Category: Zanzibar

We had the morning free so we slept in.  We were supposed to have lunch at the hotel, but we decided we wanted to go to a Swahili restaurant which was listed in the Lonely Planet’s “Best Restaurants in every Country” guide.  Ali took us there and it turns out that his nephew works there.  His nephew explained what everything was and we picked what we wanted to eat.  We had way more food than we could possibly eat but it was fun for Rick to try lots of different dishes.  It cost us $23, bargain.

After lunch we headed to the airport.  We said a sad goodbye to Ali and Suleiman and boarded the plane for Nairobi.  In Nairobi we were picked up by Lydiah and William. They took us to a restaurant for dinner and then dropped us off at the international airport. Our flight left at 11:55pm. We were surprised to see Douglas and Nathalia, friends from Amboseli, on the plane. They were supposed to have left for Bali when we flew to Zanzibar, but I guest they postponed because they got food poisoning somewhere along the way.

We flew all night and arrived in Dubai at about 6am and then caught our flight to Boston. Luckily the plane was almost empty so we were able to stretch out and sleep. Thank you to Randy and Karen for picking us up at the airport. It was overcast and cold when we got home. It was about 85 degrees in Zanzibar and 55 degrees in Boston when we left. Ugh!

We got home to our new kitchen.

We started the day with a walking tour of Stone Town.  Ali had told us not to walk in the alleys at night so we had generally avoided them.  He took us into the alleys and it was like a whole new world.  It reminded me of Venice with all these cute narrow walkways.  We learned to about doors.  Historially doors were a sign of wealth.  The doors were heavily carved often with chains along the door frame.  The ones with chains either had a single, double or tripe chain which represented how many slaves you owned.  Some doors had verses of the Quran over them.  The square door frames were Arab and the one that had a rounded portico over the door were Indian.  Many of the doors had large metal spikes (that were dull at the end).  This design came from India were the spikes were used to prevent the elephants from trying to enter.  Many of the restored buildings had traditional Indian balconies.  The construction was plaster over stone.  If the plaster is not well maintained mold grows under the plaster and delaminates it. 

The next stop on our tour was the Anglican Cathedral.  Zanzibar was part of Oman in the late 17^th century and at one point was the capital of Oman.  It was during this period that the slave trade was in full swing.  Livingstone came to Zanzibar and saw the slave trade.  When he returned to England he reported what he had seen and the English decided to come and shut down the sale trade.  It officially end in 1873 but unofficially didn’t end until 1907.  The Anglican Cathedral was built over the old slave market as a way to “purify” the space.

An aside…from Wikipedia…

Sir Henry Morton Stanley (born John Rowlands; 28 January 1841 – 10 May 1904) was a Welsh explorer, journalist, soldier, colonial administrator, author and politician who was famous for his exploration of Central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone, whom he later claimed to have greeted with the now-famous line: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”. Besides his discovery of Livingstone, he is mainly known for his search for the sources of the Nile and Congo rivers, the work he undertook as an agent of King Leopold II of the Belgians which enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and his command of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He was knighted in 1897, and served in Parliment as a Liberal Unionist member for Lambeth North from 1895 to 1900.

More than a century after his death, Stanley’s legacy remains the subject of enduring controversy. Although he personally had high regard for many of the native African people who accompanied him on his expeditions, the exaggerated accounts of corporal punishment and brutality in his books fostered a public reputation as a hard-driving, cruel leader, in contrast to the supposedly more humanitarian Livingstone. His contemporary image in Britain also suffered from the inaccurate perception that he was American. In the 20th century, his reputation was also seriously damaged by his role in establishing the Congo Free State for King Leopold II. Nevertheless, he is recognized for his important contributions to Western knowledge of the geography of Central Africa and for his resolute opposition to the slave trade in East Africa.

Slaves were brought from all over eastern African to Zanzibar to be sold.  They were held in small unground cells that would often flood with sea water during high tide.  When it was their turn to be sold they would tie them to a tree and whip them so the potential buyers could see how strong they were. The floor of the church shows where the tree stood and has red marble to represent the slave blood spilled there. 

There was a slave museum associated with the church which provided more history.  It was all very overwhelming.  One important thing that we learned was that slavery is still very alive today and there ware between 21 and 36 million people living in modern day slavery today, more than were seized during the entire African slave trade.  The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that illicit profits of forced laborto be $150 billion a year

Other random historical facts:  Tanzania was communist for many years. Communism fell in the early 90’s and that’s when it opened up to the world.  Ali said everything, including food was very limited during the communist era. 

Another random fact:  Fred Mercury was born in Zanzibar so there is a museum in his name.  We didn’t go there.

After the church and slave market we went to the regular market.  The government is building a new market so portions of it were on the street.  We started with the octopus and fish markets which, as with other third world markets, there was no refrigeration and a lot of flies.  All the fish vendors were together and I asked Ali how he picks who to buy from.  He always buys from the same man.  He know that his fish is fresh and won’t make him sick.  This vendor builds loyalty by extending credit when you don’t have enough money or adjusting the price if you are a little short.    

Next stop the chicken market where you can buy your chickens alive or if you want to eat it soon they will kill it and clean it for you.  Ali rarely eats chicken because it’s quite expensive, about $12/chicken. 

We then walked through the streets and to the palace of the Sultan Seyyid Said from 1828 until it was largely destroyed by the British bombardent in 1896. It was rebuilt and used until the 1964 revolution when the last sultan was overthrown. It was renamed the People’s Palace during the communist period. It used to be open as a musuem, but it is unstable and therefore closed. We went into the Old Fort that was built by the Omani after expelling the Portuguese in 1699. 

We then went to lunch at our favorite restaurant.  Rick worked on his presentation for the sailing club that afternoon.  That evening we went to the Africa House to watch the sunset and to have a drink.  The Africa house was where the English congregated in colonial times. 

At breakfast we saw boats coming back loaded with people (typically 10-12 men).  Ali says they are fishing boats and they fish all night.  We have seen the kerosene lamps that they use to light their work on the horizon at night.  It’s very dangerous work because they use nets to catch fish and the men must get in the water to spread the nets.  Needless to say, in the dark it is easy to lose someone.

This morning we went to a spice farm.  Zanzibar is well known for its spices.  The climate and its history as a port on the trade routes made it a logical spot for spice farming.  Spices are grown in the center of the island because the other areas are too inhospitable for the plants due to presence of significant quantities of coral rock.

The farmers showed us a sample of spices grown on the island.  It was very interesting to taste the fresh spices and compare them to tastes we are accustomed to. They were all far more intense.  We were surprised by the form some grew in.  For instance turmeric is a root, with an exterior skin that looks like ginger, cinnamon comes from the bark of a tree, and cloves from a flower.  Zanzibar boosts the world’s best cloves.    

Ali guided us but we also had a young man who got the spice samples for us to see/taste.  He was continuously working, making stuff out of reeds and hibiscus flowers.  By the end of the tour I had a hibiscus ring, bracelet, necklace, basket and crown and Rick had a hibiscus tie and a crown.  Here is a picture of us in our geeky finery. 

We also saw the original method for building a house which consisted of a lattice structure, packed with mud, with a palm leaf roof.  The mud and roof need to be replaced every couple of years so people have moved to a more sturdy construction. 

We returned to the hotel for lunch and that afternoon we walked around town.  It was very hot.  There is a lot of Arab and Indian influence in the architecture. 

We went to a park where food vendors set up shop for the dinner crowd.  It seemed as if vendors had the same thing, mostly kababs of fish and meat.  Of course they was no refrigeration and lots of flies.  The kababs were packed in newspaper. The whole thing didn’t seem very sanitary to us. 

Almost all the ladies of Zanzibar wear hijab, the traditional muslim head covering. Some wear Niqab which is a veil that covers the face, showing only the eyes. Most wear an abaya which is a shapeless, floor lenght cover up. All in all they must ve very hot because I’m hot and I don’t have all those clothes on!

We walked back to the hotel.  The food at the hotel isn’t very good so although our meals are paid for we went down the street to another restaurant for a pizza. 

We were up early to go to see the red colobus monkeys which are endemic to Zanzibar.  It was a 45 minute drive to Jozani National Park.  The road was one of the best roads we have been on in Africa. 

Ali commented on how much the population had spread into the “burbs” of Stone Town.  There has been huge population growth, there were 475k people in Zanzibar in 1978 and today they estimate the population at 1.8 million The road was widened several years ago and some of the houses had been chopped through the middle to make space for the road.  Many of these houses still showed the scars of the chopping.   There was a lot of poverty and people sitting around.  Ali told us that the unemployment rate is 30%. 

We arrived at the park at the same time as several buses full of people.  There is a cruise ship in the harbor and one of the excursions is to see the red colobus monkeys.  There was a monkey family living right by the parking lot, so we saw them pretty much immediately.  These monkeys eat unripe fruit because sugar is toxic to them.  If they inadvertently eat sugar they will go in search of charcoal to neutralize the sugar.  They have very long tails because they only have four fingers on their hands and no thumb.  They use the tails to help hold on to branches.  They were playing/fighting and they fell off the branches a lot.  These monkeys are on the endangered species list. Only about 5,000 Colobus monkeys remain today. 

Also living in the park is the Zanzibar blue monkey.  These monkeys look quite similar to the red colobus monkeys, but they have a thumb and a shorter tail.  Their diet does not overlap with the red colobus so they don’t compete for food and live together peacefully.

After watching the monkeys we took a walk through the forest and Ali pointed out many different species of trees.  There were a lot of small mahogany trees which are protected. Hopefully they’ll grow to be big mahogany trees. 

Next we crossed the main road and went to look at the mangrove trees.  I learned a new fact about mangrove trees.  Mangrove trees live in brackish water so they need to eliminate the salt that they take in.  They do this by pushing the salt to a few of the leaves which cause the leaves to turn yellow and fall off. 

We watched a group of singers and dancers at the park. Ali said they were for the tourists but more importantly they were trying to spark an interest in younger Tanzanians to preserve their culture.  

We had a late lunch t a a good restaurant up the street from our hotel.  That afternoon we got caught up on the blog.  We had a very light dinner at the hotel and then lights out.