Places with cool names... Zanzibar (Pt 1 of 3)

Where do we start... zanzibar... zanzibar... zanzibar...

zanzibah.. ha.. (sung to the tune of van halen's Panama) is a small island off the coast of Tanzania surrounded by warm tropical waters and bleached white sands. Whilst it has it's fare share of million dollar fancy resorts (like anywhere with a stretch of decent coast these days), it also has a myriad of small out of the way places that are full of the most laid back, easy going locals you could find...

George and I were hoping for a relaxed easter, and came armed with a stack of books to lie on the beach a read... Flying from Lagos, you have to detour through Nairobi, and although the town had been besieged by riots and a little ethnic cleansing in recent days, we hoped to catch up with journalista extraordinario Katharine for a few days... Turned out she had to hold down the Associated Press fort in Lagos for the exact week we would be in East africa (so we borrowed her key and were allowed to stay at her place anyway...

Zanzibar is a mix of local islanders, mainland swahili and arab and indian traders. This can been seen in the faces of the people, the architecture and the local cuisine. Despite it's bloody past (the locals rose up over the arab, indian and asian oppressors in the late '60s, killing thousands...)

The capital - stone town - is an eclectic mix of old run-down buildings and narrow streets which allows for interesting views (breakfast at the Kiponda above...)

No one seems to be getting around to fixing up the old places and there's plenty of derelict structures in the surprisingly tiny town. Some are just being held in place like this (above)



Buildings are dark and cool inside, housing many families in small spaces, but the entrances to these dives are still some of the most elaborate I've ever seen, with huge carved mahogany doors (i guess that's the Arab influence)



some of the buildings are so close together you can barely get through - it's really easy to get lost, and you often lose sight of the sun (very cooling, but kinda scary when you're lost)


One of the things Zanzibar has been famous for since the earliest traders came through the area (after Vasco de Gama no doubt...) is Spices. And they sure do grow a lot of them.

One of the things that's a "must see" is a spice tour. Being the organised folk that we are, we hadn't set up anything, but this town is so easy going, at 9:00pm on Sunday night we mentioned that we'd like to do one and the next morning we were on a bus for $10 for the day (inc lunch and a trip to the beach...)
here's our very knowledgeable guide with some vanilla pods...

... nutmeg and mace...

...tumeric...

On our little jaunt around the farms of the tiny island (it's only a few kms long) we got to see the locals doing their thing.

As the island is barely able to produce enough food for it's inhabitants, they're reliant on the mainland for everything - which makes consumables like cars and fuel way too expensive for the locals

even the soccer balls are make do



whether swimming or fishing, unlike Nigeria, most people spend a lot of time in the water here...

One interesting by-product of the Arab (Muslim) influence are the bright shawls that locals wear - often adorned with phrases in Swahili. This also means that women sit side saddle on motorbike taxis rather than hiking up their dresses like in Mainland Africa (I guess the traffic so light here you don't need to hold on with both legs like in Lagos!!

Places with cool names... Zanzibar (Pt 2 of 3)

After a few days in the hustle and bustle of stonetown, it was time to jump a taxi to the beach. Again, we hadn't booked anything, but the locals are so easy going, it wasn't a problem just to call ahead and turn up.

we landed at Nyota Beach Bungalows...

man, this place was sooo laid back, you had to remind your haeart to keep beating every now and then as you just lazed around...

nothing to do for a few days but read, swim, eat, read, snorkel, eat.....



our room faced the ocean, and with mozzie mesh on the windows you could wake up each day to a beautiful sunrise

or sunset...

The bunglows were quite isolated, with most of the resort much further north, and so the locals here just got on with their lives and ignored the small number of tourists...

The beach on this part of the island is protected by a barrier reef about 200m off shore. When the tide is low, the reef acts like a dam, keeping a foot or two of water in one huge rockpool. The locals use this area to farm seaweed, and each day at low tide all the women would go out to their particular plot and harvest seaweed and bring it onshore for drying (which they'd then sell for medicine...)


As the tide would come back in, all th little sticks would be covered and you'd never know the farms were there...


...even the kids would be involved...




When to tide was really low, everyone would go out to the barrier reef and search for shellfish and crabs (the pic below is take about 300m offshore - though you woudln't know)

The old italian guy who ran the place (didn't really speak english) had a sea kayak and a bunch of snorkelling gear that you could jsut borrow for free whenever you want, so we spent a lot of time diving on the reefs and generally stuffing around - it was heaps of fun..

Places with cool names... Zanzibar (Pt 3 of 3

There's a limit to how much lazing around a a beach you can do. Though to be honest, we'd actually been quite action packed snorkeling for hours every day. But anyway, it was time to head back to stonetown before flying back to Nairobi.

So what did we do?

We went snorkeling again! There's few dive centres in town, and you can tag along with a dive, but just snorkel for next to nothing. So we jumped on one of the dhows (local Arabian style boats) and headed out to some of the reefs - absolutely beautiful!!

We spent all day out on the boat and had a mix of local fruit for lunch. Whilst chatting to the boat captain we learned that they had a deal with a restaurant up the coast where you could take a sunset cruise up to the restaurant for dinner.

so we did...

After going back to the hotel to get changed, we were back on the dhow with an esky full of cold ones sailing through Zanzibar harbour. You get a great view of the old trading town from the sea







then an hour or so later, we pulled up at the beach, jumped into the shallows and walked to our table on the sand

... pretty freekin awesome - a great way to finish a very lazy holiday

Ishahayi Beach School Foundation

Both George and I were sad that our time in Nigeria had to come to an end, and for me it was the village of Ishahayi that I'll miss the most. Ishahayi was were I first been asked to help build a school and joined the Ishahayi Beach School Foundation which allowed me to be involved in many more projects around Lagos.


It was Ishahayi - about 45mins by boat from Lagos - that we'd go out to regularly with donations for the teachers, stuff for the kids, food donations.

Ishahayi was where we installe dthe first computer and taught everyone how to double-click...

...where we'd spend long hot days in the shade somewhere discussing the school and the world. Where we taught the kids about hygene and malaria.

...where I could walk anytime any day and anyone who saw me would call out "Mr John"

An expat blogger in Lagos visited after I'd gone and wrote this.

Here's a few things we did in 2008.....

The swing set


A couple of years earlier someone was going to chuck these out in Lagos, so The IBSF folk somehow manged to get them into a ute, then onto one of the boats and out to ishahayi where Ben concreted them in. Since then, they've been so popular that we have to keep welding new chains on because they keep wearing out...




The Mural

IBSF member Theresa Sabatini spent a lot of time organising local artist Eugene, who'd been out at to the school before, to paint a mural on the end of the building to give the kids a fun thing to do and to protect the paintwork
we got a hand carrying everything up from the boat

Theresa and Lady Salami


The kids painting the main colours


Eugene and I sped things up a little (and managed to get less paint everywhere...)

No everyone was quite big enough to master a paint brush so we improvised



Everyone had a great day, Lady salami cooked us some fish stew and we managed to get most of the paint of ourselves


Ever the optimist, Lady Salami was teaching the kids how to learn from the mural as soon as the paint dried. Here's a video of her explaining the tap we installed near the toilets and how to spell it to a group of very excited kids...


The Lunch Lady

After we built the verandah, it allowed the lunch ladies to have a spot to come and feed the kids. This gave the women a way to make money as the school and church helped pay for each child to eat - and it ensured all the kids were getting at least one proper meal each day.




These two are orphans that lady salami is looking after for the Church

Football

As soon as school was on break, the kids would be out playing soccer in the sand. Various balls were donated by individuals over the years. These by a church in the US





The donors were diplomatic and gave the boys a blue ball and the girls a pink one
(though the boy were always trying to steal it so they had two to play with...)



Mosquito Nets

Nurse extraordinaire Desire Quinn, as a parting gesture when leaving Lagos, raised enough money by herself to buy every family who had a child at the School a mosquito net!!!

Malaria education (which the kids had never formally received before Desi did her thing) is helping to keep the kids and their families healthy and in school.

Handing out the nets

The "I just got a mosquito net" dance


GOODBYE

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, and so did my time with the people of Ishahayi...

Here's a video of the "Uncle John is going" song that was an impromptu send off on my last day out at the village. I had to put the camera down in the end as I was crying, but this is most of it... Thanks to Aki, Shola and the kids..