Zanzibar

Sorry for taking so long to post about Zanzibar. Between slow and over-priced internet access and a bout with food poisoning and sunstroke, it was tough to be connected:).

We write you all from Stone Town, Zanzibar, where we arrived nearly a week ago after another nine-hour bus ride between Arusha and Dar es Salaam. From Dar es Salaam, we took a two- hour ferry to reach the island of Zanzibar, a political part of Tanzania but culturally very distinct. We began to perceive the differences between the main land and Zanzibar immediately at the port. A predominantly Muslim region, Zanzibar is much more conservative than the main land. The women around us were dressed in full hijabs or conservative headscarves (except for the tourist females, many of whom were scantily clad (e.g., the girls sitting next to us as we write, wearing see-through tanktops)), and the men dressed in ankle-length cotton shirts and skull caps. Tanya noted that the dress was more conservative than in Tehran, despite the fact that women here are not required to wear the veil. Many people at the port read books in Arabic, and many more people had traces of Arab and Indian descent.

The ferry ride was long and uneventful except for the television programming of the World Wrestling Federation which induced cheers from everyone-- including the most conservative-- in the audience.

A quick overview of the geography and history of Zanzibar. The island is located 70km off the coast of Dar es Salaam, on the Indian Ocean. The island has one major city, Stone Town (Zanzibar Town), on the West Coast, and the rest of the island is surrounded by fantastic tropical beaches. The center of the Zanzibar is abundant with spice plantations, for which the island is famed. Because of its strategic location as a trading post between the East and West, Zanzibar has been fought over for centuries. From Portugal to Oman to England to Tanganyika (the main land), everybody has wanted a piece of Zanzibar.

Our first night, we ate dinner on the seafront of Stone Town, where dozens of vendors set up their stalls selling fish kebabs, Zanzibari pizzas, and piles of fresh fruit. We sat on the grass alongside the locals and enjoyed our meal-- until we were swarmed by touts who would not leave us alone.

At sunrise, we were awoken by the calls to prayer from the neighborhood mosque, a beautiful way to wake up. A couple of hours later, we piled into a minibus to go to Paje, where we stayed for the next five days.

Paje, on the East coast of Zanzibar, is a little beach paradise complete with clear turquoise waters, fine-grain white sand, and row of palm trees and coastal pines. Paje is also a major destination for Italian and Swedish tourists, who together made up 95% of all tourists we saw. Although at first we thought everything in Paje was perfect, a couple of events opened our eyes:

• Our section of Paje beach was very clean, free of the plastic bottles and bags littered elsewhere. We thought that this was thanks to the young man who swept the beach every morning. We were right... in a way. One morning, we watched the full clean-up process which entailed: sweeping up the trash, digging a large hole in the sand on the beach front, dumping all of the plastic debris into the hole, and simply covering it all up! We don't even want to know what how the rest of the island deals with garbage collection...
• We decided to venture off the tourist path and walk three minutes inland from the beach to Paje village. The contrast was heart-wrenching. There, only steps away from semi-topless Swedish sunbathers sipping cocktails, were dozens of young children in rags, drinking dirty well water from old, used paint cans. We are in Africa, though it can be easy to forget in beach paradise.

Today is our last full day in Tanzania. Tomorrow, we go back to the first world. We will write again from Cape Town in the next few days and add more pictures as soon as we can. We miss you all!