All bets are off

---

I spent the last 2 weeks of my trip in Zanzibar. Mostly as a guest of the president’s son, but that’s a whole other story and probably not as exciting as it sounds.

Stone Town, is as you would expect, a winding maze of whitewashed streets full of women swathed in black robes and bright kanga head scarves, along with men in square hats pushing bikes. As the women saunter through the narrow streets you can’t help but be mesmerized by what you can see - just their alluring eyes peeking out through the black hijab.

However it’s also a place full of honeymoon couples and groups of Italian tourists emjoying the luxury of 5 star hotels. Out of Africa indeed.
I’ve been on the back of a pharmacists’put-putting piki piki as it swerves through narrow streets taking me in search of medicine (dawa), and nearly taking off my kneecaps in the process, I’ve swam with dolphins, clambered with monkeys and went nose to nose with some giant turtles. At one point, I took a trip to the North of the island, where I found a backpackers’ paradise at a ‘full moon party’. It gave me the creeps. And I also went East to Jambiani. Here you would never have guessed it were Ramadan. Rastas smoked spliff on the beach and Kili beer is drunk as if it were water. I went to get out of the madness of Stone Town for a bit - to swap the bars, the dollar signs and the minarets of the mosques and terrifying historical slave chambers for some sand and sea.

I’d been offered an opportunity in Stone Town - the kind that doesn’t come along very often. However after a week of hanging out and chatting to people the veil of the paradise veneer dropped away like the curtain in the wizard of Oz. And I saw the ex-pat life for what it was. Middle aged-women running away from failed businesses, failed relationships, failed investments and setting up with young beach boys. As Jenny, an author I met, said to me over a glass of wine… Zanzibar is full of nutters. The veil dropped and I ran. I was tired of being 'other'.

After 3 months in Tanzania I met lots of different people, saw many sights from down south by the Mozambique border to the heights of Kili, and had many (as other people would say ‘ experiences’). Below are just some of the encounters I had, though one of my favourite moments was probably with Captain Kuku (named after his father who killed a ‘kuku’ - chicken - when he was young). As he raised the sails made from rice sacks I just sat back on his tiny wooden dhow and sailed across turquoise waters wondering who else had floated across those seas.

I met Gareth, a Swazilander with slicked down hair and a navy polo shirt, in a beach bar round a fire and he is unfortunately someone I will remember. He was straight out of university and spending time in Tanzania “to sort out a hotel run by locals…. I want to give them the benefit of my experience”. He also went on to tell me that what South Africa needed was a good civil war. “People - white and black, need to get over themselves” he told me as he swigged his Kili.

Then there was Eric, the sleezy and obsequious barman at the Moshi YMCA.
Me: Eric, can I have some water?
Eric: Yes madam. Small or big?
Me: Ooh! Do you have a big bottle? Big please.
Eric: No madam. I’m sorry. We no have big.
Me: Oh. Ok. Small is fine.
Eric: Coldy or hoty? (most rinks are drunk at room temperature or ‘hoty’).
Me: Cold please
Eric: No madam. We no have cold. No power.
Me: Oh. Ok. Hot is fine.
Eric. Ok. Madam. Please be waiting 5 minutes.
This conversation would take place each morning.

Me: Hi Eric, can I have a fruit salad?
Eric: Yes madam. Please be waiting 5 minutes.
5 minutes later.
Eric: I’m sorry madam. No fruit salad.
Me: but I saw some watermelon and oranges. Do you not have some more?
Eric: Please be waiting 5 minutes
5 minutes later.
Eric: Yes madam. We have watermelon.
Me: And oranges?
Eric: Please be waiting 5 minuts
5 minutes later.
Eric: Yes madam. We have oranges.
Me: Can I have some of that then?
Eric: Yes madam. Please be waiting 5 minutes
5 minutes later, Eric brings out the fruit and I cut it up.
Eric : Ah! Like fruit salad!

The hostel had done my washing but turned a white shirt blue. I went away for a few days and asked them to re-wash it for my return. When I came back, Delfina, the lovely receptionist at the YMCA who a great collection of wigs greeted me with a big beaming smile:
Delfina: Ahh! Welcome back Susie! How was your trip? We cleaned your shirt for you.
Me: Brilliant.
Delfina: But then we lost it.
Me: Ah. Not so brilliant.
Delfina : But it was clean.

Then there was the 19 year old I met down in Foradhani gardens where I also had the best grilled seafood of the trip. He told us he shouldn’t be saying what he was saying about the government as many of his friends had been arrested, but in the meantime was quoting Plato and Machiavelli whilst talking about John Okello, the Zanzibari revolutionary. He told me he wanted study history at university so that he would learn more and that people would respect him so that he too could lead a revolution. I believe him.

On the day after I got back from Dar having been sent there by Mama Veronica
2 days after coming from Dar to meet her in Moshi, she phoned me to come and attend a conference… in Dar
“No. I said. I’m Sorry. I’m too tired. I’ve just done four 9 hour bus journeys in 1 week. However if you’d have told me about the conference I’d have stayed in Dar.
“You see the problem is this is a poor country.” She replied. “You never know what will happen in a developing country”.

Woman on the street passing me. “Wow, dada (sister). You are beautiful.”
(I like that one)

One day Mzee (term of respect for an elder) Mela, the grandfather in the office for looking after projects in support of the elderly who are left to look after AIDS orphans, put his arm around me, took his glasses off and whispered in my ear:
“next time we go to a conference we can share a room. You’d like that…. You can show me how to put on a condom”
I wondered how disrespectful it was to hit and ‘elder’.

Jon, the guide on safari stated: “Women are trouble. They are expensive. I like to hit and run”. And then later, leering at me and putting his hand on my knee. “I like white. White is good”.
When he went to drop off the lovely Yolita and Emil, he said “I go drop off these guys and then I come back and sleep with Susie”
Me: no you don’t.

I met a prostitute in the bar in stone town: “Are you famous?” she said. “I’ve seen you in a magazine.”
Me: no
She goes on to compliment my clothes and I of course do what girls should do to bond in a bar, or a toilet, or over a desk… and compliment her earings, followed by mutual overenthusiastic introductions in the way that ‘sisters’ who are sizing each other do. Actually, I’ve got to say all the prozzers I met were lovely, charming and really friendly - I guess they knew that some lost looking white woman was certainly no competition for them when it came to the middle aged- ex-pat men who footed their clothes, their great jewellery and their mobile phone bills. “You must come to Dar. We can hang out together” ‘Mara’ insisted.

David, the tour guide who helped me keep warm at the ngorogoro crater by driving off to find me a bottle of the lethal ‘kognagi: “Blair is America’s poodle”.

Serge - the French Canadian I couldn’t get rid of for a few days in Zanzibar said to a couple of German students: Ah, you’re from Hamburg. Do you know Mika?

But really there is so much more that happened and even more that didn’t happen. One thing’s for sure though. For some strange reason, I’m glad to back.

---

Photos

staples
'sportsman' cigarettes and coke - that'll get you through the day.

tipu tip
The house of notorious slave trader Tipu Tip. The prongs are anti elephant devices. Useful in the narrow streets of stone town.

jaws corner
Named from the time they put up a big tv screen and watched the movie

tipsy
Stone Town sunset

Comments

[Brett]

Photo-journalist Susie Goldring
Beautiful pictures Susie!

[susieg]

pics
Aww. I was just monkeying around