Zanzibar nights

Having reached the 6 month mark on my Tanzanian tour of duty I felt I was owed a(nother) holiday and 5 nights on Zanzibar was my gift to myself. The down side was a compulsory night beforehand in Dar Es Salaam and all the stresses of a stay in the big city. I slept at the TEC (Tanzania Episcopal Conference) - I didn't realise it was the centre of the Catholic Church in Tanzania - as if I hadn't been surrounded by enough Nuns, now it was the turn of the Bishop's. I haven't had such a socially awkward dining experience since being invited to a meal in Nyangao and needing to discreetly flick the ants off my chicken drumstick.

I have a new favourite taxi driver in Dar, Nasoro, who shepherded me through the furore at the ferry terminal with the sage advice: "Don't let anyone carry your bags". "Don't let anyone sell you a ticket". "Don't stop walking until you get inside the ticket office". I felt well taken care of and more than a little paranoid. Buying the ticket for the ferry to Zanzibar is the hardest part - fighting the crowd around the ticket sellers who haven't smiled since Christmas and trying to explain that "I am a Tanzanian resident", "I don't want to pay tourist price" and "Please give me a ticket with my own name on it and not my next of kin's" (the British passport can be confusing). Once you have that, the 2 hour catamaran ride across the Zanzibar Channel is pleasant enough, depending on the crossing and the number of passengers throwing up around you. Worryingly, the VSO office does not encourage volunteers to use the ferries after the 2011 and 2012 boat disasters in which hundreds, mostly Tanzanians, died. The government does not maintain the cheaper boats that the locals use - it makes far more money by investing in the "tourist" vessels that draw in more revenue.

The ferries dock in Stone Town where you run a second gauntlet of ticket touts and men luring you to their hotels/taxis/bars. Once you have escaped their clutches and got away with all of your luggage, the next challenge is finding your way through the labyrinth of Stone Town's narrow, twisting alleyways.

The Zanzibar archipelago includes 2 islands; the poorer, north island of Pemba and the main island of Unguja - or Zanzibar for tourists. Both islands are predominantly Muslim unlike the Tanzanian mainland and the adhan can be heard from pre-dawn. The one belonging to the mosque near my guesthouse sounded like a WW2 air-raid siren. Maybe it was. Stone Town was the heart of East Africa's slave trade during the 18th century and at various times in its history the islands have been under the control of the Portuguese, the Omanis and the British before uniting with mainland Tanganyika to form modern independent Tanzania in 1961.

After 6 months in the village, staying in a guesthouse with hot showers, an indoor toilet (en-suite would you believe!), a good fan, choice of breakfast and views over the harbour -  was like being dropped in heaven. Lingering over the roof-top breakfasts, even the pervasive smell of fish from the market below was not enough to dampen my holiday mood.

Some lucky volunteers are based on Zanzibar and others were passing through at the same time as I. We had lots of fun travelling on the local dala dalas, visiting the food stalls at the Forodhani Night Gardens (subsequent food poisoning excepted), spotting the red colobus monkeys in Jozani Forest and pretending to have money ++ at one of the all-inclusive 5* star resorts along the coast. Street stalls sold tiny cups of coffee for 8p which you sipped whilst watching the world go by. The tourist bars sold cocktails for much more than 8p which you could drink as the sun set over the Indian Ocean. Luxury - why don't they need a pharmacist on Zanzibar? 

My dala dala face