As I hopped on the bus to Zanzibar at 5am Saturday morning, I felt like I was going on vacation from a vacation. Complaints these days are very hard to come by.
For the next 8 hours I slept in some of the most comfortable awkward positions of my life (many of which were documented as I discovered later). When the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere for a bathroom break, I learned quickly that patchy tree cover combined with the looming fear that a lion may be crouching behind the shrub you singled out makes the bush ill-suited for a full bladder. Nonetheless, I dispersed into the bush with my senses heightened and fortunately returned to the bus in one piece, only narrowly encountering a patch of thorns en route.
We arrived in Dar es Salaam in the late afternoon where we got on a 2-hour ferry to Zanzibar. The ferry was uncommonly extravagant and I felt that peculiarly familiar breeze that is air conditioning for the first time in 2 months. Strangely enough, as soon as the boat left the port, we quickly abandoned the air conditioning for a spot on the front deck (after all, sea breeze is far better than any processed air, no matter how hot it is outside). The Indian Ocean was dotted with sailboats made from salvaged wood and curtains (I’m still convinced they were pirate ships, which isn’t too far-fetched in East Africa… I’m lookin’ at you, Somalia).
The smell of raw fish welcomed us to the island and we navigated the maze-like alleys of Stone Town. We arrived at a small lodge that was far off the main road. Although the hotel met the students’ standards, our program directors made us switch after 2 nights because apparently our standards were dangerously low. I mean… sure, the first room that Karla and I were assigned had brown stains on both the sheets and leaking ceiling. And maybe the 33 mosquito bites on my legs are a result of not having a bednet (not to mentioned the bedbugs and spider bites). And yes, we had to shower in buckets of cold water, the toilet rarely flushed, feral dogs lounged in the courtyard, and a trail of ants extended the length of the room… but those things didn’t bother me because I was on the most gorgeous island I’ve ever seen.
Exhaustion from a long day of travel made the night’s sleep pass quickly. For some inhumane reason, we woke up at 5:00am on our first day of vacation to go out to see dolphins. The obscenely early hours and the obscenely rainy morning successfully dampened our excitement. The storm cleared just long enough for us to wade out to the boat along a path that was inconveniently paved with sea urchins. When we arrived at the boat, I faced a catch-22 of potentially catastrophic proportions—I could walk unguided back to shore and most likely suffer multiple sea urchin wounds en route or I could hop in the tiny boat that was made of rotting wood and continually needed to be relieved of leaking sea water. Defying my life-long fear of both boats and oceans, I chose the latter option and hopped in. I quickly overcame the illegitimacy of the boat when we got moving; it was still early in the morning and the clouds hadn’t quite cleared, but the view was beautiful. Unfortunately Paul couldn’t enjoy the view much as he was given the task of dishing water out of the boat to prevent it from sinking. The captain of our small boat (or rather, large canoe) had a very severe infection in his right leg that caused everything from the knee down to be inflamed to at least 4x its normal size (from what I could tell, it looked like elephantitis). However, judging by his surprisingly swift movements, he has learned to live relatively comfortably with his disability. I’m fairly positive that the only English word he knew was dolphin, which is enough to succeed in his line of business. Thirty minutes later our first few dolphins and we immediately began to throw on our snorkel gear. I’ve always avoided snorkeling in the past (as was evident by my complete ineptitude in using flippers), but the prospect of swimming with dolphins was impossible to pass up. Right after hitting the surprisingly warm water I caught a quick glimpse of the dolphins before they vanished into their giant blue playground.
Our excursion helped us work up an appetite and so we headed to Halima’s house for lunch. Halima is a student in our program who is from Zanzibar and, upon the notice that we were coming to the island for midterm break, her family graciously undertook the task of feeding 14 hungry Americans. The food was plenty and delicious. We all sat cross-legged on the ground, helping ourselves to the array of Zanzibari dishes sprawled before us.
One thing I’ve noticed here is that Tanzanians love to cook and eat bananas in creative ways. There’s raw banana. Grilled banana. Fried banana. Banana stew. Boiled banana. Spiced banana. Pickled banana. Mushy grey banana. Unidentifiable banana. Could-be-banana-but-I’m-to-nervous-to-try-it-banana... You name it and the Tanzanians have tried it. At Halima’s lunch, there were about 4 different banana dishes, along with octopi, fresh fish, mountains of rice, fresh-squeezed juice, and spiced coffee. Needless to say, I left Halima’s a few pounds heavier than when I arrived.
The remainder of the day was spent exploring Stone Town. The buildings themselves are works of art as they each possess a unique dilapidated charm. The facades have crumbled, exposing the old brick underneath; the rainfall has inflicted water stains that tie dye the sides of buildings; and a gorgeous reddish-brown rust creeps over any metal that dares to face Zanzibar’s adverse climate. The entire city is incredibly and remarkably photogenic.
There’s a conspiracy theory floating around our group that the program directors are fattening us up to eat us for the “farewell dinner”. It may seem far-fetched to you, but if you had a dining experience with them, then you would definitely think something is fishy.
Speaking of fishy, I ordered a massive plate of fresh seafood for dinner (mussels and red snapper), along with naan, freshly squeezed sugar cane juice, and a banana and chocolate pizza for dessert… (see what I mean?).
I overlooked the ocean while I ate its bounty and watched as the sun slowly dipped under the water.
1 comments:
Asante sana, squash banana.
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