Day 27 - Zanzibar

It has certainly been an eventful past few days! I apologize in advance for the length of the post, but I haven't had a chance to update my blog. I'll try to list the highlights of each day, beginning with the day we arrived in Zanzibar.

On Tuesday, we took a 2.5 hour boat ride to the island from Dar. The ride wasn't too eventful until we came closer to the island. I was standing outside when there were two huge whales fairly close to our ship! It was an amazing sight. Several times they jumped completely out of the water and created a huge splash. Then as we passed them they repeatedly flapped their fins and tails against the water. Definitely a great welcome to the island. It was also an amazing sight seeing the dhows in the port as we were approaching the island. After we arrived on the island, we checked into our hotel in Stone Town, which is the largest historic city on the island. The city (as well as the island) has been occupied for over 300 years. The architecture is absolutely stunning. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures on my phone (so I can't upload them to the blog), but I was sure to take a lot of pictures on my camera. We had a tour of Stone Town later in the afternoon, which featured palaces and other buildings constructed by the Omanis when they ruled Zanzibar. After the tour we were all exhausted, but for dinner we found a great seaside street market with a lot of vendors selling different types of food. It was a tourist mecca, but once the vendors knew you spoke Swahili, they enjoyed talking with you. The first night I had Zanzibar pizza - a famous meal on the island (pizza is a misnomer - it's completely unlike the American variety). After dinner a few friends and I walked around Stone Town some more - and with its narrow, winding streets, that can sometimes be an adventure in itself!

On the second day, we toured the Jozani Forest, which is on the southern end of the island. Zanzibar is actually much bigger than I had initially assumed. It took roughly 30-45 minutes to drive to the forest (granted the speeds were a little slower). It was very interesting to tour this section of the island. Once you leave Stone Town, you leave nearly all tourists and get to experience the "real" part of the island. The forest is known for its population of collubus monkies - and did we see them! We were walking along the path, when suddenly there were proabably about 10 monkies in the trees surrounding us. They were quite the sight. I have a few pictures and videos of them jumping from tree to tree (about 5 feet above my head). They were very active when we were around. We then left the forest and went to the nearby beach - which was stunning. There were ngalawa (massive canoes carved completely from a tree trunk) in the water (which was bright blue) and coconut trees lining the beach. We didn't go swimming there, since we left the beach and went to speak with a woman who owns a seaweed farm on the island. It was fairly awkward, since 15 American students piled into her modest home to stand in her living room. We then talked about seaweed farming and the demands of the job. It is incredibly hard work and incredibly low paying. She was telling us that since the work is so hard, and since seaweed doesn't sell for that much in the markets, men don't partake in its collection or sale. I definitely felt uneasy standing in her house while we were talking about her poor work conditions. After about 30 minutes we left, and went to lunch at a hotel on the beach. The water was incredibly warm and very shallow. I ran out into the Indian Ocean with a group of friends for probably 15 minutes, and the deepest part was probably up to our waist. Even then, it didn't show any sign of getting deeper. We returned to Stone Town in the evening and returned to the market for dinner. This time I had shark for the first time and lobster. The lobster was okay (I'm sticking to the northeast's variety) but the shark was really good.

The third - and final - day on the island was also long. In the morning, we went to a government-owned spice farm on the island. Zanzibar is known for its abundant spices so it was great to get a tour. Little did we know what was waiting for us! When we started walking around the farm (more like a forest at some parts), roughly ten workers all joined our group and made random objects for us. Everyone got a cup made out of leaves to keep our spices, and most of the girls received rings, frog necklaces, bracelets, etc. - all made on the spot out of tree leaves! I was given a crown and tie (perhaps to be worn at the next Board meeting?) which were pretty funny. After the tour - complete with sampling the original varieities of vanilla, tumeric, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon, just to name a few - we sat around and tasted an amazing array of different fruits also native to the island. They were amazing! Finally, we walked some more through the farm and a man working climbed a massive coconut tree (with only a piece of rope tied to his ankles for leverage) and knocked several down. We then tried coconut milk (after they sliced the tops open) as well as the fruit(?) liner inside the coconut.

Once we left the farm, we had the remaining afternoon and evening to ourselves - which was much needed. I decided to walk around Stone Town alone at first and try to buy some things to take back home. It was probably the best and worst decision I made on the trip. After 5 minutes of leaving the hotel (located in the tourist-dominated section of Stone Town), a random person came up to me and started speaking in English (this is not out of the ordinary). I responded back in Swahili, and he asked where I had learned Swahili. I mentioned I'm studying in Arusha, and he said he knew the program coordinator, Deo, who teaches at Michigan State. He said they were good friends and he was asking me about how he was doing. I was fairly skeptical, but he was harmless. Then he asked me why I was shopping in the tourist part of town, and took me to some of the cheaper (ie, non-tourist) sections of Stone Town. We ended up in the local spice and fish market, where he had a shop. I purchased a few spices from him and left. He offered to show me the way to the other stores I had seen (which I really wanted to return to), but I declined. Big mistake! Navigating the streets of Stone Town - without a map - is impossible. I walked around the non-tourist section of town for a couple hours trying to find some good stores. It became a little tiring, but this was probably my most favorite part of the trip. I asked so many people for directions (the responses consisted of - "Go straight, then right, then left, then right at the roundabout, etc etc), but never really found any sense of direction. My favorite phrase became "Samahani, maduka ya kawaida, si maduka ya wazungu, yako wapi?" Or, "Excuse me, where are the stores of the locals, not the stores of the white people?" Needless to say, people started laughing hysterically every time I asked the question. I bought a few things at a greatly discounted price, but didn't find too much otherwise. I finally had enough of walking around and returned to the more tourist-dominated section of town. Zanzibar has a much greater Arabian and Muslim presence than the rest of Tanzania. It was incredible to walk around the island and see the cultural diversity - from the young, adventrouous American tourist to the older woman in a full-length burqa.

One of the favorite things to experience while going into shops was seeing people's reaction when they realized you spoke Swahili. Without a doubt, tourists get ripped off while shopping. And since I was a white, young, male, the odds were stacked against me. Nearly everyone in Zanzibar (unlike everywhere else I've been in Tanzania) greeted you with "Jambo!" Technically this is a greeting in Swahili, but not very many native speakers use it. So whenever someone said "Jambo," it was clear they were assuming you were a non-Swahili speaker. So it was fun seeing reactions when people realized you spoke the language (to some degree, that is). I had some great conversations with people. One vendor said that they normally tell tourists something is ebony (when it's not). I also kept accusing people of giving me the "white person" price, which they promptly denied. When I was walking back to the hotel in the evening, I was stopped by yet another person wanting to sell me a CD or a t-shirt. By this point, they were pretty annoying, since they say the same lines time after time. Even when I would respond to his english questions in swahili, he would still speak to me in english. I kept walking, and when he was calling after me, I said "Pole, sijui kiingereza, ninasema kiswahili tu!" (I'm sorry, I don't know English. I only speak Swahili!). He stopped in his tracks, responded in Swahili with "Really? You don't know English?" and I said, "Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't understand you." He subsequently gave up. It was a lot of fun, and all in all, I was glad to have gotten lost. In the evening, we went to dinner at an Indian Restaurant for our last night in Zanzibar.

The next morning we had breakfast at 5:45am, left for Dar es Salaam by 6:45am, and drove back to Arusha. The trip took much longer than I was hoping. We returned last night around 8:30pm.

That concludes the trip to the coast! Thanks for reading.