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African Stories: The Doldrums. Kilwa Kasiwani, Tanzania, Africa.|| Oberholzer: A New York travel magazine was interested in seeing my images of Oman. The picture editor mailed me and said there was a God-Almighty blizzard about to hit New York and she'd come back to me when she could get back to work. So, just to glamorize matters, I replied that I was stuck on a dhow off the coast of Tanzania in the doldrums. (a colloquial maritime expression of equatorial low pressure with complete ocean stillness). That sounded quite lekker, you know, the complete opposite to a blizzard. This actually did happen in the year of 1990 when I was on an assignment for Tanzanian Breweries. The logo for this beer campaign was that the Tanzanian population would have their beer delivered, ---- ‘Come what may'. Our entourage travelled to some of the most isolated and inhospitable places in the country to photograph thirsty locals receiving their boxes of beer. A refrigerated breweries truck filled with beer accompanied us. At one stage we found ourselves on the Indian Ocean coastline south of Dar es Salaam, where a cargo of beer was usually ferried to islands on wooden dhows. So one quiet morning, Safari Lager set sail on two dhows with a motley crew, assistants, art director and photographer. Beer to the island of Kilwa Kasiwani, ‘come what may'. After a couple of hours we were beset by an ever-increasing stillness, the silence broken only by the limp flap of a sail and the creaking of a wooden mast. Massive cumulus clouds hung as if painted on a canvas. The heavy atmosphere slowly wrapped our two dhows in the listless quietude of the doldrums. The sail stopped flapping and the ocean stopped lapping. Another few hours of inactivity and stagnation passed. No ripple, no flap, no lap-lap, no nothing ---- ‘come what may'. A crewman threw a fishing hand-line into the pond. I took a picture of the beer and the dhow and the clouds on the pond. The brilliant art director tied a bottle of beer to a line and let it sink down to the cool depths of the Indian Ocean. We all followed suit. The fishing dude changed his bait to a bottle. Intermittently, we were pulling up and drinking chilled Safari Lager from the ocean. The island of Kilwa Kasiwani remained were it was, on the horizon. The brilliant art director ordered that we should fill the empty bottles with seawater, replace the caps and return them to the boxes. When the coastguard found us toward early evening they were totally dumbstruck to find the loudest doldrums party ever recorded in African maritime history. As thanks for towing us back to port the ingenious art director gave them a box of beer ----the bottled saltwater one. ‘Come what may'. (KEYSTONE/LAIF/Obie Oberholzer)