Big Brother’s African Brother #32: Stone Town, Zanzibar Island

Stone Town, Zanzibar Island

Day 31: 28 August 2002 10:00 pm

Big Brother is no longer spying on us – freedom at last.

Modest dress poster

We woke up with the call to prayer blasting out at 5:00am. In the night,
there had been torrential downpours and I was glad that the roof wasn’t
leaking. The disintegration of so many buildings in Stone Town is due to
flat roofs. The style was copied from Oman, where the climate is much
drier. Angled roofs are required here, but existing roofs are expensive to
replace.

We have been testing out our AquaPure Filter bottles as a litre of drinking
water costs Tsh 500. So far so good. We just fill up to the top and leave
standing for 15 minutes.

All of our group were checking out except us – they were off on their
organised spice tour and then travelling to the northern beaches. We were
happy to remain in Stone Town, as the beach held little appeal. Most truck
members do not understand this, but we have seen so many deserted, idyllic,
white sand beaches before, it’s not top of my list of must-dos.

We changed the date of our ferry booking to the day before, as we have
decided to spend a night in Dar Es Salaam. There was no hassle or charge
with changing the date. We booked our spice tour for Tsh 9500 with Mr Mitu.
This guy is recommended in Lonely Planet and seemed to be above board.
Outside Mr Mitu’s office there was an interesting poster, advising women to
dress modestly, illustrated by two contrasting pictures. I just had to have
a photo of it. Take heed, Roberta, hot pants are not the way to go on
Zanzibar. We also purchased a tub of industrial strength “Toss”. This is a
common brand of bright blue washing powder that I’m sure contains a list of
chemicals banned by the E.U. Why it’s called “Toss” I’ll never know.

It is so easy to lose yourself in Stone Town. We came across fascinating
wooden carved doors, some with spikes (a tradition brought here from India
where the spikes were used to protect doors from elephants), and many
decorated with carvings of passages from the Quran.

One of the touts handed us a paper leaflet addressed “To our loved Tourist”
that cautioned us that hotels and guest houses are prohibited from selling
tours or transport and we must use travel agencies or touts. I chuckled at
the dire warning of “Anyone who is found to do may fall to disappointment”.

On our way back to our hotel, we noticed a stall that had ebony carvings of
unpolished heads, but still retaining the original bark of the tree. The
stall owner was named Simba and I immediately warmed to him as he was
wearing a Liverpool F.C. shirt. He spent time explaining about the quality
of the wood and carving. He offered us the carving for US$10 compared to
similar we had seen in Uganda for US$30. We bought it after a little
discussion and I knew we were having a perfect day. Sometimes every event in
your day goes smoothly and we were having such a day.

Back out of the food market for dinner where, horror of horrors, we bumped
into our tour leader. We confessed that we were returning to Dar Es Salaam
a day early and instead of lapsing into hysterics, our tour leader remained
chilled, not painting a picture of instant doom and gloom if we attempted
it. I wonder if our tour leader had been smoking something?

We stuffed ourselves silly and our poor shrunken stomachs ached – Tom had
barracuda in his chapati – and the banana and chocolate pancakes were the icing
on the cake.

Positives: A perfect day!

Negatives: Not applicable.