Notes from a Small Island in the Indian Ocean

Dear friends,
Greetings from Pemba, the emerald Island that sits in clear, deep, blue water. We are only 30 Nautical Miles off the coast of Africa, and yet we live in a different world. I have been sending out Haber News letters for some time now, and yet I feel that we are loosing something. There is indeed a power to the written word, but nothing beats a photo. I toyed with sending out word documents, but they become too heavy and they are rejected by spam filters. Then my good friend Greg Wilson from the Cook Islands set up his travel blog for his journey around the world. I became addicted to his comments on public buses and beer. (How often do we on a tropical island catch a suburban bus?- Our buses are converted light and heavy trucks!) . When Greg’s journey came to an abrupt end I was a bit sad. Then recently Greg had the brain wave of re starting the blog to allow his friends to see what was going on in Rarotonga. Once he started he found that writing a newsletter was harder than he thought. Well, waffling has never been a problem for me, so I thought I would convert our newsletter “Haber” into a blog of life in Pemba and our travels.

We moved to our new location (S 04' 55 384 E 039' 40 529) in the north of Pemba on the 23rd of November 2009. Know only as plot no 29 on the Zanzibar Government land registry. As any psycologist will tell you, moving house is one of the most stressful aspects of life. Moving a living being like a hotel and dive centre with clients and boats and compressors in one day was a nightmare. But it was a fun nightmare. That was until the wheel bearing on my small boat trailer blew up and decided to disintegrate. I pulled over just as the wheel popped off and the boat bounced gracefully off the trailer. It was late so I paid three guys some money to guard the boat overnight and drove home. Home now being a beach resort. The next day Stuart Lind (our chief instructor) outdid me by bashing a huge hole in the fibreglass tube of our other rib. So we started our diving on our faithful Dhows Java Sparrow and Kiboko Kidogo.

At first I was so glad that I had refused to sit in Chake and only dive the south of Pemba when I lived there. All through our time in Chake Chake we dived the Fundo and Njao gaps. Drawing on experiences dating back 7 years I was able to pull a rabbit out of a hat on numerous occasions! But as we dived more and more, different sites within sites became apparent to us. New sites were found and old ones spit into three. We now have 19 dive sites within 36minutes on a dhow and 30 sites within 40 minutes on a rib. What we could not prepare ourselves for was the total unpredictability of the diving. We see mobular manta rays on many more occassions than in the south, more sharks, more big jacks and the same reef fish and schools of black snapper and Pompano. Having dived the east coast, the souith west coast and the north west coast, I can honestly say that the best diving in Pemba is right here. On my doorstep, in the North West of Pemba.

Apart from the diving, we have dicovered new creeks to kayak into, new places to go birding and more hidden tracks to walk along in the afternoons. The people of our local village of Makangale have formed a co-operative and provide cleaning and gardening services. They add to our old core staff from Chake Chake. Enoch is our new chef and he trained under Figen D’Souza the former Turkish Honourary Consul (and formidable cook) in Dar es Salaam.

To add to all of this, we are avidly awaiting the arrival of the Jersey/South Wales “Anti Corruption unit”. This is a group of friends who visit every year to dive and fish and not pay bribes. This year they are bringing “Jerry the Taff”, a veritable fishing guru who will rehabilitate all of my old PENN fishing rods. We will then troll the deep channels and fly fish for bonefish in North Pemba’s shallows. Steve Le Bas from Jersey (Channel Islands) has agreed to fit out a fishing boat for me, and so in honour of his arrival I have purchased a Yamaha 23ft Fibreglass fishing boat. Steve will add the new 4 stroke 60hp engine and cables and within 2 days we hope to be out there looking for bone fish. All of this will of course be documented and blogged on this page.

Not everything is easy or perfect in paradise though. We constantly battle to uphold the rule of law and not be harrassed by the Zanzibar Revenue Board. (the vat man in other countries). We are constantly subject to requests for bribes in return for protection. We refuse of course and the threats come thick and fast. Getting spare parts can be a pain, and our Green Goddess Fire Engine was subjected to Duty by Customs (even when it is a Duty Free Item) , they held onto it for so long that we ended up having to pay storage of more than the duty. As this blog goes out it is close to being released! (thank heavens it rained this morning…. The drought has ended and the risk of brush fires reduced.)

Life goes on, even on a tropical island. I will of course report on the activities of the Anti Corruption Unit and whatever fish we catch….until the next bulliten.

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