Died and gone to Zanzibar (Dec. 18/08 - Nungwi, Zanzibar, Tanzania)

Nungwi, the northernmost town on Zanzibar, is paradise. We were blown away to see the big ocean view rooms and perfect white sand beaches after roughing it in campgrounds for so long. This morning we joined up with a guy named Musa who would take us on a tour of some of the island's highlights. We stopped first of all at a spot in Stone Town where the slave markets existed back in the 1800's. Zanzibar was the east coast hub of slave auctions, where Africans were taken from mostly Malawi and Zambia, shipped across Lake Malawi, marched in chains across Mozambique, and eventually shipped across to Zanzibar. Here, they were stuffed into dank rooms underground for days at a time until an aution was held, at which point they were sold to work in the Middle East, India, or the local spice plantations here on Zanzibar. We went into one of the holding rooms, where a space about the size of our bedroom at home was crammed with 75 people in a space with 4 foot ceilings and a trough down the middle for a toilet. This holding process was seen as a test to determine if a person was strong enough to survive as a slave. If not, they were just left to die until the room was cleared out. Dispicable - it was hard to even stand in that room and try to imagine it. An Anglican church has since been built over the spot where slaves were whipped as another test of strength, and it was interesting to note the tributes to Dr. David Livingstone, who was the European explorer who set out to end the slave trade in 1873. He succeeded, but actually died a month before the trade was shut down. Before coming on this trip, I read the book "Into Africa" to learn about his story, so seeing these places of relevance in person was really interesting. On the way out of the church, while noting that the whole building was constructed with concrete made of dead coral, we spotted a little scooter parked in front with a bumper sticker that read "OBAMA 2008" on it. These Africans are all over Obama's victory - a lot of people assume we're American and belt out "Yeah Obama!" before noticing our Canadian flags. We even saw a sarong yesterday with Obama's face plastered all over it!



After leaving the slave market, we drove north out of Stone Town and into rural countryside. Our next stop was the Butterfly Spice Farm, where we wandered around to see/smell/taste a huge variety of spices that are grown here and shipped around the world. On the way in, the "farm" looked pretty much like a natural forest, with different types of trees all mixed together and no apparent pattern to the planting scheme. But once we were shown which plants were which, it was amazing! The list of spices and fruits that we saw included:

• banana
• pineapple
• coconut
• passionfruit
• oranges
• coffee beans
• cocoa beans
• jackfruit
• breadfruit
• durian
• almonds
• henna
• cloves
• cinnamon
• ginger
• lemongrass
• peanuts
• tumeric
• peppercorns
• vanilla beans
• ylang ylang
• nutmeg
• cumin
• cardamom

It was so cool to see how some of our everyday spices (and many exotic ones too) are grown. Some little factoids we picked up:

• cinnamon "sticks" are actually sticks of dried bark; eating the bark was like sucking on sweet cinnamon candy!
• chewing cardamom pods makes your mouth go numb, so you can use it to soothe a tooth ache
• Zanzibar produces about 30 to 50% of the world's cloves
• vanilla beans are super expensive because they have to be pollenated by hand
• black, white, and green peppercorns are all from the same plant - only the drying process differs

We even got to taste some of the just-picked fruit and amazingly flavourful lemongrass and clove teas. The guide even climbed a palm tree to get some coconuts for us to try the milk and the fresh coconut meat inside. We all bought a bunch of spices to take home - the freshest (and cheapest!) spices you could buy. Did I mention they don't even have to fertilize or spray anything? So make that fresh, cheap, and organic!

We carried on down the dirt road to a village called Kizimbani, where we were led through a grove of nutmeg trees and wild teak trees to a house in the middle of the forest. We were asked to take off our shoes and rinse our hands, as the woman who lives here had cooked us lunch! All 13 of us plopped down on a woven mat in her house, which was tiny, two rooms with nothing more than walls and a couple windows. She brought out bowls of spicy clove rice, red onion salad, ugali (maizemeal) with octopus sauce (seriously, it had tiny purple octopuses in it!), fried cabbage, and steamed spinach. It was an awesome meal that had us understanding how these people eat (though this was clearly a special feast!) and sweating twice as much as we were when we came in! Afterward, she brought out some fabrics and beaded jewellry she had made, and some people held her sweet little 4 month old daughter named Sada who had pierced ears with twine earrings and the biggest white eyes you've ever seen.

It was an hour-long drive north through tiny towns where piles of freshly picked cloves were spread out on the edge of the pavement to dry, until we reached the town of Nungwi at the north tip of the island. The village itself seemed pretty rough around the edges, but once we pulled into our hotel and caught a glimpse of the beach, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Being on a budget trip, we were expecting a pretty low end hotel. What we got was a king size bed and sand-covered balcony overlooking a turquoize sea and perfect white sand beach. Perfection!! It only took a few minutes to ditch our bags before everyone was paddling out into the ocean, where the water was crystal clear and a lovely 28°C. Several hundred feet out, it was barely waist deep, and soon the coral heads started that were home to clownfish, anemonies, butterfly fish, crown of thorns starfish, giant snails, and bright blue urchins. All within view of the bar :) We signed up to go diving tomorrow and watched the dozens of dhow sailboats coming in from a day of fishing as the sun went down. Ahhhhhh, paradise.