Stone Town, Zanzibar

Walking to the local dalla-dalla (bus) out of Bwejuu, we bumped into an Irish fellow named James who had a whole van for himself & his 2 friends, also heading to Stone Town. He welcomed us to join them, as long as we didn't mind stopping at the Jozani forest (monkey preserve) en route.

Jozani was a treat as we got to wander among the adorable monkeys while they munched on leaves & hung around. It was our first safari of the trip, a good teaser.

Then, just like that, we were in Stone Town. In Zanzibar where there are no cities, this is "town", & the villages are just that, villages. Stone Town features narrow cobblestone streets that cars can't fit through. Scooters can, however, so we had to be alert to the honks as a vespa would zip around a corner and force us to the (which side?!) left and out of the way.

We coordinated our trip to Stone Town with the Zanzibar international film festival, a festival that has grown in it's 9 years to include daily music and dance performances. After Bwejuu's isolation, this seemed to be a good way to get culturally immersed in Zanzibar.

We found a sunny room for Liz to write in the mornings and I discovered the Dhow Countries Music Academy, where I enrolled in drum classes from a perma-grinning teacher, Kheri. The hand drums here are called ngoma and Kheri showed me some of the local traditional rhythms each morning. By the end of my week of lessons, he had built me two ngoma at my request. Now I've taken them with me to the beach to practice and learn more.

In Stone Town, we settled into a morning routine of writing (liz) & drum class (mark), while going to the Forodhani Gardens in the late afternoon for live music performances. We were treated to the talents of musicians from Zanzibar and all over Africa. A multitude of locals were at these shows and it was nice to see so many families out for an evening of entertainment. The kids would dance at the front near the stage, while their parents watched from a distance.

We made some Tanzanian friends and kept seeing them on the festival grounds. These kind and generous people made us feel very welcome and thanks to their excellent English, we were able to get some sense of what life is like for people our age in this country.

Bwejuu, Zanzibar

It was a long journey to Zanzibar for Liz and me; two overnight flights, two 7-hour bus rides and a ferry. We topped it off with a ride on a dalla-dalla, and made it to Bwejuu, an isolated beachside village on Zanzibar's east coast.

Bwejuu's sand is a gentle powder when it's dry and packs like a firm dough when it's wet. Palm trees line the beach and are met by the gentle waves of the Indian Ocean at high tide. At low tide, the water recedes by hundreds of meters revealing a long, flat beach and tide pools of warm water in gooey sand and seaweed. We were in Bwejuu for a week, long enough to notice the ocean's daily visits to shore shifting from afternoon to morning.

We put our footwear away and adjusted to beachside life. Liz got herself set up with an oceanfront "office" and diligently worked on her thesis in the mornings. In the afternoons, we swam in the ocean, walked barefoot up and down the beach, or went into the village for supplies. I helped Liz with editing and also spent a lot of time in a hammock, reading and listening to music.

We were treated to gracious hospitality and continuous greetings of "Jambo" from the locals. Bwejuu was a difficult place to leave. After seven days, we made our way to Zanzibar Town, commonly known as Stone Town.