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Published: March 2nd 2008
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Ugandan Jack Johnson
A good act, Maurice Kirya, sounds a bit like Jack Johnson. A few weekends ago a handful of teachers decided to jump on a ferry to Stonetown for a few days where there was an annual Swahili music festival going on, Sauti za Busara. Some excellent bands coupled with the now familiar frustrations of Africa made for an overall great weekend. In fact, I hadn't planned on going to the festival mainly because I had not booked a room, so on Wednesday night my friend Christy and I sat in Cody and Nora's (Nody) apartment where I was berated into calling a few places. After a number of negatives we tried the place Nody had booked months ago. Not only did they not have a room for me, they had no record of the reservation that had been made! So now there were four of us without rooms on one of Stonetown's busiest weekends! The following night, with none of us now planning on going, another friend Vera made one phone call and got us all rooms somehow. So Friday afternoon we ventured off to buy tickets for the Zanzibar ferry. Now most of you would probably expect an ticket office with a little confusion out front of people selling tickets
Mtundu
Just make sure they don't say Gucchi, Greg! on the street as well, after all, this is Africa. But no, there is a ticket window, or rather four of them but none seems... official. And there are about 15 people yelling different things at us. One of course was selling tickets on the street, several others just crowding and telling us things for no apparent reason, until they told us after we bought tickets that we had to tip them for their help. Hah, yeah right! But while we are trying to buy the tickets Vera called, already in Zanzibar, at the hotel, with no rooms. Grrrr... but they kindly got her a free cab with the instructions "Go find her a room." About 20 minutes later she called back, standing in a lobby of a hotel who was promising rooms, so we bought our tickets. Or at least we tried to, once we went to buy the tickets at the window, the guy selling on the street started yelling loud and fast in Swahili at the "official" ticket window. The tickets were already more expensive than our friends had paid the previous day, but finally the two guys seemed to come to an agreement and "surprise", the
Seckou Keita Quartet
Very cool, a bit beyond description. Check out the cool instrument! ticket guy remembered that the price was actually MORE that day, some special day thing. Well, without much choice and needing to catch the ferry, we grumbled and paid, and then were handed tickets with other people's names on them, the ones that were selling them on the street! Argh. But they let us onto the ferry with them, so off we went.
After a nice ferry ride where I ended up sitting next to and chatting with a building project manager who had built some large structures in Dar, Zanzibar, and Arusha, I arrived for the first time in Stonetown. It was already dark so I didn't see much yet but we wandered to our hotel (on the FAAAAAAAR side of town) and back for some dinner (mmmm... Pili Pili Perch... means spicy perch), and of course some music! The first band we saw was a Kenyan band called Yunasi who were excellent! And damn if the lead singer could shake his a**. For their last song they called up anyone on stage who wanted to try to rival the lead singer in his booty-shaking. About an even mix of young Tanzanians and drunk white gap year kids
Nora Posing
I just had to add it... too funny. jumped at the chance to make fools of themselves. Oh wait, no, just the drunk white gap year kids made fools of themselves as they just couldn't hold a candle. It ended in a dance-off/booty-shake-off between the lead singer and some girl, and she CLEARLY won! Not that I would have a bias here or anything. The next band to play was good but not nearly as much fun. Then came the most bizarre group of the festival, a band called 7 Survival. If you have a chance to ever see them, don't. Or do so you can write a travel blog entry about how strange they were. The band consisted of four drummers, one guy to actually just sit there and hold one of the drums, four dancers dressed in Masaai clothing, and one "singer" sitting there with a kid's Casio keyboard hooked up to the amp. The drummers were pretty good, the guy holding the drum did an excellent job holding the drum, but the keyboard guy just hit 2-second chord after 2-second chord seemingly randomly while droning into his microphone. We left during the first song... 40 minutes into the first song! But what made the band
BBC Award Winners
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba recently won a top album award from BBC. And they deserved it. Check out the cool little instruments again! so strange were the dancers. There was obviously a story being related, but, I'm not even sure I can relate how strange they were! Let me try to sum up. One guy's eyes were bulging out of his head as he moved spastically around the floor, he must have been high on something. There was a white-flowing robe I think representing Jesus at one point. Shortly after the high guy started to slap his ass, and then made motions which could only be interpreted as him eating whatever was down there. One of them jumped around strangling himself for a few minutes. Strange. Just really really strange.
Saturday we explored Stonetown a little, wandering through the little alleys and visiting of course the famous coffee house. The little streets full of shops were very cute and fun to wander around on, but after a little while myself and my friend Greg became bored with the shopping for shoes and such so we headed over to a local hangout to relax and watch the boats go buy (where you can see Greg purchasing some "real" Guccis, the guy assured us they were real, ha!). Late that afternoon the music started
Alcohol?
Students testing the effects of alcohol on mosquito larvae. up again with some excellent acts, but none quite as surreal as the final act of Friday night. A good one-man show which sounded quite a bit like Jack Johnson came late afternoon, followed by a performance artist dressed in hospital gear talking (I'm told) about corruption. Still, not nearly as strange. The highlights of Saturday night were a succession of increasingly good bands, starting with a Mauritian woman with a very raspy, Arabic-style music. This was followed by a great band from West Africa with abnormally large guitarish instruments protruding from their bellies (see picture). The highlight of the evening however was a band that came on around 10p.m. and is just coming off winning the BBC's best album of the year. And they deserve it, about five guys playing very small mandolin-looking instruments and a woman who can sing! The rest of the bands after were succeedingly more mediocre hip-hop bands, with us heading out around 1a.m. just before the last band came on. A little more wandering around Stonetown on Sunday followed by a smooth ferry ride back made for a great weekend.
Shortly after returning from the weekend in Zanzibar, Gus the chemistry teacher and
Doppler Effect
Students "measuring" the Doppler Effect by running in and out of the waves. I took 25 juniors to the beach for three days as part of the schools ESP program where each grade goes out on trips around Tanzania. All 11th graders do science-related trips mostly based around the Biology/Geography trip to Udzungwa. Any students not doing biology or geography get dumped to us to go to the beach were we did mediocre science experiments for three days. The words are less interesting here, look at the pics.
Finally this past weekend I got to try out my new tent for the first time as Nody, myself, Cam, and Clelia and her two boys headed to Kim Beach for a night. Kim Beach is about 45 minutes south of Dar and is a remote, cool little spot. A little too much seaweed while we were there, but the waves were huge and the views gorgeous.
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