Fire in Stone Town but Tepid Food

Artwork from the Hotel Balcony

Why do fireworks and undue excitement seem to follow me whenever I decide to travel.  If it is not fireworks in the hotel room or actually catching a flight after showing up at Pearson Airport 15 minutes before the flight departs, it is always another thing.  I overnighted in Stone Town a couple weekends ago, to catch my ferry Sunday morning to Dar Es Salaam, the  chaotic litter-strewn capital of Tanzania, where I had In Country Training with my employers VSO (I came out of cycle so now doing it). Buying the ferry ticket on the Saturday in Stone Town was an ordeal enough.  In the Caribbean lines and queues are usually general guidelines of where one should stand and are usually chaotic.  In Zanzibar, “Qs” only exist in the alphabet -  they take bold-faceness to a whole different level - cutting in front of you blatantly or going to the back office to bypass the queue.  To top it all off a "Tanty Merle " liked woman came and pushed me aside with her buxomness, not even apologizing and proceeded to buy her ticket and leave without even a murmured assante (thank you).

Beautiful Stone Town 

After that experience I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner at the Arab -themed Monsoon Restaurant.  The service and ambience was excellent and the food was well presented but taste wise it was not a hit.  I ordered the peppercorn encrusted calamari in a tomato sauce with spicy rice.  What I ended up with was plain battered fried calamari without any sight of peppercorns (and we are in the black pepper capital of the world) or tomato sauce, a tamarind paste that was so sour you could wash and season fish with it, something that was supposed to be curried chickpeas but tasted more like a curried-channa sweet porridge, a cold stale flatbread, something that looked like cooked pumpkin, but turned out to be cooked ripe papaya mash with cilantro and garlic, and a spiced rice without any salt. As if this wasn't bad enough there were also blobs of sautéed spinach and something like an eggplant ratatouille.  The last two items weren't bad taste-wise, but I grew up on food similar to what was on the plate and I could make them much better with my one good eye closed. To top it all off, to get to the washroom the restaurant (he’s single – so dump him on the terrace) you had to go inside, take off your shoes and walk through a Morroccan styled lounge where they was live Taureg music band performing in the middle of the room, with many people eating on the ground on cushions on the fringes. Excuse me as I interrupt your dinner and live entertainment but I have to pee – sorry was that your feet I stepped on.  Not what any diner wants to hear in a nice restaurant.

Fire in Stone Town

After grudgingly having to pay for that meal I decided to go for a night cap at rooftop bar at the African House close to my hotel - at least I know not to order food there and just stick to drinks.  Approaching the corner to turn into Africa House I see a crowd blocking the narrow street in what is the worst section of what is known as Suicide Alley, with lots of activity and sounds - what now? Turns out the building in front of Africa House had a fire on the 3rd floor, which also houses a Chinese Restaurant.  Clean the pork fat in your grease trap people!! The fanciful Dhow Palace Hotel which is close by was running a water hose across the street to help put out the fire – at least they knew that the firemen who would surely arrive when the fire is either put out or the entire building has burnt down.  I decided this was not a scene to be missed – we West Indians love fire (not you Anna) – so I ducked under the hose and headed to the African House - why should a fire stop me from drowning my sorrows.  I get there only to realize there is even a bigger crowd there as the hotel had been evacuated and several Chinese people walking around frantically.  Doing the Japanese thing (which by the way is now becoming the Chinese thing) I pull out my Blackberry and start taking pictures furiously of the fire and the crowd.  I missed the best shot though of the man in one of the windows of the building where the fire was burning, sticking his head out the window doing his best Occah Seepaul impression (the former Speaker of the House of Trinidad who refused to vacate her post and a temporary state of emergency had to be declared to get her out)  - refusing to leave.  Maybe he had faith in the no-show firemen.  They did arrive a few minutes later but could not seem to find the hydrant – sorry this is Stone Town there are no hydrants.  They did find a pipe where they attached their hose and me being a bit wiser than most of the crowd, quickly retreated to the far corner of the street and watched comically as all most of the curious onlookers got sprayed with water coming through the building and the fire was being put out. This was too much for one night....I chuckled all the way back to the hotel. I thought to myself, I haven’t even reached Dar as yet and the fireworks had already started.  And I still had the Econo Lodge (and they do take the Econo seriously) to look forward to for a week. Well that’s another story for another blog post.

Sultans, Suicide Alley & Serengetis

Good Example of Famous Stone Town Doors 

This past weekend I stayed overnight in Stone Town, the old part of Zanzibar City (the capital of Zanzibar), which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  For over 2000 years, merchant ships from Arabia, Persia (Iran), India and Portugal traded with Zanzibar.  The Sultan of Oman took over from the Portuguese at the end of the 17th century and by 1840, Stone Town had become so important as a trading town (particularly for the slave trade) that it became the seat of the Sultan. In 1890 Zanzibar became a protectorate of Britain, and this lasted until independence in 1963, when the last Sultan was expelled.  A revolution shortly afterwards in 1964 led to the massacre (genocide) of thousands of Arabs and Indians, with thousands of others having to flee overseas (shades of Idi Amin's Uganda).  The Islands joined the mainland to form United Republic of Tanzania in 1964, and has remained relatively peaceful and a semi-autonomous part of this federation since - although VSO does recommend that its volunteers leave the island for about an month during election time.

The weekend started off with the usually shopping for the school – fruits and vegetables, dry goods, fish, bottled water – in the bustling market area of Stone Town.  Learning from my mistake two weeks ago, I did not eat or drink in public (Ramadan finishes the end of the month inshallah) – instead, sneaking off to the Zanzibar Coffee House, with its shrouded entrance for coffee and my usual passion fruit tort.  Then it was off to Zantel to get my Blackberry service hooked up - but alas it does not work with my phone (maybe I shouldn't have bought this phone in Ebay).  I shall miss the Blackberry Messenger service immensely – so if anyone wants to get me a 40th birthday present in December a Blackberry Torch (unlocked) would do just fine.  Or a return ticket to Toronto – economy class is good  but exit row please and not on Ethiopian Airlines. After changing some US$ into Tanzanian Shillings (US$1 = TZN 1,617) - shop around for rates as they vary from one Bureau de Change to another - and shopping around for material for the students' new school uniforms, Pat (who runs the school)  and I went to the Zanzibar Coffee House (my second trip of the day) for some more refreshments - had the minced meat crepe this time which was good.

Local Artist At Work at the Back of My Hotel

I then got a quick tour of Stone Town from Pat, including a stop at the Radha Café, where they make great chappatis, samosas and spring rolls (4 samosas with a curried onion and a coconut relish sauce will run you about US$1.50).  Then checked in at the nearby Shangani Hotel in the Suicide Alley area - when you see the narrow streets and the crazy drivers (and wandering tourists) you will understand the nomenclature.  The rooms cost US$25  - the cheapest I have probably ever paid for a hotel room not counting my one time ever staying in a hostel in Brussels when I was a student in the UK (Brussels is bad as it is without having to slum it in hostels).  Breakfast was included, there was AC, good Cable TV (woo hoo!!), hot water and it was clean. It was actually an excellent deal - notwithstanding the creaky bed (not what you think!) and wardrobe doors, the 3 flights of stairs and the construction nearby.

I then headed for the rooftop bar at Africa House nearby, an old colonial outpost and expat hangout, for some cold Serengeti  beers (don’t drink Safari it is vile although Kilimanjaro is good) and the amazing sunset.  The place was packed with Italian and English tourists, and English Premiership Football blared on the televisions, while more appropriate Buddha Bar music piped in the background.  After watching Arsenal get mauled (give up Wenger), and one too many “buono seras” and “ciaos”, I moseyed to my hotel, trying hard for not to make Suicide Alley live up to its name on my Saturday night-on-the-town. And what a crazy night it turned out to be - a quiet dinner at a nearby restaurant (well except for the two cats fighting each other on the nearby table) and a couple more Serengetis and I was ready for some dodos (sleep - not the extinct bird).  Well first I had to get my US$25 worth of all 75 cable TV channels - watched cricket, football, something which I figure was the Arab version of The X Factor (there was no camel humping talent), some fish tagging on the Discovery Channel, some Nollywood shows (Nigerian equivalent of Bollywood), good old CNN and BBC, watched the Pope lose his skullcap in Spain during a freak storm, and for good measure, threw in some viewing of millions of people doing their Haj in Saudi Arabia.  One month without TV can do that to a person.

Beit El-Ajaib Museum - Former Sultan Palace

Slept in Sunday morning and after a breakfast of oily looking weak coffee and some fried eggs with jaundiced looking yolks (still no way near as white as yolks in New Delhi), did a walking tour of Stone Town and made another trip to Radha House (better coffee - more samosas).  Did some walking around – bought some postcards from Mrs. Patel (they are everywhere) from Memories Souvenir shop, and took some photos of the famed Stone Town doors.  After Pat and our driver picked me up after midday, we went shopping for plants for the school (I found a bird pepper tree in the nursery and promptly stole a handful of them) and to the Mtoni Marine Hotel to check on some of our students who work there and to also have a late lunch.  We passed on the philandering-named Tiger Woods Pizza and settled for another cheater-named choice in the Mr. Lance “I Never Doped-It's My Large Lungs ” Armstrong Pizza (hopefully there was no EPO, nandrolone in it).  It was quite good - next time I am going for the Ruud Gullit Pizza - god knows what will be in there.  On my way back to sleepy Jambiani I thought, it wasn’t a Vegas jaunt, or one of my feverish Toronto weekend getaways from my days in Cayman, when the last thing I would be interested in is watching some white South African tag a dark fish on TV (or maybe he killed it - maybe it was a new sport - apartheid fishing?). But it was great.  Old age does mellow one out a bit!

The Congo Comes to Stone Town

Marie France and I outside the Livingston Cafe in Stone Town

On Saturdays we usually go into Stone Town (the de facto capital and about 60 km away on excellent recently paved roads) to do the food and supplies shopping for the school.  Just before we set out, I was chomping on a guava in the garden of the school, when this Indian guy shows up and introduces himself as Vivek.  He wanted to borrow a laptop or a USB cable to download his pictures, because his memory card on his camera was full.  Turns out he is a helicopter pilot with the UN peacekeeping force in Goma in the Congo.  I lent my USB cable and told him to throw it over the wall of the school when he was done as we had to leave . 

Stone Town is a 1 hour drive unless you take a Dala Dala (public "buses") which will take more like 3-4 hours, seriously test the strength of your anti-perspirant, and you may have firewood, chickens and a bunch of bananas in your lap and a baby to burp.  On the way saw some indigenous red colobus monkeys (indigenous to Zanzibar) and Umu (one of our ex-students) taught me some basic Kiswahili which I wrote on a piece of paper and laundered it by mistake (so now my blue khakis is covered in white paper fuzz balls).  While shopping in the public market I bought an orange and started eating it, forgetting it was Ramadan (month of fasting for Muslims) and got scolded for eating in public.  There was no way I was giving up this orange - so I hid between two vehicles and finished it off.  Sine then suggested that we go to the Zanzibar Coffee House for a latte, which turned out to be one of the best I've ever had and also the passion fruit tort. From there we walked a bit through Stone Town and headed for Archipelago - a popular restaurant on the waterfront where I was supposed to meet my good friend Marie France Guimond, who is currently working in the Congo with IRC.  When I got there, much to my horror it was closed and with no cell phone or way to contact her, I hung around the corner (trying not to look like a Jean and Dinah) for about 45 minutes (avoiding all sorts of souvenir sellers, boat rides and some offers which I am certain is still illegal in Texas).

Marie-France and I did our MA in International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa together and we had not seen each other in a couple years.  She did show up and we went to the Livingston Café nearby and had a drink and spent the next two hours catching up. I told her the story of helicopter pilot soon after on our way back to catch our ride home, we ran into him and one of his colleagues. Marie France sometimes hitches rides with the UN helicopters so who knows, she might invited out for some chappati and a tikka masala all the way in the Congo.  On my way back home I thought- I just moved to the other side of the world, I’ve been here barely one week and already I am meeting up with friends and making new ones.  Won’t be long now before I teach them about “liming” and “Sparrow” and of course “Jean and Dinah”!!