Chapter 5 - Day 5 - A History Lesson

 After an amazing night at Zuri, we woke up and went for breakfast. A buffet style that had everything from fresh juices to an egg station and breads and cakes and everything you can imagine. 

At 9:00am the car that would be taking us to Stone town was at the entrance of the hotel and we began on an amazing journey through history.

It was more than one hour drive and when we got to our destination, a stop on Creek Rd, the road that separates the old town from the new town, as they call it.

Being from Brazil and knowing how Brazilians are perceived, i had strategically planned to wear the Brazilian National Team Jersey that day. Amazing how right I was.

We stepped out of the car and I needed to exchange some money into Tanzanian Schillings so we could pay for things and buy any souvenirs we wanted. there was a small exchange right by the road and we exchanged $100.00, or the equivalent to TSH 230,000.00 (Tanzanian Schillings).

Right after we got out of the exchange place, we got approached by a gentleman, his name was Ali, he was inviting us to go see his stand in the market. He had spicas and lots of things. initially I tried to evade him, saying we have just gotten there, but at the end we succumbed and went to his stand. He has all kinds of spices, tea, coffee, vanilla sticks, etc, and we ended up buying some things from him.

When we were about to leave he came and introduced us to his friend Khamis, a registered tour guide that offered to take us around Stone town and telling us the story of it for the price of TSH 50,000.00, around USD20.00. We accepted and the adventure started.

We started walking and noticed how narrow the streets of Stone town are, as you can see.

I did some research and learned that People have lived in Zanzibar for 20,000 years. History properly starts when the islands became a base for traders voyaging between the African Great Lakes, the Somali Peninsula, the Arabian peninsula, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent. Unguja offered a protected and defensible harbor, so although the archipelago had few products of value, Omanis and Yemenis settled in what became Zanzibar City (Stone Town) as a convenient point from which to trade with towns on the Swahili Coast. They established garrisons on the islands and built the first mosques in the African Great Lakes Region.

During the Age of Exploration, the Portuguese Empire was the first European power to gain control of Zanzibar, and kept it for nearly 200 years. In 1698, Zanzibar fell under the control of the Sultanate of Oman, which developed an economy of trade and cash crops, with a ruling Arab elite and a Bantu general population. Plantations were developed to grow spices; hence, the moniker of the Spice Islands (a name also used for the Dutch colony the Moluccas, now part of Indonesia). Another major trade good was ivory, the tusks of elephants that were killed on the Tanganyika mainland - a practice that is still in place to this day. The third pillar of the economy was slaves, which gave Zanzibar an important place in the Indian Ocean slave trade, the Indian Ocean equivalent of the better-known Triangular Trade. The Omani Sultan of Zanzibar controlled a substantial portion of the African Great Lakes coast, known as Zanj, as well as extensive inland trading routes.

Sometimes gradually, sometimes by fits and starts, control of Zanzibar came into the hands of the British Empire. In 1890, Zanzibar became a British protectorate. The death of one sultan and the succession of another of whom the British did not approve later led to the Anglo-Zanzibar War, also known as the shortest war in history.

The islands gained independence from Britain in December 1963 as a constitutional monarchy. A month later, the bloody Zanzibar Revolution, in which several thousand Arabs and Indians were killed and thousands more expelled and expropriated, led to the formation of the People's Republic of Zanzibar. That April, the republic merged with the mainland Tanganyika, or more accurately, was subsumed into Tanzania, of which Zanzibar remains a semi-autonomous region.

That being said the amount of history you see here is amazing.

You can see references to the Muslim, Hindi, Christian and lots of other cultures. They are famous for the doors carved by hand and you can see plenty of them. According to our guide, the doors that had the spikes on it, were from the Hindi type, to protect against elephants to come in and bust the door open, tha amount of detail is amazing.

We then went into the highest building in Stone town to get a glimpse of the town from above. As you can see it is amazing.

From there we went into a Hindi temple, as seen below

Then from the Hindi Temple we went to St Josephs Catholic Church, and on the way there was a tradidtional medicine man.

The church was really nice and we were able to get in since our guide knew the people that took care of the church.

Another stop was the Old Fort, initially built by the Portuguese, and then expanded by the Sultan of Oman when they expelled the Portuguese from there. 

From the Fort we then went into walked by the House of Wonders, that was built by the Sultan of Oman and in the 19th century it had running water. Interesting fact is that when the British were ruling there, the father of a very famous singer worked there as an accountant. The singer was Freddie Mercury, from Queen and even more interesting is that he was born in Zanzibar. the house where he was born turned into a Museum about his life. We passed by the Forodhani Gardens, where the cannons to protect the city are and then to Freddy Mercury house we went.

  After being there, and since we were not going into the museum, our guide suggested we go to Changuu Island, also known as Prison Island. In order to get there, we needed to hire  a boat that would take us there and bring us back. The price for the boat was SCH130,000.00 about $60.00. The good thing was that the boat was all for us and we could stay as long or as little as we wanted.

The ride was smooth, even though the boat look like it is 100 years old. In order to get into the boat, we had to take our shoes off, and get into the shallow waters of the beach, more like a fishermen village, and then when we got to the island, what a view.

This island was built to be the house of the British governor, then turned into a prison, then a quarantine place during the Yellow fever pandemic, and also where the slaves were taken to be "broken" if they were not cooperative, a sad reminder of what was done in the past. 

Another fun fact about the island is that it is home to lots of tortoises, some almost 200 years old, and we got a chance to feed them by hand.

What an experience. But the day was starting to get to the end, we headed back to the main island, and stopped for a beer and coffee, at this place called  Cafe Africano, which our guide gladly suggested. the Beer was great and the coffee also. We also nibbled on some local peanuts and spiced Baoba seeds.

After that we still had a long drive back to the hotel.

Got to the Hotel in time to see the amazing sunset once again, this time we also had the pleasure to see the Party Boat Zanzibar Style, where some locals and tourists were mingling.

After this an amazing dinner with local dishes.

After a day full of activities, it was time for resting, the next morning the car would come to pick us up at 5:30am, since the real African adventure would begin. Next Stop: Serengeti.