by James Best
Taken aback, she smiled. ‘How old do you think I am?’
He thought about it. ‘Twenty?’
She was happy with his estimation. ‘Hah! Unfortunately, I’m a fair bit older that that!’
Sam replied quickly. ‘Forty?’
There was no way she was forty. I jumped in. ‘Sam! It’s rude to talk about women’s ages.’
Sam paused and looked at her again. ‘She’s not wearing a bra.’
Oh crap. ‘Sam!’ I yelled.
‘Well, she’s not,’ he protested.
‘Sam, I think you’ve finished breakfast.’ I bundled him out of the dining room, Naomi and her camera in tow.
We were finally going to Zanzibar. I was looking forward to visiting the fabled island, and Sam was looking forward to getting to our last destination. We packed our bags, and Morton, who’d been staying with friends up the road, decided to rejoin us for a few days in Zanzibar. At the time of independence in 1961, the old British protectorates of Tanganyika and Zanzibar were independent countries. A few years later they formed a union, leading to the name Tanzania, but Zanzibar has long been considered to have different cultural and political characteristics to the mainland.
The modern ferry, carting hundreds of passengers, a mixture of wazungu tourists, local business folk and families, skipped across the Zanzibar Channel in ninety minutes. We trundled up the gangway to the chaotic customs area. Sam and I approached the counter.
‘Passports,’ the official barked. I handed them over.
‘Yellow fever certificates.’
‘I don’t have them here,’ I explained. ‘They’re back at the hotel we were staying at in Dar, in storage. I didn’t think we would need them given you have to present them to get into Tanzania.’
The official frowned. ‘This is a problem.’ He spoke to a nearby female official in Swahili and she approached us. ‘You must follow me.’ She marched us through the crowd and we entered a quiet glass-enclosed room, sectioned off from the chaos of the crowd outside the windows.
‘You must understand you have only two options,’ she said. ‘By WHO regulations, if you do not have physical evidence of a yellow fever vaccination, we cannot let you into the country. Zanzibar is an independent country. Your other option is we take you to the department of health and you both receive another vaccination, which is not harmful even if you have had a previous vaccination. This will cost you seventy US dollars each.’
‘Can I telephone the hotel and get them to find the certificates, take a photo and send it to my phone? That is physical evidence,’ I said.
She responded curtly. ‘No, I do not have time for that. I am going home soon.’
I thought to myself that that was an odd thing to say.
Sam wasn’t happy. ‘I don’t want another needle. I don’t want to go back.’
The official looked at me. ‘You must help me solve this problem.’ The penny dropped. I’d heard that phrase before.
‘Will money help?’ I reluctantly asked.
‘How much money?’
I thought about it. ‘How about twenty US dollars for both of us.’
‘I can’t hear you.’
The hide! I carefully replied, ‘Thirty US dollars, and I’m now speaking very loudly.’
She opened the top drawer of the desk she was sitting behind. I now noticed she had strategically positioned my chair so that I was sitting near the drawer. This was a well-practised routine. I slipped the money into the drawer and she closed it. She leant forward and looked me in the eye. ‘You must not tell anybody about this. I like my job.’
‘No problem.’ I said. But what I thought was, Well, you are ripping me off.
Meanwhile and unbeknownst to me, Naomi had been filming through the window the entire time. I was also wearing a microphone, which I’d completely forgotten about in the kerfuffle, so the entire interaction had been recorded.
We got through customs, as did Morton, who went through the same process in the glass-enclosed room and slammed his twenty US dollars on the woman’s desk. We rejoined Matt as we left the building and entered the glare, dust and archaic beauty of Stone Town, the capital of Zanzibar.
Matt had organised our hotel room for us and we settled in before heading out for dinner in Forodhani Gardens. The gardens were a short stroll from our hotel, through narrow winding alleyways lined with stone buildings. Large, dark wooden doors were capped with elaborate carved motifs in squared or semicircular friezes, reflecting Omani Arabic and Indian influences respectively. Many of the doors dated back hundreds of years, and some had large wooden or copper spikes protruding from the panels, designed to stop elephants knocking them down. Not something you usually have to worry about in Sydney.
We arrived at the gardens before sunset. Stone Town is set on a rounded protrusion from the island, and the gardens sat at the furthest point. From the sea-wall perimeter African teenagers took flying leaps into the water.
Sam was laughing at each jump. ‘I want to go in.’
‘No, Sam, you’ll get your clothes wet and we don’t have any others with us,’ I replied.
Matt nodded his head sideways towards the water. ‘You should let him go in.’
I thought about it. But it was dangerous, what with the boys landing on top of each other in the water. Sam might also attract some unwanted competitive attention from them given he was the only mzungu. He took some convincing but eventually relented. It was, however, pleasing that he wanted to do it, reflecting his growing confidence in grabbing new experiences.
As Naomi was filming Sam and me, she was approached by a plain-clothes police officer, who showed us his ID and promptly marched her off to a mobile police station at the edge of the park. We followed to give moral support.
At the police station, Naomi received a stern lecture about not filming in the park without a permit, and she dutifully acted chastened, telling them it was for personal use and she had only been filming for five minutes. Eventually the policeman let her leave with a caution, feeling he had done his duty.
‘Why do you need a permit?’ I asked Naomi.
‘Oh, it’s all about money. Maybe you don’t even need a permit, and he was just trying to scam some money out of me. It might be a per hour thing, that’s why I said I’d only filmed five minutes.’
‘This has happened to you before, hasn’t it?’
Naomi, who had spent many months in Africa on an earlier assignment, nodded. ‘Ooh yes, many times.’
Sam was excited. ‘Naomi got arrested!’
‘No, Sam, she wasn’t arrested,’ I clarified, but it was sometimes hard to explain the difference.
After sunset, we grabbed some pizzas and seafood kebabs from the trestle tables surrounding barbecues in the centre of the park. Locals and tourists shared the space, which had a vibrant and relaxed feel. We sat on the sea wall with our paper plates and watched the world go by as a quiet moon rose over the strait.
CHAPTER 37
Zanzibar
The next day, our first full one in Stone Town, was a relaxed affair. Sam and I took off on our own, wandering the narrow labyrinthine streets where grapevines and bougainvillea canopies gave relief from the heat, moss- and lichen-covered plaster crumbled off the red-coral-rock walls, and conversations echoed from dark entrances and shuttered windows, while phone and electrical wires tangled around gutters and across roofs. In one place entire walls had collapsed into an empty building. As Matt would comment later, it seemed like the whole place was slowly and gracefully falling down.
We purposefully got lost in the old city. Each corner could reveal a sun-bleached small square, where a gathering of men discussed politics while sipping coffee sitting on baraza, the long stone benches outside of the buildings, wearing kufis (small white caps) and traditional long white robes. Young men sat astride their red Vespas chatting on mobiles, and clusters of schoolchildren scattered off to school or prayers, the girls with colourful kangas wrapped over their heads.
Ther
e were cats in doorways, latticed verandahs, horseshoe archways, carved wooden balustrades, and stairwells disappearing into shadows. Stone Town oozed mystery. It also promised excitement. As Major F.B. Pearce exclaimed in 1919, ‘Over all there is the din of barter, of shouts from the harbour; the glamour of the sun, the magic of the sea and the rich savour of Eastern spice. This is Zanzibar!’
It seemed not much had changed, beyond the mobiles and the tourists.
We strolled the streets, drank coffee on cafe balconies, browsed the tourist shops and ducked and weaved to avoid the incessant hawkers, known as papasi (ticks), who were relentless in their attempts to winkle some shillings out of the wazungu. Sam and I played chess and cards, did some reading, writing and drawing, juggled and boxed. Sam read the whole of Animal Farm, his first non-Harry Potter book, while sitting in the stone amphitheatre in the centre of town. It was a good day in Africa for both of us.
In the evening, the five of us headed out to dinner in an upmarket restaurant, taking our seats on a balcony overlooking the narrow winding stone alley below. It was our last evening with Matt who was heading home early the next morning. An attractive African woman came over to take our order. Matt, Morton and Naomi placed their orders. The waitress turned to Sam. ‘I’ll have an African woman, please,’ he stated, clearly and firmly. Matt shaded his eyes with his hand, Morton’s head hit the table and Naomi burst out laughing. I jumped in to rescue the situation. ‘He’ll have a burger and chips, and so will I.’ The woman just smiled and gently shook her head as she walked away.
The next morning Matt headed off to fly back to Australia. It had been great to have him around, and for Sam to encounter another familiar face. It was also good to have someone who had known Sam all his life observe his progress and participate in his adventure.
Sam, Morton, Naomi and I then got to work over breakfast, planning our time on Zanzibar, maps and the Lonely Planet guide sitting beside our coffee and toast. We allocated another day in Stone Town and three days travelling around the island. We thought hiring a car was probably the best option after leaving the city. Minibuses were possible, but accommodation in the rural areas was often hard to get to in places, especially with packs.
The rest of the day was more organised. Morton, Naomi, Sam and I booked a boat trip out to Prison Island, five kilometres offshore, and then a dhow cruise at sunset. With events piling up I reminded myself not to push Sam too hard in the middle of the day; it would be a lot for him to cope with.
The Arabs had isolated recalcitrant slaves on Prison Island. Later the British had erected a prison there but the buildings were never used for their intended purpose. Instead those on ships suspected of having yellow fever or cholera were quarantined there for a week or two, to protect Stone Town, then the busiest port in east Africa, from epidemics. More recently, its isolation has provided protection for another species, the Aldabra giant sea tortoises of the Indian Ocean.
Previously widespread but then nearly hunted into extinction in the nineteenth century, the tortoises are now only found naturally in the wild on one atoll in the Seychelles. In 1919, four specimens were gifted to Zanzibar by the British governor of the Seychelles, and they were kept on Prison Island. Isolated and protected, their numbers quickly increased. In the late twentieth century, however, poaching dramatically reduced the population, nearly wiping out the colony, before a secure enclosure allowed the tortoises to thrive once again.
Sam was fascinated by the huge beasts, which can weigh more than two hundred and fifty kilograms and have amazing longevity. One specimen on Prison Island was 192 years old.
‘What do you think of that, Sam?’ Naomi asked.
‘That means he was born in 1823,’ he replied. ‘He was born before the American Civil War.’ Naomi was impressed with Sam’s history knowledge. All those conversations we’d had at the back of buses were paying off.
We had unfettered access to the animals, and Sam was brave enough to gently stroke one old timer’s head, which apparently they liked. Unfortunately, an idiotic tourist stood astride one of the tortoises, which we’d been unambiguously instructed not to do as it distresses them. I thought the South African curator was going to explode. ‘Get off that tortoise now!’ He told us he’d had to put a tortoise down a few years earlier when some clown stood on its shell and broke it.
The dhow cruise was a much more laidback affair. The elegant sailing ships are masterpieces of simple design. A single triangular sail was rolled and tied to a long yard, mounted at an angle on the mast. By adjusting the angle of the yard and the sail with two simple ropes on each end of the yard, the sailor can easily adjust direction and speed, including being able to tack into the wind. It was like a giant windsurfer, or more correctly, a windsurfer was like a mini dhow; dhows have been around the coastlines of eastern Africa, Arabia and India for thousands of years.
Sam chilled as we glided along in the waters beside Stone Town, our taut and trim sail a cream obtuse triangle floating on the jade waters. He draped his fingers over the gunwale, trailing a white V in the sea water. His floppy hat, which we had bought way back at Guma Lagoon Camp on the Okavango Delta, blew off his head and landed in the water, beyond my reach in a flash. Another item to add to the list of the lost, broken and missing in action. Well, at least our packs were getting lighter.
That evening, Morton, Naomi, Sam and I went to an Indian restaurant where the food was excellent, the electricity supply intermittent, and Sam’s behaviour, to put it in his words, ‘disappointing’. I think he’d picked up that adjective from his mother. The source of the dispute was that Sam wanted all of the garlic naans and none of the curries, a point on which he proved inflexible. I finally had to pull the plug and leave early so the rest of the restaurant could eat in peace. I think the heavily scheduled day had knocked him around: three boat rides, lots of sun and too much novelty. Maybe a curry was a bridge too far.
In the morning we bade goodbye to Morton, after nearly a month travelling together. He had been a terrific ally and good friend to both Sam and me. Coming into our lives when he did was perfect timing, as I was really flagging at that time. After he departed, it was down to Naomi, Sam and me. We were on the road again, but for the first time in almost six months I was doing the driving. We hired a small Suzuki four-wheel drive and drove north out of Stone Town. But finding a petrol station immediately proved to be a challenge, given the African penchant for vague directions.
‘Yes, turn left down there,’ we were told, followed by a sweeping wave off into the distance.
‘It is some kilometres,’ was another response.
‘Yes, we have one. It is close around here.’
The driving also proved challenging. I warned Naomi my plan was to give way to everybody.
Leaving urbane Stone Town, we headed north through plantings of coconuts, bananas, avocados and jackfruits, the latter’s bulbous forms heavy on the branches. Rainstorms and glaring sun reminded us how close we were to the equator. Young schoolgirls walked past in matching veils, drenched but unfazed.
We were approaching the northern tip of the island when a turn-off to a beach appeared on our left. I pulled up to have a look around.
On the beach stood a young lad, probably close to Sam’s age but half his weight, standing tall in a high-buttoned shirt. He stepped forward. ‘Sir, I am Ishmael. I would like to act as your guide, if you would like. There are some nearby historical ruins.’
‘How much?’ I replied.
‘Two dollars,’ Ishmael said, carefully, ‘but if you don’t want to pay, that is all right.’
I was stumped by Ishmael’s honesty. Meanwhile his friends were mocking and imitating Sam, who was excited and jumping around. I became irritated until I realised they were imitating all three of us. I guess we were novelties, after all.
Ishmael walked us down the beach and then across to a nearby decaying coral-stone building. Ishmael told us that the house had been built by Portuguese traders in the fifteenth or sixteenth cen
tury. ‘They lived here for a few hundred years. They traded metal materials for spices and ivory.’ His account was backed up by some official signs around the site. I was not only impressed by Ishmael’s English and his knowledge but his delivery. He was a bright spark all right.
I was also impressed by the ruins, and tried to convey a historical picture to Sam. ‘Imagine, Sam, living back here in the sixteen hundreds, where the only people you would know would be in this house, and it would be years and years before you would see any of your own people.’
Sam looked out the corner of his eye in his enigmatic way. ‘Yeah.’ On the way back to the car Ishmael told me he wanted to be a doctor. ‘I want to help people. I want to help women and babies who are dying when they shouldn’t be dying.’
‘I’m a doctor,’ I said.
‘Oh, really?’ Ishmael’s eyes lit up. ‘You have studied mathematics, and physics, and chemistry? These things?’
I smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘Yes, sure.’
‘Oh, I want to study these things,’ he lamented.
‘I really hope you get to do this. I think you would make a good doctor,’ I said, meaning it.
In Africa, however, so much talent goes untapped.
As we arrived at the tip and headed down the east coast, surf beaches stretched out before us, lined with five-star resorts. This was the other major tourist attraction in Zanzibar besides the history and culture of Stone Town: the natural beauty of the beaches on the east coast. However, as we hit the intersection to the road heading down the coast, our trip hit a snag.
We had already gone through three police checks since leaving Stone Town. In general, African police and army checkpoints are uncertain affairs; you never know whether you are going to be met with a smile or a scowl. Many officials seem overly fond of their uniforms and the authority that comes with them.
Here a single soldier stood at the intersection, holding his machine gun. He stood in the middle of the road as I drove up and signalled for us to stop. He approached Naomi on the passenger side of the car and she rolled down the window.