Chapter 70 Mombasa
March 11, 1867.
Mombasa is the only port in East Africa that is as famous as Dar es Salaam. This port was built by the Arabs in the 11th century.
Now with the signing of the East Sang Treaty, Mombasa, the second most important port of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, has also fallen into the hands of the East African colonies. In order to improve the operational capabilities of the Mombasa Port, the East African colonial government began to transform the port’s infrastructure.
Today, Mombasa has a maximum temperature of 33 degrees Celsius and a minimum temperature of 22 degrees Celsius.
Working at the port during the day is still a bit stuffy, but it is still within the tolerance range.
Colonial soldiers are commanding black slaves to push wheelbarrows to and from the port area to transport sand and gravel, and all the dredging of the port area is done by black slaves.
These black slaves are all assets of the Sultanate of Zanzibar. Because the colonial handover work has not been completed, they were temporarily expropriated by the East African colony.
Except for the soldiers and black slaves who supervised the transformation of the port, most of the rest were Chinese workers and immigrants from the Austrian Empire.
In order to renovate and repair Mombasa, an important port city, the government of Mombasa, a colony in East Africa, has taken out the cement at the bottom of the tank.
Cement in the current colony is still sent from Europe by ship, so the quantity is limited.
Mitrovic, an immigrant from the Austrian Empire on the pier, is directing his workers to build the buildings on the pier.
Mitrovic is a Yugoslav farmer from the southern part of the Austrian Empire. Fortunately, this guy has attended two years of school and participated in the work of building a church in his hometown, so he was appointed as a foreman by the Mombasa colonial government to direct the workers. construction.
These days, farmers themselves know some crafts, and some tinkering is naturally a no-brainer. After all, most of the one or two dilapidated houses in the family can be passed down for four or five generations.
So cement, a new thing that Chinese workers have not been exposed to before, can be mastered very quickly as long as the immigrants from the Austrian Empire take the lead in demonstrating.
Several workers used iron drills to pry off the loose and decayed masonry, and even some rammed earth foundations.
The staff next to them shoveled the knocked-off masonry and soil residue into the wheelbarrow compartment with a shovel. After the whole vehicle was full, it was pushed to the shore and dumped on a temporary pile of soil. These waste materials may be used to pave the road later .
"Here, we have to build half a meter." Mitrovic said to the workers.
He held the measuring ruler, turned the ruler body outward, cut off the scale at half a meter with his hand perpendicular to the ruler body, and paid attention to the Chinese workers.
"So, understand?" Mitrovic said.
This is the disadvantage of the language barrier. The communication between the two parties requires a lot of body language. Although both parties can speak some German, there are not many.
Many of the immigrants from the Austrian Empire knew German, but more people only knew the local dialect in the Austrian Empire. They only knew a sentence or two of German, and they might have heard and learned it from the ruling nobles.
The Chinese immigrants have also received German education, mostly temporary classes run by the colonies, teaching some simple vocabulary and phrases.
But there was not enough time, and there was no environment to use German. After all, the early immigrants were basically Chinese except for the German mercenaries, and there was no room for German. Even the students of the Hechingen Military Academy were responsible for the translation work.
However, the recruitment of workers in the East African colonies was not foolish, and they made full use of this point. Only old immigrants who can also speak a little German are eligible to be workers in the colonies.
In the colonies, the number of workers was quite small, but from the moment they left the fields, the status of Chinese immigrants was improved a step.
At present, soldiers in the East African colonies are larger than workers, and workers are larger than farmers. And only by knowing German (at least a little) can you become a worker and soldier, otherwise you can farm the land honestly.
Chinese workers have at least reached the same stage as those who continued to engage in agriculture among the immigrants from the Austrian Empire, and this is reflected in wages.
Immigrants from the Austrian Empire are not fools. They can't get the benefits, and it's not easy to get away with a full meal.
They may not have the ability to resist the colonies, but they still have the courage to fight for the legal rights and interests of the colonies.
After all, when they set foot on the ship to the East African colonies, they still had a little yearning for a better life in their hearts.
The East African colonial government did not disappoint the immigrants from the Austrian Empire. Although the money they received was small, it was stable. Moreover, there were almost no entertainment venues in East Africa, so there was nowhere to spend the money. The money is also considerable.
Of course, now the colonial government has started to use the accounting system. After all, the East African colonial government cannot print money, so the money in the hands of immigrants is "virtual".
When they need it, they can use the ledger to withdraw from Hexingen Bank, but this method has only been used by German mercenaries.
German mercenaries only came to East Africa to make money. Strictly speaking, they are not immigrants, so their families are in Europe, and they can also keep in touch with their families in Europe. It just takes some time, and sometimes they need money at home. Xinggen Bank advances his salary and sends it to his family.
…
As dusk approaches, the Port of Mombasa has been remodeled by more than half.
After all, in Africa, there are no commodities that can be sold, so the cargo volume is not large, so the scale of Mombasa Port is not large in the world.
At most, it has some status in one-third of an acre of land in Africa, which is why the repair work in the colony is progressing so fast.
Of course, the use of slaves also contributed a lot. Currently Mombasa is still in the handover stage, and the local residents of the Sultanate of Zanzibar have not been completely withdrawn, so the slaves plundered from Uganda and other places are temporarily requisitioned by the colonial government.
After the ships were emptied, the East African colonial government packed these black slaves and the residents of the Sultanate of Zanzibar and sent them to Zanzibar Island.
Because of Majid Sultan's stupor in his later years, the port of Mombasa was in disrepair for a long time, and the silt was deposited, and the transportation capacity was greatly reduced.
The current most important industry in the East African colonies is agriculture, and food, as a bulk commodity, requires a large amount of transportation.
Not to mention that there are immigrants, machinery, and merchant ships from various countries berthing, all of which require the East African colonies to prepare more excellent ports.
And Africa is a continent that lacks good ports, so it is necessary to use the current ports.
Currently, Bagamoyo Port is also under construction. By then, the East African colony will have four excellent ports of Dar es Salaam, Bagamoyo, Tanga and Mombasa at the same time, which will greatly solve the problem of transportation capacity.
After the renovation of Mombasa, the port road was doubled, and the road was paved with a thick layer of gravel and construction waste.
The wharf was reinforced and widened, unreasonable structures were demolished, safety hazards were gradually investigated, and old facilities were replaced.
The current capacity of Mombasa Port will be about 1.5 times that before the transformation, as the most important port in the north of the current East African colony.
Mombasa will replace the port of Dar es Salaam and the port of Tanga. After the opening of the Suez Canal in the future, it will undertake the reception of merchant ships in the direction of Europe and Asia, and become the most important and largest port in East Africa in the future.
(end of this chapter)