It was a long trip getting here from Nairobi - thirteen hours on a bus to Dar Es Salaam (including an interesting border crossing), a night in a hostel, then a two hour fast ferry ride to Stone Town (ST). So far it was worth every km! We had few expectations of Stone Town - we had booked 3 nights and wondered if we should have headed straight for the beach. Again we were very pleasantly surprised! ST is a vibrant town with lots of fun things to keep you busy, while maintaining a healthy balance of “Hakuna Mutata”. It is an interesting old city with very narrow streets (easy to get lost in!), huge old trees, people taking it easy sitting on doorstops outside their homes and businesses who will almost always call out “Jambo” (hello) or “Karibu” (welcome), and Muslim women dressed in gorgeous bright skirts and scarves. Many of the colonial looking buildings seem to be fighting hard against decay. It is common to see chipping or fading paint, cracks in stucco, vines taking over walls, and buildings literally being propped up by poles and rope. Somehow the city manages to look really charming, and the decay fits it well. Lots of photo opportunities in such a place!
ST is a port city so there are many restaurants literally on the beach (eating dinner with toes in the beautiful white sand). One night we had drinks at Mercury’s (named for Frddie Mercury, born in Zanzibar) and watched two soccer games on the beach, a boys’ game and a mens’ game. It was fun watching the young boys diving into the ocean for the ball when it went out of bounds - usually about 8 or ten of them would dive in to retrieve the ball. All of this happening with a beautiful sunset, the Indian Ocean and bobbing boats as a backdrop.
We went on two day trips from Stone Town, a Spice Tour and a snorkelling trip around the local islands. The Spice Tour ($10USD) was a full day tour of spice plantations, following by a visit to a gorgeous beach. Easy to see why Zanzibar is called the Spice Island, we saw clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper trees, as well as vanilla, ginger, cardamom and others. We also sampled all of the local fruits and had a beautiful lunch of king fish curry with chiapati. The tour included a brief stop to view a slave cave, which was a natural underground cave where slaves were kept prior to being shipped off to foreign destinations - not a pleasant part of the island’s history. We were really happy that we got such good value, as we are seeing that $10USD doesn’t tend to get us very far generally!! The next day we met up with Misty and Dylan, two SAfricans that we met on our bus to Dar. They had invited us on a snorkelling day that they had organized. We visited several islands (including one that was literally just a sand bar of the coast… gorgeous), snorkelled and had a great lunch on a beach. We also visited Prison Island where an old prison had been converted (in the late 1800’s) to a quarantine area during a couple of plagues and the cholera epidemic. With Zanzibar being such a critical port during the spice trade, I guess it was a good idea! The island also has a Giant Tortoise sanctuary where we fed some big, old (one of them was approx 120 years old) turtles.
We are now in Kwenda, which is a beach in the North East of Zanzibar. It is idyllic here with white powder sand and the most gorgeous turquoise water. Dhows float just off the coast and it is common to see fishermen walking along the beach with their daily catches for sale to the hotels. Getting the meat out of a coconut we bought on the beach yesterday feels to be the most industrious task that I have undertaken in about a week. Yes, life is rough these days.
That is all to report for now. We will be heading back to ST for a couple of days and then on to Moshi for our volunteering project. We have our assignments and we are placed together (which neither of us expected) in two different community groups. We will be working with groups of people who are starting or running small businesses. In one group we will be working with people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWA) and in the other, people with disabilities. Our volunteer duties will include assisting in project planning, helping with micro finance loan apps., assisting with dealing with community stigmas (both groups are stigmatized in Tanzanian society), visiting families and people who are sick, assisting with budgeting and planning, etc. I am really looking forward to our time in Moshi with CCS… a little nervous at this point, however I can’t wait to get started.
Anyhow, that is all for now. Love getting emails from home, so keep ‘em coming please!!!
Paula
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