Mr Tuesday and the raping of Africa.

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Zanzibar is an Arabic word meaning ‘black island’. Although part of Tanzania, the small island boasts its own government and remains mostly self-sufficient with the exporting of spice and coffee, thus the nickname; spice island.

The island itself was beautiful, surrounded by clear waters and white sand; it is easy to see why the island is a tourist favourite. Massage huts lined the beach with music cascading over the beach chairs and their lazy occupants.

The beer is cold and the food, when visiting local haunts, is dirt cheap.

The people were an interesting mix of charming, seemingly lazy locals offering their services; pushy and insistent beach boys and downright rude foreign business owners.

We arrived via ferry to Stonetown, the streets were narrow and confusing, almost maze like. Each door way boasted stunningly crafted doors for which the town was famous. Most archways were bluntly squared with detailed carvings and Arabic prayers of profits to display the Islamic religion; others were arched high, almost reaching the second story, these were Hindu doors. The triple arched doors were gothic and decorated with medieval influence, all doors included menacing yet blunt ‘spikes’ protruding from the heavy set doors which were at least double the size of western styles. These ‘spikes’ were coloured gold and added to the richness of the doors, quite ironic as often behind these doors laid squalor and poverty.

Zanzibar has enforced a law that all tour guides on the island must be local, I think this is a great initiative that would encourage the locals to tour with a sense of pride. Unfortunately the mentality has had a reverse effect and our tour guide in particular had a don’t-give-a-damn approach. As much as we would have preferred to ignore the twat and use our own Absolute Africa guide, we had been warned that this could result in him spending a day in jail if he was caught.

We moved onto Sunset Bungalows, a resort which sat shoulder to shoulder to their competitors along Kendwa Beach. The beach was lovely and lazy days followed lazy nights. At this point we were all grateful for proper beds, showers and more importantly, privacy, the most valued commodity of them all.

We were approached by the resorts recommended tour operator, Scuba Doo. The owner Chris was a likable fat man who knowingly informed us on the ins and outs of the beaches tours and scams. We were all advised to be wary of the beach boys too good to be true offers and offered us a group discount to snorkel all afternoon. Our group split with those preferring to book with the familiarity of the PADI brand while the rest of us (including me) braved the adventure of the beach boys wooden boats.

Of course Chris was right, on the day of our adventure we realised the rickety boat had been pushed past capacity, offered no life vests, second engine or enough snorkel equipment. On top of this the one hour destination travel time had been changed to two and the price had been increased. Seeing no one in our group of 15 had paid a deposit we happily walked away ignoring the abuse and blame of the world’s problems on women, he should know, he has a wife and three daughters and hates them all. Lovely.

Taking advantage of my free morning I meandered up the shore, ignoring the persistent peddlers in my wake. At the end of the beach sat a small hut with paintings leaning up against the wall. This was the only hut where upon my approach no-one rushed out and started to thrust their wares in my face. I decided to enter and was pleasantly surprised to find an attractive man squatting over a small stool intently painting, a calm look of concentration resting on his face.

He welcomed me and introduced himself as Mr Tuesday before returning to attention back to his work. Seeing a painter may not sound impressive to you, however since arriving in Africa every day I have seen multiple art stores and NEVER anyone painting. I was rather pleased with my find.

His paintings were lovely and I more than appreciated his laid back approach to potential customers. After eyeing a particular piece of art I thanked him and left only to return with Ash who was as excited and impressed as I was. We both bought a beautiful piece each to capture our Tanzanian adventure at a price well below its value (I believe).

I returned each day with additional friends who would buy a few pieces, the word spread amongst our group and soon Mr Tuesdays store was looking quite bare and our tour leader was busy finding the space to store all the pieces on the truck.

The rest of the group went on their half day Scuba Doo tour whilst the rest of us felt a tad foolish for our mistake; this feeling was quickly eradicated when they returned less than two hours later with the look of thunder on their faces. It seems that Chris had been the biggest scammer and hypocrite of all. The group had been in the water for barely 50 minutes and were promptly returned.

As you can imagine the group was not happy to pay for a ‘half day’ tour, Chris suddenly turned to Mr Hyde and viciously told everyone to fuck off of not pay. What a pleasant man.

So although no-one snorkelled, we had an excellent time soaking in the sun, swimming and simply relaxing.

On our last day I received a message from Mr Tuesday to return to the store, at which point he graciously asked me to select a complimentary painting, he had received so much business from my recommendations and wanted to show his appreciation. I was touched by his gesture.

Clutching my gift I returned to chaos. Voices were raised and a verbal battle was in progress with part of our group and a short though rather formidable looking foreign woman. She wore a Scuba Doo, Kendwa Beach shirt and had two police officers waiting in a car behind her. The woman was Mrs Chris and was just as tactful.

She stood, hands on her hips and her mouth flying, ignoring all rational. In her opinion we were all trailer trash and had no respect (ironic), she screamed at us that we went from country to country, creating destruction without thought for the people and were, in her words ‘rapping Africa’.

Wow.

Mrs Chris demanded (never asked) payment regardless of the fact the group had been told not to pay, she sneakily threatened to report our Absolute tour guide to the police for working on the island as her leverage. Unfortunately with the police looking on there was no choice and payment was made.

The whole situation was ridiculous and I was appalled at the disgusting attitude and dirty tricks from the owners of Scuba Doo Zanzibar, the smug look on her ugly face and police in her back pocket implied this was not the first time she had used such tactics.

At this point there is nothing else to do but laugh, and as she left 28 people happily did so in her face. You must be a rotten person on the inside to have so much anger, but there is no point in returning the anger which she musnt feed off, all you can really do is pity someone in that situation.

Well… pity them and also write a blog about their terrible business.

Ha.

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Photos

Sunset
Here I missed Matthew the most.