July 19 The Road to Zanzibar*

*‘The Road to Zanzibar’ was the title of a film with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour done back in the 1940’s or early 50’s. A series of ‘Road’ films they made.

We got back to the Holy Ghost fathers’ guest house in time for supper last night with great meal that started with a ginger and carrot soup by Molokai the cook. It just kept getting better with each course. He was trained at the Bismark Institute in Dar Es Salaam. I never considered the Germans to be great chefs, but somewhere along the line, some good information got transferred to Molokai.


Next day we go out to Arusha National Park only 40 minutes away and spend a nice day seeing giraffe and buffalo up close as well as colobus monkeys. It’s an easy access park if your time is limited. It touches on Momella Lakes Lodge where John Wayne filmed “Hatari” in the early 60’s, a senseless film of capturing animals and a chance for the Duke to flex his muscles and badger his co-stars. While we are there , Patricia, our travel agent has been working on getting us tickets to fly straight to Pemba Island off the east coast. She is partly successful insomuch that we can fly to Zanzibar but will have to find our own way over to Pemba from there. We will leave tomorrow. There are a couple of small airlines that serve Pemba several times a day from Dar or Zanzibar but they aren’t on any computer link. We decided to fly to avoid the 350 mile bus ride from Arusha after experiencing the two hour ride from Moshi which is only 50 miles. Admittedly that’s probably the slowest part of the trip but we are starting to fatigue, and it will put us a good day behind our schedule to arrive a day early before the course starts. We bite the bullet on the extra cost $400 or Tanzania Shillings 591,000. I take a picture of that stack of bills.

We find that our ‘Wednesday’ tickets for Zanzibar are dated for Thursday, so Patricia goes back to work after supper to get that sorted out. She does a super job and by Wednesday morning she delivers them to us. We go to to an ATM to get money to pay for them and then have another wonderful lunch before leaving on a bus chartered by another group of visitors for the airport. The others are ten schoolboys from a Holy Ghost fathers’ school in Bensalem, PA. They’ve been here two weeks with several of their teachers including Fr. Chris McDermot who had been a priest out here for many years, Kathy Posey, their English Lit teacher and Brother Joe a philosophy teacher. They are an inspiring group of young men, and their interaction with their teachers and with us gives me great hope that there is a caring bunch of youngsters out there in the world.

Our flight to Dar and then on to Zanzibar are smooth, although as transit passengers we have to be led through a maze of corridors to re check in again and by the end of that we have been through three security checks.

This is I think my seventh time to Zanzibar. The first time was 1968 when the country re-opended with Eastern bloc style tourism after the 1963 revolution. It is still an intriguing place even with the growth of tourism. There are now a lot of high end hotels that cater to single nationalities, ie. Italians only or Germans only. I met a Norwegian dentist who somehow got sequestered in an Italian hotel, but left screaming after two days, up to his ears in pasta. Most of these tourists just go for the beaches and never see the rest of the island or Stone Town the old quarter of Zanzibar town. Admittedly Stone Town has become tacky Tourist Town where even Masai have shops to sell trinkets, but if you look hard you can still find places where the pre-tourist era is still exposed. Pemba we hope will give us a glimpse of what Zanzibar was 30 or 40 years ago.

Tonight we go to the Bandari Lodge ($45 for the three of us). We get their last room. It’s right near the port and the fish market although you can’t smell it unless you walk another fifty yards toward it. We go the other way to Fodorani Gardens on the sea front for the outdoor food vendors who all show up at sundown. On the way back to the Bandari we stop at a bar I’ve been to before. It is now dubbed ‘The Mercury’ after Freddy Mercury (remember Queen?) who was a native of Zanzibar. Soft house music and the Zanzibari young elite, all buried in their text messaging and condescending attitudes toward the wait staff.

We bought a ticket to Pemba as soon as we got off the plane at the airport. There was a ticket office for Coastal Aviation in the airport. $244 for the three of us.

Our taxi driver Mohammed Kassim is a very personable man, about 45 years old. He offers to pick us up to go to the airport next day. We accept. He will also get us when we return to Zanzibar from the Pemba trip as we hope to spend a couple of nights back here before flying home on the 27th. He will also take us on a tour of the island. I can highly recommend Mohammed if you ever come to Zanzibar. I will include his telephone number later when I find it.

July 21 Zanzibar in the Morning, Pemba by the AfternoonWe wake in the morning having digested the grilled tuna, and giant prawns and washing it down with some Kilimanjaro Lager in Freddy Mercury’s bar last night. The high Zanzibar style beds provided good sleep with the ceiling fans keeping us cool. I look out the window into a building under construction next door and see the dark side of Zanzibar. A man is lying on the floor in the unfinished construction with a tourniquet on his upper arm and a syringe and needle stuck in his forearm. A story in the paper recounts a heroin bust at a house near the airport. We meet an old man in the hotel who is a native of Zanzibar but now lives in Oman. Many people of Arab descent fled to the Emirates, Yemen, Oman and elsewhere after the revolution in 1963. The violence was directed at the Arabs who benefitted most from the Sultan’s rule. Only a few days after the British pulled out of Zanzibar, the Arabs were killed or chased out of the country, many literally into the Indian Ocean. Since the initial years of a communist style state where only the East Germans, Russians, Czechs, Chinese and a few others had representation here. The country has since liberalized its world view. The Arabs and Indians came back, although many of the older ones stayed in the Middle East. It was the younger generations who returned and set up shop. Many have gravitated toward the tourist trade which produces half the country’s revenues. The island of Pemba where I’m scheduled to teach lies about 30 miles to the north. It never went along wholly with the revolution and as a result was on the short end when development projects were created. Possibly that is not a bad thing. So there is some division within the Zanzibari house as well as a distrust between Zanzibar and the predominantly Christian mainland. Counter revoultionalry politics also evolved on th island and an opposition developed. In the early 2000’s some resistance came about on Pemba and a heavy handed response from the Zanzibari authorities took its toll with several dozen lives lost. Any legislation passed in the Tanzania Assembly that pertains to Zanzibar must have a 2/3 approval of Zanzibari representatives. The Sharia and Kadhi courts have been maintained as well. It is to the judges of these courts that I will be presenting training on mediation.

July 21.
We are up at 7:30 and have breakfast and set out to explore Stone Town , the old city before we need to go to the airport at noon. First I head to the fishing wharf but Dominique and Gabrielle refuse as the smell gets pretty strong. They say, ‘You go , Grandpa. Take some pics and come back. We’ll wait here.” After that we head to the big market which I know in advance may also challenge their sensitivities. But we make it through and stop at a few shops with intent on a good coffee, but Gabrielle convinces us to head for a sandy beach where she can put her feet in the water, so she and Dominique indulge their piscesian instincts. We get back to the hotel at 10:00 and take showers to cool off , then check out of the room. We head back to town and visit the old hospital that has been renovated and turned into a cultural center by the Aga Kahn Foundation. Then back to the Bandari where we find Mohammed is patiently waiting for us. Out to the airport where we wait an hour for our 15 passenger Cessna of Coastal Aviation. We chat with an older gentleman in Arabic dress. His English is impeccable. He was born in Zanzibar but fled at the revolution. He ended up in Oman and joined the army, recently retiring from the field artillery. He is an avid fan of American westerns and when I tell him of the visit to Momella lakes where ‘Hatari’ was filmed with John Wayne he is almost in tears. In a short time he is boarding for Muskat. We say our goodbyes.

Our plane is a 15 passenger Cessna , the pilot the only crew member. We get a quick briefing and off we go with a full view out the front window. A beautiful 30 minute flight to Pemba. Once on the ground we take a taxi to Chake Chake for Sh. 15,000, about $10 and find a room at the Clove Inn. $90 per night , air conditioned, beautiful white marble tiles, swimming pool but not much soul.

We take another taxi to the nearest beach and have a sundown swim and watch a large flock of bats flying to a rookery somewhere. We have dinner at the hotel connected to the beach and learn that a room here would be $160 per night.





July 22 We Go Exploring on Misali Island
The Mediation Training will start tomorrow. The Lonely Planet highly recommends visiting Misali Island so,we decide that today we’ll go there about 4-5 miles off Pemba. The Clove Inn calls up a tour operator who is at the hotel within twenty minutes and consummates a deal to get us there for the rest of the day. He takes us to the market to stock up on food and water, as there are no amenities on the island. We get three small loaves of bread, each of which constitutes a hoagie sized loaf of surprisingly good quality. Then we get tomatoes, and onions, some mangoes and tangerines and 3 liters of water. It’s a two hour ride out there, and I’m glad I brought some Dramamine with me as it’s a rough ride in an 18 foot wooden boat. At the island it is wonderful, the snorkeling is great, we lay in the water 50 feet from the beach and drift with the current that runs parallel to the beach. Lots of nice shell, though everything is protected here. We can pick them up , but we have to put them back. We spend five hours out there before retuning. Again I will post the name and number of our guide at the end of this blog. Our ride back is wet but uneventful. We have a meal of fried octopus, rice , chicken, chips, and mashed potatoes between the three of us.

Peter Serete our co-facilitator arrives from Kenya and Abdul our local host also meets us. We make some plans for the next day and go to bed. Peter has never taught transformative mediation. And now I think I can do it in my sleep. I trained him in interest based mediation in 2007, but his real experience is in the Quaker program Alternatives to Violence, so I sense that he is really glad that we got here as planned. Tomorrow, Dominique and Gabrielle will travel to the north end of the island with a guide. Dom. Wants to see the flying foxes (really a red furred fruit bats that live in the forest. Gabrielle just never ceases to be thrilled by everything. She has to be the easiest going 11 year old in the world. July 23 Dom and Gab are off north with our tour operator for the day ($100 for driver and car). I go with Peter to the Gombani Football Stadium about 4 miles north of town where we teach a class of 18 in one of the VIP lounges at the stadium. When they first said we were teaching at the football stadium I was wondering how many people they invited. The day goes exceedingly well for us. Hezron, the coordinator of Change Agents for Peace International (CAPI) a Norwegian Quaker NGO which sponsors this event, arrives at lunch time and we finally meet. Bridget Butt a Canadian who has headed CAPI for years, recently returned to Canada. It was Bridget who first talked about doing this training three years ago when the Quakers thought they might get back their property which had been confiscated in the revolution in 1963. A scuba diving company had had it for a number of years but CAPI was in the process of petitioning for its return. There are 18 participants including six women who are mainly social workers, there are also 6 magistrates from Sharia Courts and a Judge from the Kadhi court. A number of the magistrates are also imams from their mosques. Most speak English quite well but ask for Peter to do some translating. And he teaches his portion in Swahili although he admits that his Swahili is much less fluent than their more pure coastal Swahili. We compare Transactional and Transformative mediation and then focus on Transformative. Two years ago, Renee and I discovered that if we had people do practice mediations in front of the whole class and critique each one after it was done, they would have a fairly goo grasp of the process by the sixth mediation. I used this methodology and it still works. I told them in advance there would be many mistakes at first and it would take the bravest to volunteer to go first. They plunged in and learned by doing. They are fairly merciless in their critiquing of each other as well. I tried to put things in a positive light each time and looked for the best things, but someone always seemed to find the errors as well. Eventually some even created some new techniques as they went along. Very creative people. When I get back to the hotel with Peter , Dominique and Gabrielle are not yet back but when they do finally arrive, they have lots of stories to tell including getting vomited on by the flying ‘foxes’. They said they came across the most beautiful beach in the world but the water was full of jellyfish, so they didn’t swim. But at the north end they got up in a lighthouse and they explored Arab ruins in several places on the island.. I also learn from Peter and Hezron that they plan to pay our hotel bills and plane tickets to and from Pemba which is very nice for us as we were beginning to go over our budget.

On our flight back to the main island on Monday, Hezron who is joining us loses his ticket in his taxi, but nobody at the airport seems to mind. The four of us and one other passenger are the only people at the airport other than regular personnel. Baggage is hand inspected. No metal detectors here. They verify that Hezron is on the manifest and wave him through.

Knowing that there will only be a pilot, I ready my request to ride in the co-pilot’s seat. After my plea , the pilot says, “Climb up front.” So I tell Gabrielle to get up there. She reluctantly gets in the seat and he helps her strap in. We’re all thrilled that she gets up there. Life had been getting a little boring. The pilot is a young South African from Capetown. But we learn nothing else about him as the plane only stays on the ground in Zanzibar for a few minutes as we unload. He’s off to Dar Es Salaam by the time we’re in the terminal. Mohammed is there to meet us and we go into town to do some hotel searching. We can only find one for one night and will have to move to another on our last night in town. No worries anymore about needing to be somewhere to meet a schedule. We have a nice afternoon in Stonetown exploring. Next day Mohammed will take us on a tour of the main island. It’s off to bed staying in our first hotel with a balcony and palm trees in the garden. We’re in Stone Town rather than on the edge at the Bandari, so everything is right out the door.

Tuesday July 26 A Spice Tour and North Side of the Island.

Mohammed picks us up and 9:00 and we find a new hotel half a block away. It’s around the corner from the Supreme Court. It’s our least attractive hotel, but the owner and workers are very nice and they have the best breakfast of anyplace we’ve been to on Zanzibar. When we say Zanzibar we are really referring to a group of islands. The big island is really called Unguja even though most refer to it as Zanzibar. The place was originally inhabited by African peoples and then Persians or Shirazi people sailed down with the trade winds and stay for several hundred years. Then power shifted sporadically between Omani’s and the Portugese. Vasco Da Gama probably was the first European to see the place in the 1490’s. Ruins tend to show a lot of buildings that are both Omani and Portugese in architecture, one would build on top of the other. In the late 19th century a Sultanate was well established by Omanis, and this came under the protection of the British during the ‘Scramble for Africa’ , a competition between the Germans, British, French, and Portugese which culminated in the 1885 Treaty of Berlin when most of today’s political boundaries were drawn. In most cases these boundaries do not represent any of the tribal boundaries of the indigenous peoples of Africa. So Masai found their traditional territory straddling both Kenya and Tanganyika. An many other countries have those same problems.

Zanzibar was the center of the slave trade on the east side of Africa. The site of the Anglican Cathedral in Stone Town is where the old slave market existed. The dungeons where slaves were held before auction can still be seen under the cathedral. It is a terrifying place to see and imagine what must have gone on there. Slave routes went into the interior from Bagamoyo on the mainland. It was from here that David Livingstone went into the interior. His headquarters still exist on Unguja, though there is nothing to see in the building. It is owned by the Zanzibar Tourist Bureau, surrounded by new structures and a boat building center on the shore in front of it.

Mohammed takes us to a spice plantation which is probably not a functioning production center but it has examples of most of the spices that grow on the island from cloves, vanilla, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, lemon grass, and jackfruit, durian, mango, papaya, coffee, lechees, and several others. There is a demonstration of tree climbing to collect coconuts, and a tasting session of the various fruits. As we leave, we see there are a number of similar centers that live off the touist trade. We head on from there to the north, as we told Mohammed we also wanted to go swimming somewhere. He takes us to the extreme northern end and wants us to see the aquarium. We reluctantly go in but are surprised to find that it is a sea turtle sanctuary and hospital. There’s a natural lagoon where turtles are protected. A young French girl is working there and shows us around. She has just arrived there from South Africa where she was working at hospital for penguins. From there we walk over to the beach and see some boat building going on and find some great shells right there. Mohammed takes us toward the Sunset hotel complex which allows non-guests onto their beach. I had stayed here in 2007. Before going to the beach he asks to stop and do prayers for a few minutes. He goes into a small mosque, washes his hands and feet before entering and does his prayers as we wait in the van. While we are waiting a young boy comes up and takes a drink from the ablution block, but no one seems to think this is a sacrilege.

Before going down to the beach we stop at a local restaurant and ask the owner for a ‘fast lunch’. He suggests tuna stir fry and it turns out to be a great choice.

The beach is long and smooth. Several more hotels have been built since 2007 , and Italian is the dominant language now being spoken. It is strange to hear the Zanzibari’s speaking this language. We have an enjoyable afternoon there and Mohammed brings us back to the hotel just before sundown. We head down to the Fodorani Gardens in time to take pictures of a magnificent sunset and have our last dinner in Africa. In the morning we do somemore shopping and Dominque and Gabrielle both get henna designs painted on their feet and hands by Bikai, a beautiful young woman who has a clothing shop in the old fort. Then we head back to the Zanzibar curio shop for a last look and a few purchases before meeting Mohammed for the trip to the airport. We make our goodbyes with him and leave a lot of our surplus clothes and other things with him. At sundown we are in the plane and on our way to London with a two hours stopover in Nairobi. We have some great experiences in London for a day and a half but I will leave that to another day to describe.

The end result of our trip is 4 mediation trainings touching about 80 people. It has been affirmed in Kigali and Bujumbura with Quaker people I’ve worked with in the past and introduced to new people in Catholic in Muhondo, Rwanda and Islamic in Chake Chake, Pemba. All places expressed a need for mediation and a desire for more training in the future. Of the 300 people I’ve trained on past trips there, they have now trained another 1700 mediators, making it over 2000 mediators developed in this program. I estimate it has cost about $12,000 to do this over the past 4 years. A pretty good bang for the buck when comparing to many other aid programs that we hear about.





8/5/