Western Tanganyika Territory was one of the most neglected regions by the colonial government. This changed in the late 1920s, when the British administration considered relocation programs to counter and control the epidemic spread of sleeping sickness. The following study focuses on one region within the Western Province, Utongwe, and specifically on a tour of the area in the 1930s. By emphasizing processes of visualization and visibility of historical archive material, the article demonstrates the embeddedness of different agents and the transfer of knowledge in interregional contexts. It foregrounds people and perspectives that were often ignored in Western narratives about African societies of that period. In doing so it uncovers the ambivalence within the processes of the reproduction of a colonial order, and the re-reading of colonial documents.