Zanzibar

Just the name evokes thoughts of an exotic magical land of unknown whereabouts.  You have heard the name before but aren’t quite sure where it’s located.  Is it an island in the south pacific?  Or a city in India?  Maybe a town in Morocco?  Zanzibar is an island off the east coast of Tanzania in East Africa.  Combined with Tanganyika in 1964 to create Tanzania, Zanzibar Island is part of an ancient Arab and Portuguese trading route.  Known worldwide for spices and slaves; it was the location of the last legal slave market in the world and continues to be a producer of cloves, cinnamon and vanilla bean. 

I arrived on what felt like the hottest most humid day of the year.  The heat and humidity were oppressive and I climbed into a van that had been sitting in the sun with all the windows closed and had an A/C that felt like a very light, hot West Texas breeze.    That was the longest, hottest 60 to 70 minute ride of my life and to make it worse we were stopped three times by police at permanent road check stations.  Each time we were inspected by a very tall, very dark black man dressed in an all-white polyester uniform.  He carefully inspected all the different registration stickers on the car, looked in all the windows and then talked briefly to the driver before waving us on.  It was intimidating; if I were driving in a car by myself I would have been so nervous he would have assumed I was guilty of something.  Finally we turned onto what felt like a washed out river bed that led to a large metal gate, it was opened for us and we drove into a high porte-cochere with white plaster pillars and a very steep and tall thatch roof.  It opened to a lobby of the same style; welcome to the Ras Nungwi Beach Hotel located on the northern tip of Zanzibar Island.  The property is located on a white sugar sand beach laden with palm trees and fancy “grass huts” with thatched roofs, air-conditioning and lots of teak and mahogany furniture inside.  

Roof over the slave cave

Not far from Nungwi are the slave caves.  They are places where slaves were hidden during the illegal slave trade times between 1876 and 1907.  It was very emotional to see the “holding tanks” carved straight down into the ancient solid coral reef that makes up this island.  They were covered with concrete roofs and had very steep steps down into the two level caves.  There were very small openings toward the top but not sufficient to allow any air flow.  The heat was stifling with just two people standing down there.  I can’t imagine how stuffy, hot, sweaty, and stinky it would be with 50 or 60 people crammed in.  We then walked the trail used to scurry the slaves to the beach where boats were waiting in the dark of night.  The beach was so serene and beautiful that it was hard to imagine the evil that took place here.  I can’t begin to imagine the terror one would feel having been stolen from your home and family, stuffed into a cave, smuggled from the cave to a waiting ship, chained into the cargo hold where you vomited and defecated in place and then, if you survived the journey, you were auctioned off to a stranger for a life of hard labor.  How does one human do this to another?

On the way back to Stone Town we took a spice tour.  It’s a tour of a government owned farm with many different spices and fruits that are commercially grown by local farmers.  We saw clove trees, black pepper vines, a lipstick tree, chili peppers, a cotton tree, mango trees, banana trees, vanilla vines and jack fruit trees.  It was fascinating to see the tree or vine that grows the spices we buy in jars at the grocery store.

Stone Town, officially known as Zanzibar City, is exactly what you imagine; an old town with narrow stone streets that snake in and out without logic that are lined by two and three story stone buildings on each side.  You will find old palaces and homes of the sultans who ruled Zanzibar before the British arrived, one of the largest is a museum you can tour; The House of Wonders.  Near the center of the old town is an ornate Anglican Church that is located on the exact site where the last legal slave market in the world used to be.  The market was closed in 1873 and the church, construction started later that year, was specifically built on this site to help heal the evil of slavery.  Two of the slave storage chambers were kept as a reminder of how terrible conditions were. 

There was a large and small chamber, each only about three feet in height.  The large chamber held 75 slaves and the small chamber held 50 but they were terribly small spaces.  No slave could have stood; they would have had to sit with knees drawn up.  There was a trench down the middle that was used as a toilet and the ocean would wash it out at high tide.  Interspersed in the old Arab town are many colonial style buildings built when the British arrived in the late 1800’s.  Some evenings you will find a huge open market along the coast.  It is packed with people, both locals and tourists.  There are many individual stalls cooking and selling different types of food each with a small table and chairs so the patrons can sit and eat.  I saw a lot of seafood (shrimp, lobsters, and fish) plus chicken and mystery meat.  We joked about the mystery meat being cat.  I did not try any of the food that night and I wish I would have, there were a lot of things that were clearly cooked well and would have been safe to try.  I also took no photos and I am not sure why. 

Today Zanzibar is known for the export of fine raffia and seaweed but the tourist dollars are its main industry.  The newer parts of Zanzibar City are similar to every other third world city and not worth a visit but I recommend a visit to the beach, Stone Town and the forest area to the south where the colobus monkeys live.  If you go see the monkeys please send me photos, I was not able to get to that part of the island....yet.