Back to class for B and W. To the streets for K, C, and B. A woman in a burka holding hands with a toddler wearing a snap up cowboy shirt. A young girl standing in front of a dress shop longingly looking in. Rows of dresses are hanging from the ceiling. An old man blind with cataracts. Long poles holding up tall walls. At Old Fort we connect with the dressmaker. Everyone holds up kikois so I can try mine on. I decide to keep wearing it. Lunch at Coco de Mare. ‘Pili pili Crab’ for me. Described in the menu as ‘fresh crab sautéed in garlic, chili and Zanzibar spices, fresh from the farm’. I’ve been there! Crab claws in hot curry sauce with pilau rice. TSH5000. I eat with my fingers. I’m in heaven. Cold Tusker Beer. Earlier I commented about seeing ‘Club Sandwich’ on the menu. “Are you kidding? Who would order a club sandwich in a restaurant like this?” Moments later, the server presents a club sandwich to a New Zealander (? - best guess based on accent) sitting across the way. I am particularly humored when the guy who ordered it comments loudly, “You call this a club sandwich?” Apparently, British pub food isn’t what one should order when in a Zanzibari restaurant. Who’d have guessed?
B and W are finishing up as we arrive at One Ocean. They’ve both passed their tests with 90% scores. Only tomorrow’s dive remains. They eat in the restaurant at The Tembo Hotel where they have been pool diving. Brian, Kristin and I get to swim in the pool while they eat. Borrowed luxury. The place is swank.
We walk in single file down the narrow streets. Big bundles of wood, bags of charcoal, timber being carved into elaborate beds. The end result of the destruction of the forest. A way of life for the wood workers. They are masters of their craft. We come to the church that sits on site of the old slave market. Bill arranges for a tour. I feverishly take notes as our guide, Christopher, recounts the horrors of an African’s life once captured. A tiny stone holding room with tall, thin slots as the only source of air. A ceiling that necessitates crouching. Chains. A deep trough runs down the middle of the stone room. At high tide, it carries away the sewage. The tiny room is stifling with the 6 of us in it. People died here from starvation or heat or sadness. This was the room for mothers and older children. Most babies were killed. ‘Useless’. The room feels the way it looks. Oppressive. Deeply sad. Crying. I sit and stare. I can barely imagine the fear. The disbelief. Trying to feel what the people here must have felt crushes my heart. I blink back tears as I listen to Christopher. Many people were tricked into slavery by their captors. Chiefs from the villages were given gifts and told the people who went would be given good jobs and were going ‘off to a better life’. The people who didn’t get to go were often jealous. Reality soon presented itself when the ‘workers’ were soon chained together and forced to march for days and hundreds of miles to get to this place. Little hope of ever finding their village or their people again even if they were to escape. Some tribes captured and sold members of neighboring tribes. Villages tried to defend themselves. People lived in fear everywhere. Some committed suicide rather than face slavery.
We walk outside to the auction site. There is a whipping tree where slaves were beaten and their ‘toughness’ judged based on whether they cried out. Those able to ‘take it’ were sold for the highest prices. A rectangular pit in the ground holds sculptured people in shackles. This is where the slaves were sold. It is too much. I cry openly. “It’s so awful”. Christopher puts his arms around me in comfort. “I’m sorry,” he says. HE is sorry. So ironic. I can hardly stand it. Singing. I realize there are school children right next door and they are singing. They are lining up to go inside after recess. They smile and dance as they sing their way in, the auction yard visible from their playground. The people here seem to have moved on. Incredible.
We visit the church built by released slaves under the protection of the Missionaries who came after the British forced an end to the open slave market in the 1880’s. The famous Dr. Livingstone is given deserved credit here as being responsible for the end of the open slave trade. He first saw the slaves being marched out of the jungle near Ujiji, went back to England and appealed to the British magistrate which sent in war ships to defeat the Arab sultan who ruled Zanzibar. The African people who had been brought here as slaves, now released had nowhere to go now that they were freed. They came from dozens of different tribes and did not know how to get back to their people. The Catholic missionaries taught them carpentry skills and took great care of them. The church is beautiful and hopeful. There is a marker in front of the pulpit where the ‘whipping tree’ once stood. The slave trade went ‘underground’ until 1907. I realize that many of the people here in Stone Town must be the descendants of all those released, homeless, slaves. Lives horrifically interrupted.
Our tour of Stone Town continues through the fish market. Still reeling from the Slave Market experience, I’m in a bit of a fog. The fish market is certainly an experience for the senses. It smells as one would expect an unrefridgerated fish market to smell. We move through quickly and I ponder if this is where my crab from my curry at lunch came from. Probably. As my stomach has not protested anything I’ve eaten so far, I’ve decided that the fish here must be ‘fresh enough’. It sure doesn’t look it from the outside.
We tour the Arab palaces and the House of Wonder. I’m slowing grasping the history of the Island. It was under Arab rule for decades. They built elaborate palaces here and along the coast outside of town. This palace was built in 1846. This island has gone from tribal rule in the 1400’s to the Portuguese who allegedly showed the tribal chief a mirror and gave him gifts. He was so impressed that he turned over possession of the island to them and they ruled here until the 17th century when the Arabs took it from the Portuguese in battle. Eleven different sultans ruled here until the British took control and the island became a British protectorate (that’s why the current money is still called shillings). The British gave the island back to the Arabs in the early 1960 but the local people staged a revolution in 1964 and won their independence. Christopher was a young boy then but remembers the riots in the streets and the assassination of the islands first president. It was this man who gets credit for the amazing cultural tolerance now evident on Zanzibar. He arranged forced marriages between men and women from all the religions and sects represented (Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim – Sunni and Shiites). He reasoned that if there were family connections between all the different ethnicities and religions, the people would be forced to get along. The strategy seems to have worked. Prior to his decreed, Arabs lived in certain houses and Indians lived in others (you can tell by the shape of the doors). Now anyone can live anywhere and the island has enjoyed relative peace for decades. I am amazed this was happening when I was a young child. I forget that Tanzania is such a young country.
Christopher is a wealth of knowledge about history and current affairs. I wish we could talk longer. I take notes but know I have missed dates and gotten details wrong. Bill points out that I can Google it all later. Oh, yeah. Such a weird world we live in!
Most people here (Christopher says 95%) are Muslim, converted by their Arab rulers. We talk later about the irony in that. It does seem odd that a people would choose to practice the religion of their oppressors after they regained their independence. The indigenous people of this island once had their own form of religion and worship. I wonder if that is practiced any more. I need to look up Voodoo on Google.
Will heads home. The rest of us go for Indian food. The first real Indian food of my life I realize after I get a taste. I savor the flavors and the presentation. All eaten with our right hands, communal bowls shared. Two Indian children eat French fries with ketchup at the table next to us. The grass is always greener. We walk home and find Will outside sitting on the stoop chatting with Said (the night watchman who sits outside The Clove from 7:00pm until 7:00am every night). He and Will seem to enjoy each other’s company. Bill and I join them. Said is learning English and Will wants to learn Swahili. Said has brought an English to Swahili dictionary he is using to teach himself the language. We offer gifts of glow-in-the-dark bracelets to passing children. The word gets out and soon our offerings are gone. I say goodnight.
