Boat Building in Zanzibar

FEATS  OF  ENGINEERING

                                         

At the age of eleven, my enterprising older brother Eustace, who was perhaps the most creative and venturesome brother that anyone could ever have, decided that he was going to build a boat to enable him to go out fishing for the BIG ones.

All that he knew about boat building is that the material to be employed had to be wood. He also knew that most of the required materials that went into his ambitious project had to be either donated or obtained by begging for them from the many retail shops around town.  The precious wood was finally obtained but it came in the form of empty crates that most shops were only too happy to give away.  Hardware, such as nails were obtained by ambitiously saving the sometimes crooked nails that came from the empty crates and painstakingly straightening them with considerable risk to his fingers.  His tools were an ancient hammer and a beaten-up saw.

Eustace had no boat plans.  At his age, even if a plan was given to him, he would not know what to do with it.  However, the human eye is a wonderful tool unto itself.  Eustace went to the beach at “Smith Mackenzie” where several boats lay on the beach away from the beckoning waves.  He spent a good ten long minutes looking at the construction of one of the boats, after which he felt very confident that his dream boat would soon become a reality.

Eustace spent many tireless hours after school building his boat.  He built it on the third floor of our three storied building (Kitaruni) with little foresight that eventually, on completion, it would have to be lowered down two very steep and suicidal stairways leading to the road. There was a whole lot of sawing and hammering and much swearing that went on for a week or so.  Finally, Eustace came up with the final product….a boat….or something that resembled a boat. 

Word got around “St. Joseph’s Convent School” that the launching ceremony was to be held that Sunday after the eight o’ clock Mass, usually referred to as High Mass.  All the boys full of curiosity and who knew Eustace were at the “Band Stand” beach a hop step and a jump from St. Joseph’s Convent School.   There was a slight delay in Eustace showing up because, as was predictable, the boat needed a whole lot of help not only to be lifted but also to be brought down those dangerously steep stairways at the house.

Finally, Eustace and a whole entourage of his friends were seen carrying the boat towards the beach. It almost resembled a Muslim burial.  Eustace’s chest was as far out as it would go with pride.  He led the way.  I had never seen a prouder person.  All his friends viewed him with the deepest respect. They looked at him as though he would be next in line to receive the Nobel Prize.   Of course, Eustace was always a person of few words, and it is best that those words were not articulated.  Eustace accepted praise as he would an insult so it was best to simply smile one’s approval rather than say anything that needed a vocal response.

Finally, the boat was placed close to where the waves of the Indian Ocean gently came and licked it.   Eustace was handed a bottle of “Vimto” with which to Christian his boat. (He was too young to buy a bottle of champagne and there was no provision in his lean budget to buy one anyway.) It was a ceremony (perhaps a ritual) that had to be done since this was done whenever a ship was launched.  He saw this in the British newsreels at Empire Cinema the week before. Ships were being launched and shortly thereafter torpedoed.   He made a short speech full of choice invectives and this brought about a thunder of laughter. The boat was to be named “The New Titanic.”  Little did Eustace realize that the name itself was a bad omen.  He then ceremoniously took the Vimto bottle and struck the front of the boat in an effort to break the bottle.  To everybody’s shock, the entire front of the boat came apart but the bottle of Vimto stayed intact.  As though that was the most normal way for a boat to behave, Eustace got a hold of his tired hammer and made sure that the dislodged front end would never ever come apart again. The front of the boat was shining with all kinds of nails that were used to keep it in place.

Now came the grand finale which was the launching. Hundreds of eyes were focussed on this final test.   Eustace sat in the boat and ordered two of his friends to push him out to sea.  He took his oar and commenced rowing frantically away from shore to the lusty claps of all those who came to watch their hero.  When he was about twenty feet from shore, however, the boat started doing what submarines are expected to do.  It started taking on water.  In a couple of minutes, the boat sank and disappeared from view.  Eustace could be seen dog stroking it all the way to shallow water and towards the safety of shore.

None of his friends dared laugh at him for this apparent failure or it might have meant a missing tooth.  Eustace returned to the launching site late that night when the tide was out to retrieve his boat.  When he got it home, weighing twice as heavy, he discovered that the boards had expanded considerably.  It then became obvious to him that he had used the wrong lumber which had the property of soaking up water when exposed to it.  Marine wood was what he needed, and this remained in his mind until many years later when he found work and was able to bring in an income.  He was then able to pay for the best material in his attempt to build another boat.  By this time he had also become literate in reading boat plans and was now able to avoid all he pitfalls that come from infantile ignorance.

As he put it to me years later, more went into planning the Kon Tikki rafts than in the construction of his first boat.   He now produced a boat that was his pride for many years and which gave him much pleasure for all the remaining years that he spent in Zanzibar.  

Unfortunately, the crowds that were a witness to his first humiliation were not present to give him the standing ovation that he now richly deserved.

My brother Eustace passed away a few years ago.  Needless to say, I miss him a whole lot.  My only consolation is that he is up there and is probably building himself another boat that will take him into unchartered areas of the universe with God as his Captain.  Happy sailing !!!