Stone Town

(Post from June 12-14, 2019)

Thursday morning, we were scheduled to take the 9:30am ferry out of Dar over to Zanzibar, about a 2-hour ride. Thanks to a Tanzanian friend pro-tip, we purchased tickets in advance online and only had to print them out when we arrived at the terminal.

Easy, right?

You would think.

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve been in a public transportation hub as a white person in an African country… but how could I forget??

The hustlers.

As soon as we approached the ferry terminal, we were swarmed by about 7 or 8 men in yellow vests who were all simultaneously barking endless questions about our travel plans and status of ticket purchase, commanding us to do various things with our luggage, flashing their badges to prove the legitimacy of their demands, hustling us this way and that…

The words abrasive, annoying, overwhelming, and persistent come to mind.

A group of about 4 of them had me walking blocks away to an unnamed ticket office that I didn’t even need to go to. I came back to find one of them had Sam’s backpack on. We had to shake ourselves and remember who was actually in charge here!

Eventually we got the tickets printed, our bags back, and weaseled our way free of the madness—only to collapse into our seats on the ferry with a celebratory high five and shared look of far too much exhaustion for it only being 9:30am…

“We made it!”

…Fast forward 2.5 hours and a good nap later…

On the other end of the journey, we were leaving the confines of the ferry terminal in Zanzibar and about to walk into a similar gaggle of men hustling travelers, this time for taxi rides to their hotel. We noticed a guard who seemed to share our frustration with the increasingly aggressive swarm of people shouting and clamoring for attention. Then he snapped.

This guard—our hero—shouted some fighting words in Swahili, then grabbed a big stick and approached the crowd. In a few big sweeping, swashbuckling movements, he swatted a clearing in the crowd (without actually hitting anybody) so there was finally a little space for exit-ers to breathe and pass through. Some uneasy murmurs rippled through the group, but mostly they fell in line. Point taken.

Meanwhile…

Sam and I could not stop laughing—both because we shared this guard’s total exasperation and also because we were green with envy at his freedom to swat his way out of annoying groups of people. A superpower we wish we had!!

Anyway.

Long story short… We’re here! In Zanzibar! With Francis!!

We were so grateful (again!!) to see his friendly face at the gate ready to pick us up as soon as we arrived. Our reunion in Zanzibar is somewhat serendipitous as Francis is actually in the process of completing his Master’s in the Netherlands, but is home for a few weeks in the interim working on his thesis research. It turns out all 3 of us will be flying out of Dar the same day next week—Francis to the Netherlands, Sam to the US, and me onto Mwanza.

All that to say, he’s been doing an amazing job of juggling hosting us and also tying up last minute loose ends before he leaves — he’s amazing!

Exhibit A: For our first night in Zanzibar, he put us up in a dreamy ocean-side bungalow, each with our own rooms and king size beds—a resort where his friend works. (We’re starting to see a pattern… friend networks seem to make the dreams work around here!) He arranged all this after coming back from another quick trip abroad, only returning the day before we arrived(!!).

Our Francis-led Zanzibar adventures have run the gamut of cultural experiences! Top 5 Highlights (in no particular order) thus far include:

5) A sobering walk through the Anglican Church—which currently stands at the site of Zanzibar’s former slave market—and very well-done museum display on the history of the ivory and slave trades in Zanzibar. We also saw some of the remaining holding rooms for slaves before they were brought to market to sell–the one pictured below was built to hold 75 women and children at once. Haunting and horrific.

4) Dinner at the seafront night market, which comprises a series of open-air tables set up with an impressive spread of kabobs, lit by kerosene lanterns much like the ones you might have around your campsite. The food was delicious; the vendors, charming! (The only unpalatable element was the assembly of at least a dozen nappy, mangy cats prowling around for leftover fish scraps—but we kept our eyes at sea level and did just fine!)

3) Wandering through the narrow, Arab- and Indian-influenced streets of Stone Town. The architecture and wood carved doorways were a far cry from anything else we’ve seen in Tanzania thus far!

2) Lunch at a magical treehouse-like restaurant that would have made the Swiss Family Robinsons proud.

1) Friday night out on the town! Including dinner and live music at a place that Francis warned us was “a bit local” — all that we could have hoped for and more! Four musicians started out playing instrumental only—what Sam decisively labeled “slow jamz”—on stage for the first half hour, then gradually throughout the night different singers were added to the mix and the tempo picked up until the finale of all performers on stage to bring us this delightful mashup with amazing moves to match: