Look At Me, I’m in Zanzibar!

I had eleven leave days to use before May 3, due to a Peace Corps policy restricting us from taking vacation during our last three months of service. So I’m off to Zanzibar Island, off the coast of Tanzania, with Brady in tow.

First of all, this has to be one of the coolest flights I’ve been on – Nairobi to Zanzibar. We flew right by the snows of Kilimanjaro, and the book title doesn’t lie. There’s lots of snow up there.

Tanzanian shillings are a bit shocking after Kenya. The exchange rate is about 1250 Tsh to 1 USD, and about 18 Tsh to 1 Ksh. So when the taxi driver wanted 10,000 shillings to take us to Stonetown, we were a bit stunned, until we realized it was less than 600 Kenyan shillings. (Later we would be at the market waiting for 250 Tsh (14 Ksh) in change, while all the vendors laughed at us for bothering with such a small amount. Hey, you can almost buy a soda for 14 Ksh in Kenya.)

Stonetown. It’s the main town on Zanzibar Island, where you’ll find most tourist accommodations and services, including internet and supermarkets. It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, renowned for its old architecture, historical buildings and winding alleyways reminiscent of the various peoples who have inhabited the island throughout history.

Although it’s similar in feel to Lamu - waterfronts dotted with languid dhows bobbing on a gentle tide, whitewashed buildings, ornately carved wooden doorways, mosques, skull-numbing calls to prayer around the clock, and a distinctly Arabic feel – it’s also a typical African town with a chaotic bus stage (featuring the Tanzanian equivalent of matatus, dalla-dallas, which are basically glorified pickup trucks with two benches in the pickup bed for the comfort of the passengers who are packed in like sardines), random and alarmingly large piles of garbage everywhere, random and alarmingly large piles of not-so-mysterious brown stuff in places that are not the choo, vehicles spewing black clouds of toxic smoke into the air, and lots of people in various states of employment and/or sobriety harassing you for things, or for being foreign.

There’s a decent market in Stonetown, next to the stage, with decent local fruits and vegetables, and lots of spice vendors hoping for gullible tourists willing to pay mzungu prices. There’s also a pretty impressive chicken market with the equally impressive smell of live chickens, and conveniently located chicken-slaughterers and their vat of boiling water for people like me who prefer not to slaughter chickens ourselves. And of course, on the other side of town on the waterfront, a sizeable fish market with a sizeable fish market smell.

Quick Historical Geography, or Geographic History. For centuries Zanzibar has been a preferred destination for explorers, merchants and rulers from places as diverse as Portugal, Persia, Oman, India and Britain. Like many areas of the East African coast (Lamu comes to mind), there is an Italian ex-pat community on Zanzibar, whom I’d like to thank for bringing gelato to the non-Italian world.

The Zanzibar archipelago used to be made up of Zanzibar Island (called Unguja by locals), Pemba Island and Mombasa, all of which were part of the British Protectorate in the late 19th century. After independence from the British in the 1960s, Mombasa became part of Kenya while the remaining islands became part of Tanzania.

Interestingly, Tanzania was called Tanganyika until Zanzibar was incorporated into it. Mathematically: Tanganyika + Zanzibar = Tan-Zan-ia.

Today there is still a lot of political tension and resentment between mainland Tanzanians and Zanzibaris.

Also, Freddie Mercury Lived Here. The guy from the band Queen was apparently born and raised on Zanzibar, and someone was keen enough to exploit this bit of trivia to rake in tourist bucks. Such is the story of Mercury’s, a mostly mzungu joint overlooking the beach with spectacular sunset views, tasty seafood, half-decent cocktails (it’s still Africa, after all), cold beer and a selection of t-shirts that say, “Mzungu.” Prices are also “mzungu.” Despite this, Brady and I spent a good portion of our time in Stonetown keeping ourselves hydrated at Mercury’s, watching the pickup football (futbol) game on the beach, and the cast of characters that came with it, like the kid wearing a life vest ostensibly fashioned out of discarded foam padding from an shipment of TVs.

Speaking of TVs, there is a giant banyan tree in town that has, inexplicably, a broken and rather large-screened TV jabbed into the trunk at eye level.

(Photos by Brady Zieman, except Mt. Kilimanjaro)