A late start for us, leaving at 9am. Back up the shakey shakey road and up to the west coast north of Stonetown to Chuini Spice Farm. Well, our bus did, the other apparently ran out of diesel and had to be replaced, arriving an hour later. Georgie miraculously replaced by Imjan.
A quick word about the strange world of Zanzibar transport. Throughout Africa, Toyota has had more than its fair share of vehicles. [There's] some mention of importing second hand vehicles direct from Japan by the bucket load (not a useful metaphor) Japanese signwork and windscreen safety notices intact, which does look a bit odd. The standard taxi in Zanzibar is a 10 passenger minibus, the police roadchecks seem to be solely to count a maximum of 11 heads. The standard bus is a Toyota Dyna or Toyace, both of which look like squater, longer Suzuki Rascals. The non-cabin part is replaced by an open sided, roofed affair with two bench seats on which they cram as many people as possible -- usually with one or two hanging off the back. Quite often there's luggage or firewood or whatever piled on the roof. Then there's the occaisional Toyota Landcruiser, a rare Land Rover and then lots of mopeds and bicycles. Everyone beeps, honks, rings, tinkles or shouts at everyone else and the only time considered safe for overtaking is when the person you're overtaking is in the process themselves or someone is coming the other way. Overtaking requires [even] more beeping in some sort of conversational way. Nobody really goes fast (presumably in aticipation of a whopping pothole even on the good roads) so it all gets played out in a form of slow motion.
At the spice farm the form of the tour consisted of Imjan, guiding the spice tour, marching off to the next plant and starting the description of it as the rest of us made our way. Every plant required a conversation with the farm workers [not in English] to retrieve part of it and by the time we had all gathered around he had either moved on or some random fruit was being distributed. Any questions had to be asked [in turn] of the farm workers and translated [back to us]. Whilst he did seem to know some general stuff it was more by rote than knowledge.
Off to the guest house [in Stonetown] for the night, L'ail Noor. A quick note about Zanzibar flush toilets. they seem to direct a powerful jet of water from the back of the bowl across to the front where most of it is used to effectively flush. The rest of it is used to effectively spray the entire bathroom. Yuk, especially with a full bowl...
L'ail Noor guesthouse S6.17469
E39.19811 Elev. 12m! 
Then back to the Passing Show Hotel for lunch for the same affair as last time [our first lunch on Zanzibar]. Most of us chose beef this time in the hope of fewer bones. A pretty unimaginative choice [of restaurant], obviously some kickback going on.
Next stop, the site of the old Zanzibar slave markets. The site of the whipping post now replaced by a (small) cathedral but the original pits are still there. Just as you might have seen on the TV, 5.5 ft high rooms with a half-height mezzanine layer which the slaves were on with a floor-deep diagonal trench a metre wide most of the way across. The women and childrens' room was maybe 8x6m and housed 75 people for 3 or 4 days, the mens' 6x6m and housed 50. Without food and tiny slits for air it's not surprising that the death rate was quite high, with or without the whipping. It lasted 42 years before being abolished.
After that, Imjan did an apalling job of leading on a quick recce round the curio market -- his usual trick of not waiting to tell everyone. I hate to go on but he is being spectacularly useless. We followed Georgie round a bit in the hope of getting our bao game posted home but all we managed was [to collect] a rotting cardboard box. More tomorrow.
Paul has gone spectacularly quiet during the time in Zanzibar. I can't blame him, he's done a lot of work, but on the rare occasions he steps in over Georgie or Imjan he clears things up tremendously. Maybe we non-Africans have the wrong expectations of this world.
We then tootled through the market and bought a travel bao (small foldaway version) and a sarong for Helen. We need to practice our haggling skills. For the bao game the man wanted 7500 (1000 Tsh to US$1) so I said 3000. He said no so I stuck at 3000. He came down to 7000 so Helen said 5500! What!? Shut up, woman!
He said, 6000 and I insisted I wouldn't pay more than 5000 (hoping he hadn't heard Helen). We settled on 5000. For the sarong Helen took a different tack an offered 2000 (from the asking 3000 or so) and simply didn't budge at all for over ten minutes. I paid him off with 2500.
We tried out our new bao board over a couple of Cokes at the harbour, small children and youths taking great delight in belly flopping into the harbour from great heights. We decided we needed an additional bowl to keep our bao beans in.
Off to The Africa House Hotel (a dull reminder of colonialism not a black face amongst the customers and a fashion show) for "sundowners" or, in our case, time to Mosi-guard up. Then the idea was to hit the harbourside food markets. Imjan appeared to be organising it but then disappeared and it was led by Georgie who rushed through the stalls leaving us at the back non the wiser.
As it was mostly meat or fish kebabs we decided to seek out a bowl from the under-gas-light stalls. What a pulaver! Forty minutes later we emerged without a bowl but pleased that we had not thrown our money away. Then one of the stall holders appeared and asked 1500 for his soapstone bowl. A good price the other stall holders agreed.
We tried a few kebabs which were OK and were sold some flat drinks which makes you very suspicious. Those were quickly left on the floor. Back to the guesthouse at 9pm and played bao (not that we're temporarily addicted) until midnight.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.