Zanzibar: from hijabs to bikinis

After wandering around the market, we locate dalla dalla 116, heading all the way north to Ngunwi. There are a dozen or so bags of rice on the roof of the pick up truck, and we fill into the flatbed, near the cab, and wait for critical mass to be achieved. Before we get the requisite 20 or so passengers in the 1/2 ton Nissan, we have added a freezer and another dozen items to the roof. The wooden frame groans under the weight, but we are assured that the it is 'not broken enough' to be of any worry. This is standard local transport here in Zanzibar and many other places around the world.


Just 30 minutes prior, we were wrapping up a scrumptious, lingering and decadent lunch, on the 2nd floor verandah overlooking the Stone Town harbor. Lunch, equal to pretty much any I had in foodie San Francisco, included an app of amazingly tender baby calamari, two fish dishes that were excellent, and a desert of passion fruit creme caramel. All washed down with fresh mango juice, spiced tea and coffee. In this public space, the patrons all look like us, white, sunburnt and well fed, while the servers are darker, scrawny and unbelievably polite. This is standard ex-pat dining in Zanzibar and many other places around the world.

 

The distance between these two concurrent realities of cramped dusty travel and luxurious abundant lunch is vast, with the attendant socio, political, economic and historical context. This is travel in the developing world, when you are able to sample the extremes of human existence within minutes and even sometimes seconds. We are somewhat used to this duality, but the velocity of the change between the poles can be disconcerting. For instance, the base price for this backpackery, camping tour through Africa is more than 10x the current median yearly income for a family in Madagascar. It is the bastion of privilege to be able to occupy both realties seemingly on demand.

We have mentioned our trip out to Zanzibar a couple of times and thought it would be good to write a bit about that island. Going into our trip, Zan was one of the places i was most anticipating because of the exoticism that its very name carried in my mind, and the reality of the island proved to be a bit underwhelming.

Zanzibar has an history that is quite divergent from that of mainland Africa. It has centuries of sultan control from the Middle East, as well as a number of periods under European colonial rule. It is an island about 90k by 30k, and has been a cross current and intersection of African, Indian, Arab and European influences for many centuries. My anticipation was that the Arab and Indian influence would be very strong, but while there I found that first, and foremost, it is an island of massive luxury resorts and abject poverty, writ large the duality above. In addition to this duality, the dominant thread was the island's similarity to mainland Tanzania.

The island only became part of Tanzania back in 1964, after a bit of a messy transition from colonial rule that was started in year before. The stronger muslim influence is felt more strongly than on the mainland. For example, the majority of our co-passengers in the dalla-dalla were women and girls in hijabs. In fact, one of the women that we tried our Kiswahili on was a woman named Ameena (mother of Muhammed). However, as we rode the dalla-dalla to the northern beaches, we looked at similar housing, towns, and crops to the mainland, Zanzibar. It just did not feel all that different to me than what we have been cruising through, both before and after.

 

Beach Boredom

We spent 2 days up in Ngunwi, which is at the northern tip of the island, about an hour drive from Stone Town in a direct car or 2+ hours via local transport. This is the archetype of paradise, with sunbaked vivid white beaches, crystal clear water that is perfect for swimming, great seafood, and grand vista sunsets. Nungwi also has a robust tourist infrastructure (for instance, a Hilton).

Then why was i so bored? We had been there only 18 hours, including 8 or so sleeping, when i turned to Muriel and stated - 'I am bored'. Already that day, we had gone for a jog, explored a bit and took pictures, seen some cool sea turtles, checked out the local art market, had lunch, read and I was tapped out. My hope of going for a bike ride was shut down by the heat and this stretch of paradise does not include surfing. What I could really have gone for was a fast internet connection and some american football on TV (thought soccer would also have been just fine). Here were were in true paradise and I wanted to tunnel into a man cave and not come out for hours. Hmmm, that seems a bit off.

I am just not a beach person, I guess. It is pretty, and the actual beach is wonderful for running, but I am not hardwired to idle away the hours. Instead of being relaxing, it induces stress for the activities i am not doing, for the opportunity cost of doing nothing. I get relaxation by doing things, burning calories, sweating. We will go to many more beaches, and I will get anticipatory seduced into the archetypal beach ideal. But, the sample size is sufficient, I am just not the beach type.

I think that part of the problem is that this magnificent beach could have been a beach paradise anywhere in the world. It didn't seem especially African or more specifically Zanzibarian. The over-baked tourists and the local touts trying to sell their wares felt homogeneous and distant from even the small pieces of local exoticism that we had experienced on the dalla-dalla.