Zanzibar: Music, Beaches, and Turtles

Sauti za Busara Music Festival

I’ve spent the last 10 days on Zanzibar, a small island off the coast of mainland Tanzania. For the first four nights, we danced to live African music at an outdoor music festival in Stonetown into the wee hours of the night.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we tried to stay up dancing til the wee hours of the night.

Sauti Za Busara at the Old Fort, Stonetown

Long sound checks and set-ups, prayer breaks smack in the middle of a few acts, and some bands defiantly refusing to leave the stage despite being told to finish up meant that the program ran behind schedule every night. 

On Saturday night, the last act was supposed to go on at 1:00 a.m., but everything was running so late that they didn’t play until after 3:00 a.m.  The music ended some time around 4:30 a.m. Or so I heard. The first night I managed to stay up until 12:30 a.m., the next night until 1:30 a.m.  The best I could do was 2:40 a.m. on Saturday night, which was too bad because all of the headliner acts were fantastic, but they had to cut their programs short since there wasn’t enough time left. 

Making Zanzabari "pizzas"

Spice Farm: vanilla plants

After four days, Julia and I had our routine down.  Between bands, we would head to Forodoni Gardens to drink fresh-pressed sugar cane juice mixed with lime and ginger, slurp some Zanzabari soup, and eat Zanzibari pizzas (really a cross between an omelette and a crepe). By the end of the festival, vendors were recognizing me outside of the Gardens and parroting back my previous order: “Banana and nutella pizza? Later tonight?”


Julia is my Lonely Planet Thorntree success story #3.  She answered my original posting for safari mates, and although we didn’t safari together, I mentioned to her that I was meeting up with my sister for this music festival, and she was interested too. We met up for all four days of the music festival and then a couple of more nights at Kendwa beach together.  She’s from New Zealand and is on a nine-month solo journey. To date, I don’t think I’ve met a woman travelling alone that I haven’t liked!

By the end of the music festival, we were completely exhausted.  It probably added to our tiredness that the first two days, not realizing that this music festival was going to be a late night marathon that would require an afternoon nap, we went on two all-day excursions.  The first was to a spice farm (Zanzibar used to export a lot of spices), caves where slaves were hidden before being transported (Zanzibar used to be a big slave trading outpost), and a beach.  The second excursion was to snorkel off an old-fashioned wooden dhow and gorge ourselves on seafood and a twelve-course tropical fruit tasting extravaganza.

On the last night of the music festival, Julia and I were so tired that we lay down and fell asleep during one of the breaks between acts. She had caught a cold, no doubt from the lack of sleep over the previous nights, and I had started to feel kind of dizzy from the exhaustion!

Yes, First World vacationing problems...

Beaches and Books

I think the beach kills brain cells. In a good way, if that’s possible.

After the Music Festival, Julia and I headed to Kendwa beach in the north of Zanzibar.  She had a couple of days, while I had the whole rest of the week. At the outset of a beach vacation, I always wonder if I will really be able to spend that many days just at the beach. Invariably, the answer is absolutely yes! 

Kendwa Beach

I remember in Uruguay I called my beach days “channeling my inner noodle.” Beach time feels so deliciously self-indulgent. I really can just lounge in a shady spot on the beach with a good book and take ocean dips for the entire day.

Beach scenes: Local girls at the beach (Most of Zanzibar is Muslim)

Local fisherman on their dhow (old fashioned wooden sailboat)

But I cannot be at the beach without a book.  Margaret will tell you that the first thing I did when we hit the beach in Thailand on our post-bar trip was to look for the library someone had mentioned! Since I did not bring my e-reader to Africa, I have been on the lookout for book exchanges and am propositioning every English speaker I meet to see if they have a good book to exchange with me. I did come across Pierce Brosnan: The Unauthorized Biography, but I haven't gotten that desperate yet!

I kind of enjoy not having complete control over what book I will stumble across next. I’ve already finished the two books I came with and traded them for: Every Little Secret by Gillian Solvo (an autobiography about growing up as the daughter of two prominent anti-apartheid activists), The Leopard by Jo Nesbo (I’m really enjoying this detective murder story from a Norweigan writer who has been compared to Stieg Larsson. I would definitely recommend him for well-written light reading), The Landgrabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth by Fred Pearce (an investigative piece of non-fiction about the sale of land/resources world-wide), and Maya’s Notebook by Isabelle Allende. It’s a fun and eclectic mix!

The Green Sea Turtles: A Tourist Trap or Genuine Conservation Effort?

On my last day at the beach, I went to the Turtle Release Day sponsored by the aquarium in Nungwi. They were releasing into the ocean sea turtles that had accidentally been captured by fisherman and also juveniles that had hatched in the aquarium, but had been gathered as eggs in the wild.  

I began the day by visiting the aquarium. The “aquarium” was kind of a misnomer.  It was a big pond with some turtles swimming and others in turtle pens in the water. Then there were speeches and music.  The Vice President of Tanzania spoke and then released a ceremonial turtle.  Then after waiting around for awhile (nothing runs on schedule here), all of a sudden, they were just handing out turtles to all of us tourists who had paid the $25 participation fee.  With no instruction, we just wandered to the beach with our turtles in hand and climbed into boats. Some people were taking selfies with their turtle.  Some turtles squirmed and flapped as they sat in people’s laps. Some people pour bottled water on their turtle, fearing that it was getting too dry. I can’t imagine that bottled water was good for an animal that lives in salt water...  

Feeling kind of sheepish with turtle in hand

On board the boat, I started talking to a Swedish girl who had been volunteering at the aquarium for five weeks.

“What do you think of the organization?” I asked.

She paused and looked a little uncomfortable. “I don’t like it.” she said.  

She told me that it wasn’t what she had expected, that the workers didn’t care about the turtles, that it was just a money making tourist trap, and that there wasn’t any science to their method of taking the eggs away from where they had been laid.  Turtles return to their home beach to lay their eggs, and she said they weren’t sure that these would successfully imprint their home beach.  They weren’t being tagged or tracked either.

At Kendwa beach, everyone lined up and laid their turtles down on the sand and prodded them in the direction of the water. 

Some people helped their turtles, correcting their course. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to because I imagine it's something significant that a little turtle has to do, but luckily my turtle headed straight for the water. 

The turtles making their to the water

Tourists from a nearby resort all flocked out,  touching the turtles and taking photos, some people got in the water, some organizers stood between the turtles and the water. I was worried that someone was going to step on a turtle.
 

Before I left the U.S., I watched Blackfish, a powerful documentary about killer whales in captivity.  If you ever thought about going to Sea World, you will never want to after this documentary. 

So maybe I’m a little sensitive to the idea of wildlife in captivity right now, but I ended up feeling kind of dirty for having participated in the event.