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.