There was something sketchy about the guy. The way he sidled up to me at the stern rail, crowded in way too close. He had shifty eyes, brown skin, slim, with short black hair, maybe in his twenties. I was quite possibly a mark -- tourist, white, much older, head and shoulders taller. Nevertheless, I made sure my daypack was tucked safely between my legs. My digital SLR camera was in there. I’d read the warnings to travellers.
Directly
below us, the high speed ferry unspooled a boiling wake that carved a long
white furrow across the Indian Ocean. Sprinkled here and there on the glittering
water, weather-beaten wooden dhows with stained and patched lateen sails criss-crossed
the sea as their crews fished. If we hadn’t been on a sleek, 35-metre catamaran
travelling at 22 knots, the scene could have been a thousand, maybe
two-thousand years old. We were out of Dar es Salaam, as the sailors say, bound
on a quick day trip for the storied island of Zanzibar. As we headed north, the
Swahili Coast of Tanzania lay low and green to the west until it finally
disappeared.
I
understood that different cultures have different ideas of personal space, but
I didn’t trust this jittery kid with the furtive eyes. I kept a close watch on
him until he finally left, disappearing into one of the large salons on the
boat. The massive ferry – named Kilimanjaro – was modern and pristine with three
decks of comfortable seating including open air sections forward and aft, and
inside, luxurious cushioned chairs in economy and business class with air
conditioning and television. The ferry was part of a fleet built by an
Australian company for the billionaire owner who had been born in Zanzibar.
Our
early morning passage would take two hours. Plenty of time to imagine the people
who’ve sailed these historic waters. Archeologists found stone tools on
Zanzibar that were made by Africans from the mainland who’d risked the 30-kilometre
journey 22,000 years ago. They were followed over the centuries by traders from
Yemen, the Persian Gulf and from India. Some stopped and married into the local
population. Vasco da Gama planted the Portuguese flag on the island in 1499 and
it soon became part of their colonial empire that lasted for two centuries.
Zanzibar Island (Unguja in Swahili) is part of an archipelago off the east coast of Africa. It’s a strategic location with ocean access to the entire eastern flank of the continent, the Middle East to the north, and to India and Sri Lanka across the Arabian Sea. The island also has arable land, plenty of fresh water, and a natural harbour, all of which explains why so much blood has been spilled on its sandy shores. The Sultan of Oman threw out the Portuguese in 1698, planted vast plantations of cloves and the islands became known as the Spice Islands. Their fragrant cargo was carried away on sailing ships to markets around the world.
The sultan had two other resources to export: ivory from elephant tusks and slaves from the mainland. The Sultan rulers of Zanzibar imported as many as 50,000 African slaves annually. Some they kept to work in the fields, the rest they sold to the Arab world, India and beyond. According to Islamic jurisprudence, free Muslims could not be enslaved and so in the countries of Islam demand was high for this cheap labour. According to the BBC, an estimated 17-million Africans were sold into slavery in countries on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa. Historians claim the Arabs were especially brutal. In Zanzibar, as many as one-third of the slaves died every year.
Over
the years, merchants on Zanzibar added gold, frankincense, weapons, silks and
turtle shells to their list of goods for sale. The island became the commercial
capital of East Africa. The ruling sultans and wealthy traders built a new town
out of blocks hewn from coral and so it became known as Stone Town. Awe-struck
sailors wrote home about its beauty as they approached from the sea. But when
they got closer, the stench of garbage, excrement, and rotting bodies filled
the air. Once ashore, they were greeted by the threat of tropical and venereal diseases
and the sight of skeletal slaves dying in the streets.
It was just the salty tang of the ocean that
greeted us as we sailed into the harbour under a cloudless sky. A couple dozen dhows
large and small were moored in quiet water. Some were fishing boats, others
were used for freight or ferrying passengers among the islands of the
archipelago. Many take tourists out on day trips to dive and snorkel among the
reefs or to visit the island’s vast white beaches. The ocean front of Stone
Town is lined with ornate and stately buildings many hundreds of years old, a
melange of styles built by Africans, Arabs, Portuguese, Indians and Persians. They
face a boulevard dotted with palm trees that follows the serpentine seawall. The
rich beauty and history of the architecture prompted the United Nations to name
Stone Town a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000. Further up from shore, the spires
of the Anglican and Catholic Cathedrals and the minarets of mosques rise above
the neighbouring three and four-storey stone buildings. To the north of the ferry
dock, the harbour is devoted to shipping, with huge cranes hovering over stacks
of multi-coloured cargo containers ready to load or unload.
Once
the ferry docked, we disembarked into a large, open air reception area where Customs
and Immigration officials of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar,
stern-faced as they are at any border these days, demanded to see our passports
and vaccination certificates. After being waved through, the next hurdle was to
navigate the crowd of shouting taxi drivers and travel guides offering their
services. I didn’t need either. Guidebooks, government websites and bloggers
warn travellers not to take any taxis here unless pre-arranged by their hotels.
The same goes for hiring would-be tour guides. Tourists can be targets for robbery,
kidnapping and sexual assault.
Out on the
street, I stopped to admire the beautiful buildings across the road, but first
I needed to find an ATM to withdraw more Tanzanian shillings as the ferry
company hadn’t accepted credit cards. I
walked along a main road that skirted a fetid marsh choked with reeds and strewn
with a magnificent array of garbage which someone was burning in smouldering
piles. I was grateful for having taken my malaria pills and shots for yellow
fever.
I approached
one bank but the two armed soldiers standing guard said there was no cash
machine there. Down the dusty road another block or so, I found a bank with a small,
glass-enclosed ATM. I stepped inside and withdrew more cash. As I turned to go
out, I almost ran into the guy from the ferry, the one who’d crowded in so
closely. He had just taken a step to come in. I was surprised to see him.
“Habari,”
I said (hello in Swahili), and walked past him and out to the road, my daypack
slung over my shoulder. I’m not a timid traveller but quickly realized what
might have happened. Stories are legion here of tourists convinced by the sharp
point of a knife at their backs to withdraw their daily limits and hand over credit
cards and PIN numbers as well as their passports. I wondered what Canadian
passports were worth on the black market. About US$2600 or more according to a
newspaper article I read later.
I
turned east, strolled uphill on a street lined on both sides with stores
selling plumbing supplies, hardware and clothing. It was a beautiful morning. The
area wasn’t busy, just a few knots of local men in their kanzu and kofias chatting
over coffee while women dressed in abayas
and hijabs opened up their shops.
I was simply wandering about checking out the town, seeing how people lived. I
was happy to be there, smiled and said Habari, but noticed that while some
nodded only a few smiled back, just a couple of mumbled hellos. It was easy to
understand. They must grow weary of gawking foreigners with their pockets full
of money.
I
continued up the road then stopped and looked behind me. There was the guy from
the ferry again. He was on the other side of the street. He saw me watching
him. I turned and kept walking, then stopped and looked. He was almost directly
across from me. Was I being stalked? I stood still and waited as he walked
past, and as he did, he motioned to someone up the street, pointing to his head
as if to say, “He’s onto me.” I couldn’t see the other person, so I stayed
there until the guy moved on, then turned and walked back toward the harbour.
Tourists
from so-called developed countries need to be more than careful here. Common
sense and humility are required. In the Zanzibar archipelago, one of every two
people live below the poverty line. The average annual income is US$907. One
lens in my backpack – just the lens – was worth double that. It was an easy
decision to leave my camera in the bag.
It
was time for a coffee. I headed to The Old Dispensary just across from the
ferry terminal. It’s a four-storey wedding cake of a building with carved
wooden balconies, elaborate cornices and an exuberant amount of gingerbread. I walked
through the huge wooden doors into a courtyard paved with stones and open to
the sky. I sat at one of the tables, enjoyed a coffee from the southern
highlands of Tanzania and admired the balconies on the upper floors that overlooked
the courtyard. Birds flew freely in and around the massive pillars. The friendly
waiter told me it had once been a charity hospital for the poor built by a
wealthy Indian trader in the 1880s. Later, it became a dispensary, providing
basic medical care and medicines. Over the years it deteriorated until The Agha
Khan Trust restored it in the early 1990s. It was a cool oasis, a perfect place
to check my guidebook and map.
I
can’t resist an old fort and so downed my coffee and walked south along
Mizingani Road, the stately route that follows the harbour seawall. Ngome Kongwe, Swahili for old fort, is a
brooding beast of dark coral stones. It was built by the Omanis at the end of
the 17th century to protect the town from the acquisitive
Portuguese. It’s the oldest building in Stone Town and looks it. The decrepit hulk
contains a large inner courtyard lined on two sides with the kiosks of local
artisans selling clothing, purses and other souvenirs to tourists. Up a flight
of ancient stone steps to the top of a circular tower, a cultural centre sold work
by local artists. I bought three small ink and water colour pieces from the
artist who painted them – a dhow at sea, a pair of massive wooden doors, and a
street scene -- which are now framed and hanging on my living room wall. Adjacent
to the square within the walls of the fort is an amphitheatre for live dances,
musical performances, and movies shown at the Zanzibar International Film Festival.
Two
of Stone Town’s architectural jewels are right next door. The House of Wonders (Beit-al-Ajaib in Arabic) was built in 1883 as the Sultan’s palace
and became the first building in Zanzibar to have electricity and an elevator. Next
to it, the Palace Museum or Sultan’s Palace (Beit el-Sahel) is a group of buildings that includes the palace and
the sultan’s harem. The palace was built in 1832 in the Omani style – formal
simplicity with local materials -- and was home to the local sultans until
the Zanzibar Revolution. The museum contains roomfuls of the rulers’ rich furnishings,
including ornately carved wooden chairs, settees, Persian rugs, four-poster
beds, and oil paintings.
The
fort, House of Wonders and Sultan’s Palace all face Forodhani Gardens
overlooking Stone Town’s sea wall. It’s a small, well-kept park with a white band
shell and green lawns where several local teens were hanging out while a couple
of older men were enjoying naps on the grass in the warm sun. At the edge of
the quay were two take-out food kiosks. I stopped at Café Foro and ordered grilled
fish and rice and spent a pleasant lunch at an outdoor table watching boats,
dhows mainly, coming and going in the harbour. Among the handful of people strolling
by were a well-dressed Arab man and two women wearing fashionable abayas
and hijabs. I wondered if they were his wives.
See Part 2
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