Our first stop was at the Kizimbani plantation. Like other spice plantations and farms, it looked more like a garden where spice shrubs and grasses grew together in the shade of mango, jackfruit and other fruit trees. Our guide, Abdullah, showed us foods such as rose apple and guava carambola and tamarind, as well as spices in their natural form: cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, vanilla, black pepper and a variety of others.
Like many Zanzibaris, Abdullah was of mixed Indian and African descent. He was very informative and took his job seriously. He told us that the East Indies and southern China were originally the source of almost all the spices that were traded, and that the cloves for which Zanzibar is famous, and other spices, were introduced by the Arabs in the early 18th century to break the spice monopoly of the East.
For me, the highlight of the trip was not spices and fruits, however. It was the rain. Actually, it did not rain; it poured. And since we were in the middle of nowhere, we had nowhere to go. Except to hide under the metre-and-a-half-high shrubs that grew along the side of the plantation. For me, there was something about those moments, crouching under a shrub in a rainstorm, that was bringing me back to nature. For the second time in two consecutive days I felt the trip was changing my appreciation of life’s pleasures.
After touring the plantations, we had a delicious and very filling lunch of some local fish and rice in one of the villages and proceeded to the chambers where slaves were secretly kept after the British had tried to stop trafficking in slaves in 1873. For another 33 years or so, right up to 1906, the Arabs continued trading in humans, hiding their African captives in these secret chambers. Slaves, captured or bought on the African mainland, were marched in chains to Bagamoyo (near present-day Dar es Salaam), which in Swahili means ‘lost hope’. Once you got to Bagamoyo it was clear your chances of escape were very small.
‘It was during this period of secret trading that a slave ship was arrested by the British off the Durban coast and all the slaves were dumped in Durban,’ Abdullah told me when he discovered I was from South Africa. It suddenly dawned on me why there is a small, close-knit Zanzibari community in Durban, whom we Zulus call amaZinzimbane.
The secret chambers – dark, damp caverns where many captives died of suffocation and starvation – were located in the forest, entirely underground; only the roof stuck out above ground. In the old days entry was by way of a small hut and a big hole.
The tour was a sobering experience, but one frivolous thought kept popping into my head – were it not for the Arabs, Africa would have won the FIFA Soccer World Cup a few times already. Imagine Pele playing for Malawi, Ronaldo for Tanzania and Ronaldinho for Zambia! Before visiting the secret slave chambers I had never thought that the Arabs had contributed so massively to today’s global demographics.
On our way back to Stone Town I asked Abdullah what he considered to be his nationality since Zanzibar, although it is part of Tanzania, has its own president. His answer was: ‘I am a Zanzibari of Tanzanian nationality.’
If you understand that, shake your booty.
Although I was not looking forward to visiting the old slave market, it was one of the reasons I had chosen to go to Zanzibar. I could have joined a half-day tour of the place but decided to go there on my own. I felt that I needed time to absorb everything at my own pace. I was right. I saw groups of tourists being shunted around by tour guides and knew that if I had joined the tour group I would have done myself a disservice.
Visiting the old market was a very moving and emotional experience. Standing in front of the statue of four chained slaves, I could not understand how people could be so evil, inhuman and barbaric for the sole reason of accumulating wealth. Bitter as the site made me feel, it is one of those places that I wish everyone would visit.
Later, I stood outside the Catholic church that was built on the actual site of the slave market and reflected on the pain and agony slaves must have felt when they were whipped to establish the price they could fetch. The value of a slave was determined, it seems, by four factors: gender, age, physique and, for a male, how much pain he could take at the whipping post. If a slave showed low resistance to pain by crying out at the very first whipping, the seller would normally not go through with the sale because the slave was likely to go for a low price. For the slave that meant going back to the slave chambers until the next auction day. But the most disturbing thought was that the auction, however awful, was just the beginning of a dismal life in bondage – first, an appalling sea journey, which few survived, and then, working like an animal in the service of another human being. Mainly, it seemed, on plantations: sugar plantations in Brazil, the West Indies and the French colonies of Madagascar, Réunion and Mauritius; cotton plantations in the American Deep South.
Depressing as the old slave market was, I was glad I went there. Among other things, it changed the way I look at Arabs. The history books that we studied during the Bantu Education era never mentioned the role and magnitude of Arab influence in Africa. They concentrated on European colonialism. The slave tour in Zanzibar opened my eyes to the reality of a thriving trade in African slaves on the African continent long before European powers even started colonising Africa. In fact, it is ironic that it was mainly Britain, the arch imperial power, that finally put an end to slavery, with the active involvement of the very missionaries, guys like Livingstone, about whom I have such ambiguous feelings.
Nowadays, Arabs are mostly portrayed as fighting a just cause against American imperialism. To me, however, it seems that their forefathers screwed Africans in a big way. They took away our dignity and pride and converted our forefathers, including women and children, into goods with a monetary value. Not that the African kings and chiefs were innocent. It is well documented that local traditional leaders used to barter their own subjects or captive members of other clans with Arab slave-traders.
Like Robben Island, Zanzibar is one of those places that for ever changes your perception of certain groups of people because of their treatment of others.
While waiting for the sunset and watching the dhows ferrying tourists along the bay, I decided to go for a barefoot walk on the beach. It was time for reflection.
Later that evening I spotted a once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity: two Masai men surfing the net in a public internet café. Excuse my ignorance, but I had always thought of Masai as warriors who kill lions on the plains of the Serengeti, as portrayed by the media. The Masai in the internet café reminded me of another contradiction: the name of the rock group Guns and Roses.
It was at that moment that a brilliant idea leapt into my mind – Business Idea Two. What if I were to produce a world-class music album by fusing the music of a few Masai musicians and a number of Zulu mbaqanga musicians with Australian Aboriginal tunes? The name of this confusing group would be Organ Donors in Waiting and the album would be called Open Secret and it would contain tracks with names like:
‘Dentist with a toothache’
‘An honest politician’
‘Divorced marriage counsellor’
‘Dermatologist with acne’
‘A trustworthy pastor’
And – the smash hit at number one – ‘Pregnant nun’. One thing about doing the Cape to Cairo, you really start thinking outside the box.
The following morning a scheduled half-day trip to the beaches along the east coast of the island was cancelled because of bad weather. I spent the morning still getting lost in the small alleys of Stone Town. In the afternoon, I went to the harbour to catch a ferry back to Dar es Salaam. As I was walking towards the boat, I was stopped by a policeman who told me that I had to go through immigration.
‘But I am only going to Dar es Salaam,’ I said, rather peeved.
‘I know, but you still have to be stamped out.’
I found that really confusing. How can you be stamped out while you’re still in the country?
At the immigration place I was the last one in the long queue of tourists. It appeared th
at there was even a form to be completed. When I eventually got to the counter and handed in my passport, the officer did not give me the form to fill in. Instead he simply asked, ‘Bafana Bafana?’
I replied, ‘Yes, sure. Bafana.’
I wasn’t sure what he wanted to know – whether I was part of the Bafana team or, highly likely, to confirm that our national soccer team was indeed Bafana Bafana. Whatever it was, my response worked. He stamped my ferry ticket, not my passport. Only then was I free to board the ferry back to Dar.
At the dock there was much chaos and many people with big bags pushing and trying to get on the ferry first. When I at last got on board I found that there weren’t all that many seats, which explained why everyone had tried to get there first. I ended up on the sundeck with some other tourists. The ferry left on time.
As I watched Zanzibar recede, I vowed to visit that magical and exotic place again – Resolution No. 7. The perfect sunsets alone would be worth the trip. I also loved the laid-back culture, the cosmopolitan nature of the residents, some of them, especially on the government plantations, living in dire poverty. One thing though, I had to learn Swahili first (Resolution No. 5).
After about half an hour on the ferry, the sea started to get rough, owing to the bad weather. As time progressed it got much rougher and the ferry, although relatively large, lurched up and down over the big swells. I was really taking strain. I was starting to feel seasick. A few moments later I witnessed something that I’m sure I will never see again in this lifetime: a large number of people all throwing up at the same time. Because of poor judgement most of them stood facing the wind and almost everything blew right back into their faces.
Among this crowd was a sister who must have been in her late thirties. She was afraid to stand up and hold onto the railings before bending over to throw up into the sea. As soon as she got close to the railings, she would start reversing. Eventually, she just sat on the edge of the deck and messed up her legs and feet.
Just when I thought I had seen it all a young girl came running towards the edge of the deck, but she could not hold it in any longer. She boiled over just before she reached the edge. Coincidentally, this girl was upwind from the woman who had sat down near the edge of the deck. So everything, and I mean everything, blew into the older sister’s head and the back of her neck.
Regardless of how seasick I myself was, it was such a hilarious moment that it had to be enjoyed. Like others on the ferry, I laughed out loud. That young girl must have eaten a lot of brown rice in Zanzibar because all I could see on the sister’s head and neck was brown rice. Only then did the ferry’s ticket examiner start handing out plastic bags.
While all this was happening I had spotted a very attractive sister who was also carrying a backpack. She must have spent a lot of time in the sun because she looked chocolate white. She was really attractive, with fine, shapely legs and juicy lips and boobs. She was so stunning that I thought to myself that I would really not be a man if I did not pounce on this sexy thing.
In just over two hours we got to Dar and, while people were disembarking from the ferry, I decided it was time to put my charms to the test. ‘Which backpackers are you off to?’ I asked for starters.
Before I could finish my ice-breaker, she said, ‘I cannot remember the name but there is a pre-arranged cab waiting for me. If you want, you can join me.’
I could not believe my luck. We started chatting about her travels and other general stuff while I surreptitiously examined her cleavage. Just what the doctor ordered, I thought. We waited until all the other passengers had disembarked and, as we descended the steep narrow stairways, I allowed her to walk in front in order to get a view from the rear. Her backside, as to be expected of a European woman, was small and not really my type, but generally speaking I was very happy. She was going to be in Dar for one night and then fly back to Amsterdam, via Nairobi.
When I stepped off the ferry, the cab driver who had failed to collect me from the museum four days ago suddenly showed up. He started to explain that he had had a flat tyre, but he discovered within seconds that he was the last man on the planet I wanted to see. I did not care whether or not he called his gang to sort me out. That man had almost ruined my trip, and now he wanted to separate me from Leonie.
I learned that the cab that was supposed to pick her up had not pitched. And that is when the trouble started. More than ten cab drivers began to shove their keys into our faces, trying to get our attention so that they could take us to our hotel. As the man, I had to take responsibility. Since Leonie’s driver had not shown up, it was my duty to organise an alternative cab quickly. I did all the negotiations while she held onto my left arm. Eventually we agreed on a price with the driver who shouted the loudest and were on our way to the backpackers where she had a reservation.
We discovered when we got to the backpackers that it was fully booked. But since Leonie had pre-booked, she had a bed – I was the one without a place to sleep. I had to think fast. ‘What if we book a room in another hotel and share the cost?’ I asked with a disarming smile.
She kept quiet for a while and then said, ‘No.’
Before she could continue, I had another proposal. ‘I will pay for the room. You just have to bring yourself.’
She kept quiet, looking at me with a silly smile. By then my heart was pumping hard and blood was running from one head to the other.
‘Let’s give it a rest. In about 48 hours I will be with my man. Maybe if we had met earlier … I am sorry,’ she said, really looking sorry.
I took a deep breath, knowing that I had given it my best shot. We shook hands. She wanted to give me a hug but I resisted, trying to make her feel guilty and, hopefully, change her mind.
This also did not work. I had to go and find accommodation for myself somewhere else.
As we were driving to another hotel the cab driver, Stanley, started laughing at me. ‘The secret, my brother, is to keep eye contact all the time. Women feel under pressure when you look right through their eyes,’ he advised me. The man could not only speak a bit of Zulu, but was curious about something that is well known about Zulus among other black South Africans. ‘Why,’ he asked me, ‘don’t Zulus want to learn other languages?’
‘That is a long story, a very long story,’ I told him, thinking about what could have been but was not.
Stanley didn’t seem to notice that my mind was elsewhere. He explained to me why the drivers were shoving car keys into our faces as we left the ferry. It seemed that touts who did not drive cabs also tried to get passengers from the ferry in order to show them to a cab. On whatever the cab driver charged, they would then claim a commission. You could distinguish between the two groups: cab drivers had keys, touts didn’t.
Having decided to take it easy in Dar for a day, I went for a walk on the main street, Samora Machel Street. I could not help noticing how beautiful Dar’s women were. Pure beauty, natural African beauty.
That was another motivating factor for me to learn Swahili.
Later that afternoon, I went to an international hotel to use the internet. The difference between the relaxed people at backpackers and the stuck-up and serious people at international hotels immediately struck me. It was with that in mind that I decided to do something I have always wanted to do: watch porn in public on the internet.
All those serious, uppity people who were walking past could not believe what they were seeing. I was even tilting my head from one side to the other in order to have a better view of what was displayed on the screen. I noticed that, much as they pretended to be disgusted with what I was doing, the men passing by spent more time looking at the screen than at me. What a bunch of hypocrites!
After a full day of relaxation in Dar, contemplating its beautiful women and old buildings, I was ready for the 11-hour trip to Mombasa, Kenya, on, as it turned out, a bus that was really luxurious. It even had seatbelts throughout the cabin and the driver’s assistant would check at intervals that ev
eryone was still buckled up. We were well looked after on the bus: biscuits, 350-ml soft drinks and 600-ml bottles of water were served throughout the journey. But, as on other bus trips, we stopped in the middle of nowhere and things proceeded in now familiar synchronised fashion, women on one side and men on the other.
We came across the first weigh bridge on the outskirts of Dar. There must have been something wrong because, after 20 minutes of heated argument between our driver and the weigh-bridge operators, we were required to make a U-turn to be weighed again. Only after the bus was weighed for the second time were we given the go-ahead.
Otherwise, the journey was uneventful. We took a well-deserved break in the small rural town of Tanga, consisting mainly of old houses with corrugated-iron roofs. From there, for the first time on this trip, the road surface was not tar but gravel – all the way to the border at Horohoro, which we reached about two hours later. The borders on previous occasions had all been rivers – Orange, Zambezi, Songwe. This border, however, ran right through the middle of a featureless landscape.
To Leonie, the Dutch woman I met on the Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam ferry: thanks for nothing.
Kenyatta’s Kenya
Father of the Nation
Arab settlement in what is now Kenya began in the 8th century, along with trade in ivory and slaves. The Portuguese seafarer Vasco da Gama arrived at Mombasa in 1498 and, seven years later, Portuguese ships followed to establish a permanent presence there. By 1730 the Arabs had managed to expel the Portuguese and, by 1839, all the major ports along the East African coast were governed from the island of Zanzibar. Britain took over in 1890, when Germany gave up the protectorate it had established in 1885, and British East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika) came into being.
Kenya became independent on 12 December 1963, under a government led by Jomo Kenyatta, alias Kamau waNgengi, alias John Peter, alias Johnstone Kamau. By the time of his death in 1978, he was commonly known as Mzee (‘old man’ in Swahili). Born in British East Africa (some say in 1889, others 1893), Kenyatta spent several years in London and a year in Moscow as a student. After his return to Kenya, in 1946, he founded the Pan-African Federation with Kwame Nkrumah, and became president of the Kenya African Union. In 1953 he was sentenced to seven years hard labour for organising the Mau Mau rebellion and, on his release, was sent into exile in a remote part of Kenya.
Dark Continent my Black Arse Page 11