Days 8 and 9 were spent chilling and sunbathing, either by the pool in the gardens, or on the deck over the sea.
Really got me thinking of all the random things I learned, or that have happened over the last week or so!
Firstly, I have had the pleasure of company every morning at around 5:30am. My new friend is destined to wind up on my dinner plate by the end of the trip, I promise. The incessant "cockadoodle-dooing" from 5:30am til around 7:30am has made me realise that if push came to shove, I could kill my own food.... It just needs to annoy me every morning, and it's history. I hate that damned cockerel. It lives in the gardens outside my room and I swear it has a perch right next to my head. KFC anyone?
Food in Zanzibar is pretty awesome, although there are some weird combos. I had fruit salad last night for dessert, and it had pieces of cucumber in it.....should have been awful, but it actually worked. The cucumber cut through the sweetness of the rest of the fruit with a clean, crisp flavour. Who would have guessed?
I've discovered I love grilled octopus. They take the fat tentacles and slice them lengthways before grilling them. On the plate, they kind of look like halved bananas, but with the suckers on the outside instead of banana peel. If you've never tried octopus, and you like prawns, chicken or meat, you will love it. Not fishy at all, it has the texture of pork or chicken, but the taste of calamari or prawns. Yummy!!!
And Zanzibar spiced potatoes.... Wow!!! Boiled potatoes with coconut cream, chilli, onion and spices, like an exotic but warm potato salad.
Salum told me a lot about Kiswahili village life. About how as a boy he would make toys and games with his friends from things you could find lying around, or from the forests. How he loves Arsenal (after being a staunch Man U fan for the first 10 years or so) and how the regular power cuts means often his tv doesn't work.
One time, Zanzibar island had a power cut that lasted 3 months. Getting food was relatively easy (fresh fish is in abundance) but keeping food fresh was not easy with the 35 degree plus heat.
There are basically 2 straight ways to earn money in Zanzibar- you go into the Tourism industry, or you become a farmer/fisherman. Other than that, people will do whatever is necessary to earn money. The Beach Boys live off tips for taking tourists to book excursions, or just to walk with them to show them around. Women generally don't work, but if they do, they become teachers (where they are respected highly within their community), work in hotels as maids, masseuses etc, or the latest addition- the Police. Salum tells me that men fear police women, because they are "too strong and powerful" he would never marry a policewoman because he "cannot control them"
His views on marriage are archaic, but at the same time has an innocence you can't ignore. He wants his wife to be "soft, and gentle". He tells me that it is customary for the women in the family to prepare the "marital bed" with white linen.
If there is no blood on the sheets in the morning, or the following morning, then the bride's parents must pay a fine to the groom for not protecting their daughter. (eg letting her go out and run wild with boys) He is incredibly nervous that the woman he eventually decides to marry won't be "innocent".
In his culture, women are to be treated gently, and protected from the big bad world. They are cherished because they look after the home and look after the children (Salum is one of 9!!)
At one point, Salum asked me if he thought a European woman would marry him. I had to laugh- and explained that European women generally didn't want to be "controlled" by their husbands, and had a level of independence that Salum would struggle to accept. He then confessed that European women generally freaked him out as they are powerful to him- too strong to be controlled. Bless him, he would never survive!!! (not to mention the chance of finding any European woman over the age of 18 who would bleed on the marital bed is about as likely as him becoming the next US President, but hey ho.)
Back to village life- watching women come out on mornings where the tide was out to catch octopus was really cool. They brought out buckets and long sticks, and a sharp knife. They used the sticks to poke under rocks and coral to encourage the octopus to grab hold of it, before pulling it out like an Octopus lollipop, and killing it swiftly.
Sometimes the men would come out to check their wicker fish traps- I once saw a guy cycling down the road with a 4' reef shark strapped to his saddle bags.
Some of the fisherman sail right across the channel to mainland Tanzania to sell their catches in Dar e Salaam. A 3 hour sail.... Pretty incredible. On clear bright days you can see Dar e Salaam city rising from the horizon like Atlantis.
In the villages, the further out from the city you go, the more bicycles you see. The closer you get to the city, the more motorbikes. Oxen are used to pull carts, sometimes at quite high speeds with young guys standing on the carts like chariots!!
The roads were lined with cloves drying out... From green to yellow to brown and finally the almost black colour you see in the packets on the supermarket shelves. The smells on the roads are incredible. Warm, heady and spicy, smelling like Christmas in the roasting red heat.
Day 10 was spent with Safari Blue- a tour company specialising in snorkelling safaris and island hopping.
With the huge variation in low and high tides, areas we walked on in the morning were 6 feet underwater by the afternoon.
The islands were like something out of "Lost" with lush deserted forests and steep rock faces.
Snorkelling was amazing- every coral you can imagine and more with huge shoals of fish. The guide would point a fish out, then explain to us what it was (yellow fin barracuda for example)
What was sad was to see sections of completely destroyed coral where boat motors have chopped up the reef and killed it dead. These vast desolate sections serve as a reminder of how we act before we think of the consequences of those actions.
We also saw the mangrove forest from the ocean side, as opposed to the river side in Jozani forest. The water so thick with salt, nothing grows apart from the mangroves. No coral, no seaweed, nothing.
I could go on forever about all the sights, sounds and smells, but I think the best way to do it is for you to visit yourselves......
Zanzibar, thank you for an incredible 10 days, I only wish I'd stayed the full 2 weeks.
Lakota xx
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Location:Zanzibar, Tanzania
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