flying horse to zanzibar

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hey!
i ended up with a ticket to the ferry from dar es salaam to zanzibar after accidentally letting myself be toured by a street bum into his fathers safari shop and pressured heavily by his entire family into purchasing one. he was a nice fellow with no teeth who initially let on to be just looking for some company. i assumed that they had taken me on the price of the ticket, but it turns out that they did not... which i feel guilty about. it was a strange circumstance as i was literally trapped in the mans shop by his wierd family blocking the door, throughout the entire process of the ticket purchase i was acting overly grateful as so to guilt the man into not going through with the overcharging, and as it turns out, from the start of the sale he was quoting me a very fair price. very fair!

at the docks for departure a couple of hours later i arrived late along with woman with bags of potatos and umbrellas atop their heads heading for the boat in hoards. i squeezed in, i thought my boat was leaving, i could see it leaving, so i ducked and weaved to the front to the man ripping tickets and he let me through onto the dock itself, through a gate that was holding these woman out, and it turned out that yes i was late but so was the boat before my boat from leaving. so i had a seat on some funny metal bench built onto the pier and watched a little as the "seagull" departed and the "flying horse" docked. i was afforded a great view due to my accidental entry onto the dock. last minute muslims came continually screaming down the gangway to catch the leaving boat while old black men in red jumpers attempted to detach it with funny sticks and shouts, everyone shouting and yelling and jumping around, using the funny sticks to try to pry the boat free. this ferry, the seagull, looked like it had resurfaced from years spent somewhere underwater, big holes in the hull with little black faces poking out waving or just yelling. the size of a regular ferry boat between anywhere, the size of one between vancouver and victoria if not for all the missing pieces and long lost panels of the hull. as it managed to finally edge off from the dock, men and woman left behind who had just missed it tossed suitcases, sacks of canned carrots, matresses and rice over the widening gap to friends and family who did manage to make it, one man at the last possible second made the leap himself to the smiles and happy shouts of everyone aboard including the "staff" (no real staff, renegade boat).

my boat, the flying horse, arrived soon after the seagull had left. same boat but older, cheaper ticket. i was the first one on, as i was already past the gate and on the dock, so i hussled to the top deck and secured a spot right at the front of the thing. this fellow in a red manchester united shirt speaking good english asked me some nice questions, about some things, and i asked him some questions about some things back and we became friends. hassan! he broke it all down for me very neatly and nicely, zanzibar vs. tanzania, the state of their national football team and a brazilian fellow who heads it, tanzanian secret girlfriends because girlfriends are taboo, only marriage!, medical school, these things. he unloaded the ferry with me into the heart of stone town zanzibar, the most stunning collection of tilted crumbling wooden rock buildings and narrow streets with the smell of fruit and chocolate and freshly brewed goat bone soup, and he took me to where i was planning to catch a dala-dala group taxi/bus out of town into bububu. hassan! and he jammed himself and myself into one of these insane VW campers with no seats and twenty other people and we rode to bububu together where he even located the small beautiful little house that i am now staying in. hassan! he is my age and he is from the other side of town (bububu is north he lives south) but i have his phone number, he says that he would like very much for me to come to his village and so i will go.

i am just wandering now around stone town in awe, buildings like ancient temples and churches with heavy wooden doors painted orange once, built so tightly together that there is barely enough room for shoulders between them, a city's worth of little mazes and secret alleys and little girls in bright blue playing strange games. wierd bearded muslim men on motorcycles racing past with just inches between the wall and their handlebars, hairpin turns. i am taking a lot of photos.

love
jasper

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