Zanzibar!

The Zanzibar spice tour was wonderful. I was able to see indigenous spices as well as the ones brought in from various countries. It was great to be able to put a face to a name. Most of the spices I was familiar with back home consisted of the powdered variety. In addition to spices, I was able to see Jack fruit, Star fruit, Cacao, Pineapple and others that produced a red pigment like paint.

Back in the day, the Omani Sultan owned the Zanzibar archipelago and Cloves were the dominant export and cash generator for the sultan. This island was also the last outpost of the slave trade, which was abolished in the late 19th century. Even after trading was abolished, the merchants continued to maintain secret underground caves to hide and ship the slaves. For an extra 1000 shillings we got to see an old slave caves. The sultan used to keep 200 hundred plus slaves in here. You can barely find a flat space to stand, let alone lie down. And the bugs down here were huge! The tour cost about 13 US which included lunch, the half day was enough for most of us, as we got dropped off at the beach. Yours truly stayed in the shade under the coconut trees due to massive burns from a rookie-no-sunscreen-on-3-hour-ferry-ride-mistake.

I met a young American who had been living in Malawi for four months. He’d just returned from New York City and was making his way back to see his girlfriend. After the spice tour we enjoyed a couple of Kilimanjaro beers and Jameson’s at Mercury’s, just down the street where Queen’s Freddie Mercury was born. After an hour shared taxi ride up the coast of Zanzibar, I arrived in Nungwi , a small dhow boat making village. Situated at the northern tip of the island, this village has been transformed into a tightly packed resort chain. The good news is you can easily side step these bigger resorts and focus on the village and the beach.

Just in front of my cabin I counted 52 women dressed in colourful traditional Muslim wear. They were standing in the water with buckets in hand and waiting for the days catch. Four men in their dhow boat would catch a load of small sardine like fish over an hour and return to shore. The women would scramble to meet them halfway and the bargaining would begin. As demand greatly outstripped supply, the lucky few would get a bucketful of fish to be hauled off and sold at market, while the rest would have to wait for the next catch. With unwavering persistence, the women would sit on their overturned pails for as much as 4 hours, for the chance of leaving with something to sell. To add to the trouble, the wind was particularly strong thus making it difficult to secure their headscarfs. With one hand protecting their dress and one on the bucket it gave the more agile ones a small advantage in the seaweed.

Spice tour!

Chocolate or Caccao!!

Pinacollada!

The Sultans slave caves! Last place on earth to abolish slavery.

Umm... Cool looking flowers? I was spacing out a little.

Starfruit!

"Pepper, I put it on my plate" - Canadian PM

Alien Pod or Nutmeg?

Monkey brains or Zanzibar Almond?

Vanilla beans.

Cinnamon bark. Tastes great.

Mini star fruit. Tastes like lime but texture is like an apple.

Anti-Malarial Plant. Eat it or boil it. Makes a bitter tea. Good thing because I decided to take a break from my pills for a few weeks.

Combination of jetlag, damp sweaty quarters, malaria pills and sleep deprivation, caused alien abduction themed nightmares. Should've switched the bathroom light off!

Young cocconut .

Women buying bucket loads of fish from the fishermen out at sea.

Dhow boats.