After a two-week bush safari in Zambia, a friend and I, craving the exotic and beaches, flew from Lusaka to Zanzibar. Zanzibar is a small coral island, 80 miles long by 24 miles wide, off the coast of Tanzania in
After a two-week bush safari in Zambia, a friend and I, craving the exotic and beaches, flew from Lusaka to Zanzibar. Zanzibar is a small coral island, 80 miles long by 24 miles wide, off the coast of Tanzania in the Indian Ocean. From Stonetown, Zanzibar’s principal town, to Dar-Es-Salam, capital of Tanzania, is a bumpy two-hour ferry ride.
Arriving in Stonetown in the dark of night, the island felt mysterious, echoing the spice and slave trades for which it was at one time famous. Our first hotel, formerly the Emerson and Green, now called “236 Hurumzi,” was a 19th Century building where slave owners brought their slaves to be freed in exchange for cash. Now, nine suites, each decorated like visions from the Arabian Nights, house curious visitors like ourselves.
The island, a trading crossroad between Arabia, India and Africa was at different times controlled by the Portuguese, the Sultanate of Oman, and the British. It gained independence in 1963. A resident told us that the CIA advised the government that Zanzibar couldn’t survive as an independent country and should align itself with a larger neighbor. They chose Tanzania and the residents, who pay taxes to that country, have been complaining ever since that they get little in return.
The narrow winding cobblestone streets of Stonetown are lined with shops overflowing with clothes from India, spices, art work, even authentic African masks. We made friends with Masai warriors, who for a few months a year, tend street stands selling trinkets and jewelry. The proud Masai, one of Africa’s most recognizable tribes, have fallen on hard times.
Masai culture revolves around their cattle herds which are being decimated by severe droughts in Tanzania and Kenya. Also central to Masai life is a rite of passage in which young boys, 12 to 14, must kill a lion singlehandedly. Now, those governments’ need for foreign exchange means saving lions for visitors to photograph is taking precedence.
The Zanzibari architecture and people reflect the chronology of its rulers. Now somewhat shabby, yet still beautiful, Arab architecture lines the harbor. The people, an exotic mixture of ethnic backgrounds, speak Swahili. The language originated on the island and then spread to East Africa. Some speak English.
Most visitors to Zanzibar are Europeans who go to expensive, all-inclusive beach resorts and spend their time sunning, snorkeling, rocking in hammocks and eating. We happily stayed in Stonetown at a delightful $50-a-night beachfront hotel, the Tembo (Swahili for elephant), with an excellent beach restaurant next door.
We wandered and regularly got lost in narrow car-less streets. With our friend Mohamed, we bought spices and rose water in a 1,000-year-old market and visited a spice farm and a red coleus monkey preserve.
I temporarily tattooed a hand, arm and leg with henna, a custom Zanzibaris adapted from India. Often we rented a dhow, an ancient style of sail boat. With Shariff, our captain, we sailed to deserted islands to snorkel in clear aqua waters and gather shells.
In Stonetown the best entertainment is what one resident called “African street theater.” We’d sit in our beach restaurant for hours trying to be patient with vendors and watching trucks getting stuck in the sand as they tried to load a cargo ship bound for Tanzania.
At dawn, sipping black Kilimanjaro tea on the beach deck of the hotel, I watched men practicing calisthenics and bathing in the sea. In orange-lavender sunsets, children, maybe 6 years old, and young men practiced Kapolei, Brazilian martial arts, on the beach, doing backward somersaults into the sea.
The dress and clothing of the residents was a visual feast; Masai dressed in traditional red, women in Indian saris and kangas, traditional cotton sarongs made in Africa. Many Muslim women were covered from head to foot in black with peep holes for the eyes. I bought a kanga with Barack Obama’s photo printed on it. He is wildly popular in Africa.
I had taken with me as little giveaways 50 Barack Obama political buttons. People of all different ethnicities begged me for them. I could have easily given away 200. The Africans we met from Zambia, Tanzania and Zanzibar feel he belongs not only to the USA, but also to them. Repeatedly, they expressed patience that he would have many difficult challenges to overcome but that he was moving in a direction that would make the world a better place to live for us all.
I hope we Americans are as patient.
