After the first couple of days of mortification, today was my first excursion. A trip to the spice farms, a trip to Stone Town, and a trip to Prison Island. All in all a full on day.
Salum arrived at 9am to pick me up in a space wagon, and explained the spice Farms would our first stop.
The Omani people were the first to bring spices over to Zanzibar to farm, after they ousted the Portugese from the country. There are words in the Swahili language which have been fused from Portugese, showing how close those ties were.
So we arrive at a government Spice Farm, over 10 hectares. It wasn't what I expected- looking more like a lush overgrown forest than organised, structured farmland, it was full of tall trees, small shrubs, bushes, flowers and grasses.
Half way down the dirt road, Salum stops and lets a man into the car. A small alarm started ringing off in the back of my head.....
"This is our spice guide. He will be showing us spices to smell, or to taste" he says. Oooookaaaaay...........
Still on the same dirt road, we stop next to another guy, who hands over a box-cutter style knife to the Spice Man.
That small alarm has turned into a full blow foghorn. What the hell am I doing?? I'm in a car, in some random farmy forest, with 2 guys I don't know, one of whom has a knife!!!!
I watch too many movies for my own good. About a dozen scenes from various serial killer movies or tv shows ran through my head in a heartbeat.
Meanwhile, Salum is chatting away about the history of the Spice Farms, and reality filters back into my dizzy head. I'm on a tour, and it's going to be fun. That is all.
The spice farm was actually very cool. My Spice Man cut small pieces of spice from the plants they grow from. Coffee grows on a huge tree? Cardamom grows from the seeds of a flower that grows out the roots, not the stalks of the plant? Iodine is the sap of a tree? Who knew!!!
Cinnamon bark regrows if you slice it off, which is more cost effective than cutting the whole three down- and even the leaves have a cinnamon smell.
I ate a Jack Fruit. It has to be the weirdest fruit I have ever had. It looks like a huge, knobbly rugby ball. Opened, it looks like a cross between a pineapple, and a pawpaw. It has seeds the size of the tip of my thumb, encased in kernels of flesh- a little like sweet corn. And it tastes like a cross between a banana and a pineapple.
My head couldn't work it out, so my taste buds struggled too. Did I like it? I don't know.... It was too different!
The biggest eye opener was cloves. The clove trees are HUGE, and some poor guy has to climb the tree tout the cloves off. Clove smuggling is apparently big business in Tanzania. Yep, you heard. Clove smuggling.
As the most expensive spice grown on the island, you face 30 years in prison if caught with illegal cloves. 30 years????? I don't think you get 30 years for smuggling rhino horn!!! Crazy....
And so onto Stone Town, which was named a World Heritage site back in the 90's.
Narrow alleyways in between 3 or 4 story buildings, Stone Town is bustling. A huge food market was the first thing we saw.... But the smells of the meat and the fish in the 38 degree heat was too much for me, so we swerved around it.
Going through the alleyways, there was such an incredible abundance of colour against the stone walls. Women and children in brightly coloured scarves and robes. Paintings being sold on every corner, and street hawkers selling cd's of "local" music (um..... Bob Marley, local in Zanzibar? Really? That guy gets everywhere!)
One of the stops in Zanzibar was the last standing slave market. Zanzibar abolished slavery in the late 1800's after a plea by David Livingstone and the British government.
Illegal slave trading continued until the early 1920's and "freed" slaves were still mistreated until the revolution in 1964. Only 40 odd years ago. Makes you think, doesn't it?
The British Missionaries turned the slave auction site into an Anglican church after 1894, and kept the stump of the whipping post in the floor of the church in memory of the men, women and children who were whipped, sometimes to death, at this site.
Under the slave market building are 2 slave chambers. Not enough room to stand in, with 2 narrow "windows" for light. This is where the Omani slave traders kept their slaves. Measuring maybe 15 feet by 30 feet, they would keep up to 75 women and children in one, and 50 men in another. A 3 foot channel dug into the stone showed where the slaves had to use the toilet until the tide came in and washed the waste away every day.
It was a really sobering moment, looking around that room and trying to imagine how anyone had the will, or the strength to survive in such conditions, and one I don't think I will ever forget.
After that, Prison Island was a welcome relief. Travelling on a little boat for 20 mins, we arrived on the island. Prison Island never did become a prison, but the original building is being built into...... You guessed it, a hotel! Is anything scared anymore? Watch- some idiot will try and make Stonehenge a hotel at some point.
Anyhoooooo I digress. Prison island is interesting to walk around, but I struggle to see how you can make a half or full day tour out of it. They do have a tortoise sanctuary, with some tortoises over 100 years old, but still.... How many tortoises do you want to look at over an hour, let alone 5 or 8 hours???
They used to let you feed the tortoises until one idiot decided to sit on one (hello, does it look like a pony to you???) and another decided to let their child feed its fingers to one of the larger, more cantankerous ones. Now it's strictly "look but don't touch" which I get. At the end of the day, it's still a wild animal even if it is incredibly slow and ancient.
Am I right in thinking today passed virtually shame free? Hurrah!! Oh wait.... There were about 6 incidents where Salum had comments thrown at him about leaving Tanzania with his new "wife".... That would be me again then. Married off twice in 3 days? Not bad going.......
Day 4 was über lazy. Sunbathed in factor 15 lotion.... Yes, factor 15.... That's BIG for me, who normally wears a factor 2 or on a crazy hot day, factor 6.
I have also come to the realisation than Europeans are way too wary for their own good. I have smiled at loads of couples staying here over the last 3 days in an attempt to open a conversation, only to be shut down hard. When I mean smile, I'm not talking about my "work smile" (people who have worked with me understand) I a talking about a genuine, happy smile. After all, I am on holiday.
Maybe the guys think I'm a crackpot. Maybe the women think I'm a black widow, after their men. Balls to the lot of you, I just wanted to say hello!!!
South Africans are definitely more friendly, and more trusting.
Eventually, I asked a girl where she went snorkelling. We then did strike up a conversation, and it turns out she had her own funny stories, as her "husband" was actually her brother and for 3 weeks it's been easier to go with the flow than try and explain.
They did Kili last week, in 3 days, which made me wish I hadn't busted my back and ankle.
But that's a different story!
Watched the sun set.... Which is meant to be incredible. In a way it is, but it's not as amazing as the sun setting out in the bush. As Salum would say "I a being totally honest with you"
Sill love it here though......
Live, love, laugh....
L xx
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