Mr Dam

Stories came through to us later about a few [Germans] who were awkward. One was a Dr. Ekhart at Mbeya, who was sent back to Germany in one of the first exchanges of prisoners.

There was also a Mr. Dam, who was known to be a fiery character and had left his wife and children on a farm on the southern side of Lake Rukwa and gone off into hiding. He was missing for some time but was eventually caught on the border, trying to enter Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique), and was interned. This man caused quite a lot of trouble whilst a prisoner of war, but when the war was over, he was allowed to remain in Tanganyika because of his wife and children. His wife, with two small sons, remained at Sumbawanga, running their farm alone and when lions worried their cattle, she was reputed to go out hunting them alone, with a pack of Ridgeback dogs. She survived the war very well, when one considers she was the only European, with her two little boys, in a vast and unfriendly area. It was said that she and her husband did not live together again.

He [Mr. Dam] later married an Englishwoman and they had another family and farmed at Esimingore on the eastern shores of Lake Manyara. Sad to relate, after Tanganyika's Independence in 1961, he and a girl-friend were murdered - chopped up badly by persons unknown and left for dead, and the farm has reverted to bush.

He [Mr. Dam] later married an Englishwoman and they had another family and farmed at Esimingore on the eastern shores of Lake Manyara. Sad to relate, after Tanganyika's Independence in 1961, he and a girl-friend were murdered - chopped up badly by persons unknown and left for dead, and the farm has reverted to bush.