Zanzibar

Once Saumu was settled in school and everything seemed to be in place in Tanga, I headed down to Dar es Salaam and caught a ferry over to Zanzibar in hopes of catching the last few days of the Sauti Za Busara (voices of Wisdom) East African music festival. Fed up with the escalating drama and politics surrounding my work with Saumu, I was REALLY looking forward to a day of diving, wandering the narrow alleys of Stone Town in search of fresh coffee and kicking back at beachside restaurants with a cold beer. Not everything worked out as planned, though, as I discovered that the island was without electricity (since December 2009!) and accommodation in town was scarce with so many tourists in for the music festival. Flights from Tanga to Zanzibar were booked also, so I had to settle for the 5 hour bus ride from Tanga to Dar and the mass of scammy con artists outside the Zanzibar ferry terminal. After calling about 15 guesthouses and hotels in town I managed to get a booking at a guesthouse who admitted that they didn’t have a generator, or running water.


I got to Zanzibar without a hitch and met Regina, from South Carolina, USA, who had also just arrived in Stone town for the music festival and was staying at the same sub-par guesthouse. We decided to hang out together for the evening so we wouldn’t have to wander home through all the alleys in the dark on our own. We picked up some local food – chapatti, mishikaki, saladi and sugarcane juice at the Forodhani gardens outside the old fort, then went into the music festival for an evening of East African music. The music was a bit strange - there was a taraab group and some Kiswahili singers, everything on the edge of modern and not exactly what we were expecting, but pretty cool nonetheless. The event was staged inside the old fort, so despite the lack of electricity, there was still a massive stage against one wall of the fort, with a varied audience from all over Tanzania and the world. I had to laugh on several occasions when locals started speaking in quick Kiswahili to Regina (she’s African-American) and little white me would have to jump in to translate and reply when they realized she didn’t know the language at all. I think we confused a few locals.

I spent another day wandering through alleyways and little curio shops, booked a dive and checked out the open food market and music festival again on my second day in Zanzibar. My friend Salim from Tanga was in town as well, so he helped me find the local market to buy a new kanga and a good local restaurant for some chipsi mayai. Regina and I went to the music festival again, and I really enjoyed the second night’s performances. My favourite group was a Ugandan Dance group, which performed some traditional dances and songs with a bit of modern flair. The energy these guys had was unreal – some of the most genuine smiles and laughter I’ve seen from performers in ages. Another Tanzanian reggae artist performed a set that got the locals and hippie tourists going, making for a really cool evening under the stars in the old fort. I never did find cold beer on Zanzibar though...

The highlight of my time in Zanzibar was definitely the day of diving on the reefs around Stone Town. I managed to coerce Regina into trying snorkelling for the first time, so she joined me for a day out on the Indian Ocean. We set off early in the morning after swapping out stuff over to another guesthouse with running water and a generator (luxury!) and had an awesome day out on the boat and swimming amongst fantastic coral, colourful fish and white sand beaches. While I didn’t spot any whale sharks or manta rays, I thoroughly enjoyed weightlessly drifting around with clownfish, yellow boxfish, massive schools of little bait fish that looked like miniature cyclones, massive butterfly fish and tons of bright fairy basslets. I still finding diving to be my favourite form of meditation; there is nothing better than feeling weightless, listening to nothing but your own breathing and the crackling of the coral reef and slowly swimming around with loads of beautiful creatures.

The shower with running water was SO GOOD at the end of the day too. I had one more day to search out the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop I found 2 years ago and loved so much, buy a few of my favourite Zanzibari scarves, send a few postcards home, and track down another book to read seeing as I’d finished the 4 I’d brought from home. Regina and I headed to the upscale Africa House hotel for sundowners on the open balcony and enjoyed a couple (expensive) passion fruit martinis on our last night. Feeling relaxed and back into travel mode, Regina and I headed back to Dar on the ferry the following morning and I made my way to the south beaches of Dar es Salaam to meet my African Trails truck and begin the next chapter of this journey...