Stone Town Redeemed

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I take back every bad word I ever said, and every bad thought I ever had, about Stone Town. Well, not every single one, but most of them. It's not a bad old place, really. We went back there today and we had a couple of hours to kill before catching the ferry to the mainland. I had resolutely decided to stay inside and catch up on some blogging and banking, more to avoid being assaulted/groped/offered drugs than because my to-do list was particularly urgent. But in the end I headed out with Sarah and Rebecca to explore the Stone Town labyrinth some more and give it a second chance.

We found ourselves in the shopping district, where men and women wove at looms inside dimly lit rooms, and the shop doorways were awash with colourful dresses and saris, scarves and fabrics, jewellery, and paintings of African sunsets and tribal warriors. Shopkeepers and stall holders called out to us, "Hello, Madam. My shop is here. Come and look at my shop. To look is free". Men followed us down the street, singing songs from the CDs that they had tried to press into our hands as we passed. Flustered tourists shook their heads and said, over and over again, "No, thank you" whenever they were harassed. One local had a sense of humour; he was selling t-shirts with the words "NO THANK YOU" printed on them.

Today the smell of fish and sewage was barely there, replaced by citrus and spices, whilst a contagious atmosphere took over the hostility from before. We met people that restored my faith in this town. The elderly woman who directed us from her shop to someone else's when she didn't have what we were looking for. The young dreadlocked local who looked at my braided hair and shook my hand in approval. The man who went out of his way to show us how to get to the hotel where we'd left our bags, and his friend who passed us on his bike five minutes later and shouted out that we were going the right way. It was small things like this that completely changed the way I felt about Stone Town, and I'm glad that I was able to delve deeper below the surface and see beyond the not so good experiences of the first day.

Sixteen of us came to Zanzibar from the mainland; nine of us are returning. For the rest, the trip ended in Kendwa and they're going their separate ways whilst we continue our journey into Malawi. It will be strange to travel in a smaller group. We've only known each other for two weeks, and although there are some personality clashes (as is always the way when a group of people are put together), friendships have been formed and bonds forged in that time.

Our next stop, Malawi, is the country that I know least about on this trip. I think that, in a way, I sort of overlooked it in my eagerness to explore the more well known places that we've visited so far. We have two long driving days ahead of us, the first to get us out of Dar Es Salaam and over the Tanzania-Malawi border, and the second to take us to Chitimba, where we'll have our first glimpse of the famous Lake Malawi. I'm looking forward to getting to know this new piece of a continent that I have very quickly fallen in love with.

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