The miracle of Michamvi.

---

There’s a steady rain falling over Stone Town in the morning, and I’m dodging rank-smelling puddles on my way to Mercury’s, where a taxi driver waits to whisk me away to The Palms. With my Zanzibar goodbye just days away, I suspect these next three days will be my last - and, in effect, only - bit of beach time on the island. About that fact I have few regrets. While hardly immune to the charms of palm-fringed coasts and Italians in skimpy swimsuits, the essential elements of the Zanzibari beach retreat - swimming, boozing, basking in the sun - hold just a slight, passing appeal. Rather than trading well-worn travel tales with a bunch of glassy-eyed backpackers in Kendwa, I’ve been happier to plod around Stone Town these past two months, haggling at the market, chatting up the locals, and trying to at least learn a little something about life in Zanzibar today.

It seems odd, though, as our minivan barrels over the rain-slicked road, that this is only the second time I’ve left Stone Town since arriving in Zanzibar. Driving east, toward Paje, I’m struck by the sprawl of development along the road - the furniture shops and lumber yards, the dukas hawking DVDs and herbal remedies. After the tropical torpor of Pemba, where the largest town, Chage Chage, came and went before I’d even blinked, Unguja seems like a strip mall by comparison. It’s not until we’ve reached the eastern half of the island that the shops are replaced by banana plants and maize fields, and a solitary man on a bicycle - bundles of banana leaves lashed to the back - is the only soul we’ll encounter on a long stretch of road. At a police checkpoint, five languorous officials look us over from the side of the road, unhurried by our urgent mission of getting me to the nearest beach. After a brief debate, a stocky, uniformed guy with a trim moustache - almost pained in his reluctance to move - swaggers to the middle of the road, moves aside the rusted drum serving as a barricade, and lazily waves us through.

The weather, too, has switched gears. Mzee, my driver, explains that Unguja’s east coast has its own microclimate, and that even on a rainy morning in Stone Town, the towns along the Michamvi Peninsula are likely to be blessed by sunshine. It’s a welcome bit of news. After all, if the demands of my arduous job require a few days of seaside pampering at The Palms, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t have sunny skies to lighten the burden. I might not be the beach bum my Mediterranean blood would imply, but if pressed, I can lie around in the sand and drink fruity cocktails with the best of them.

It doesn’t take long to realize that The Palms’ staff has the same thing in mind. There’s a bottle of sparkling wine and a platter of fresh fruit waiting for me on arrival, and just minutes after checking into my villa - a palatial place with Swahili-style furniture, a private plunge pool, and a bathroom that’s about the size of my apartment in Stone Town - I’m giddily clapping my hands and giggling like a schoolgirl. By mid-afternoon I’ve gorged on grilled calamari, knocked back half a bottle of wine, and plopped myself in a private beachside bungalow, boozily staring at the waves. It is, at times, a pretty swell life.

For the next two days I indulge my inner glutton - a guy who, if my ballooning stomach is any indication, is struggling to get out. The seafood is delicious and abundant, the wine cellar is getting plundered, and the fact that I’m doing all this for the sake of a brief, 200-word review for a luxury travel website seems more than a bit absurd. When the heat and tropical sun are bearable, I take long walks along Bwejuu beach - one of the island’s least-developed coastlines. Fishermen tug their lines in to shore, rickety dhows bob on the waves, tourists splash around and, if we’re being honest, squeeze into swimsuits that had no business leaving the racks at Marks & Spencer. It’s shaping up to be a good week. Over dinner I chat with the Cohen family, from L.A., a merry, well-traveled bunch who drop names like Papua New Guinea and Bhutan like they were neighbors popping in for a Sunday barbecue. A local taarab group serenades our table as we battle our way through the entrées and desserts. Drowsy with food, wine and good company, I head back to the villa, crank up the A/C, and doze off in front of the latest Olympic highlights on EuroSport, visions of toned pentathletes dashing and vaulting through my head.

The next day, during one of my rambling walks along the beach, I stumble upon Club Vacanze, an improbable slice of Calabria at the far end of the peninsula. Despite my time on the Kenyan coast, in such well-known tourist haunts as Watamu and Malindi, it’s my first look at the fabled all-inclusives so favored by Italians in East Africa. That the place is called “Club Vacanze” probably speaks volumes about just how African is the African experience at the resort. Down-tempo house music thumps over the speakers; bronzed bodies laze around with a sort of hedonistic squalor straight out of The Satyricon. At either end of Vacanze’s private beach, where slit-eyed askari keep vigil, clusters of beach boys stand around with souvenir t-shirts and knock-off shades. Not allowed to spoil the view from the Italians’ sun-loungers, they’re forced to wait on the resort’s periphery, hoping to make a few shilling off whatever stragglers they can get a hold of. I’m slightly indignant at the spectacle - a kid I’m walking with suddenly stops at an imaginary line in the sand, offering to meet me on my way back - though I suppose if you’re shelling out a few thousand euro for a trip to Africa, there’s no reason why any actual Africans should be allowed to ruin it for you.

It’s a credit to the Italian owners of Breezes and The Palms that they’ve resisted the gaudy route of Club Vacanze and other like-minded all-inclusives. (Though if they managed to import some of those same sun-bathing beauties, dripping and glistening and practically gliding out of the sea like water nymphs, I probably wouldn’t complain.) Adriano, the son of Breezes’ owners, who runs The Palms alongside his wife, has lived in Zanzibar for almost twelve years, and he’s gone to great lengths to bend to local customs and protocols. Fluent in Swahili, he never makes decisions that will impact life in the villages nearby without first consulting the elders of Michamvi. He’s earned a great deal of respect as a result: when we drive to the village one afternoon to meet with the elders - a group of garrulous, mirthful old guys sitting in a breezy bungalow on the beach - they approach with wagging hands and broad grins, as if welcoming home a prodigal son.

It’s one of the great regrets of my travels that, apart from some capable Spanish and a dozen languages’ worth of greetings, I have no way to break the language barrier that hounds me wherever I go. While I’ve hardly struggled to meet people who are willing and able and, often, all too eager to speak English with me, it’s with the older generations that I flounder in a sea of fumbling handshakes, bright smiles, and an utterly incomprehensible stream of foreign tongues. How much is lost with those bent old men on the barazas, those ageless women in the market, carrying a life’s worth of inherited wisdoms in their breasts, grinning gummily at the mzungu who can muster little more than a few heartfelt “salamas”? Yet it’s here, in Michamvi, with the elders shifting their kikoys and tilting their kufi caps my way, with Adriano sitting Indian-style beside me, ready to serve as interpreter for this great international summit, that I have a chance to finally unlock the ancient mysteries of the Swahili coast.

Only I don’t know where to begin. I’ve been lulled into a near-narcotic state by the sea breeze, the crashing waves, the sun warming my arm; drowsy and smiling dumbly, my mind goes blank. The elders stir and look toward me expectantly, no doubt having been told by Adriano that there’s a foreigner - an American journalist, no less! - who would like to meet them and ask questions about their lives. Maybe they’ve even disrupted the day’s routine to greet me here on the beach, eager, too, to hear impressions of Zanzibari life from an emissary of the wider world. Suddenly I feel terrifically self-conscious, even foolish; and I can’t shake the feeling that, days later, when the salty old sea dogs of the Zanzibari Social Club meet to shoot the breeze, they’ll remember the slack-jawed American who sat in the shade, grinning like the village idiot and complementing them on their colorful kikoys.

The importance of this moment, after all, can hardly be overstated. As I’ve learned during my travels in East Africa, the village elders are venerated by their communities - a testament, perhaps, to the great respect shown anyone with the wisdom and wiles to survive for so long in the face of such hardships. In Zanzibari politics, as Adriano explains, no decision can be made by the mayor or the party council (a relic of the island’s socialist past) without first getting the elders’ approval. Years ago, when he was buying land for a new hotel venture, Adriano was drawn into a dispute with a high-ranking government official. The politician claimed he was entitled to the land, but the elders - acting as impartial arbitrators - sided with Adriano. Though undoubtedly peeved at the decision, the pol dropped his claim. The Palms might not have been here today were it not for the clout the elders’ judgment carried.

Finally I ask about the impact tourism has had on these coastal villages, expecting to hear horror stories of scantily clad sunbathers run amok; but to my surprise, the men are eager to talk about how much things have improved since the first resorts arrived. It was the prospect of tourist windfalls, after all, that prompted Zanzibari politicians to improve local infrastructure. Tourist money helped to build roads and schools in the area; the wells that provide fresh water, and the power lines connecting Michamvi to the grid, wouldn’t have been built without the influence of foreign investors. But tourism, of course, is a double-edged sword: one resort dug its well in the wrong place and upset the water table, ruining the drinking water supply for neighboring villages. Hoping to undo the damage, they built a new well nearby, but the elders bemoan the fact that the water isn’t always fresh. Some days, they say, it’s like drinking from the sea. There are complaints about hiring practices, too: most of the new resorts have brought in polished graduates of the tourism schools on the mainland. In an impoverished area where jobs are scarce, couldn’t they spread some of that wealth around and hire from villages like Michamvi and Bwejuu?

Still, with all the changes they’ve seen in the past two decades, the elders are resigned to whatever new developments the age of tourism might bring. You don’t live to be a Michamvi elder, they imply, without learning to adapt to the times.

And for the oldest of Michamvi’s elders, that makes for a long life of adapting. Ali Jamhani, a mirthful old man who has more children (six) than teeth in his wide, thin-lipped mouth, claims to be the oldest man on the Bwejuu peninsula. At 97, he is still spry, youthful, a touch mischievous. When Adriano mentions a dispute with an elder from Bwejuu village who claims he’s the oldest man on the peninsula, Ali Jamhani smirks with mock anger, and the others have a few laughs at his expense. He maintains there’s documentary evidence to back up his claim, though the prospect of a century-old birth certificate surviving the wreckage of both the German and English colonial enterprises seems highly unlikely. As if to prove his point, though, Ali Jamhani, grinning gummily, gestures to a young girl splashing in the waves. She is his youngest daughter - an energetic six-year-old who could just as easily be four or five generations further down his family tree. I give him a look of comical bewilderment and admiration, which draws appreciative laughs from the entire group. And I’m willing to grant that now and then, miracles still do happen in Michamvi.

---