Stone Town

There are some places on Earth whose names, when mentioned, project images of their own mystical pasts...


...ZANZIBAR...


...Anything come to mind? The Periplus of the Ethyranean Sea? The trading settlement of Menouthias? The Shirazi sailors from Persia calling port at Unguja Ukuu?

Freddie Mercury's birthplace?

For being such a tiny island, Zanzibar does have a history rich in tumult. The full details of this are beyond the scope of this blog, so let's just say that the place found itself changing hands many times between various imperial powers who found it a convenient rest stop en route to the Orient.

Nowadays, the foreigners Zanzibar sees arrive on passenger ferries from Dar-Es-Salaam instead of frigates from Muscat, and come with cameras and snorkeling gear in place of spices and glassware. Nonetheless, it is still a spectacular place to visit.

I myself rolled in a week ago with my friends Hugo and Roisin, who've now been with me for 3 weeks, and we decided to hole up for a few days in Stone Town.

Stone Town is Zanzibar's beating heart; once an Arab trading port, it is the sight of a bustling, labyrinth-like village where towering minarets pierce the crystalline skies, and whiffs of cardamom and cloves tickle your nose with their exotic essences. The streets, sometimes no wider than an armspan, are chock-a-bloc with people from many walks of life: Indian, Portuguese, Persian and of course African.

We struck gold on our first night there. Just after dark, the waterfront park, by day a shady refuge from the blazing sun, turns into a sprawling outdoor fish market. Prawns, octopus, lobster, sharks, marlin, scallops and just about every other type of pelagic goody can be found, fresh from the ocean, cooked up on a coal grill by a local guy and served with chili sauce and some chapati bread. It's not cheap, but then again, if I told you that $10 for a massive portion of seafood isn't cheap, you'd probably think my mother dropped me as a child.

The next day - another beauty - I grabbed my camera and headed out with every intention of getting lost in the maze and the mystery. Stone Town is a photographer's wet dream, with its myriad colours, spectre-like shadows, old Islamic buildings, narrow passageways, traditional spice markets, lush coconut fronds, hole-in-the-wall shops, whitewashed stoned fences, decaying streets and flowery enclaves, not the mention its plethora of children, tuk-tuks, sailboats, dispensaries, stray cats, women in kangas, mosques, minibuses, mango trees, donkey carts, baobabs, fake Maasai warriors, butterflies, wood-carvers, tea-sellers and the occasional rat. I took 150 shots in the span of half an hour.

Unfortunately, I got a little ambitious. Whilst leaning against a wall adjacent to a busy street and snapping a portrait of a few ladies in their traditional headdresses, I was approached by a man in a suit. He was accompanied by a guard whom, I carefully noted, was carrying a large firearm. I was invited to into an office and told to sit and wait, while some angry phone calls were made in Swahili. Several minutes passed before a second stuffed suit ('the boss') appeared and informed me that I had just committed a crime by photographing the Civic Courthouse. I thanked him for informing me that it was a court house, because it sure wasn't evident from the ruddy street, and assured him that I was only using the court house wall as a brace while framing the photo of the ladies. He demanded that I relinquish my camera, but I managed to appease him by deleting the offending image. I left the place, still under armed escort, feeling guilty for not having done anything wrong.

Stone Town marks only my second visit to a place where Islam in the dominant faith. Muslims intrigue me - everything from their traditional dress to their outright, all-encompassing devotion to Allah. I find them very peaceful, wandering the streets in their skullcaps and sandals, stopping to wash their feet before entering the mosques, then congregating after a prayer session to drink tea and gab on their mobile phones. It's a pretty far cry from the guys you see on CNN, shooting guns into the air and crying for the bloody death of all non-believers.

Sadly, despite its bargain-basement seafood and old-world charm, Stone Town can be difficult to swallow for its cohort of resident street touts. Wherever you go, be it the waterfront, a sidewalk cafe or an out-of-the-way backstreet, there will be some guy tagging along, calling you "Friend" and reciting fourteen million different reasons as to why to should hand over some cash. You know, when I first arrived in Africa I was tolerant of these pests - I'll even go as far as saying that I found the attention endearing. But now I've had enough. Beyond being solicitous, I'm now outright hostile with them, hitting them with any of a selection of prepared rants within moments of their initial approach. Some do desist, but others seem to relish the challenge, becoming more deliberate in their attempts to expunge a donation. One day soon, I'm going to give one of them some free dental work.

But not yet. After two days in Stone Town, which I enjoyed very much, we escaped to the beach.