The boatbuilding community of Huwair, where our Meshouf-building workshops were held, had no direct experience of constructing Zaimas, but some locals remembered them being built and used as recently as the 1990s. They agreed to attempt to reconstruct reed and cane canoes, drawing on their familiarity with these widely available local materials (also used in vernacular architecture), as well as the evidence we’d collected in the form of oral history interviews – recorded in both Huwair and Amara – and the photographs and writings of Thesiger. The results of these experimental workshops are outlined here.