AU REVOIR ZANZIBOIR

Stone Town, Zanzibar. Click to enlarge

IN JULIA'S WORDS

12 July

An unexpected pleasure in Zanzibar Stone Town was bumping into the National (Zanzibari, not Tanzanian – long-standing and contentious relationship that it is) Library.

Stone Town to me is like being dropped in to an elaborate labyrinth, blind-folded, spun whirling dervishly around, and then being asked to find my way. What I understand to be my innate compass urges me to turn left to where I want to go - which turns out to be NOT the way to go.
Even trying to secure landmarks to find my way fails me. I note the bit of shopfront wall with the boldly spraypainted words in dark blue JAWS on a central wall at where five narrow paths meet. I’ve seen this place plenty times.
I know that it’s not far from the Haven guesthouse where we’re staying, but blow me down with an unprecedented typhoon in Benoni if I can at all figure which one of the medieval lanes leading off from this slight intersection I should take.

Dunno where I am but I like it

But I’m generally very poor anyway at north and south, left and right, so I’m quite used to struggling to find my way. Rehana, though, has an inner longa-lati-directional compass forever fixed in her forehead and NEVER loses her way - except just this once, in said Zanzibari stone wonderness. And I feel ever better about my Kafkaesque non-comprend of Stone Town labyrinth because of it.

Probably, then, it’s better that I wasn’t looking for the library, because I would never have found it. But as it happened, walking along a road that promised the State building (just a major white-washed wall could we see walking past) and Victoria’s gardens (nice frangipani type trees but overgrown beneath so no hope of lying down with a book), and just as we reached an intersection at the end of both – there was the university library. 
A handsome enough building, a carved Zanzibari wooden door at the entrance. On the stoep was shelves for bag storage. They allowed us to use the library, we just had to sign in. The two assistants were watching a Bollywood movie on a laptop, the office probably belonged to the chief librarian, a stout woman who was reclining on a couch on the first day of Ramadaan. 
There were air conditioners covered in cobwebs on the walls and the spiders had made homes on the ceiling fans as well. The ceiling was water stained. There were three other users, two young men conferring by pointing on each other’s laptop screens and a young woman transcribing notes on her laptop.

Deeply depressing were the number and agedness of the books that peppered the few DIY iron shelves – especially for a library that proclaims itself as that representing the nation.
But I didn’t look at much more before I spotted the Azania Journal, maybe 40 thick editions, and pulled out the 1966 edition. Almost immediately my eye fell upon an article by one Neville Chittick, that very researcher who had done so much archeological/historical prodding on Kilwa Kisiwani.

Chittick’s article was just called “Kilwa”, and put out his three major points:

·       The western tip of the island had a powerful civilisation prior to the Arab invasions

·       The first batch of Oman arabs had first berthed in southern Somalia for a good few centuries, and so had assimilated much of Africa before they set sail and arrived at Kilwa – probably 12^th CE

·       The second batch of Oman Arabs – 16^th century? – pissed far more emphatically on their new tree, and the change is far more remarked in the archaeological debris. Like fancier lamps and portable braais.

About the Portuguese adventures/plunders around here, Chittick said little. Or perhaps I scanned over it.

Besides such an unexpected gem on the subject of the history of these parts were many others: about Tippu Tip (that empire-building slave trader) who wangled and plundered as far inland as Malawi and Zambia and Zimbabwe; and a cache of over 3 000 buried ancient coins – most connected with Kilwa Kisiwani - in Oroa, discovered under a mere foot of soil in the 1940s by a boy sent to dig up roots between two  Baobab trees.
Whose harried wealth it was will probably never be dug up, but the theory was that they were buried there in the early 1500s when the Portuguese relationship with the locals had suddenly soured and a Portuguese ship blockaded the island, pirating and plundering the local’s vessels.

But aah … how splendid to be slopping my way again in the white and the heat of Stone Town, 16 years on from my first and only visit. Nick, Sue and Ondie, my fellow travellers back then: you’re much in my thoughts.

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Friday 12 July

Soon after I met Julia, around 16 years ago, she went to Zanzibar with friends and told me that I would love it. She was absolutely right. From her descriptions, I thought it would be a great place to bring my mother, and I wish I had. My family would feel as at home here as I do. It is one big mixed masala of an island.

But before I start oohing and aahing, a bit of reflection about being on the road for three months. I knew before I left that this journey was an opportunity to be more selfish than I usually am. I envisaged waking up every morning and asking, “what do I want to do today?” and then, taking only Julia’s needs into account, doing only that. It’s been great taking time out – except when I’m stricken with huge missingness for the people I love.

Away from home, in places where communication is difficult, cut off from access to media, I’ve started feeling a little too self-involved. The coup in Egypt and the war in Sudan is interesting insofar as it affects my travel plans. Cabinet reshuffle in South Africa? Tell someone who cares. Madiba’s health and horrible family is a huge concern though, Julia gets tearful when people ask us how he’s doing.

Most of my communication – this blog, phone calls, sms’s and emails, are all about “me me me”. I have nothing else to talk about. I am desperate for news from home and there’s nothing nicer than a long email from my parents filled with details of their busy lives and lovely anecdotes about everyone else. 

This is exactly what I planned – a hedonistic journey for one year. In all of the countries we visit, I haven’t come to contribute or get involved. I’ve come in search of pleasure. I do bring enormous interest and a few dollars to hand over every time the Tanzanian Parks Board demands some from me. I need to guard against rating every destination by whether its campsites and guesthouses meets my needs. But it's hard to live without water, she whines. Everywhere we go people look so dusty. Do we also look like that?

My biggest regret so far is that rushing from place to place gives us scant opportunity to meet locals and form short-lived friendships. We skitter across the lives of the people we encounter. 
Most of the locals we meet are staff at tourist facilities and the guides, boatmen and drivers we employ for a few hours. Our fellow tourists are our only other company. This is a consequence of the choice to visit 10 (11?12? who knows?) countries in one year. Not complaining, just observing.

Zanzibar’s a bit of a cure for homesickness because so much of it is familiar – the mix of the masala on the skin, in the language and in the food. The Ramadaan fervour is a lot more pronounced than in South Africa. 
It’s midnight and a group of men are beating tablas and tambourines in the alley outside our hotel and singing Allah and Mohammed’s praises. It’s beautiful but very loud.

In the visitor’s guide to Zanzibar handed out at their posh tourism bureau office at the port, there’s an entry about “Eid-al-Fitry”. It says “it take place annual after thirsty the holy month of Ramadhan”.

There are notices plastered on every building warning mzungu that it’s Ramadaan and that they are to dress modestly (we all know this is only directed at the women) and they are not eat or drink anything in public. 
Why is this necessary? Will the sight of a kufaar drinking water tempt a good Muslim to break his fast?

When we went down to the beach last night to watch the locals excitedly spotting the fingernail of the new moon soon after the blood-red sunset, we came across a blonde who had never heard of Ramadaan.
A group of teenagers had submerged a tyre into the sand on the thin strip of beach and showed off their tumbling skills. They launched themselves off the tyre into double and triple somersaults, to the enthusiastic cheering of the boys waiting their turn. The few times their tricks didn't quite work out they found soft landings on the sand.

The sunset on the eve of Ramadan

Most of the mzungus on the streets today had not gotten the message. Thighs hung out of short shorts and skirts and many shoulders were draped in spaghetti straps. 
Most of the eating establishments were closed at lunchtime.  Jules and I went to the market in search of modest clothing and were forced to buy menswear – for women there were mostly abayas and burqas on offer.

The winter and summer collection

I so wish I could take photos of the beautiful Muslim women on Zanzibar whose pitch black kohl-lined eyes under dark lids peer out from their black burqas. But I can’t. Take it from me, they are gorgeous without exception.

Our hotel, The Haven, is owned by Ali, a Zanzibari. It is a converted house. Our bedroom has a double door and the ceiling rests on mangrove poles. The bathrooms (one with a HOT shower, the water isn’t SALTY but the soap and shampoo still won’t lather) are clearly recent add-ons. Its great to sit on the narrow stoep outside like the locals do and hold conversations with the neighbours.

It is within walking distance of all the sights - the sultan's palace, the fort, the waterfront, the beach, the ancient public baths that the sultan built, the cathedral and lots lots more. Freddy Mercury's old home in Stone Town was a normal, middle class yellow block of flats.

Farrokh Busara, aka Freddy, could have stood right here!

The food in Zanzibar has surpassed my high expectations. Jules and I had lunch at a local restaurant, Lukmaan, on our first day. The food was served buffet-style and we chose oyster curry in coconut and tamarind sauce, spinach in coconut sauce and plantain curry in coconut sauce.
Our next big meal was at an Indian restaurant, Silk Route, which was designed the way I had envisaged our wedding – red, yellow and orange silk draped the entire ceiling. The waitresses all wore salwar kameezes and served the food with graceful twists of their wrists.

Tonight, the first night of Ramadaan, we started at a Goan vegetarian restaurant where I only had a samoosa starter. The rest of my meal I ate on the street.

The public feast was a sight to behold and a good reason to spend the next 28 days here. On the waterfront, in a park donated by the Aga Khan, vendors set up tables heaped with lobster, huge crab claws, octopus, hundreds of skewers of meat and fish, falafel, fruit and a weird thing called a Zanzibar pizza which is banana, nutella and raw egg wrapped in pastry and fried in oil. 
Sugar cane juice vendors turned the wheels of their huge crushers and added freshly-squeezed lemon and fresh ginger to their icy concoctions. All the juices in Zanzibar are so pulpy they can almost be chewed. And there’s ice cream, and milkshakes!

My last meal for the night was at 11pm at a restaurant across from our hotel, Amir, the owner, has a charcoal brazier and cooks skewers of gorgeously marinaded chicken and beef which have to be drenched in his delicious mango chilli sauce. Most of the food we’ve eaten so far has been served with mango, paw-paw or avocado relish. Heaven!

The Haven to the left, Amir's establishment on the right

ZANGLISH, EYELAND STILE

IN JULIA'S WORDS

16 July

Luckily Nungwi on the island's northern tip was the last of our destinations on Zanzibar. Paje on the south eastern coast where we were previously stayed had its points,  but did not match tourist’s pleasureville in the north. Better, ne, to end on a soaring soprana’s high note, not a whimper. 
Our accommodation at Baraka’s Beach resort in Nungwi was just a tweak more expensive (US$45 per night) but had plusses like brick and mortar (rather than something like a very big upside-down woven basket for a room in Paje) and a shower en suite that had HOT, ALMOST FRESH water (vs shared ablutions in Paje a walk away with a dribble of cold brack water). 
The skinny old man with orange front teeth, our “captain” in Paje, punted us out oldmanfully in his sail-less dugout for a fairly fine snorkel on a fairly fine reef; whereas we were loaded aboard a double decker super-dhow with 15 other mzungus to a FABULOUS reef and teaming fishies – for less dosh. Sounding like a picky tourist brat? I am.

The brat and her captain for the day on a Nungwe reef

Nungwi’s far more built up, but not too vulgarly, tucking the tourists away quite discretely in the many resorts. 
Mzungus lie down in clumps like beached maggots with slight slips of colour where their very slight cozzies cover, whilst Masai men, far from their mainland origins, are the tourist touts who stalk the white sands in their tartan red cotton cloths. 

Brat gets a tattoo

One national Zanzibari practice would cause picky proofreaders to wince and incur lasting brain ache. It’s the charming disregard for general English sentence structure, and for spelling in particular, which mashes the language in a most fascinating way. 

In Nungwi, menus were worth a thorough reading less for what was on offer than for how it was said. Friend eggs were everywhere, children could order half potions, you could get a barberqued chic, and drink yourself a sprint gin. 
One souvenir shop assured you “we dial in wood”.  Interestingly, not even the Zanzabari officialdom cares a hoot for consistency. Their grand official signs and letterheads – all in English, curiously, not Swahili – variously call themselves “Revolution Government of Zanzibar” and “Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar”. Three wee letters, which for me, imply quite a radical difference.

Oh, and with Ramadaan/Ramadan/Ramadhan afoot in these parts, I’m glad that a) I have earplugs (wo these loudspeakers, many of them, can goooooooooo oooooooooooooon – often sounding like the singer’s got bad tummy ache) and b) that I’m reading “The Portable Athiest: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever”, edited by Christopher Hitchens. Just really helps, both of them.

Now back in Mikadi Beach, we've packed up our car and are ready to get the short ride on the ferry to Dar in order to avoid the infernal chaos. Then, pole pole (said polay polay, meaning slowly slowly) we’ll slide ourselves northwards towards Arusha and Kilimanjaro.

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Wednesday, 17 July

Stone Town almost trapped us in its winding, narrow alleyways filled with fascinating people, but the beach beckoned and we vowed to return to it for another day and a night before we left the island. But the beach seduced us also and we never returned to the Ramadaan feast in Stone Town. 
It was a hard decision to make, but our consolation is that Zanzibar is not that far from South Africa and easy to reach. We will come back again.

First beach was at Paje. Our taxi driver Ame, who had taken us to the The Haven when we arrived in Stone Town, insisted that he would also find cheap accommodation in Paje. Our spot, Teddys Original Beach Camp, was okay but Mike and Carol’s beach banda (our straw basket, Jules called it) had a sand floor! The water in the shower was a trickle on the first day and offered nothing on the second. Dunno what I would have done in Tanzania without wet wipes. I’m on my third packet already.

We should have taken more notice of the coconut trees when we arrived in Paje. But we were mesmerised by the water – a fat turquoise stripe with a dark blue reef in the distance. We failed to notice the hundreds of kite surfers on the fat turquoise stripe. We put on our cossies and rushed onto the wind-blasted beach, the coconut trees bent in its path.

Jules and I walked with the wind at our backs and soon reached a point where the incoming tide made it difficult to continue. When we had a short swim, the wind whipped up waves big enough to push us away from our entry point. Going back to Teddys camp, a haven from the blasting sand, was hard work.

Low tide at Paje. Click to enlarge

On day two we went snorkeling, and what a delight it was. Our captain, Mohammed, took us out in his dugout, which he and his son punted out to the reef. The wind was forgotten as we stared down at thick reef and its community of fishies. I saw copper and gold ones for the first time.

Later that afternoon I had the most expensive cheesecake I have ever had in my entire life. It was perfect, with a ginger biscuit crust and a thick, smooth, lemony topping. Wish I could say I didn’t gobble it, but it’s been a while.

The next day Ali, a Paje taxi driver, took us to Jozani Forest where we lingered for two hours before heading to Nungwi. The forest was beautiful. The colobus monkeys, which are indigenous to Zanzibar, had beautiful red pelts and ugly mugs.

There wasn’t a breath of wind when we arrived at Nungwi and the sea had a turquoise stripe a bit thinner than Paje’s beach, and offered sheltered coves at high tide. Ali's first choice of accommodation for us had two bungalows available – with an EN SUITE bathroom with a WORKING shower with HOT and cold water. Okay, our shower didn’t work until day two but we used Mike and Carol’s.

Despite high season in a place lined with resorts and hotels including a Hilton, Jules and I swam alone when we went in for our first dip.

Our snorkel at Nungwi was a full day trip to an atoll, where the coral was mostly bleached white but the fish were stupendous. I got that burn-first-itch-like-hell-later-something-in-the-water-bit-me rash the next day. The problem with seductions is that they often lead to STDs. I’ve got Snorkeling Transmitted Disease. Will it dampen my passion? Like hell!

Best of all, we met an Aussie couple on the boat – Shirley and Roger – and had two visits with them afterwards. So nice to meet mature, interesting people. The one problem with being a low-budget traveller is that you share accommodation mostly with backpacking teenagers and people a year or two older than that.

Ramadaan almost ceased to exist on Zanzibar’s tourist beaches. At Teddys camp in Paje, they closed the bar from 6.30 to 7.30pm but the rest of the time they merrily dished out haram booze to all comers. In Nungwi the beach bars and restaurants all had happy hour at sunset – set their tables on the sand and sold the booze at even cheaper rates. One place also served a “becon” burger. 

Happy hour at Nungwi

The sunsets were as delectable as the milkshakes and fruit smoothies made with fruit cut up at the bar. All the bars had blenders and they added yumminess like icecream, yoghurt, spices and honey.

I ate affordable, delicious lobster in Nungwi and had my best meal in Zanzibar there – a cocunut prawn curry.

On the ferry back to Dar I was horribly sea sick for the first time in my life, puked till my stomach hit my spine. Jules said I turned white first, then several shades of yellow.

Today we went shopping in Dar es Salaam for the next leg of our journey – using public transport and schlepping our goods in our backpacks across the city (sometimes I do miss the Norwood Mall!). We may delay our next trip to the mountains – Meru and Kilimanjaro – because we’re making one more stop on the Indian Ocean. Bagamoyo is beckoning, and it looks like there be reef.

JAMBO AND GOODBYE AGAIN

IN JULIA'S WORDS


21 June

Centuries old baobabs are living histories

How barred it is being free strangers in a strange land free.

What can they make of us, two women that-side-of-midday in their big red car (BRC) setting off as we are - with bras, yes, but tools and spare parts too? Spare parts and tools we’re not yet as adept with as we are our bras (slipping on, snapping off, cussing, twirling, flinging, burning).
What do their husbands make of them being so abroad, unchaperoned (we think they think)? And if not their husbands (allah forbid), their fathers?

I am only sort of making up what I think they think because they – actually, the men – do tell me. Often the question is, “Where are your men?”. Variously we may answer, oh but one roadblock behind us; we left them behind, they’re just trouble (accompanied by vigorous slide-clapping the palms together, as if brushing off some persisting dirt); don’t have any.
A very kind young Malawian – Joshua – told me that I was killing my tribe by not being wed and with children. Could that be?

Rehana and I reckon we can gather a lot about how men and women work things out here by what we can see as we whisk past on the road. Ways of moving, and with what, is a big one: women with their burdens of children, wood, water, almost always WALKING; and men, often burdened with sacks of charcoal, crates and huge piles of unfamiliar weed-looking greens, almost always with WHEELS – whether bicycle or motorbike or car or truck.

While Rehana and I often comment on the lack of women on bikes – there are some as passengers, but rare as roadrunners are those riding themselves – we take for granted that we’ll see no women at all riding bikes, or driving cars, or in a truck’s saddle, or piloting a boat. We don’t even think to comment on that, it’s so obviously not going to happen.

And so then there’s us, in our BRC. Two women negotiating a near-tank to Egypt. Among busses and trucks, which are often decked out like Hindu cows in glittery garish décor and with names like Taleban, Cape Town, Man United, Super Doll, Mum Pet, Facebook and Wifi tattooed on the top of the front and back windscreens.

But our voyeur’s glimpse is truly what it only can be – a sample – and it often feels so slim it’s pathetic. If it’s about knowing who the other is, how much can either parties gather as we rumble-whisk past?

Help! The mzungu's staring at me

Of course, land in a swirl and gag of dust we do in our BRC, often. Glad for me and Rehana are all the pool tables – even small villages have them, some say for dark purposes like gambling and drinking – because we’ve amassed years of passing the time shooting this shit. Which means we're medium to good at getting the balls in dem holes.
What a vista THAT must be for locals -  not only mzungus, but FEMALE mzungus, wielding cues fairly competently, on tables which quite often resemble obstacle courses and/or golf course rough. The most outrageous was the one at the beach village of Nkhotakota in Malawi with duct tape so sticking the baize together the surface was quilted; and many with tears and sloping surfaces, it’s more hit and hope than calculation.
Sometimes I think it politic to lose, being a Mzungu woman and all, and our opponents black men. Don’t want to set off a tinderbox of otherness, after all. But mostly I don’t have to try too hard to lose – I do anyway.

From Maasai man decked in checkered skirts to vested polisi (policemen) at their mess in Lindi, we greet and settle into the ritual of playing pool. Whose rules may differ a bit here and there from what we’re used to, but not unrecognisably so.
And it’s another glimpse, a really satisfying one (win or lose) that I appreciate. Except – how to get to even get a glimpse of the women? Follow the wailing children home to their mums, go to collect wood and water with them from far places, arrive on their darkened stoeps as they food make with words of greeting like mambo, jambo?

STILL JULIA'S WORDS

29 June 

The former glory of Kilwa Kisiwani

A looooooooooooong time ago, when people still used bark to shine their teeth and unlucky leopards were kings’ cloaks, an event in the palatial corridors of Persia rippled its effects along the islands strung out along this East African part of the coast: Lamu; Malindi; Zanzibar and its hanger-oners; Mafia Island; and Kilwa Kisiwani.

A sect within the sect called the shiraz had pissed off the Main Man in Persia, and so been banished from the empire. They were given three days to gather all moveable possessions and themselves into their boats and remove their disgraceful shadows from those shores, or face certain death.

So off they hurried, a fleet of, say, 882 vessels, bobbling off to where the Indian Ocean heads south. Did they know where they were going? Of course they did. Sort of. From rumours of trading posts and enticing land with dodgy people (who cleaned their teeth with bark), but none had been there themselves.
They charted their course with some care, but what little do the currents and the winds care for charted courses? The fleet soon broke up into handfuls and clumps of boats, and those who were not lost to the perils of the ocean hauled themselves and what was still retrievable of their worldly belongings onto the islands.
They were too afraid of the mainland and its dodgy people, and chasing off the few stragglers they found on the islands was not, it turned out, too hard at all.

The original people of Kilwa Kisiwani have become known by history as The Sad Ones because they were so very sad to have to leave their happy island home. They resettled in a place on the mainland known by history as The Sad Ones’ place.
What did they leave behind? Not just their orchards of plums, peaches, apricots, walnuts, almonds and plantations of mabisusale. There are those, for example, who say that the extravagant excesses of salt in the mid-island tidal pools, where the mangrove trees are starved for sea water two weeks at a time, is because of all their tears.
And why were they so very sad? Some say it’s not just because they’d been turfed off their island; some say there was more to it than that. Some say, in fact, that they were forced to leave behind gold. An island of it.

It’s true enough that there was gold on Kilwa Kisiwani – but only that which those who were destined to become The Sad Ones stored and traded for with the real gold merchants, who set forth to the south western interior from the nearby coastal town of Kilwa Kivinje.
But rumour had it, blown across the ocean just before the trade winds, that the gold was mined on Kilwa Kisiwani itself.

Some say their kin from Persia who had settled in Malindi, an Indian Ocean island to the north, only sailed this far down because they’d been blown off course. Others say they had carefully plotted their journey.
What’s for sure is that, a few centuries after the sub-sect of the shiraz sect of the expelled Persians had chased out The Sad Ones, they themselves were chased out by their Malindi kindred, who came seeking gold. The cunning slits the Kisiwani Persian exiles had carved above the palace/fort gate through which to pour boiling oil on their onslaughters didn’t, after all, keep them safe.

Gold the Malindi newcomers found – but only that stored in some of the stone and coral buildings left behind by the fleeing shiraz they chased away. And wow were their stone and coral buildings. Mosques and palaces and wells, with all the aquaducts and chambers and stone domes that these required. And décor of Chinese porcelain too. A city of 7 000, some say.

Remnants of the Sultan's palace

But no amount of digging among the orchards and mbuyu trees and promising rocky outcrops by the newcomers, the Malindi muslims, yielded a thing. No. The only gold to be found was that which had been brought by others from the southern interior to be stored and traded, cunningly in a corner of one of the guest houses of the Sultan’s palace compound.

Yet the rumours that were blown just before the trade winds of unimaginable gold riches to be mined on Kilwa Kisiwani persisted, and a few hundred years later, the Portuguese sailed in to claim the wealth.
Who and how many ships came, I know not. Nor do I don’t know what loss of life may have resulted as they dislodged the Malindi muslims like unwilling clams, but the upshot was the Portuguese building themselves a fort three stories high.

So the Portuguese, after, say 222 years, were then deposed by the Omani arabs, who were commercial entrepreneurs to a fault. The fort became a storage place for slaves.

This history is, of course, more a suckory (history straight from the thumb, only vaguely guided by facts), but then, which isn’t? More definitely I can say that it was a hot privilege to traipse among visible ruins of all of the approximate above, and something to consider that the ancient “great well” is still the place where women gather with buckets to haul out the last dribbles from that far below pool.

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Wednesday, 3 July

Thousands of years ago, Africans built pyramids, churches, mosques and palaces that remain marvels of architecture. Today, I am struggling to understand why people aren’t using the wheel in Tanzania. I watched a workman building a new chalet at Whale Shark Lodge where we’re staying on Mafia Island. He was transporting sand, in a sack, which he filled, carried on his back and emptied – filled, carried and emptied again and again in the blazing sun. I wished I had a wheelbarrow to lend him.

Two days ago we watched men loading cargo onto ferries at Nyamasati on the mainland. They either rolled or tossed heavy sacks in the direction of the vessels or carried them on their bent backs. One of them tossed a bag of coconuts onto my foot. I wished I had a trolley to lend them.

There was a bunch of men at Kilindoni harbour on the island, trying to lever up heavy crates with spindly mangrove sticks. They had placed even skinnier sticks in a row in the soft sand between the crates and the ferry. They need a crane.

Work (and life) in the poorer parts of Tanzania is enormously labour intensive and time consuming. Imagine if they had wheelbarrows, trollies and cranes – and the luxuries of running water and electricity. What would they do with all their free time? Find things to complain about?

The Great Mosque at Kilwa Kisiwani

After Ruvumu our next destination was Lindi, a four-hour drive away. We are finally heading north again. We had a grilled fish lunch at a posh(ish) hotel. The beach was wide, with a fat lagoon pouring into it, but it was too windy for a walk and we had to find a place to sleep. Anika's Guesthouse was just fine for one night, we had a little lounge, a four-poster bed and a (pongy) ensuite. 
Jules and I went for a late afternoon stroll through the town. We were drawn off the beach by the sound of drumming and singing. We followed the sound to a nearby restaurant and discovered a local group rehearsing for an event that weekend.
The dancing was exceptionally raunchy, the women prancing backwards towards the men who then ground their hips into the offered asses. The drummers were mostly old bearded men but the lead, topless drummer had a six pack to die for. We watched the dancing till it got dark then we headed for the police mess, where everyone said was the best pool in town.
The mess (an actual one, filled with policemen) was hosting a pool competition, with big prizes. There was a stage with dancers (quite pathetic hip-hop wannabees, no match for the earlier crowd) and blaring music.
The policemen were very kind. Despite the competition, they made a table available for a few games with us. We were no match really, but a few times we held our own until the black ball. Lindi was only an overnighter, but we got back to our guesthouse that night after a fat visit with the locals.
Next stop Kilwa Masoko, another four hour drive.  Kilwa Dreams, a campsite far from town, wanted $20 dollars for a campsite. We moaned and complained and whined a lot, more a consequence of our bad experience at Ruvumu; we are getting used to paying double what we paid in Mozambique and Malawi.
We set up our camp. Jules went to use the loo and, lo and behold, there was no water to flush. The shower was also dry. The staff went to town to fetch water. The electricity was sporadic and so was the internet connection.

Sjoe, we are spoiled South Africans. It’s taking long to adjust to paying a lot for the privilege of washing in half a bucket of water. At least we don’t have to walk to a river or a well or a borehole to get the water. And then traipse down what passes for a road and get coated in dust when mzungus drive past at speed in a big red Landscruiser. The women can’t jump out of the way when we come roaring up behind them because they’ve got buckets of water on their heads. They go home and cook or wash with dusty water.

We went to Kilwa Kisiwani, an island across from the town. Once again we had to pay $20 each to the Parks Board to set foot to the island and we had to use a guide who also charged $20 per person. Saeed, our guide, was fantastic. His family had lived on the island for generations and some of his knowledge came from his grandmother. 

The Persian Shirazis arrived in the eighth century and their sultan built a city on the island, remnants of which still stand today, including their ancient graves. They built two palaces, 99 mosques, many splendid houses, drilled wells that are still in use today, developed a sewerage system and built the first swimming pool in east Africa for the sultan – a 50 000l octagon.

 

Remove the weeds and add 50 000l of water, it may still be a working pool

We walked across the island with Saeed, pausing at the crumbling edifices while he pointed out the remnants of the ancient city and described its past glory, built on a trade of gold, ivory and slaves.

We walked between the homes of the current citizens of that former sultanate. Most of them live in mangrove and daub huts. Although I tried not to stare, I could see through the holes in the walls and the open doors how little they had in their homes. 
If we unpacked the contents of our car we would have more possessions than them and it would probably be worth more than they could earn in a year (a decade? A lifetime?)

Not one of the current residents of Kilwa are using the knowledge left behind by the people who constructed that ancient city – surely the Shirazis and the Portuguese used local labour? Why weren’t they using those building methods today? There was enough ingenuity on the island to build a swimming pool in the tenth century.
After our tour of the ancient ruins we went for an epic snorkel in the channel between the island and the mainland. The coral was a Kirstenbosh-sized fantasia of pinks and reds and yellow and greens and purples and bronze. Of fishies, there was very little thank goodness, the coral was psychedelia enough to hurt the eyes.

Kilwa was pretty and had a long, coconut palm-lined beach with a tide that receded out into the far distance and came back to lap near our front tyres. Jules and I had another epic walk at low tide; our calf muscles are coming up nicely.

The fortified entrance to Kilwa. The fort has a dungeon, where the Arabs and the Portuguese stored slaves

Next stop was Nyamasati, where we planned to catch the ferry to Mafia Island. The village was pretty dismal – a filthy harbour, sand-whipped wattle and daub, some two storeys high – and this was where we planned to leave our cars while visiting the island.
We split up in search of accommodation. The best price Jules and I could haggle at a dark and dingy guesthouse for the use of their sandy yard was Ts35 000 for one night’s camping and three days of parking. Mike and Carol had found a guesthouse that wanted Ts100 000 (that’s R650 for one night’s camp and parking!). Fortunately, a church mission offered us shelter in return for a donation we thought was reasonable.

We’re beginning to resent the Tanzanian Parks Board wanting $20 every time we set foot on their designated land; but we hate people quoting ludicrous amounts for the most basic of goods. On the road to Nyamasati a young man asked for Ts10 000 for six small bananas (that’s R65!). Jules was quoted Ts1 000 shillings each for bananas on Mafia Island. I paid Ts3 000 for a tube of Pringles from an Indian shopkeeper, Mike went in minutes later and paid Ts5 000.

We were at the mercy of tuk-tuk (called bajaj here, the make of the Indian-manufactured vehicles) drivers on the island and after being ripped off by the first two who brought us into town, we learned to bargain them down to half their quoted prices (which is still probably double what the locals pay).

The ferry ride to Mafia Island was pretty nightmarish. Jules and Carol volunteered to go to the harbour at 6am, as instructed by our kind hosts at the mission, to buy the tickets. Jules reported that there had been a mad scrum, with elbows forcing grandmothers out of the way and crotches digging into her body. We went to the harbour at 8am, just in time to board the ferry, and then sat, bored out of our skulls, for two hours before it left.

Clearly, the ferry trip is a big deal for some of the locals. Women and children especially were dressed in shiny wedding clothing. They chatted excitedly, fed themselves and their children and when the ferry reached the open sea, lay themselves down in their fine clothing on the dirty deck they had soiled even further with the detritus of their meals and went to sleep.
We chugged out of the harbour in a belch of black smoke and trundled through a maze of channels lined with mangrove trees. Fishermen casting hand-held lines clung to the sides of their dugout boats as we passed and rocked them in our massive wake.
Out to sea the water was calm and striated like a lagoon with stripes ranging from the shyest green to the boldest aquamarine.

Kilindoni, the main town on Mafia Island, was grungy. We checked into the New(?) Lizu Hotel because an English volunteer teacher we met at Nyamasati said that it was clean and reasonably priced. 
Unfortunately, my Handy Andy, Jik and Savlon was in our car – Lizu could do with a good scrub. There was mosquito mesh on the windows in our room but gaping, cobwebbed holes in the ceiling. Our bed was covered in cobwebs; it probably hadn't been wiped once since it was brought to the hotel. 
Jules and I were attacked by mosquitos at Nyamasati and our bites came up huge: we began worrying that they were bedbug bites. There was a huge rubbish heap next door to the hotel and the bar opposite blared hiphop till the early hours. We checked out the next morning.

The road from the harbour into Kilindoni

You can check out any time you want

We paid a lot for a hotel room with this ceiling!

Carlos, the proprietor of Whale Shark Lodge on the other side of town came to the Lizu Hotel to rescue us and plan the next day’s excursion. We had walked along the beach on our first day on the island and found two establishments – Butiama Lodge charged $140 per person per day.
Whale Shark was more reasonable at $25 a day. It was perched on a hill above the beach and had a deck perfectly positioned for sunset viewing (another visual delusion – we watched the sun set again into the sea on the Indian Ocean coastline, and I loved it).

We spent our next day at Utende, a beautiful village on the other side of the island. The Parks Board nabbed us at the entrance to village and extracted $20 each.

Our boatman, Mohammed, was a cute mixture of African and Arab with a hooked nose and a cute smile just like my nephew Faizal’s. He took us out to the rocks at the entrance to the bay where we had our best snorkel yet on the trip. 
The coral was patchy but spectacular and the huge fish were completely unfazed by our appearance. At our second snorkel stop I kept diving down to swim among what I can only describe as a thick curtain of colourful fish, mostly orange. I kept forgetting I was a smoker and stayed down until my lungs were burning. 
There are whale sharks, turtles and occasional dugong in the bay, but we saw none of them.

Mohammed took us to Chole Island, which also has Arab and German ruins, but we balked at the further $5 entry fee demanded from us. We retreated to the beautiful beach on the bay where one establishment, which charges $180 per person per day for their chalets, wanted $6 for a beer and $3 for a Coke.

We paid Ts15 000 for a bajaj ride to Utende and Ts1 000 each for a lorry taxi ride back with the locals.

Mafia Island is beautiful if you stay in the lodges, but its beaches are not much better than the mainland and the main beach at Kilindoni is a festering, perfumed wound of fish guts and ferry filth.

Sorry to moan so much about money, but the sheer ludicrousity of Tanzanian prices is getting to me. And, as I’ve already pointed out, we haven’t reached the Serengeti yet and Zanzibar also lies in wait for us rich mzungus.

IN JULIA'S WORDS

4 July

The hunkiness of sweating male bodies, the fitness – yes, they’re fit – of the women, it’s all truly fucking beautiful. I’m talking the oft visible rippling muscles of arms, stomachs, legs, and bums (US-gangster style plumber-cracks are hot here too) of the men; and the suggestion of tight asses, arms, stomachs and inner thighs of the women in the flamboyant modesty of throw-around fire-and-ice coloured wraps and scarves.

Better than Walmart figures, and the average sallow-putty bulges of couch potatoes, and the gym-buff better-be-organic neurotic of “our world”, thought I.

And I still think so: the sheer beauty of almost all – the people here on these mean tracks, I mean.

But here’s the first of a few … observation-catches-wonders:  they work, almost to a person, INCREDIBLY UNBELIEVABLEY hard. And I mean the heaving, lugging, schlepping kind of WORK.

[Which I knew about too, and which not occasionally makes me feel shame and guilt as I roar past in our fat ol’BRC a gaunt granny, for example, walking on the side of a dust road with a pile of wood on her head that we’d happily burn up for evening’s viewing pleasure (doubtless she’d EEK it out for a week of three cooked meals a day for a family of 16), while she also inhales the grit we spew in our wake as she makes her way with a roof’s-worth of wood carried on her head to her home 3kms away.]

Everything that's fetched is carried

Getting out of our fat ol’ BRC to catch the sweat in public transport, though, made me look at it all over again. We left our BRC in the care of a mission station in Nyamasati, where we had slept up in our most-luverly tent the night before (we have so come to love our tent-bedroom over hired lodges – mostly because what our budget allows for when it comes to other kinds of accommodation makes for whiffygrungydives, whereas our tent is most fine and our pillows smell of us).

This was on a ferry from the almost impressively nowhere port-town of Nyamasati. It was impressively nowhere because it is the local port to Mafia Island (Kilidoni’s its port). So it’s busy – for the port of a small town. Mzungu/tourists are known to turn up.

There are sacks upon heavy sacks – of meal, coconuts, sodas – coming aboard. And did I see even ONE DEVICE WITH WHEELS TO CARRY THESE? Why yes. One biggish wheelbarrow. And the rest of the backbreaking stuff to be heaved? By hunky male back, dripping with glistening muscle.

So I thought: wheels are here, and the wooden platform down to the boat would work just fine with wheeled carts and other mechanical things too could carry the physical load.

Lugging it down on sweating hulks of men is just their CHOICE. They ORGANISE themselves to be like this. To work sooooooooooo damn hard to carry the water, to build the wall, to transport the sacks. 
And then I realised exactly how dashing YOUNG and MALE the whole scene was. It’s all about unbridled macho masculinity. It HAS to be like this to centrepiece their sheer dripping, bulging BICEPS.

So this is the next of my observation-catches-wonders: in order for young men to have some sense of power in this social order – but not too much, mind - and yet be useful AND subservient to the older men in power, there must be as little mechanisation as the imagination can capture. Heave, hoist, strain, sweat-it, young men.
It’ll keep you busy by day and exhausted by night. Then imbed your power, old sour men, in the rituals and symbols of elders and ancestors.

No in at all for the flamboyantly constrained women, in this bicepdrippingsweat scene. No matter how fit, of any kind, you may be.

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Sunday, 7 July

A place to seek some peace

Dar es Salaam, so far, has been a haven of peace. After weeks in small towns and rural villages, I’ve been longing for a shopping mall with a cinema and an ice cream parlour (yes, me!). 

We’ve had it hard and dirty.  Since we arrived in Tanzania we have swallowed acres of fine red dust and our big red car has suffered the added indignity of a litre of spilled long-life milk and owners who don't have access to enough water to clean it properly.

We wanted to park for a while, get clean and stick close to our car, which so far in Tanzania has given us our cleanest and finest accommodation (despite the sour smell at the back). It’s been a while since we settled down for a long stay, our constant packing and unpacking, and moving from place to place is disorientating. 
No sooner have we managed to pronounce the name of the place where we’re at before we have to struggle with another one. It’s hard to make connections with local people during short stays, especially when there’s such a huge language barrier. Paying guides to be our friends for a few hours isn’t very satisfying.

We’re still struggling with Swahili, and it doesn’t help that every person we meet teaches us a new way to greet: Jambo, mambo, salama, poa, safi, mizuri and another word we learned today which I forget and means howzit. 
Then there’s good morning, afternoon and evening, which I also forgot. I say salaamu aleikum when the Swahili word just won’t land on my tongue and usually get away with it. Goodnight’s easy: its lala salaama.

Mikadi Beach Lodge, a short ferry-ride away from Dar es Salaam’s CBD, fulfilled some, but not all of our expectations. We had wanted a grassed camp; we got sand. I set off, towel, shampoo and soapdish in hand with high expectations to their showers, which promised hot and cold water. 
The water was piping hot, but it was salty seawater. The shampoo lathered, the soap wouldn’t. Thank goodness we brought loads of wetwipes, I’ve been using them every day.

On Friday Jules and I cleaned every inch of our car, inside and outside. Jules found two barrels of fresh water and we almost emptied one, carrying every drop we needed to our campsite. By late afternoon the car was clean and my legs were like jelly.

Despite my exhaustion, I made supper, and it was worth the effort. In hindsight, it wasn’t about the taste – fantastic as my tuna-with-feta pasta was – it was us reclaiming our comfortable space and making it work for us.

Dar es Salaam has been kind to us so far, touch wood – despite all the warnings about it being a mugger's paradise. We went into the city for the first time yesterday, and within an hour, there was an incident. In bright sunshine, on a busy corner, I heard the unmistakable sound of the zip of my haversack being opened (we live with the sound of zips opening and closing on most of our possessions).
I turned around and found a young man with his hand on my bag.  Two men started shouting and chased him down the road. We were surrounded by concerned people, one a newly-qualified lawyer who pressed his business card on us and said we should call if we had any problems. Everywhere we went people were concerned about two women walking in the city and gave us their cards to call if we needed help in any way.

I’m feeling quite at home in Dar, there’s many people here who would fit right in on the Cape Flats. But the kiddies at our campsite made me weep bitter tears for my grandson Ruhi Khan back home, whose third birthday I missed a fortnight ago.

We arrived in the city at the best time, everybody says. It had been cleaned for Barack Obama’s visit last week. One man told us they even cleaned the streets with jets of water; he’d never seen that before.
So glad we missed the visit, although we had sat in a crowded, dirty bar on Mafia Island and watched people’s proud faces as they watched Obama making a speech at a posh banqueting hall. The Tanzanian Broadcasting Corporation, for reasons only they can explain, kept cutting the poor man’s face off at the forehead. I’d never noticed Obama’s eyebrows before.

Where's our welcome to Dar?

Newspapers and television have been in short supply for weeks, so imagine our surprise when we bought the papers on Saturday and discovered that there had been a coup in Egypt on Wednesday. Not going there, I declared, I'm on holiday. And I'm not driving a Landcruiser down a road lined with hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees fleeing fighter jets.
Our route will have to change. Is there a place called Alexandria in Ethiopia? We'll do some research.

We leave for Zanzibar tomorrow, just in time for Ramadaan on an island that’s pressing for independence so they can impose sharia law. Should be very interesting, I’m looking forward to it.
I fell asleep last night with a disco blaring to my right and a mosque blasting out a dhikr until the early hours of the morning. My earplugs drowned the music to a dull throb, but the tenor of the monotonous Arabic prayers persisted and put me straight to sleep.
Yesterday we had a fine Sunday lunch in an Indian restaurant and I had goat for the first time. I couldn't resist - it was on the menu as mutton breyani. Tastes just like mutton, especially when it's prepared with all the right spices.

Oh yes, Jules and I found a mall with a fantastic supermarket that stocks loads of South African and British goods. We scoped it out yesterday and went in today. After weeks of deprivation all we managed to buy was two rolls of Polo mints and cigarettes. We’ve lost our ability to shop.