On Monday, it was decided that we could head north for a spice plantation tour and a visit to Stone Town. Juma, a driver from Kizimkazi, picked us up and we drove about 90 minutes to a spice farm where we met our guide for the day, Abou. (Note that names are spelled phonetically.)
We are often reminded that we are traveling in a country where labor costs are low. At the spice farm, we had the services of a driver, a very knowledgeable guide, and a farm guide who assisted (above, with the red dot on his forehead following a demonstration of the fruit of the lipstick tree).
We saw and learned about many spices (pepper, vanilla, nutmeg, ginger, lemongrass, cloves, cinnamon, coriander) and fruit grown on the island.
And ended the tour with a musical performance - a young man with a great voice who sang as he climbed high into a coconut tree, and a tasting of various fruits; two more people 'supported' by the tourists visiting the farm.
The farm 'guide' presented each of us with crowns and rings he had made from coconut palms as we walked around learning about the plants.
We then headed to Stone Town, the oldest part of Zanzibar town and a major tourist attraction on the island. Stone Town is a city of prominent historical and artistic importance in East Africa. Its architecture, mostly dating back to the 19th century, reflects the diverse influences underlying the Swahili culture, with the East African culture being preeminent, there is a unique mixture of Arab, Persian, Indian and European elements. For this reason, the town was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.
We started at the site of the last open slave market, where we sat in the Anglican Church built on the site and listened as Abou gave us a history of the slave trade in Zanzibar. The wooden cross over his right shoulder was made from the tree under which David Livingstone died - he is noted here as one of the European anti-slavery leaders of the mid-1800's.
In front of the altar is a stone rectangle - the middle circle marking the place where the tree had stood where the market took place, the red in the stone symbolizing the blood shed by many of the slaves who perished in the inhuman conditions in which African people were captured, marched hundreds of miles, and imprisoned while awaiting sale.
The Slave Memorial (above) and the underground compartment where people were kept before being sold (below).
The heart of Stone Town mostly consists of a maze of narrow alleys lined by houses, shops, bazaars and mosques. Since most streets are too narrow for cars, the town is usually crowded with bicycles and motorbikes. On Monday the streets were eerily quiet and almost all businesses and markets were closed due to concern about possible unrest associated with election results.
The one place we saw a number of men sitting and talking was Jaws Corner, where people generally gather to discuss community affairs. We were ushered through by our guide who tried to point out historic areas but was focused on getting us back to our driver.
We met our driver just up the block from one of the houses where Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara), lead singer of Queen ("We will Rock You, We are the Champions", etc..), lived as a young child. We dropped one of our group at the airport and returned to the lodge safely. As we were eating a late lunch we got a call from Audley, the company we used to arrange our trip, informing us of isolated incidences of civil unrest in Stone Town and assuring us they were monitoring the situation. They were surprised to hear that we had in fact been in Stone Town a few hours earlier. We asked lodge staff for updates during our stay and heard reports of police and military activity preventing any gatherings and the use of tear gas to break up crowds.
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