ZANZIBAR... from Tom and Lesley

 

                      Zanzibar 

Every face, every texture, every place is spicy: it's a spice island. 

Swahili, Arabic, Indian and a bit of British and Omani colonization. 

 

"Stone Town" 

STONE TOWN is so called as it was constructed 

of coral stone. The very narrow 'streets' were 

designed for coolness and also to confound invaders. 

This also confounds modern visitors... we kept getting 

lost and so discovered more interesting places.

Lesley prompted our visit. She is a sculptor and mosaic artist 

and is influenced by African art and I just took holiday pics. 

We loved Zanzibar on our first visit in March 2013 so we 

returned in May 2015. I shot the video on our second trip. 

By then I knew a bit more about the mix of cultures.

For several hundred years the Sultans of Oman lived in their 

palace on Zanzibar. They also had a palace a thousand miles away 

but they found Zanzibar was more congenial than Oman in the gulf.

The profit from the slave trade passing through Zanzibar was huge.

We visited a dark cave which was used to hold slaves as 

prisoners before they were exported to other countries.

The slave market building in Stone Town remains clowe to 

the daily market. Prices were bid and slaves were exchanged 

there. When slavery became 'illegal', slaves were held in 

that cave by the remote beach and secretly transferred out to 

dhows at night. This continued well after the 'end' of slavery elsewhere.

Nowadays the main trade of Zanzibar is cloves and other spices. 

But it is controlled by the Government and although they 

successfully revolted and got their independence from 

the Omanis, unfortunately they later agreed to become 

part of Tanganyika, much to their regret.

So now the merged economies are called Tanzania.

Their culture remains both polyglot and distinctive.

The Dhow Music Academy in Zanzibar 

is the premier preserver and promoter of 

the music of East African coastal countries. 

Recently it is becoming more famous. 

We were lucky to go there before tourism took off.

Cheers,

TOM and LESLEY