Two by Two
CONCRETE OVER BONE
Different Weight in Different Cultures ⬗ /13th August, 2026
It was a very peculiar sight, the "second" roundabout in Lindi: on one side it grazed the main road while two major streets ran straight into it. One had to be attentive, as other road users could appear suddenly and from nowhere. Perhaps that was why it caught my attention when, one day, they began building something on its central island. Actually not unusual for Tansania. On most roundabouts you find a clock tower, the Big Five, a monument or at least colorful flowerbeds. But this here was different.
Every time I passed I stretched my neck to catch a glimpse of what was happening. First they set up a towering scaffolding. Then they deployed reinforcement bars which were shaped like a body with four legs. Aha! It is going to be a giant animal! But for an elephant the neck was too long and a giraffe did not have that sort of a tail. Next time they had already put mesh on the reinforcement and were plastering it with concrete. Now I saw it: it was an enormous dinosaur! But what place does it have in Lindi?
I asked the German doctor who lived and worked here. "When the Germans were still in the country, they dug out the sceletton not far from here."*) "Look at that — we Germans again!", I thought. And the dinosaur's bones are now collecting dust in the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. Yet, this concrete and steel replica almost looked real after they had put paint on it. I was flabbergasted!
Not long after that I talked to a Tanzanian about this dinosaur and asked him whether Tanzania would want the excavated bones returned. He laughed, looked me straight in the face and replied, "What should we do with these old bones?"
Alexander Breitenbach
*) Note:
The Tendaguru Formation , about 60 km north
of Lindi Town, was first discovered by the German engineer Bernhard Wilhelm Sattler in 1906. After Sattler had written a
report, the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin (from 1907 until 1913) and later the British Museum in London (from 1924 until 1931)
launched several collecting expeditions to retrieve a number of enormous dinosaur skelettons. They are now on
display in the respective museums.
Photo: "Dinosaur Roundabout in Lindi Town", by Evelyn Breitenbach