Wednesday, 31 March 2010

Little Ado About Nothing (at all)

3rd -6th March – Days 156-159 – Bwejuu, Zanzibar, Tanzania

It wasn't quite that windy.

We were up bright and early, kicked ourselves out of bed on account of the sweaty sheets not encouraging a lazy lie-in, and headed off to the bus station to go and see somewhere else. The coast of Zanzibar Island is dotted with small fishing villages which themselves are dotted with resorts and guesthouses, and we pretty much picked one of them from the map and headed off. The ride was scenic although we were half asleep for most of it. It's an attractive island and the slow pace of life in the main town was taken even more seriously in the countryside – people wandered or cycled around, sat in the shade, or worked lazily in the fields. We arrived in Bwejuu, rocked up at “Mustapha's Place” the first place we saw a sign for, and went in to discover that we were the only guests there. It was getting towards being low season, they said, and so they wouldn't normally be full at this time of year, but the fact that it was complety empty was a result of the lack of electricity. We explained to them that mzungu tourists like their cold beer and air conditioning but it was still amazing for us to see what a huge effect a simple lack of electricity has had on visitor numbers – come on wazungu, satellite TV and air-con aren't THAT important!!!


The hustle and bustle of downtown Bwejuu was almost too much for us

We were joined almost immediately by a guy who offered us a snorkelling trip, M's eyes lit up and I could see the lazy morning I'd planned for the following day come down in flames. Within a short time, it was decided – we'd get up early for the trip, pay over the odds for it, and meet the guy at the beach for the trip. Later in the day a Danish woman and her daughter arrived and we had a few chats with them but the conversation was rather Scandinavian in nature (i.e. it didn't flow very well, fast, or easily) and I drifted in and out of it. I think I need to do nothing at all for a few days to get the energy levels back up. Bwejuu seemed like a good place to do that – it was a small, quiet village with nothing much to do aside from sit and lie around reading books and having a warm beer or two. The two guys who work at the place, Mohammed and Ali, are friendly and a guy drops by in the evening to hang around. He's half Zanzibari, half Somali, he tells us. He's a nice guy too – his face has some Somali features to it, he speaks English with a partly African and partly London accent and tells us tales of his days as a fisherman off the Somali coast before the war broke out. He tells us of his disgust for the effect that qat has on the Somali lands and is interested to hear of our impressions about Hargeisa. It's a relaxed and nice evening, and for me the only souring event was being destroyed at chess by M (yet again) in the evening. There is a generator here but they switch it off at around 11pm, the fan goes off, and it's another sweaty night.


The idyllic (.....or at least quasi-cleanish) beach in Bwejuu.

We'd walked around the village just after arriving and it was clear to see the effect of the long power cut yet again – most of the resorts in town were empty, some had closed down, and the few that remained open didn't have many customers – aside from the Danes the only other wazungu we've seen are a family on holiday at the beach. In many places, a tourist crash like this would result in the few that arrive being relentlessly hounded by touts and TCSs (tourist-crap-salesmen) but these aren't in evidence in Bwejuu (just as there were very few of them in Stone Town) and this increases my liking for the place even more. I get the feeling that this is a place which tourists have discovered and which residents have adapted to, rather than exploiting the situation ruthlessly as has happened in so many places. Zanzibaris, I salute you...


It was only "Kilimanjaro" but there was nothing else cold. Life is a struggle.


The snorkelling wasn't bad – the underwater life isn't as impressive as it was in Hurghada and the visibility wasn't as good – but it's relatively rare enough to see life underneath sea level that some colourful fish flitting around is always nice to see. They were well outnumbered by sea urchins and corals that looked disturbingly similar to extremely large brains. The afternoon was as unproductive as I hoped – lying around in another one of the low-key resorts where I found Louis Theroux's “Dark Star Safari” on a shelf and read the beginning of it, where the author traces much the same route as we did on the beginning of the trip, through Egypt and Sudan. More of the same later at another resort run by a German guy who ran over to the generator-owning neighbouring resort with several iceboxes and filled them with ice every morning to keep his beers cold. More of the same the next day at the same place. Eventually we managed to get moving back to Stone Town at 4pm. Nothing much accomplished but in my mind that was needed...


3 days in Bwejuu - a summary


The Bwejuu award goes to the guys who work at Mustapha's whose names are Mohammed and Ali, for naming their two cats Cassius and Clay. Genius!


Ali (left) and Mohammed (right) flanking M (rear) and Clay (front). Thanks guys!

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