Times have changed in Zanzibar

A quick two weeks have flown by in Stone Town and I'm finally starting to catch my bearings.

I started Swahili classes with one Mr. Faruk, who boasts that teaching Swahili is "as easy as eating papaya." The first couple of classes were slow and frustrating, but the pace is picking up a bit and I'm starting to understand how nouns and verbs work enough to throw broken sentences together. It's a pretty beautiful language to listen to.

You actually probably know more Swahili than you think: here's a list of words you might recognize, particularly if you've watched the Lion King recently.

Rafiki - Friend
Simba - Lion
Asante sana (think "squash banana") - Thank you very much
Hakuna matata - No problem
Safari - Travels / journey
Jenga - Build
Kweli (as in our dear friend, Talib) - True
Kwanza - First

Basketball continues to be a grind - they've ditched our rest day on Sunday - but the coach tells me that the intense training is only going to last for the next two or three weeks of preseason. Basically, they're looking to work the boys into game shape, then lighten the practice load a bit to keep everyone fresh. We'll see how slack those runs actually are.

Saturday, we each paid five bucks to rent a boat out to a sandbank off the coast that disappears during high tide. During low tide, it's a killer snorkeling spot, and we lucked out to see a few lion fish, a ton of clownfish and one hilarious octopus that turned changed colours to try to avoid us. The burns on my legs and back are still healing.

The other day, one of my teammates (Gidibo, or "Giddy") invited me to his family's place to break fast. Just before sunset, I hopped on the back of his Vespa and we darted through a few alleys to find a small concrete building. The only light flickered on and off in bursts, so we mostly sat in darkness in a circle on the dusty floor. The food was incredible, and despite my poor Swahili I was treated like a total king.

I spend most of the time feeling like a five-year-old, wandering aimlessly around town and staring at people and things a bit longer than I should out of sheer curiousity. I met with one very elegant, very politically oriented lady named Salma Maoulidi helped school me in the ways that Zanzibar has changed over the years.

For a number of reasons, she says the island has regressed. In the late 19th century, she said, women were revered as leaders: everyone in the family respected them for what they did in the household, and as such they were allowed to work, play sports, etc... Now, obedience and conformity are the expected norm, and the society seems to scorn "variations" rather than celebrating unique and powerful women.

Drugs are another huge problem. I'm told that 8% of young Zanzibaris are full-blown heroin addicts; the product of an island that serves as the midway point for Afghanistan and Pakistan's in-transit dope. Middlemen can take some of the pure, cut it into trash with a ton of flour and sell it on the streets for cheap. In a place where more than half the people live on less than a dollar a day, this habit costs people about eight bucks every day because the high is so superficial. Anyway, rumour has it some of the resorts were put up as fronts to launder the drug money, so I'll definitely be trying to find ways to look deeper into that.

The final issue with Zanzibar, which I'm certain ties into the other two, is the thriving tourism industry. Tourism in Zanzibar grows about 25% per year, which is incredible considering fuel prices. That said, Salma tells me that the living conditions for the average Zanzibari haven't increased in the slightest: in fact, most of the tourism positions at hotels and restaurants aren't even filled by locals because they lack working knowledge of English. Wondering why the government hasn't put vocational training in place? Or why taxes on the profits of a US$700 per night resort aren't somehow filtered back into the social system? Or what those taxes actually are?

"The one thing you need to know about Zanzibar," Salma tells me, "is that nothing is as it seems on the surface. To truly understand this place you need to look beyond the surface."

Guess I've got my work cut out for me.