Tourist extremes

First off, apologies to all five of this blog’s faithful readers for the two-week hiatus. The transition to my new office has been unkind to my updating abilities: the pace of work has skyrocketed, and only one computer in my office has Internet access – I usually get a chance to use it once every two days or so.

The past two weeks have been particularly eye-opening, since I was able to see both extremes of the tourism that Zanzibar has to offer. Two weeks ago, I played a serious tourist card and headed south to Kizimkazi, where tourists flock to swim with dolphins. Luckily, we took the early bus and our boat was first on the water, which seriously made the difference.

In the early morning, the turquoise sea reflects the sunlight in a really strange way, and the water glimmers with a metallic texture that reminds you of a computer screensaver. After a ten-minute boat ride, we see two dorsal fins peek above water and our guide tells us, quite casually, to hop in. I throw on a snorkel and some flippers and see a dorsal fin reappear just as I’m jumping in, and I dive underneath to see a massive grey bottle-nosed dolphin diving below me.

I swim 20 metres above him for about a minute, until he finds a group of five other dolphins, who start to spiral around in other, and it looks like they're either wrestling or dancing. I don't really care, because before I know it, all six are barreling towards us and dive out of the sea together. Soon I’m swimming as fast as I can, right in the pack, dodging dolphins six inches in front of me for two adrenaline-pumping minutes. Jellyfish have stung my entire body, but I’m too numb with excitement to feel it.

After that outrageous experience, which already made the daytrip worth its 30-dollar ticket, we ate some lunch and headed to Jozani Forest. Here we hung out with a big crew of near-extinct red colobus monkeys, the highlight of which was when a monkey with an amputated arm tried to steal another monkey's baby. It was painfully awkward and hilarious. Shortly after, we
walked through mangroves during low tide, swung on their incredibly powerful roots for awhile, then headed back into town.

The next day was a five-dollar boat trip to Chunguu Island (Prison Island), which used to house slaves, then eventually a quarantine station for Zanzibar. Now it's the home of a tortoise sanctuary, and for 2 bucks you can play with a few dozen MAMMOTH tortoises whose ages go up to about 185 years. They're actually surprisingly quick and crafty, and one bit off a chunk of my sandal while I was feeding his friend. Soon enough, though, we realized that the trick was to give these guys a big ol' neck massage, at which point these giant beasts just melt and relax.

I paid a cumulative 37 bucks for the entire weekend's activities, which is hardly fair considering the intensity of some of the activities. It was also nice to take a break from speaking Swahili, which is surprisingly exhausting when you're always fumbling over words and trying to piece together broken conversations. Unfortunately, my other tourist extreme highlighted this weakness in all its glory.

Last week, I travelled with two Peace Corps volunteers to the small, isolated island of Tumbatu. This is a place that has been written up in travel guides as a place not to go unless you are fluent in Kiswahili, since the islanders are considered quite aloof and unfriendly to visitors. Their island, however, is an integral part of Zanzibar's history, where Arabian leaders built a giant palace when this little stopover was the capital of all Zanzibar roughly 800 years ago.

The boat ride over was eerily calm, which made the translucent waters indistinguishable from the morning sky except for a smattering of dhows and fishing canoes along the horizon. The island is appropriately dagger-shaped, and giant Baobab trees tower over the palms, keeping an ominous lookout for potential intruders. We pass over waves of coral and beautiful tropical fish, but this is hardly a place to go snorkeling, since not making fools of ourselves is definitely first priority.

Thankfully, my two colleagues have been living in rural Tanzania for the past two years, and Peace Corps volunteers are initiated with three months of intense language training, so they are pretty fluent and handle almost the entire discussion. Our boat driver drops us off around the corner from the main entrance to the village, which only makes us stick our more as we approach the beach to say hello to a group of young men. The first thing they do is take us to the village Sheha (think elder or leader), where we sign a guestbook that informs us we're the seventh people here in the past three months.

The entire trip is awkward, but interesting nonetheless. The village looks like most rural villages in Zanzibar, except that the dirt road is replaced with a road lined with solidified coral and white seashells everywhere. There's not much left of the ruins of the old palace of the Sultan of Zanzibar, or the giant mosque he'd commissioned, mostly because they were also built with coral, which didn't stand the test of time very well. One very cool aspect is that the entire island (of about 14,000 people) has independent electricity thanks to a network of solar panels.

Zanzibar's tourism industry is growing every year (I've read about 20-25% per year despite rising travel costs) and it's easy to see why. There's something for everyone. I've yet to go scuba diving in the many legendary spots (where you can see schools of tuna, giant sea turtles and hammerhead sharks, among others), visit the holding cells of Zanzibar's once-thriving slave market, or go on a spice tour. I figure I'm here for a while, so no rush... besides, I've been trying to eat, speak and live like a local as much as I can, and it's not like the most of the population here have the disposable income to indulge in activities like this! Thanks to rising food prices, the average Zanzibari budget drops about 60% of total income on food. Add rent, clothes and transport (if you can) and there's usually nothing left.

Work has been very interesting: four field visits to schools, a couple of which were in the deep bush (i.e. Dongongwe, with a population of 150) and every trip gives more credit to the work my organization does. In the spirit of keeping single blog posts from turning into novels, I'll cut off here, but since karaoke and beach trips are the only weekend plans, I'll discuss some of the cooler aspects of my work next week.

Also, I've been getting individual requests for topics: mannerisms, food, intensity of religion, etc... so if anyone wants to know anything specific about Zanzibar, I'd be happy to share. There are all sorts of subtleties that I don't think to mention, but it's really some of the more interesting stuff.

Hoping you all have well-thought-out Hallowe'en costumes,

Graham