Zanzibar

 As promised, I have an update on this past week in Zanzibar. In one sentence summary: it was one of the best spring breaks I've ever had and I did not want to come back.

We left early Sunday morning and headed to Jomo Kenyatta airport. The last time we were there was just over a month ago, when we first stepped foot in Kenya at 4 am. Anyway, the flight to Zanzibar was a lot less eventful than the flight to Korr on the charter planes, but everything went smoothly. After several forms both in Kenya and Zanzibar and enduring the lines to get our fingerprints scanned and our faces recognized by the computer, we got another visa stamped in our passports and eventually made it out of the airport. One thing that was very different right away: it was humid. Kenya doesn't have humidity despite its heat. Add African heat to humidity and you're going to be sweating a whole lot.

Sunday through Tuesday afternoon were spent in Stonetown, on the west coast of Zanzibar. As previously mentioned, this is the historical and shopping side of the island. It's a very tourist-y spot, and it was suddenly strange to see so many wzungu every day.

We stayed at the Tembo Hotel in Stonetown for those two nights. This place is classy and gorgeous. It was originally the embassy housing in Zanzibar, and they converted the rooms into a hotel. Out the back is the beach – you can walk right on through onto the shore – and a magnificent spot for watching sunsets (and we had two pretty good ones... the first was amazing. The second was okay, though more cloudy). Our group was spread over six rooms, most with three people in them, and not one room was exactly the same, though all really gorgeous. I have to say, though, our room was quite possibly the best of the group. There were two double beds plus a king (I got a double bed all to myself), air conditioning, a TV, a tile bathtub, and a balcony that overlooked the pool area and ocean. It rocked.

View from our balcony

Most of the two and a half days, though, we spent our time outside of the hotel. A walk down the beach brought us to a boardwalk area, with some food shops open all day, pretty architecture to look at, and at night dozens of food vendors set up tables and offered a variety of unique dishes for pretty reasonable prices. If we went out the front of the hotel, we were headed for the jungle that is Stonetown's streets and shops. As shown in some of my pictures, most streets are very narrow – just large enough for one car to fit through while pedestrians squeeze in their stomachs and press themselves against the wall or hop into a shop to avoid getting run over. Lining these streets are many shops with African-made merchandise. A lot of it can be found in Nairobi as well, but going into Nairobi and finding the markets involves a full day's commitment, so I took advantage of the accessibility of these shops – plus allowed myself more splurge money because it was spring break – and bought a few things, including some items found only in Zanzibar. My bartering skills still aren't great, but I was able to knock the prices down on what I bought.

I liked shopping in Stonetown, but I don't know that I could have handled more than two days there walking those streets because it starts to get stressful. Everywhere you go, especially if you're white, no matter if you're intending to shop or not, you will have people following you offering you merchandise or just trying to pull you into their shop. They may even offer to lead you to somewhere, only to first bring you to their shop to look around or expect payment for their “tour” services. This heckling also included the beach behind our hotel – I was approached by a couple different men trying to sell fabric and sunglasses. They didn't hurt me in any way, but it just got annoying to constantly be pestered.

Aside from all the shopping, there is also history to be found in Stonetown. Though I found out the national museum is apparently no longer in business (really cool looking building though), and I never made it to the House of Wonders, I was still able to go to a historical site with a small group. After weaving through the streets, trying to figure out the right direction, we eventually made it to the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral – the former site of the slave market in Zanzibar. This was the final slave market to close, and was very well-known and trafficked thousands of slaves from east and central Africa. We paid just under $4 to get in, and it was well worth it, in my opinion.

Our guide first brought us into the sanctuary of the cathedral. This is one of the few Christian church buildings in Zanzibar, being a dominantly Islamic island, and still holds services on Sundays, and Christians from all sorts of denominations join under its ceiling. However, originally, this was the main site of the market for buying slaves. There used to be a tree that stood where the altar is now placed, and slaves would be tied to that tree and whipped, just to test their strength. Many died while bound there. The tiles under the altar in the church are spattered with red color, representing the blood shed at that spot. In the back of the church is the baptism font. The font is usually placed at the front of churches, but there is a special reason behind this font's placement. Children who were over 5 years old may survive and may be bought in the market. However, if children younger than 5 were brought to the market, they would be slaughtered. They now baptize children in that very spot – the font in the back of the church.

After the sanctuary, we went outside to a memorial that has been designed. An artist created 5 figures, chained together in much the same way the slaves were chained. These men and women were chained with separate nationalities, so that there was no common language spoken and an uprising was hindered. The looks on their faces saddened me, and I pictured even more morose and agonized expressions were on the faces of slaves chained in this way.

The final place we visited in this tour were the slave chambers. It's hard to come up with one word to describe this. I'd say “awesome” but that has too much of a positive connotation. Rather it was sobering and horrifying and saddening to be in this place, in the spots where men, women, and children stayed for days, locked up like animals. When we entered the chamber, we all had to duck – even I, at 5'3”. The first of the two chambers was the “larger” one. In this chamber, about 75 slaves would be held at once. I believe in this chamber it was mostly just men, if I remember correctly. There were less than ten of us in there – I can hardly imagine 65 more full-grown men. Across from the chamber was a second room, where 50 slaves were held (women and children, if I remember correctly). The guide told us that a drain that brought in sea water would fill the floor by their feet, and this also became the slaves' sewer. The necks, hands, and feet of the slaves were constantly chained while in the cell. Though there's a building on top of the chamber now, when it was used for slaves, no building was there so the hot sun beat through the concrete above their heads. There was one window; the light bulb that was in there while we were in there was added after it was no longer used for holding slaves, so the only light the slaves had came from one window. The conditions were so rough that this was considered the first test – if the slave survived the chamber, they must be a good worker. 

 

75 men in this one room

It hurt my heart looking around, thinking how de-humanized these slaves were. They were human beings, but they were treated as though they were worthless animals, or worse, that could be brutalized and cooped up. Sometimes the events of history make absolutely no sense to me.

Tuesday morning two boats pulled up to the beach by our hotel and men with bags of flippers and goggles dumped them on the beach for us to sort through, try on, and select. We had decided to go snorkeling.

We took a short boat ride away from the shore of Stonetown to “prison island.” This island was established as a place to send prisoners, but has been turned into a hotel, restaurant, and giant tortoise sanctuary. We visited the tortoises, which are the second largest in size only to Galapagos Island tortoises. See pictures to get an idea just how big these guys are.

After about 45 minutes or so on the island, we got back on the boats to travel a short distance to the reef nearby. There we donned our masks, snorkels, and flippers and jumped in.

This was one of the coolest things I have ever done – which, if you consider what I've done, is pretty amazing. There were so many fish of all shapes, colors, and sizes, not to mention the beautiful coral and other plant life – all of these organisms that I have only seen on TV or in magazines. I honestly felt like this wasn't my life, that a college kid from the Midwest in the U.S. who's studying to be an English teacher could not possibly be here, swimming off the coast of an African island, gliding through the bluest of blue water as fish that I've only seen in movies – or never seen at all – swim directly in front of my face.

We stayed out there 2 or 3 hours, snapping underwater pics or just swimming around in awe of what we were seeing. When we got out and headed back to shore, I realized a big difference between swimming in a lake for 2-3 hours and swimming in the ocean for 2-3 hours – my skin, in particular my lips, was more shriveled than I have ever experienced before. But I was happy, still not entirely sure if I was dreaming.

I was about to experience that “is this real life?” feeling a lot more in the next 3 and a half days. Once back from snorkeling, we grabbed a quick lunch and then piled all of our stuff onto a small bus to ride across the island to the east coast, to an area called Paje. We pulled into a compound that had several hut-like buildings, a bar and restaurant-type area, hammocks, and palm trees all around. This was New Teddy's Place, our home for the rest of the week. We were greeted by a young man named Simba (which we all recognized means “lion”) and eventually also met Genius, another regular worker. We split into different cabins, 7 of us girls in the “dorm.” I kind of wish my dorm was like that one. It was plenty spacious, even with 7 beds plus some shelves, and you didn't need to worry about tracking dirt in there – the floor was sand. From that point on, we didn't wear shoes most of the rest of the week.

Though New Teddy's did not have cabins directly on the beach, we were pretty dang close. Climb up some stairs, then descend onto a path and see the ocean. That path was tread by our feet more times than I could count. The beach was one of our favorite places. We would either swim in the ocean, or lay in the sun, or relax on some wicker beds, or take a walk down the beach to the couple of restaurants we liked to visit. I even slept out there some nights (whether intentionally or unintentionally). This part of our vacation was a lot more chill – everyone was reading, talking together, and just plain relaxing.

 

And, oh, the food. It worked out that in addition to our complimentary breakfast, the budget was enough for the program to pay for dinners from New Teddy's too. Zanzibar cuisine specializes in seafood, being a port, but not being into fish and not adventurous enough to try squid or octopus, I had some really good pasta, spice chicken, burgers, potato wedges, and some veggies while I was there. Plus, breakfast every morning was crepes with chocolate syrup and fruit. Such a welcome break from the monotony. My taste buds were more than satisfied.

And every morning, I got up for the sunrise, since sunsets weren't seen on this part of the island. Every morning it was different. Every morning I marveled at God's handiwork. How awesome He is.

Friday we were able to do another event as a program, and went to a nearby spice farm. Zanzibar is famous for its spices, being known as “the spice island.” We walked around with a guide who showed us various trees and roots, spices and fruits that are used or consumed by me and others nearly everyday, and I had never even known how they were grown or what they look like fresh from the tree. I smelled fresh vanilla and lemongrass, and saw what the nut of nutmeg looks like. I saw not-yet-ripe coffee beans, and new bananas and oranges. A guy from the farm climbed a tree and dropped 3 coconuts for us, and we opened it up and drank its milk and ate the coconut straight from the tree. If I cooked, I would have been enthralled. Even so, I was still really fascinated.

Again, I kept thinking I was dreaming. The ocean I looked out at every day could not be real – someone else had taken a picture of it and I was viewing that. I could not be laying in a hammock, staring up through the branches of five palm trees or watching a shooting star through the fronds while I sat around a campfire. I could not be on a gorgeous island just off the coast of Africa, lounging in a restaurant and enjoying a smoothie. I wasn't laying on a wicker bed frame, dozing as the waves of the Indian Ocean lapped the shore. I was only dreaming that there was fine white sand squishing between my toes. And all of this came included in a program where I pay just as much money to come here as I do to go to school near Chicago? This isn't my life. Dreams are made of this, but not real life.

Of course, this was my real life. I still can hardly believe I got to go on this vacation as part of another longer “vacation” in Africa. If I hadn't actually been there, and experienced this spring break, I'd say it was too good to be true. But it isn't. I went to Zanzibar. And I wanted to stay there. It's always a bummer coming back from spring break, and I was definitely really sad to go. I could have stayed there weeks longer. But of course, I have to face “real” life – school in Africa. If you can count that as real life.

But I am so grateful; I vacationed in Zanzibar! That is crazy. I know I use this expression a lot about what has gone on already this semester, but I feel so blessed to have enjoyed this once-in-a-lifetime experience.