"At every moment he beholdeth a wondrous world, a new creation, and goeth from astonishment to astonishment, and is lost in awe at the works of the Lord of Oneness."
- Baha'u'llah
Because it's day eighty eight of my stay here, I'll tell a funny story that happened to me during the Institutional Conference last weekend. Because there were roughly 80 delegates, I asked one of the National Centre employees to make "eighty" copies of a document. Swahili speakers have a habit of attaching an "i" on the end of many English words, and the Swahili "i" is always pronounced as "ee." So when she heard me say "eighty," she thought I was saying "eighti." She came back later and handed me eight copies of the document. I was so stressed out at the time that I didn't immediately understand what was going on. Finally, I clarified that I wanted "eight zero" copies of the document, and then we could have a good laugh about "eighty" and "eighti."
Last week, I went to Zanzibar to visit Sally, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly and a homefront pioneer. To get to Zanzibar, you either have to take a ferry or a plane (duh). I opted for the ferry because the plane is just too expensive. So I was going to have to take the dalla dalla to the ferry terminal at the city centre, but a taxi comes pulling up and offers to take the people standing at the dalla dalla stop (three of us) for TSh 500 each, roughly $0.50. On the way into the city, I talked to a Masaai fellow named Emmanuel, who happened to know one of the local Baha'is. Having determined that we were "good people," he went out of his way to take me to the ferry terminal. He advised me that I should only buy a ticket from the ticket window and then went on his way.
At the ticket area I was immediately harassed by four or five men, each offering me a "good" price on a ferry conveniently leaving earlier than the one I was going to. One man in particular was extremely obnoxious. He kept nagging me on and on until I forcefully told him I had already chosen the ferry I wanted to take and that he was wasting his time continuing to talk to me. For some reason, he thought a more effective strategy might be to belittle me. Suddenly, he begins rambling on about how the white man thinks the black man is stupid and how we're always trying to keep them down and for that reason I wasn't accepting his assistance. Setting aside the immediate desire to just flat out punch him in the face, I told him that insulting me wasn't going to be a more effective tactic to sell me a fake ticket and that he'd do well to move on and try to dupe some other mzungu. He finally got the picture after a few other bystanders, mostly ticket hagglers themselves, intervened on my behalf because earlier I'd told them I was from Arkansas, the home of Bill Clinton. It's the oddest thing, but because I'm from the same place that he is, I'm automatically transformed into an ally of the African people or something (even though a lot of people in Arkansas would be lucky to even find the continent on a map).
There were three hours before the ferry left, so I decided to walk to the government map office. I've been asked to create maps which show the physical boundaries of all the clusters in Tanzania. When I walked into the map office, I immediately noticed a sign on the wall that said, "Please do not shout in the map office." I thought that was a little unusual, but I forgot about it as I tried to explain to the woman that I needed a map of each region which showed the districts and towns. After explaining the same thing three different times, only to find out that they didn't have what I needed, I understood why the sign was on the wall.
On the way back to the ferry, I met an odd assortment of people. One lady was obviously insane. She had Christmas tree lights woven into her hair, and she was talking into a case for her reading glasses as if it were a mobile phone. Another guy was a tour operator from Arusha who, from the look in his eyes, seemed to have a conscience as he tried desperately to get some money out of me for taking me to the fish market. I don't like fish, I don't like the smell of fish, and I've already been to the fish market so he was just out of luck. Arriving back at the ferry terminal, I found the same horde of people waiting to sell me cashews, biscuits, tea, water, sodas, newspapers, and everything else under the sun. I opted out of waiting around for the ferry with them and chose instead to cross the street and duck into one of the large cathedrals on the waterfront. It'd been a while since I'd been in a church, but I enjoyed the quiet sanctity and the prayer that I was allowed.
Before boarding the ferry, an extremely thorough check of my carry-on baggage was done. That should be read dripping with sarcasm. The lady only asked me if I had a knife, which made me wonder if explosives and firearms were permitted. The trip to Zanzibar was mostly smooth and pleasant, except for the smell of petrol from the engine room. I think I may have lost a few brain cells. C'est la vie. On the boat, I actually met another Baha'i. I was reading "Call to the Nations" by Shoghi Effendi, which has the word "Baha'i" on the front of it. I noticed the man next to me was looking at my book alot, which led me to believe he was just nosy as hell, but he got up and came back with an American college student. She asked if I was a Baha'i, and then told me that she was too and that she'd been in the country for 2 months. She was here doing some service project with her university, and they were travelling to Zanzibar for a bit of fun before returning to the United States.
At the port on Zanzibar, I was greeted by Sally's niece, Agrippina, and one of her friends. They had a sign they were holding up for me and everything. It was much better than the welcome I received when I first arrived in Tanzania, which was nothing. Literally. No one to meet me at the airport or anything. Thank God the National Centre was listed in the phone book. Anyway, back to the point, we took a taxi from Zanzibar Town to Mila Sita in the Mwera area outside of town. "Mila Sita" is because it's six miles from Zanzibar Town. I greeted the village children and women, all of which were intensely curious about my arrival, and then greeted Sally and the rest of her household. At dinner, we walked to the main road, and it had been transformed into a bit of a night market. The road was lined with many different vendors selling all sorts of food. I tried some local thing that consisted of potatoes, onions, fish, and spices mashed together into a patty and then fried. It was pretty good!
We returned back to the house for our real dinner, which was large and elaborate in honor of my visit. Following dinner, the house was suddenly filled with children and junior youth. Apparently the village children come to Sally's home every night to watch a movie. They pushed and shoved until they were all seated in front of the TV and then started watching the old American movie they'd brought. It was all in English, which none of them understood, but they watched it with rapt interest nonetheless. They adore Sally, and they're very enthusiastic about the junior youth group that she's planning to start.
That night, I slept on a rope bed, which is basically a wooden frame with a bunch of rope stretched between the sticks to give support to the mattress. I was convinced that I would break the thing, but I slept well throughout the night. It seems that when I left Dar, I brought the rains with me. It started raining hard during the first night and continued to rain off and on throughout my entire trip. The weather even turned a bit cold, so much so that it wasn't really feasible to go to the beach! In the morning, I woke up to the sound of roosters and screaming children (of course).
In the morning, we had chapatis, eggs, oranges, and cardamom tea that was so good. As I recall, cardamom is a bit expensive at home so you can't just go throwing it into tea, but because Zanzibar is a "spice island" most of the world's more exotic spices are plentiful and affordable. Because it was still raining, we each did a little work and then took a taxi into town for a bit of touring.
Our first stop was one of the larger markets where we shopped for different vegetables and spices, half of which I'd never even seen before. Among the more memorable was lychee, which is an unusual but tasty fruit. After the market, we wandered into the highly famous Stone Town section of Zanzibar Town. Stone Town is noted for its extremely narrow streets, so narrow, in fact, that a car can't even pass through them. They're lined with shops, houses, and mosques and filled with all sorts of sights, sounds, and smells (not all of which were good, mind you). Zanzibar is noted for its extremely elaborate doors, which feature master woodworking and carving skills. Each place seemed to have a larger and more magnificent door. My favorite was the Indian style doors, which had spikes on them.
In Stone Town, I purchased a kufi hat and made a spectacle while doing it. I was actually buying it for a friend, but the man insisted that I try it on. Unfortunately, my head isn't shaped very well for hats. My head was too big for the hat, but the man kept trying to jam it down more and more. Soon a crowd started to gather around as the shopkeeper tried to screw this hat typically worn by African Muslims down on top of the mzungu's head. After that ordeal, we stopped to eat some mangoes with salt and pele pele (chilis), which was surprisingly good.
When we returned home, the village children took our bags and things from us and carried them to the house, freeing us up for a more leisurely walk home. Some of them wanted me to teach them a few English words, and I happily complied. Unfortunately, they never could quite work out the difference between morning, afternoon, and evening, so they'd frequently run up to you and say "Good morning!" at 4:00 in the afternoon.
Dinner consisted of fish; cassava ugali; a mixed vegetable dish of eggplant, carrots, onions, and tomatoes; sweet pumpkin with coconut; and mango juice. Following dinner, I spent most of the evening doing my actual job: consulting with Sally about her situation and the future of the Faith in Zanzibar. The primary obstacle to her work as a homefront pioneer seems to be that the Faith isn't officially registered in Zanzibar. Because of the unusual form of government that unites the mainland (Tanganyika) with the Isles (Zanzibar & Pemba), Zanzibar has retained its own government, which asserts its authority at every available opportunity. External Affairs is working on getting that taken care of, and I think once it's handled she'll be able to freely teach the Faith and meet with a great deal of success.
The next day it rained until 1:30 in the afternoon, so after breakfast I lounged around the house and played with the resident baby. After the rain managed to stop, I went to a spice farm for a spice tour. I was able to see lemongrass, cloves, pepper, ginger, banana trees, cocoa trees, vanilla, lychee, cardamom, and cinnamon. I learned a number of interesting things. For instance, the Zanzibari government gave a set amount of land to every person after the revolution, but if your land has clove trees on it then you're required to sell the cloves to the government. I assume this means that all the cloves on the island go to the government. Another thing I learned is that the price for vanilla is so high because humans have to assist in the pollination of the vanilla plant. The flowers don't open by themselves, so someone has to come along and pry them open. Because of that, they don't really propagate themselves very well. When we came to the cocoa tree (I didn't know it grew on a tree!) our guide, Emmanuel, gave me a hint as to what it was by asking, "What makes women really happy?". My answer of "money" was wrong. =(
After leaving the spice farm, we headed for Jozani Forest, which is famous for its Zanzibar red colobus monkeys. On the way, we ran into some senseless and random police roadblock. They stopped our car and demanded to see all of my documentation. Good thing I brought it with me, sheesh. I produced my residence permit and passport, and they began talking to my friends in Swahili. My friends wouldn't allow me to speak with the police and instead assured me that they would handle it. Well, the way they handled it was probably not the best way. Looking for a bribe, the police said I didn't have the right documentation to be "allowed" on Zanzibar. They demanded that I pay money for a visa, even though I already have two different types of visas. My friends started off by explaining to them that I was family. The police promptly pointed out that a white person could hardly be the family of two black people, so they took the license of our driver, told us to go on the tour, and then told us to come back to retrieve the license. When we returned, they made us pay a TSh 3,000 fee to get it back. All this trouble for less than $3.00.
Because of the delay, it was late by the time we reached Jozani Forest. They were closing and at first they were a bit stubborn about letting us in, but we managed to convince them. It was too late to walk one of the nature trails, but we were able to go see the red colobus monkeys. It was really nice that we were able to get so close to them, but then again it was a bit worrying to see how we had disturbed their environment so much that they were totally unafraid of humans. After spending some time with the monkeys, we went for a walk in a mangrove forest. The water was pretty high, but we nonetheless ventured onto a not so stable looking network of wooden bridges that wandered through the forest. Because it was moving salt water from the ocean, there were no mosquitoes or animals. Only the wind and the water, which made it the most peaceful place I've been since I arrived here. I think I could have stayed there and relaxed forever!
Thanks to the hard work of Sally's niece, Agrippina, I was able to enjoy two of the big attractions on the island for just TSh 43,000, which is a bargain price considering we were being escorted everywhere by a taxi. He even took us back to the village, six miles outside of the city. When we arrived home, we had a dinner of sticky rice and beans with the crushed cassava leaves we'd picked up in the market the day before and watermelon for dessert.
The next day, we saw the Anglican church that now sits over one of the old slave markets (the whipping post is incorporated into the altar), the seafront, the Old Fort, the House of Wonders, and Fordhani Gardens. We stayed around Fordhani Gardens until it became dark and then the place transformed into another world. Food vendors materialized along the waterfront, breaking out cooking gear and gas lanterns to illumine their wares. We had fresh prawns, oily chapati, chips (French fries), bread fruit, mishkaki, and Zanzibar pizza. Zanzibar pizza is really sort of interesting. It's a very thin pastry that's filled with minced meat, spices, onions, and a few other things then rolled up and fried. Nothing at all like a real pizza, but very tasty. I have to mention here that I was really concerned about eating "off the street." But I've eaten off the street many times here and I've only gotten sick maybe once. It's really been very surprising. I got sick from food more in the U.S. than I have here! Of course I don't even want to think about the conditions they cook food in and the places they buy it from, but as long as I don't get sick and I don't starve then I don't have a whole lot to complain about.
There was a lot on Zanzibar that I didn't get to see, which definitely warrants a return trip, but there was a lot that I was fortunate enough to see and I'm very thankful for that. The island was beautiful and lovely, and the people were very friendly and considerate. I appreciated the care and hospitality that were afforded to me in the village and because Sally is so well known on the island I was able to meet very many wonderful people. The architecture and atmosphere are, of course, distinctly different from Dar. Then again, I relish any chance I have to get out of this city!
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