consul General and adviser to Sultan Barghash. Kirk had a house down the road from the church and when he left Zanzibar in 1887 Caroline Thackerary bought it from him and retired and eventually died there, after 50 years’ service at Mbweni. The exotics which Kirk brought into Zanzibar from Kew Gardens in England and from the far east and South America, are nearly all represented in the Mbweni Gardens. I planted two royal palms in the courtyard of the ruins and these have done best of all - possibly there may be an underground water tank that we have not yet found! At first, as I wandered around, inspecting every wall and arch, I felt frustrated because I knew so little about the history of the Mbweni Mission.

One day I went to the Zanzibar Museum and found quite a lot of references to it as well as two very small Brownie Box Camera black and white photographs of the facade of St Mary’s. I was directed to the Archives, which are in excellent shape under a charming, academic scholarly gentleman called Hamad Omar. I was allowed to spend as much time as I liked studying the history of the UMCA and saw handwritten logbooks from St Mary’s, letters from Stanley, Livingstone, Kirk and many others. In the Archives were the three volumes of the UMCA History. This book, started in Victorian times and continuing on until 1957, revealed the fundamental secrets of our ruins and at last I found out what daily life had been like there when it was a school for freed slave girls.

In the Archives there were some wonderful photographs of missionary gatherings - of ladies in tightly corsetted white silk dresses and black-suited, waistcoated gentlemen with stern expressions - and of mission buildings and groups of emaciated slave children freed from dhows. I found out that the land at Mbweni was bought in 1871 and St Mary’s opened in 1873 as a school for girls. The chapel was added a little later and the long “Industrial Wing” beside the cycads was finished in 1887 and used to teach the less academic girls skills so that they could support themselves. In 1911 the Anglican Sisters of the Sacred Passion moved in and in 1920 the property was sold by the church, partly out of despair because despite the best efforts of the missionaries, Mbweni was apparently a centre of witchcraft second to none - and partly because after the abolition of slavery in 1896 there were fewer children coming in to the school.

When we bought the property in 1991 we puzzled over the various buildings, trying to work out what had happened there. When we dug the foundations for the hotel rooms, a little south of the ruins, we found we were cutting into layers of coral buildings going deep down into the soil. About one metre below the surface was a six inch layer of black ash, which seems to be quite extensive. We supposed that there must have been a major fire in the area. The coral rag and pottery we were digging up had to precede the Christian mission, it was far too deep. There is no doubt in my mind that Mbweni has been a settlement of some kind for a very long time.

In December 1994 we opened Mbweni Ruins hotel, which has only thirteen luxurious suites, a swimming pool above the sandy beach and a restaurant and bar opposite the rooms, on the top of the cliff overlooking the Indian Ocean. Many of the staff were part of the labour force which built the hotel. It has been fun working with them over the years and today almost every visitor comments on the friendliness of staff at Mbweni.

When we are asked why we don’t add more rooms, we are surprised. It’s so much fun having only a few people to look after in the airy and spacey environment of the hotel, why would we want to crowd it? We are not cheap, though we feel we’re giving fantastic value for money. There are plenty of hotels - in Zanzibar and elsewhere - that have large numbers of rooms, lower rates and a less special service. We are different. We will develop further, restoring the ruins and adding just six more luxurious hotel suites in the Industrial Wing. The main buildings will be part of the hotel, restored as they were, and used for the main entrance and reception. The rest of the rooms will be used for a library, museum, coffee shop, conference centre, aromatherapy centre and other services.

It hasn’t always been easy, getting the paperwork right, overseeing the building, training staff and learning what makes people happy in a hotel. But today we are pleased and proud to have a reputation for hospitality and friendliness, a haven for visitors to Zanzibar, beside the dreaming ruins of an almost forgotten era. Our management are a happy partnership of Europe with Zanzibar, as in the past times of these beautiful old mission buildings.

Zanzibar was the main entrepot on the east coast of Africa for the slave trade which operated out of central Africa from time immemorial until the 5th April 1897, when Sultan Hamoud bin Muhammad partially abolished slavery in his domain. Even after 100 years, the visitor can still see enough of slavery’s traces to be able to reconstruct those traumatic times.

A few years ago I decided to visit as many of the sites connected with slavery as possible, beginning at Mbweni Ruins Hotel, which lies in the grounds of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa’s “freed slave village” at Mbweni, five miles south of the town of Zanzibar. This was a positive place to start. From 1864 onwards, the Anglican missionaries did their best to care for slaves who had been freed from dhows by British naval ships, who were often worse off than the captive slaves, having no food, shelter or clothing. So a village, two schools and a church were built at Mbweni. The ruins of the school for girls can still be visited in the grounds of Mbweni Ruins Hotel.

The crumbling golden walls of the lovely old school chapel were warm with early morning sunlight when my guide, Idi Mohammed, a forestry oficer who now works with Equator tours, arrived to take my father and myself off in search of  former slave caves and chambers. Our first stop was at Mkunazini, in the Stone Town of Zanzibar, where the UMCA cathedral has been built on the site of the whipping post of  the slave market which was abolished in 1873 by Sultan Barghash. A young guide showed us around. He told us that the Anglican Bishop Steere obtained the land and began to build immediately. Seven years later, in 1880, the Christ Church cathedral was completed. Bishop Steere, who died in 1882, is buried behind the altar, whose mosaics were donated by Caroline Thackeray, a missionary lady who lived at Mbweni for nearly 50 years, from 1877 until her death in 1826.

On the left hand side, near the altar, we admired a cross made of wood from the tree under which David Livingstone’s heart was buried, after his death at Chitambo in 1873. The atmosphere in the cathedral is serene, and I felt the presence of an unseen congregation, many of whom may have walked across Africa in fear and pain, to reach the coast and Zanzibar before reprieved and coming to this peaceful place.

My father and I walked out of the church into the strong sunlight, passing a tall date palm which must have been planted more than 50 years ago. We cricked our necks, admiring the tall slim steeple and strange barrel vault roof, which was the personal invention of Bishop Steere. On the tower was a clock, keeping Swahili time: this was donated by Sultan Barghash, in return for the honouring of his request that the top of the spire be kept below the height of the House of Wonders.

Surrounding the church are many buildings of the UMCA, including the Bishops’ house, the orphanage and a school. To the left of  the Cathedral is the former UMCA hospital and St Monica’s guest house. Inside the hospital building is a flight of steps leading downwards to what appear to be slave chambers. They are open to public viewing; our guide went into graphic and patently innacurate details of the horrors which occurred in the past. There are two rooms, one supposedly for men and the other for women. There are small barred windows and concrete shelves.

We now drove westwards from the UMCA compound until we reached Kilele square, bordered by the Serena Inn and the Mambo Msiige building. This was the first Mission house of the UMCA, who sold it to the British Government for their Consulate in 1874, and moved to Mkunazini, as mentioned above. Kilele square is supposed to have been the site of the slave auction, before it was moved to Mkunazini. This seems likely, as it is at the outermost point of Shangani peninsula, right by the ocean, where slave dhows could have disembarked their cargoes. Today there is nothing to see except a peaceful square with a pretty garden.

We proceeded to the Tumekuja school nearby. This is not open to the public, as visitors would obviously disturb the scholars. However, Idi was able to get permission for us to go in and take a look. There are two buildings, comprising the French Mission, begun in Zanzibar in 1862. The one on the left was the former St Joseph’s convent and the one on the right was the French hospital, built in 1892.

We were led down some steps below the hospital, into a double chamber with rounded ceilings where tradition says that slaves were imprisoned. They were very beautiful, the light coming through the tiny barred windows causing the lime walls to glow. But there was nothing on the bare floors and no mark or sign to tell the history of this hidden place. Below the older convent building, was another, square cellar.

From the Stone Town we now drove for 20 km, which took about 35 minutes, on the road which leads north along the west coast to Nungwi. We passed Maruhubi, Mtoni, Bububu, Kibweni and Chuini palaces. All except the first two of these were “summer palaces”, built by the various Sultans to provide an escape from the town in the dangerous hot months, when epidemics of cholera, plague and smallpox were commonplace. At Bungwini we took a left fork and wound our way slowly along a bumpy road to the ocean. Another left fork brought us to the Mangapwani cave - t hough there is no tradition that this was used to house slaves, it is well worth a visit.

A slave boy working on the plantation of a wealthy Arab, Hamed Salim el Harthy, discovered this cave while looking for a lost goat. There is a spring in the bottom of the cavern, about 500 feet below ground. The water is clear, sweet and cool and the  nearby village still uses it today. Now there is a flight of steps and a rough pathway down to the pool. My father stayed at the foot of the steps and I climbed right down to the water and took a photograph of him looking very small, diminished by the distance between us.

Emerging into the now blazing afternoon heat, we drove northwards for a few minutes, through thick and prickly scrub until we came to the Mangapwani slave chambers. This was the climax of our trip. This time, descending into two damp rectangular chambers, each below its own hipped coral roof, there was no doubt in my mind of the original purpose of these subterranean rooms. The hairs rose on the back of my neck when we descended the wide central steps, moving into a heavy atmosphere which was not caused by the gloom and decay alone. Ferns sprouted from the walls and light streamed downwards - which certainly was not the case in the days when the chambers were in use. They were covered by a locked wooden panel and the whole structure was hidden from view. The three small slits in each gable end provided the only light and air.

According to the guide books, the Mangapwani slave chambers were built by Mohammed bin Nassur al Alawi and were probably used after 1873, when in spite of the the Sultan’s Decree that the export of slaves from the mainland should cease, the trade continued. We took a narrow and precarious trail down to the beach below, where the captives must have landed after their hazardous sail from Bagamoyo, or Kilwa and Mikindani, further south. Some remained on the island, sold to clove plantation owners or used as domestic servants. The rest re-embarked for Arabia and Persia.

The sandy white beach was pristine, the sea a stunning array of turquoise shades. The contrast to the horrible prison was striking; we were silent and Idi’s face was sombre and still. Then he smiled slowly and called my attention to something on the cliff above our heads. “Look”, he said. “Orchids - Angraecum eburneum”. I couldn’t believe it; clinging in a narrow layer of humus on the rocky face were spray after spray of flowering plants. Their waxy white petals and bright green lanceolate leaves sprouted in a glorious profusion. They reminded me of tears, the tears of the slaves who may also have raised their faces and smiled at this small miracle, a hundred years and more ago as they stumbled to or from the grim dhows. The salty scent of the ocean, borne on a light breeze, made me want to take a deep breath of air - I have rarely appreciated my freedom to do so as much as I did at that moment.

June 2008

Link to the safari story of Helen and Marvin Raulston

Suzane 12-Jul-09 We enjoyed our stay very much. "Asante"

Short 7-Jul-09 Spa, there was no Therapist Available

Campbell 28-Jul-09 Restaurant hours are too restrictive
Pool area & Beach too Small

Silfout 28-Jul-09 Highly recommended and I will do so to my town Operator who was not
familiar with the Mbweni Ruins Hotel

Ms Georgina Hall 11-Aug-09 Thank you Everyone at Mbweni Ruins Hotel. You Made my stay have so comfortable
Such Friendly Staff and a fantastic location. Definitely one of my top 5 hotels in the World.
Keep it up and hope to see you again soon.

Diana Nyakyi 22-Aug-09 I recommended Phones in the rooms for the convenience/safely of guests
( Should be able to call Reception)

Twine 5-Aug-09 Excellent Service!

Wilson 15-Aug-09 We had a Lovely time

Valitto 10-Aug-09 Truly sanctuary Highly recommended

Granston 18-Aug-09 Thank you so Much for a Lovely stay here.

Kenedy 27-Aug-09 Very nice, helpful & friendly staff. Thank you! Free Kayaks was a great Bonus

Busst 20-Sep-09 Very Nice Stay! Thank you!

Krista 12-Oct-09 Thank you we enjoyed our stay

Kastrup 18-Oct-09 Really nice Staff

Mercial 12-Oct-09 This is life paradise. Enjoyed is so much. Thanks for the beautifull room for us.

Yarrow 30-Oct-09 All your Staff have been Very Pleasant and very helpful we have been looked after very well-Thank you

"I enjoyed my stay here very much, it was just like in Paradise.
I am sure I will come again!"

Christina Osterstag,

GERMANY

"We came here by accident, but the stay was excellent"

Marcia & Bob Bailey

Austin, Texas

USA

"Perfect for post - safari recovery, I wish we'd stayed longer. Garden, Indian Ocean greatly appreciated"

Michael & Helen Palin

London,

UK

"Wonderful to arrive"

"Lovely to stay"

"Sad to leave"

Robert Sandbrons

"A lovely finish to a wonderful trip"

Marianne Everest

Bucks, ENGLAND

"I have travelled to many hotels, but this one is a memorable experience - small, intimate and very charming"
"Thank you for a wonderful stay"

Darshi Shah

UK

"What a lovely and peaceful place"

IM Lauryssen

BELGIUM

"Friendly service surrounded by romantic flowers complemented the quiet solitude of our exotic vacation.
We hope to visit again, will honor our friends
with a recommendation to come to Mbweni Ruins Hotel."
“Thank you! Asante!”

The Waters Family

USA

" Paradise Found"

Wendy - ENGLAND

Craig - SCOTLAND

"Another jewel in our travels through Africa"

Marissa and Laurence Lasky

Sausalito, California, USA

"Very good food and friendly team, great Sun"

Adriana Oancea

Paris, FRANCE

" Paradise waiting to be discovered.
We came wanting to do nothing but relax & that what we did. Hope to return - sometime."

Peter & Susan Brier

Lincoln, ENGLAND

“We will be back!”

Jonathan & Heather Ebertson

SOUTH AFRICA

"We enjoyed every minute, the quiet and the seaview"

Carmit & Benny

ISRAEL

"Very good - great stay and peaceful, try to keep it as it is"

Antonia - Lissy

ARGENTINA

"Excellent hotel, Excellent food"

“Thank you!”

Elena Tseue

GREECE

"Absolutely Magic! hope to be back"

Alison Pearce

Hout Bay, Cape Town, SOUTH AFRICA

"Very pleasant gardens. We loved the bushbabies at dinner"

Karen & Glenn Hori

Pleasant Hill, California, USA