'In the 1950s Zanzibar was still visited by ocean-going baghala dhows, each capable of carrying up to two hundred tonnes of cargo from Oman. The Sultan of Zanzibar still ruled the island from his palace in Stone Town. His son Ali went to the same school that I was attending in Mombasa in the 1960s. The scene depicted in this painting is one of my favorite places in Zanzibar. This cove lies 100 yards from Kelele Square at Ras Shangani Point, the original place where slaves were sold and traded in Zanzibar. Near by to this square there is a small hotel that in a different era used to be the Zanzibar Club (as famous world-wide then as Nairobi’s Muthaiga Club is today.)
Livingstone would have visited this small harbour and paradoxically it would have been in much better repair back then as shown by the vintage 1910 German postcard which depicts the same scene as my painting below, but when Zanzibar was a German colony. The postcard shows the position of the German Consular building (under the flag). The evils of slavery and colonialism are now long gone and this locale is now becoming more ancient (and interesting looking) with every passing year.
I have known this island and this particular cove for sixty years. My father’s company Martin & Paul Tanganyika Ltd. did some work on Zanzibar’s harbour in the 1950s and 1960s. They were even contracted to refurbish the electric lifts in the Sultan’s Palace (when there was still a sultan). We lived in a house right next to this little cove for a few months in 1953. I was too young to appreciate it but its effect on my mother and father were profound – filling them with the romance of travel to exotic locations. '

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