Stones and Spice

Walking on the tarmac to our plane to Zanzibar I feel a twinge of pride seeing the label under the cockpit “made in Canada” as I see we are flying a Bombardier Q400 dash 8 turboprop, proudly made in Quebec.  it’s great to see something actually manufactured in Canada in another part of the world as we seem to be great at starting innovative  companies like Nortel and Blackberry but fail to nurture them into long term stable successes. 

The flight is quick and the attendants barely have time to pass out the nuts and a drink before the pilots announce that we are descending for landing. 

Our driver for Zanzibar, Abdullah meets us at the airport with 2 cars, someone must have warned them we have a LOT of luggage.  Leaving the airport parking lot and driving down the main road it’s immediately apparent that we are in a very different place, the first giveaway is the Moorish architecture with the traditional curved archways and wooden shutters, the second is the presence of people wearing the traditional Arab Jelaba’s and round hats.  We pass 2 mosques so it’s clear that the Muslim influence here is strong.  Even at 10pm the streets are buzzing with activity, street vendors hawking their various forms of mystery meat on smoky open fires and small kiosks lining the storefronts. 

The one thing that is the same is the traffic and lack of appreciation for any kind of lane demarcation.  Nancy and I love it, it feels just like our trips to Turkey and Morocco and much different than what we have seen on the rest of the trip. We are back in our comfort zone. 

The Zanzibar palace hotel is in the City Center and we take the ring road before turning down into a maze of alleys in the oldest part of the City.  It feels like Fez in Morocco with the narrow alleys and sharp turns and the van makes it way down increasingly narrow lanes until we are delivered to the doorstep of our hotel for the night, a restored house built in 1885 by a former Dhow sailor and trader.  The traditional wooden beam and plaster ceilings, varying ceiling heights that force you to duck lest you end up knocking yourself out and steep stairs are part of the package that comes with this type of place but prove challenging for hauling up the luggage and I can see my sisters and the kids reaction as it is really different from what we have experienced so far. 

Abdullah picks us up in the morning for our 2 tours before we head to our beach resort in the Southeastern part of the island for our remaining time in Africa. Abdullah explains that the nameTanzania is actually a combination of two countries; Tanganyika and Zanzibar 

We drive a half hour out of town for our Spice tour on a local farm where or tour guide James “Bond” of Africa got to see cloves (from the flower of a tree), cinnamon tree (bark), pepper (on a vine), nutmeg, coffee tree, cardamom, vanilla bean, cacao, ginger, lemongrass, tumeric and many more.  I thought it was going to be tacky tourist but James was actually a great tour guide and kept it interesting and I had no idea how all of these “exotic” spices we use in our everyday cooking actually grew.  It was surprising to see all of this growing in one relatively small area. 

At one point James explains that in Swahili, Kahawa means coffee? Coffee means slap so if you ask for strong coffee in Zanzibar you may get a surprise. 

After purchasing some soaps and perfumes made by a local women’s co-operative and watching a performance of the “butterfly” the human coconut tree climber extraordinaire, we had a literal “sit down” lunch of local food in a house down the road from the spice farm on a concrete floor with mats, it will be a miracle if we don’t all need vitamin I (Imodium) tonight. 

Back in town we get a tour of Stone town, a Unesco World Heritage site and learn the history of Zanzibar which is actually comprised of two islands, Unguja and Pemba.  We are on the main island Unguja. 

The word Zanzibar came from the Arabic zanjibār which is in turn from Persian zangbâr, a compound of Zang “black"+ “coast"owing to its history as a slave port for black African slaves.   The islands were originally occupied for 200 years by the Portuguese who were driven out by the British and then followed by the arabs from Oman, leaving the islands predominantly Muslim today (90% Muslim, 10% Christian and Hindu) although everyone gets along and there is no hint of any sectarian violence or religious persecution like you see in other parts of the African continent, proving that religion is not guaranteed to be a source of division. 

We navigate through the haphazard maze of narrow streets that characterize Stone Town, a mess of tangled wires overhead in a seemingly random mess and stop by Freddy Mercury’s house where he lived in Zanzibar, his birthplace (he was born Faruque Bosara) which is now a museum. I ask our guide for a recommendation to buy some rough Tanzanite which is only found here in Tanzania in one spot along the foothills of mount Kilamanjaro and is actually about 1,000 times rarer than Diamonds, I buy two pieces that total about 22 carats to make a ring for Nancy and a pendant and then it’s time to depart for our beach resort for the final days of our stay. 

It is clear that China is gaining influence in this country as there is serious talk of a bridge being built to the mainland which is 50km away to be financed by the Chinese and during our stay we had to detour around many roads that were blocked due to the Chinese ambassadors visit.  This is part of China’s belt and road initiative that aims to make African countries dependent on their debt financing to gain access to supplies of critical minerals.  It appears that the Chinese government and investors are held in high esteem here the way Abdullah was talking about them and western countries are nowhere to be found so it appears that they will win this Cold War for control of the mining interests without firing a shot.

We arrived at our beach resort on the Indian Ocean at sunset for a few well deserved days of actual vacation.  I had no idea that the tides were so huge in this part of the world.  Jayson and I had to walk out almost 500m to reach the water and even then it was only 2 feet deep. It appears that you can walk about a kilometre before you reach the oceans edge on a shallow reef. Time for a margarita.  Cheers