Zanzibar primer

Zanzibar still has the power to conjure up visions of the exotic. Like other fabled destinations (like Timbuktu or Kathmandu), the word is indelibly associated with distant, other civilizations in the Western consciousness. And with good reason.

The history of Zanzibar goes back a couple of thousand years. It was known as a distant trading post to the ancient Greeks, was conquered by waves of black Africans and Arabs, and became the capital of the Omani Arabs. Islam came to the island in the 12th or 13th century and remains the dominant religion to the present day. By 1498, when Vasco da Gama became the first European recorded to visit (on his long way round Africa to India), it was the seat of a trading empire that reached India and Ceylon and was, perhaps, visited by the Chinese.

More recently, the island became a British protectorate in 1890, gained some independence in the early 1960s, and joined independent Tanganyika to become Tanzania in 1964. The entire period of unification has been marked by political unrest, with the five-yearly elections marking periods of particular trouble. The next elections are scheduled for later this year, when we will be well gone from the place. And throughout, the island has mainained a high level of autonomy, flying their own flag, with pictures of the Zanzibari president smiling down on shopkeepers, and with passport control at the port of entry.

Zanzibar island is just a quick ninety-minute ferry ride from Dar Es Salaam, and we arrived in the early afternoon on Friday. Stone Town is the old section, with numerous buildings dating from the early 19th century, a labyrinthine street layout somewhat like a an Arab medina, and notable for the magnificent mohagany doors on most of the buildings. It is unlike any other city we have seen in sub-Saharan Africa.

For tourists, there is lots of history, tours of spice plantations, and some magnificent Indian Ocean beaches.