ON ZANZIBAR
I’ll start by telling you all how we came to find ourselves in Zanzibar, Tanzania.
Quintin and I arrived in Cape Town, South Africa on September 10, 2023. We knew we’d be there until October 18, at which point we'd depart for Zambia where we would stay until October 25. After that, we had no plan. We knew we’d leave Africa in January to head to South America, but how we would fill those three months?!
We had no plan, but we did have grand ideas.
Gorilla trekking in Rwanda?! ELIZA THORNBERRY REPORTING FOR DUTY! Hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro?! Sounds genuinely horrific, BUT WHAT A STORY, sign me up! You mean to tell me the only remaining 7 World Wonder is in Egypt, and floating the Nile is already on my bucket list? Fate, destiny or karmic currents…it’s doesn’t matter, I’m more than there! I was teeming with excitement – so much to do, so much to see!
…and then the reality of Africa set in.
Nothing and I mean NOTHING can prepare y’all for how big this continent is. There’s not a map in the world that does justice to just how HUGE Africa is. The distance between countries is mind boggling. Even once we zoomed in and narrowed our search to “just Eastern Africa” or “just Northern Africa” the distances are incomprehensible. Add to this a dearth of infrastructure and the budget was blown on transportation alone.
Up until this point in our trip, we’ve relied heavily on buses, trains, and budget airlines. The combination of these three have gotten us everywhere we’ve wanted to go shockingly easily (and cheaply).
Of course there are buses in southern and eastern Africa, but the distances are SO vast and the road infrastructure SO poor, it was a no from me doggy dog (let us not forget Madagascar). There is not a reliable network of trains connecting the major cities we were considering and there aren’t budget airlines.
After understanding the effort (insurmountable) and cost (gut wrenching) of traveling within the continent, I was pessimistic about our prospects of achieving our goals. But I was also like “OH BUT WE’RE ALL THE WAY OVER HERE WE CAN MAKE IT WORK!!!!!”
Then I investigated the cost of doing the activities we wanted to do. Y’all the mere PERMIT to go gorilla trekking was a full week of budget. THE PERMIT! Never mind you the flight, the guide, a tent, and a bite of food. After a few thousand Google searches, we decided to pull an audible and said “you know what sounds really nice?! A coconut water on the Indian Ocean.”
And that is how I found myself in a traveler’s hostel in Stone Town, Zanzibar.
Zanzibar was not what I was expecting and while I’m not sure whether I had a good time or not, I have some great stories. Here are the standouts.
COOKING CLASS IN STONE TOWN:
Everywhere Quintin and I go we either do a cooking class or a food tour. In Stone Town, we did both and in Stone Town we had the most bizarre experience of any tour we’ve done to date.
The instructor of this particular cooking class was one hundred percent, without question, high out of her mind. She fell asleep on three separate instances during the class, she drank water straight out of the dirty dish bucket, ate food off our plates with our spoons, and showed up in a ripped shirt, broken high heels, money tumbling out of every pocket, with her headscarf simply askew (off) the whole time. Several times she asked her helper (who ended up doing literally everything, including the driving) if he would have babies with her.
Imagine you’re barbecuing some chicken and you ask if it’s time to flip the wings. You turn around and see your instructor laid out on the floor snoring. This was the top-rated experience on both Airbnb and Viator for Stone Town and the guide was drinking straight out of the dirty dish pail. Never in all my days and these days have been full…
The food slapped and I got the best smelling perfume of all time from the spice farmer where the class was hosted so all's well that ends well (?) but lord, I will never forget this day.
TIDES IN NUNGWI:
When Q and I were contemplating where to visit in Eastern Africa, we enlisted the help of none other than Anna Beanstalk Brown. In hearing we were considering Zanzibar, Anna emphatically encouraged us to go, promising the prettiest waters on planet earth.
We arrived in Nungwi, threw our bags down, and headed for the sea! We were so excited to see the prettiest water on planet earth, we forgot to apply sunscreen! We arrived to the beachfront and the scene was DISMAL. I was like…this sister of mine has deceived me. I know she’s seen prettier than this because I’ve been to the Dominican with her trifling ass. I’ve been to JACKSONVILLE FLORIDA with her, what is she talking about, prettiest water on earth? It was hideous and highly stinky.
Dismayed, we go for a beach walk, I get chargrilled, we get back and sit down for a scorching hot lunch overlooking the sea. And by god what happens over the course of our lunch but the tide comes in. I had never seen a tide move 200 meters in the course of 45 minutes transforming what was previously an ugly, seaweed covered, stinking sand into the clearest, most crystalline, indescribable shade of shimmering blue water you’ve ever seen. Bean didn’t steer me astray, she just forgot the details.
The tides themselves became the highlight of Nungwi.
When the tide is out, you can hardly see where the water starts. All you can see is sand, seaweed and boats sitting on the sand. The walk we did on the first day, we attempted the next day when the tide was in and ended up having to full on swim to our destination.
After watching the tides move up and down for a few days, the tide being out was no longer ugly; it was just the way of things. Life revolves on the tides. Fishermen go out when the tide is in and seaweed farmers go out when the tide is out. You can sit and watch the rhythm of life follow the rhythm of the tides.
DOLPHIN WATCHING IN KIZIMKAZI:
I’ll start by saying the view from our hotel in Kizimkazi was unbeatable. Azure blue waters as far as the eye can see. Sometimes, as was the case with our stay in Kizimkazi, a good view is all you get.
We were unintentionally staying at a rasta hotel, which, in my experience, attracts the scariest types of travelers (white vegans with dreads DYING to tell you about their peace corps experience in Malawi). It POURED the whole time we were there, completely washing out the road meaning we were totally confined to the hotel. The rain ruined the solar panels so there was no power. No power meant no cappuccinos, no laundry, no fan, no AC, no Wifi. One afternoon, I begged Quintin to get in a kayak with no paddle so I could tout him around the cove for a few hours.
Anyways, the highlight of Kizimizazi was actually a lowlight. We were meant to go for a double header – go swimming with the dolphins, and then go to the Jozani Forest. We wake up at the ass crack of dawn, get picked up and head to the marina. Our guide negotiates a boat and a captain and we’re off.
About half a second in, it starts to rain. Not ideal but you know whatever, we’re about to jump in the ocean, what do I care when I get soaked? About two seconds in, it starts to pour. About three seconds in I think for the first time on the Radical Sabbatical that I’m in an actually dangerous situation that I don’t have the ability to get myself out of.
It’s night time dark outside. We’re in what can only be described as a dinky ass fishing boat that the captain had to bail out with a bucket BEFORE it started raining. The waves swell so high, the boat is vertical as we crash over them. The captain and our guide are shouting at each other while one is furiously bailing out the boat and the other is jerking the engine cord with all his might.
In my panic I was like “OK, worst case scenario is the boat splits in half. I’m pretty sure I can make it back to shore, while also keeping Quintin afloat, so long as he doesn’t panic.” It should go without saying that there are no life vests on this boat. I’m prepared to swim back to shore after a shipwreck. As I make my preparations I look towards the shore and am HORRIFIED to discover it’s storming so badly you can’t tell which way is shore, which way is Dar Es Salaam or which way is the sky. Every direction, including up, looked like ocean. It was at this exact moment that Quintin turned around, made direct eye contact with the captain and firmly said “take us back to shore”.
We made it back to shore and told our driver we did NOT want to continue on and go to the Jozani Forest, yes, we know we’ve already paid, yes, we know we’re not getting our money back, yes we know we’ll sit at the hotel in the rain with no power all day. The good lord blessed our return to shore but he went above and beyond because there was a restaurant on shore that was selling cappuccinos. So while I almost had to like…I don't know… channel the Life of Pi…at least I got a warm cappuccino before returning to the vegans.
Those are the three most memorable memories from our time in Zanzibar. Otherwise, there were a few other things I appreciated.
Public Beaches: It took me a minute to realize it, but there are no private beaches in Zanzibar. Allow me to break it down. When you go to the beach in Florida, Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Caribbean, basically anywhere that's a “resort town” you’ll notice there's nobody but tourists on the beaches. I didn’t put two and two together until Zanzibar, that that is by design. The hotels have privatized the beaches in these areas and as a result, locals aren’t allowed to access the beachfronts. I’ve always heard about this, but I never NOTICED it in play until Zanzibar. In Zanzibar there are so many people (Zanzibari’s) on the beach. Every night there are quite literally hundreds of kids and young adults playing soccer on the beach, swimming, fishing, sitting and enjoying, farming seaweed, and carrying on with their business…on the beach. Bad Bunny references this often when talking about Puerto Rico, and I’ve heard it mentioned in other articles/protests in resort towns before and conceptually I understood what they were saying but seeing everybody going about their lives on the beach showed me what people have lost by hotels privatizing the beaches.
History: I’ve talked about learning history and tying things together consistently on this blog but this idea of how LITTLE I actually know was crystalized in Zanzibar. I was made to feel better by the fact that my history loving, nerdy, nose always in a book, husband also did not know the things we learned.
Did y’all know Zanzibar was colonized by OMAN? I didn’t and learning this highlighted that I NEVER learned about colonizers who weren’t European in school…
Did y’all know Zanzibar was an enormous slave trading hub?! This feels like a major DUH when you look at Zanzibar on the map, but this made me realize I only learned about the slave trade in the context of West Africans being sent to the Americas & Europe. Nobody ever mentioned that Oman ran one of the biggest slave trading operations in the world (if not the biggest). And in Zanzibar, the slave trade was NOT one sided, meaning Africans going out and colonizers coming in. It was circular with MANY different sorts of people coming IN and going OUT – Omanis, Indians, mainland Tanzanians, Malaysians, Indonesians. Omani’s were bringing Indian slaves to Zanzibar to work alongside the Zanzibari slaves in the clove fields.
Not to sound like an enormous asshole, but when I was reading Trevor Noah’s book he tells this story that perfectly summarizes how the notion of “the sky's the limit” or “if you can dream it, you can achieve it” is horse shit because you can only dream and imagine as far as the confines of your reality allow.
A beautiful and unexpected benefit from this trip is having my confines pushed out further.
