In early 1930, officials in Lindi town, then the capital of Tanganyika’s Southern Province, became aware of a famine going on in the remote rural district of Tunduru, about 200 miles further west.1 Over the next few months, it generated a fair amount of correspondence between offices in Tunduru, Lindi, and Dar es Salaam, and led the Provincial Commissioner, Mr Hallier, to institute a campaign of food distribution. Different official observers came to fundamentally different conclusions as to the causes of the famine and the means to prevent its recurrence. The limited oral record available on Tunduru, meanwhile, focuses for this period on labour migrancy and the aftermath of slavery, rather than hunger.2 As the famine passed, official interest in this remote district dropped off again rapidly. Nevertheless, the limited record of the events available to us repays study for several reasons.