Zanzibar - The Spice Islands

Since the last time I was able to do some blogging, I made it to Zanzibar. It was my first time ever going there and it was part of a CIEE trip that we took over the weekend. Instead of taking the ferry there which only takes about two hours and I hear is like a giant, floating daladala where they try to just cram a bunch of people onto it, we took the twenty minute flight in a 15-passenger plane instead. This was the first time I had been back to the airport since I first arrived so long ago and it brought back some memories of how things have changed since I first got here. The airport is a dump; that’s no lie. I used to think that a city of this size would have flights coming in and going out at all times and surely it must be a major destination but Dar es Salaam just isn’t like that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the airport by Kilimanjaro or the one in Zanzibar actually aren’t busier because they might get more tourist traffic than Dar gets business traffic. I can’t prove this though and that’s not what this story is about.

As our plane took off early in the calm Friday morning, we climbed steadily higher over the rusty tin roofs that make up just about every building in sight. For some reason, I sort of felt like I was leaving Dar for good as I realized what it’s going to be like to take off from here when all of my time here is done and I won’t lie, it actually made me kind of sad. I realized then and there that I’m actually going to miss this place and I’m just not ready to go yet. We’re at a strange time here because we’re so busy and I’m finally sort of feeling comfortable, getting into the swing of things but people are going to start leaving really soon. Our friend Kelly will be the first person from our program to go because she has to start school again in February to graduate this year and she’s only got about 10 days left. Time is flying with all of this work we have to do and soon, everyone’s going to be gone. (I’ve strayed from the story once again… sorry.)

The aerial view of Dar es Salaam was just fascinating though. It’s like going from being in a jungle and seeing only trees to stepping back and seeing the forest as a whole. You can’t help but wondering what’s going on at all of these different locations and how strange it is for you to be flying through the air 2000 feet above them and climbing. Then we reach the ocean and you can see all of the fishing boats are going out and the ferry that we would have been taking is putting along out at sea while the sun has only risen earlier in the hour. We touch down in Zanzibar outside of the main town and the view coming in does not reveal much. It doesn’t take long to realize that this place is most definitely geared towards tourism though and this was a sign of more things to come. We met our tour guide Jamal, boarded our bus and headed down the road towards the main town. It was easy to tell just from the architecture of the buildings and the way the roads went that the culture here is a little different, a little less hectic I would guess, than Dar. We saw communist style housing blocks, remnants of Tanzania’s experiment with two decades of socialism, stretching for what seemed like an eternity down both sides of this one street. It kind of reminded me of the projects, actually (well, okay, I’ve never actually been to the projects, but imagine if I had). Soon we were approaching the main part of the city and passed by the area we would later walk down, turning off onto another street towards breakfast at a small café.

It’s important to note at this point that the entire island of Zanzibar has actually been without electricity for more than a month now I think. Apparently something broke in the connection between the island and the mainland and things just take forever to get done here. If you recall, it was essentially the same story when we were on safari and the town hadn’t had electricity for two weeks (and counting) because some part broke that they apparently had only one of and had to manufacture or get from another country. I don’t know how much of these stories I actually believe or who’s accountable or what but it seems like this sort of thing is always happening. The generator industry is thriving here, let’s say, though the diesel prices could climb and throw everything into chaos. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before or not, but in the food industries here, electricity is pretty much only used for cooling drinks and lighting the place while all of the actual cooking is done using charcoal or gas (from tanks, definitely not coming from pipes laid in the ground). This is just what happens when you can’t even rely on things like running water.

We ate our breakfast chapattis and chai, generators humming just outside and next we headed to a local school. It was actually really cool to get shown around a secondary school and go into their classrooms. It was a kind of cultural tourism and I don’t know if this is something they always do or just something special that Ken set up through our tour guide but it was just really nice to do something other than the typical white tourist stuff (that comes later). We got to talk with the students and then go stand in front of a class where we wound up singing our national anthems to each other (I’ve got video of this). I enjoyed it, if you couldn’t tell.

Next, or at least I think it came next, we got to wander the streets of old Stone Town. Zanzibar’s history is rich and the influences of the past are very present in this part of town. The Sultan of Oman chose to set up his empire on Zanzibar as he was using the island to grow various spices and also as a hub for trade, mainly of slaves. When the British colonizers took over, a large Arab population remained behind where they were the business and political elites. After the British left, they put these elites in charge but this didn’t last long as the much larger black population had a revolution (the 46th anniversary of this was Tuesday of last week [we got the day off!]) and then the land and homes were redistributed to the people. Downtown Stone Town is characterized by narrow streets and old buildings that are influenced by architecture from the Middle East and also India. UNESCO has deemed it a world heritage site so the buildings are not to be torn down and alterations have to occur under specific guidelines. They have very notable doors with these spiky metal pieces on them, an idea originating in India where they were intended to keep elephants from knocking down your front door as the spikes would pain their sensitive trunks if they tried to feel the doors. There is a difference between how the Hindus made their doors and also how the Muslims did but they are still somewhat similar. Today, Zanzibar’s population is 95% Muslim, mostly because of the Oman influence, though there are still Hindu temples and some different churches that are still around from the missionary era and colonial era. There are, of course, countless mosques all around the city as well.

Walking down the narrow streets, dodging bicycles and motorbikes as we see all of the cool stuff that surrounds us, you could see the story of this town quite clearly. It most definitely was once an area where only the most wealthy lived but after the revolution, the common people were given the rights to these extraordinarily lavish homes. They were just normal people though, which means poor people, so they weren’t able to maintain them and they have been decaying over the years. The tourism industry is changing that though and the ground floor of all of these buildings are now shops full of the most tourist-oriented items you can find in Tanzania. The city is becoming gentrified and if I return in 10 years, it will be nothing like it is now as more of the homes will probably be hotels or offices or something for the tourism industry. I won’t lie though and say that I wasn’t in awe the whole time. At this point in the day, following our scenic flight and walking these beautiful streets, I was taking so many photos that I was thinking I might reach my record from the safari. It was just a cool, cool place and hopefully I’ll get some photos up on facebook to show what I mean.

We did the rest of the touristy things after walking through the market which was arranged like any other market I’ve seen in Tanzania but all of the shops were trying to sell stuff to white people, not the locals. We saw the slave trading place and went in the dungeon there which was pretty horrendous. I think we forget too often just how awful that whole thing really is and it’s hard to believe people really did such bad things to other human beings. They built a giant Catholic church on the grounds there after they stopped the slave trade legally (apparently it was still happening in secret at a different point on the island). The church was pretty cool though and it still gets used every Sunday I’m quite sure. I asked Elise “Is this sacrilegious?” and started playing air guitar on the altar and she said “yes” so I stopped. Then we left the place to walk through this old fort they built and then went to the House of Wonders which is now a museum. After lunch, we got back on our bus to head across the island to where we would be staying in a town called Paje. The beachside hotel we stayed at was very nice, of course, though everyone spent most of their free time working on homework as we can’t spare a minute anymore at this point in the term.

We got a chance to do some more cultural tourism the next day when we went to a local coastal village where they grow seaweed. It was interesting see and nice to actually get walk through their village and see how they were farming the stuff as an entourage of children followed us around. It was also kind of depressing though because they’ve really only been growing it for the last ten or twenty years because they need to supplement their family’s income so it’s not like we were seeing some cool farming thing that had been around for generations. They get screwed too on the prices as it takes about six kilograms of the stuff when it’s dry just for them to make the equivalent of one USD. On top of that, the stuff eventually just gets exported to France, I think they said, to go into cosmetics and stuff like that. I don’t want to be judgmental; I just wish that we were able to see where our products really come from because we take our unnecessary luxuries for granted so much because the packaged product is so different from the initial phases. It was kind of surreal to have to leave this village so that we could go snorkeling too… it just made me feel too bourgeoisie. We walked down the beach to where we were renting our masks, snorkels, and fins from and walked past some Italian resort which was essentially an Italian Sandals: Zanzibar. That was a little strange too.

One side note I’d like to throw in now is something that I’ve written about often before when I talk about how I prefer to do the cultural tourism things more than the normal white person things. It sucks being a tourist no matter what, but at least we get to use our Swahili and talk to local people instead of remaining completely disconnected from the Tanzanian people. To many of us, it seems like Ken is trying to market this CIEE program as sort of a program you would sign up for so that you could see nice beaches. I don’t feel like that’s what any of us signed up to see in a country where the vast majority of people live on less than two dollars a day and I’ve struggled with this all the time that we really don’t have any feel for what it’s like to live in Dar es Salaam for a normal person. The only stuff we see is stuff that we do on our own and we really don’t have any assistance in finding these things, but that’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is that Ken tries to discourage us or tells us it’s a bad idea to actually go into the local neighborhoods or trust Tanzanians because it’s a safety issue. Well that’s just a reality of Tanzania and I would rather face reality than spend four months here without ever actually experiencing what life is like here. Now, back to Zanzibar.

Snorkeling, even in overcast weather, is a good way to sunburn your back. This was my first time ever snorkeling not in my neighbor’s pool and it actually was quite successful in the sense that I didn’t suck in a large quantity of water. We saw some cool fishes, had some close calls with some of them too, but it was pretty fun and I’m glad I did it. The guilt was there, don’t get me wrong, but if I’m going to be given the opportunity to do something for free (as in we already gave CIEE our life savings) you might as well enjoy it. The rest of the day was kind of the same as the day before, as in we relaxed and did some homework. Only difference is that we were finally able to get that elusive pina colada that has been just out of reach for about a month now.

Sunday, the last day of our brief trip, took us to a spice farm where we got to see, smell, and taste various fruits and spices. They had everything you can think of like star fruit, turmeric, vanilla, black pepper, and so on. They put on this little show for us at the end where this guy scaled a pretty tall coconut tree, sang some songs, and did some tricks (that guy’s not gonna live forever). I’ve got video of this so I’ll show you what I mean when I get back. We drove back to Stone Town where we were hoping to have more time to walk the streets independently before our flight but we were unfortunately behind schedule so we had to travel as a group. What this entails is Dylan and I sitting in various stoops while the girls shop in all of the touristy places that sell the same stuff as places in Dar, just at higher prices. I got some more good photos of the town though so I won’t complain. The flight back wasn’t as eventful as before, probably because everyone was too busy thinking about that looming pile of homework awaiting us back in the UDSM dorms. The brief flight was cancelled out by the traffic jam on the ground and we had arrived at last back to grind of the last two weeks of class.

Since this time, I’ve just been writing papers and doing all of these things. This next week-and-a-half won’t be easy for anyone but it’ll pass quickly. Hopefully I’ll have some more stories to share or something by the time I get a chance again. In the meantime, I gave you plenty to read and this ought to hold you over until next time.