Rockin’ the house in Stone Town
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Zanzibar Archipelago, Tanzania
Well… Ramadan in Stone Town, the old city in Zanzibar.. not a party time but we made it so!
When I showed up to meet Dullah, he had met Beth, a lawyer from LA and Rudy, a Costa Rican living in France. We organized a Dhow and headed out to Prisoner island to go snorkeling and visit the tortoise sanctuary. Frankly the snorkeling was crap and the water had lots of tiny jellyfish particles in it so it felt like you were being pricked by pins all over.. not fun!
So, the tortoise sanctuary was indeed very cool.. MASSIVE .. O*L*D* turtles up to 180 years old were everywhere so incredible. Beth and Rudy turned out to be great company so I ended up hanging out on the island for a while with them swimming and enjoying the beach.
After the island, a quick shower, and we’re back on the tourist trail with Dullah who took us to the Slave Market site which was an incredibly powerful tour.. I cannot possibly believe the depths we would sink to treating other humans as we so did! But after that it was a walk through the local market where you could buy everything from underwear to toothpaste to shoes to fruit to kitchen sinks.. literally. Then onto my favorite part of the evening.. a beer at the Africa house overlooking the harbor for a few minutes while we waited on Beth’s takeaway Indian food and then we headed down to the night fish market. Table after table after table.. you get the idea.. of fresh food, prepared on skewers, between nan, in rosti and you just order till ya can’t hold any more down.
While we waited we played with some local boys who wanted to sing Michael Jackson songs with us and do the moon walk! What sweet kids they are here, so sad on so many days to see the conditions in which they have to live when they have nothing buy joy in their eyes most days.
So some late night beers again with some Austrians who were sitting by us at the night market and we rounded out the evening as I needed to get home to pick up my laundry.. but thats another story for another day.. I’m almost out of time on this computer so I have to run.
