And Relax! Zanzibar, Tanzania

I open my eyes and wait for the world to come into focus. I’m lying in a four-poster bed, covered in a thin white sheet. Through the mosquito net overhead I see a fan swinging on its axis like a propeller. It’s seven in the morning and already it’s in the late-twenties. My breathing is slow and the air is hot and wet. I take stock of the previous night.

It was a like bad dream. I was whisked aboard a shuttle after the Cessna had landed, then driven through Stone Town by night. Objects flashed past in the darkness: cars without headlights, bikes, motorbikes, pedestrians. Groups of people sat outside, illuminated in phosphorescence as they stared at television sets. My eyes desperately wanted to close, to fall into the abyss, but I was clutching my seat, my nerves worn thin. We took a side street and drove through flooded dirt roads, my life yet again in the hands of complete strangers.

An hour of travel, and the moon had risen like a orb. We entered a village of cracked walls and decaying houses, and the shuttle stopped outside a high white wall. The sign on the wall read ‘Corel Rock Hotel and Restaurant.’ The gates opened, and my memory faded.

“How are you todey?” My concentration broke. I had made it out of my room, and into the restaurant, a mug of coffee in my hand when Khazim found me. Our events manager. One of his eyes has a cataract of sorts, his gaze consequently is dull. Khazim had approached me the previous night, so his appearance this morning was a shadow of darker times. I tell him I’m still tired, and he gets to business. “We leave soon. You ready?”

I wasn’t. I wanted another day of sleep, but I wasn’t given the luxury. It was off-season and I had agreed to go on a boat ride around the islands. I rise and follow Khazim to the shuttle.

Johan introduces himself to me. Fifties, barefoot, shorts, and a loud red shirt. He is not out of place. Here the board room makes way for board shorts. In Auckland you may be an accountant, a teacher, a builder. In Zanzibar, you just are. We’re joined by a few others, a contingent of Afrikaners. Johan himself is from Johannesburg, and seems to know the staff. He sits in front with Khazim and makes conversation for the hour journey to the boat.

We arrive in another village and park by the shore. Khazim points to a banana boat. “The red one. Short walk.” The tide is out, so our short walk is ten minutes out on the shelf. My head was clearing and I was slowly registering the world. It’s a postcard. The sun is shining down on us, the seawater is warm and clear. Palms and other trees line the shores, and the sand is white. We board, and before long we’re cutting across the waves.

Paul is a geologist from Cape Town. He’s been working on this side of the world for a while. His wife, Jackie appears to share a part of her husband’s spirit, but is certainly not the outdoor type. Mark and Kate are a honeymoon couple from Johannesburg.

The two stroke on the boat is noisy, so the journey is made mostly in silence. White sandy islands pass by, each one as beautiful as the next. Khazim looks more relaxed, and tells me that in peak season there would be hundreds of tourists in dozens of boats, searching for that idyllic island spot. I had heard that people go to Zanzibar to swim with dolphins, so I ask him about it. He tells me that each peak season is like a dolphin hunt, the waters filled with boatloads of tourists itching for their two minute experience. You get pushed into the sea, you spot a dolphin, then you move away to let another person live the moment.

We reach a desert island and disembark to spend the day in leisure. Our crew plays and dines with us, the boundary between servant and master broken. The reef teems with fish in their thousands. Under the water, we spot schools of Nemo-like fish, and several dozen trumpet fish. On land, we are served with fresh produce: coconuts, mangoes, bananas, and fish. Johan wants to find some mangroves to plant outside the hotel, and so for the return journey the boat is taken into a lagoon. We shoot between a gap in the rocks, like threading a needle, and Johan jumps overboard in his flippers. I join him, my body already burnt, but deciding that any moment untaken is a moment lost. The wind picks up a little, and our boat is regularly battered by waves crashing over the hull. They soak us in salt water, but this is refreshing in the afternoon heat. We make our way south, and back to Zanzibar.

In the real world, Johan is a zoology professor. He lectures on human physiology, and happens to be managing the hotel for a while. It’s a side project for a few weeks. I join him that night at the bar, and he tells me about his experience of teaching in South Africa. As with most Afrikaners, he rues for the day when colour-politics doesn’t interfere with education. He tells me about dropping standards, and increasing problems within his classes where students are unable to write to even Matric standard. Johan is good-humoured, but he can see a bleak future ahead.

Frederik joins us, orders a beer and lights his cigarette. Twenties, Aryan, Danish. He had a bag stolen with his valuables, leaving him and his wife with a single credit card to make their way through the next few weeks. He reported it to the local polisi, but is frustrated with their lack of progress in writing a report. It’s urgently needed in order to file an insurance claim. In Denmark he works as a fire-fighter, an irony, since he is sunburnt from head to foot. Johan makes pains to repeatedly point this out to him.

Our contingent chats into the night, but eventually we retire, leaving me to return to my room and take my first long shower in ten days. My hair is coarse and stiff, and I am shocked when I wash it to feel how soft it becomes. I hear a knock on the door and donning a towel, open it. A man stands outside, he tells me name is Muhammad, and he wants to know whether I want to swim with dolphins tomorrow. I smile, and shake my head.

Zanzibar photos.