Nobody told us about the cats!

Speaking of cats…Zanzibar is teeming with them, in varying sizes and levels of fierceness; most of the ones we’ve seen hang out at Forodhani. (Except at night, of course, when they hold “Cat Fight Club” outside our windows.) I can’t say I blame them. Lie around in the sun all day; eat scraps from the daily food fest/barbecue all evening; then work out (a.k.a. fight) – seems like a pretty good life!

Seriously, though…is the cat Zanzibar’s official animal?? They are more annoying than the spiders, ants…even the flies, and if you know me/my aversion to bugs, that’s saying a lot!

But first, let me digress for a minute and talk about the bugs. There are many. Spiders, ants (none that seem to bite…yet), cockroaches (ugh…but not surprising given how close together apartments in Stone Town are). We won’t talk about the bugs from last weekend when we went up north to a small, quieter beach town called Kendwa. One of the first things I made sure we bought as soon as we arrived was bug spray for our apartment. Turns out, we didn’t need it. Our sweet, tiny little Stephanie is a fierce bug killer. Maggie and I usually scream, and sometimes run – AWAY from the bug(s), of course…while Steph mercilessly squishes them with a shoe, napkin, or whatever’s close at hand. Maggie and I have learned to cover our ears if we don’t want to hear the “crunch” or “squish” as the creepy crawlie loses its guts. Stephanie says we should thank her brothers for this side of her, so THANK YOU Michael and David!!! The other day, we were sitting at a table at an outdoor café, about to order food, and Maggie smacked her hand on the table, smashing an ant, barely looking up from her menu. Naturally we were (okay…I was) in awe of her; she shrugs and says, “Just wait till you’ve been here 6 weeks…you’ll do that too.” Poor, harmless ant…I’m still at the point of trying to blow them away from me…but they’re island ants, i.e. persistent and aggressive. It doesn’t work.

Back to the cats. They are our constant, if uninvited, dinner companions when we eat at Forodhani; they stroll around like they own the place, yawning and stretching lazily at the start of the dinner rush, ready for the evening entertainment. They sit at our feet in packs of at least 3-4, watching intently as people eat, licking their lips and inching closer with every bite. Forget having any semblance of human-cat personal space on the days you happen to get fish…you’ll be lucky to finish half of your dinner before you’re silently goaded into tossing what’s left into the trash where they half-heartedly fight for the scraps, move on to the next victim of their stare-downs. And you should see the battle scars on some of these cats – it’s no wonder people give in to them! We can usually tell from a distance when an especially bad-a** cat is en route, even before we can see the scars or scabbed-over wounds; the other kitties yowl and jump out of the way, as he/she walks majestically to his/her next target. **Shudder**

The other day, Maggie’s dinner (at Forodhani) was cut short by a particularly aggressive cat that did not so much as bat an eyelid when shooed away, or react at a half-hearted attempt from a skewer-wielding me to scare it into submission...or at least keep it at bay long enough for us to finish eating. (Relax, my animal-loving friends; the skewer in question is pretty much a long flimsy toothpick, and it’s all I/we had at our disposal at the time.) He decided enough was enough, hopped onto the bench we were sitting on, and proceeded to chow down on Maggie’s food (chili & all) as she dropped her plate onto the bench and jumped away. I don’t blame her…that kitty looked MEAN!! I’m pretty sure he had won the previous night’s bout. Even the other cats give him a wide berth. Needless to say, we provided some fun entertainment for our local friends that evening. Later that evening, the same cat scared Maggie into dropping her mango. Not a good night for dinner at Foro, I guess. Spice Girls: 0; Scary Kitty: 1. Oh, who am I kidding!?! Scary Kitty wins every time!

Stone Town…where everybody knows your business

I’m starting to think I should walk around with a sign: “You look, you pay…” Even if we just charged one hundred Tanzanian shillings (~0.06 cents, USD) for every stare, I’m pretty sure all three of us could pay off our student loans with the money we’d make while here; okay…maybe just one of us, but still…. It’s very unnerving. We’ve tried staring back just as intently, but trust me…these people are experts! Also, we can’t ever walk around alone or in a pair without someone – usually many someone(s) – asking about our friend(s)…or where we’re going…or anything else they might want to know about you at that particular moment on that particular day. It’s really fun on the days we go back and forth – running errands, or if we happen to finish work early and go back to the apartment before leaving again. I’m perfecting the art of the “appropriately-island slow albeit with a purpose while constantly responding to people’s [multiple] greetings but avoiding making eye contact with anyone and never stopping” walk.

I forgot to mention something about Stone Town. While it’s largely residential, it is also filled with touristy curio-type stores, strategically located along every street/alley/path. So pretty much every person you walk past welcomes you into their shop, “just to see…” I quickly learned not to respond with, Kesho (tomorrow) or Baadaye (later), ‘coz guess what? They ALL reminded me when it was tomorrow…or later! Lately, instead of every single person we pass saying hi and trying to get us to come into their store, it’s more like every second person says hi and every third also welcomes us in. Ahhh…progress! But now that we’re “locals,” the greetings are no longer the tourist staples of Jambo or Mambo; now, it’s more like a conversation…composed entirely of [repeated] greetings, many directed at our backs…’coz remember, we do not stop!! (Only tourists do that, haha!)

To further complicate matters, Stone Town’s very narrow streets (if you can call them that) are not only used by pedestrians, but also cyclists – on bicycles, Vespas, motorbikes, and many other two-wheeled vehicles that constantly fly by and around sharp corners at breakneck speeds. Thankfully, the riders usually warn us they are coming up behind us, towards us, or are around a corner. The motorbikes and Vespa drivers honk, while the bicyclists ring their bells; for those without bells, a squeeze of very squeaky breaks suffices to alert folks to hop to; and, my favorite…a kissing sound made by the rider also means, “beware, bicycle about to run you over if you don’t get out the way!” Let’s not go into my reaction the first time I heard that! Occasionally, we also have to make way for hand carts, known as Mikokoteni…but at least those move slowly enough that we have plenty of time to make room…usually. Unless they’re going downhill. Then good luck. We’re in the habit of walking single file, especially when all three of us are together. At least that way if one of us got run over, we’re all going out together!

Vespas/motorbikes zooming & honking, bicycles trilling, kissing sounds, and endless greetings are not the only sounds we hear in Stone Town. There are also the cats that fight every night, usually around 3 or 4 a.m., so I guess technically morning. The first time I heard it, I thought our next door neighbor was shooting a bad slasher flick to screen at the upcoming Zanzibar International Film Festival! Nope, just a couple of cats going at it like there’s no tomorrow. Honestly, from the sounds they’re making, it’s no wonder the streets are dead silent. I certainly wouldn’t want to get caught in the middle of any of those cat fights, let alone try to break them up! Yep, Stone Town in the wee hours belongs to yowling cats. Many of them…or it could be just two. I’m too scared to even peek out a window to get a look. The locals are obviously smart enough to steer clear, and I plan to do the same.

I have no idea how I’ll ever again be able to fall asleep without the sounds of Stone Town once I leave this place.

Tennis on my mind...

It’s June 8^th, and my ‘boyfriend’ is playing tennis today, as he does most days in June. After a few days of taking over the telly at home in Nairobi to watch the French Open (much to my niece and nephew’s dismay…I got away with it by telling them I hadn’t watched TV in two years!! – the looks on their faces were priceless) I’d put tennis out of my mind for a bit – partly due to excitement about finally being in Zanzibar and all.

Stephanie got up early and went for a run; I figured I’d laze around/lay in bed for a bit until she got back, until I lazily checked my phone with half an eye open. Lo and behold, emails had downloaded sometime in the middle of the night (cell phone/Internet service is spotty to non-existent in Stone Town), and an email from my friend Julie with the subject, “Can you…” caught my eye. I clicked on it and miraculously, the rest of the email appeared, “…watch tennis in Zanzibar?????????” I wish those of you who think I’m not a morning person could have seen me then!! Forget that Steph had told me what time she’d be back (important because we were sharing a single key at the time)…I bolted up out of bed and was at the beach (teeth brushed and all) in no more than 7 minutes flat! Yes, I know you’re wondering…what in the world does the beach have to do with tennis?!? It’s the closest we can go and pick up a cell phone signal, i.e. connect to the outside world. I checked tennis news and scores and realized I had to find some place to watch my boy…PRONTO!!

Many emails, lots of walking around, and several questions to random strangers later, I did find out about a sports bar where I could watch tennis the French Open men’s tennis final; it was a short (5-10 minute) dala dala (known as a matatu in Kenya) ride out of Stone Town, definitely worth it – for me anyway…plus we got to experience public transportation…fun! NOT. The three of us made the most of the excursion by visiting ruins of a nearby palace; at least this way, I had a little less guilt at dragging my non-drinking, non-tennis watching friends to a bar to watch two guys hit a tennis ball across a net for anywhere from 2-5 hours! Rafa won; it was totally worth it…dala dala ride and all.

Where's the beef?

On our second day in Zanzibar, Stephanie and I decided to walk around Stone Town some more and explore our new neighborhood while Maggie was at work. Naturally we started with the beach; at least we couldn’t get lost walking along it…right? Plus this way we could scope out a running route for Steph. Having seen the hospital (site of our internship) along the main road the day before, we figured we could get to it if we walked far enough up the beach. So there we were, enjoying the fresh air, cameras out…snapping away, only to hear someone yelling to us to stop…someone being a stern-looking security dude strapped with an AK-47. Oops! BIG OOPS!!! We had inadvertently broken a law by walking along the beach next to state house, i.e. the president’s beach/vacation home...EEEEKK!! We smiled a LOT, pled ignorance + limited Swahili, and got away with a friendly warning…WHEW!!! Thankfully Steph waited until he had walked away to say she thought his gun looked like a toy. Right next to the state house, a.k.a. the scene of trespass, is the hospital…so we did manage to get a glimpse of our work home for the next 10 weeks.

Around midday, we decided to go get lunch at one of the restaurants our unofficial tour guide from the previous day had pointed out as clean, safe, decent, affordable options for us. They were all in the vicinity of Darajani, an open-air market that we had walked part of the way through with him. Armed with the requisite tourist map, we headed in what we thought was the right direction and promptly got lost. You would think an $8 map would come with the warning that very few, if any, of the streets are actually marked…so not to rely on the map much (AT ALL)…but I suppose then they wouldn’t be able to sell vary many to unsuspecting tourists. :-/ At least we had the overwhelming aromas of endless piles of seafood, dozens of exotic fruits, various vegetables, many chickens (live or dead…your choice), and other foods for sale, to keep our senses alert while we were lost. Oh, and the flies too, of course...TIA.

We eventually managed to find our way through the market, and of course immediately wanted out of there. Thankfully the restaurant we were looking for was on the same street, so relatively easy to find. Stephanie ordered beef pilau and was pretty disappointed that there was so little beef in it. Apparently just a few days in Kenya had gotten her accustomed to eating meat – and a lot of it – at every meal.

That evening, we braved the open air food carts at Forodhani. Think of it as a large open area – like a town square, with benches, a gazebo, a couple of cafés, and a small park where people can relax and hang out for as long as they want. And they do. All. Day. Every. Day. Well…in the evenings, it’s filled with food vendors who set up tables and charcoal grills around the square and sell mishkaki (skewers) of chicken, beef, and various kinds of seafood: shrimp, scallops, marlin, snapper, octopus, squid (whole ones), prawns (also whole…with eyeballs…YUM!!), mussels, shark, barracuda, tuna, kingfish, swordfish, and spiced lobster, just to name a few. There’s also Zanzibar Pizza…which is an interesting concoction of your choice of meat (chicken, octopus, pretty much any kind of seafood, or ground beef), egg, mayonnaise, shredded cabbage/tomato/veggie mix, and cheese…think “Laughing Cow” cheese – that kind. All this is mixed together and put on a rolled out piece of dough, which is then pan-fried. There are also fruit versions of this pizza, and they all seem to come with Nutella; so Mango-Nutella, Banana-Nutella, Coconut-Nutella, etc.

The moment you walk into the area around Forodhani (i.e. when you’re about half a block away), people start aggressively trying to sell you stuff. For us, because of where our apartment is located and who/what we walk by on our way to/from, the offers usually go something like this: Taxi? Ice-cream? Taxi? (mind you…we’re just crossing the street…), and repeat in reverse, multiplied by too many taxi drivers and ice cream vendors to count. Then, we get to the actual food carts, and it’s a free-for-all! Every table has at least 5-6 people (all guys) working at it, and they ask, cajole, and plead for us to “just come see my food…just look.” If you make the mistake of stepping up to a table (just to see, of course), more often than not, a [paper] plate is shoved into your hand, and before you know it, you’ve got at least 5 skewers of various kinds of meat piled on, ready to go onto the grill – to be reheated – along with one or more of the endless types of carbs available (chips, a.k.a. French fries, chapati, Zanzibar chapati/bread [yep, there’s a difference], corn etc.), then dressed up with salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber), and drizzled with various concoctions of chili sauce. One can also get samosas, falafel, boiled eggs, fried bananas/plantains, fresh fruit, and many other things I haven’t been brave enough to try yet.

We’ve wised up some since our first trip to Foro and now have a regular table/set of guys we go to…when we feel up to it. Although, lately, we’ve started a couple of almost fights at “our table” between one guy who has decided that Maggie and Steph are HIS regulars and the other guys. If the girls take a plate from someone else, he just grabs the plate from his “buddy” – food and all – and shoves them back all the while yelling threatening things at the poor other guy(s)…or he once just fixed another plate for Maggie ignoring the one she already had. Not to worry, he’s always all smiles and nods by the time he turns back to us! Sigh. I guess the positive take on all this is that thankfully, none of us has gotten food poisoning…not really, LOL;-/ I guess our tummies became “local” pretty quick! (Knocking on every piece of wood in the apartment as I write this!!!)

One evening, as we walked home from Forodhani, some random dude says: “Spice Girls!! Hi….” This is just one of the many nicknames we’ve gotten – individually and as a trio, all of them a source of daily entertainment and giggles. I have to say, as nicknames go, it was pretty fitting: Maggie is Posh, Steph is Sporty, and I’m definitely Scary…this is one place it pays to be able to put on a “don’t mess with me” face! We take turns being Ginger, depending on our level of sassiness on a particular day. Although…we may just each rotate and take turns being all the different Spice Girls. It’ll keep folks guessing!

The BEST parts of Forodhani are that it’s by the water and has free Wi-Fi. Oh, and [luckily for Steph] there’s beef…plenty of it!

And so it begins!

After another late night (we had to watch one last episode of Baggage…don’t ask!), we got up early (well, I did…Steph overslept) to leave for the airport. We figured that before 7 a.m., 45 minutes was enough time (typically a 15-minute drive), and we’d get there at/around 7:30 to check in for our 9:30 a.m. flight. Well, the infamous Nairobi “jam” (as in traffic) proved that it is nothing if not predictable in its unpredictability. Traffic was backed up far into Mum’s neighborhood, and after almost 20 minutes in which we crawled a quarter of a kilometer, she decided to take an alternative route known as the bypass. Now, you may be wondering why not take that route anyway, especially if it doesn’t have traffic? Well, these kinds of roads in Kenya are the epitome of the description: “bone-jarring potholes.” Mum’s poor car was definitely worse the wear afterwards and required a trip to the mechanic for a bust exhaust pipe; her back was not too happy either.

All went smoothly at the airport…we got to check in our overweight bags (plus an extra) without being charged the extra fee we figured we’d have to pay – things were looking up! We discovered that our “direct” flight to Zanzibar was actually via Mombasa. Eh…TIA (this is Africa). As we get on the plane, I’m chatting with a flight attendant about our seats (they were occupied), when I see a familiar face in the first row. A childhood friend who I hadn’t seen since I left Kericho (1995) was en route to Mombasa. Needless to say, I quickly forgot about the seat mix-up, claimed the one next to him, and spent the next hour chatting away and catching up on almost two decades worth of goings-on from my home town, with just one quick glimpse out the window to appreciate “Kili” in the distance.

Flying from Mombasa to Zanzibar afforded us spectacular views of the ocean below us. The promise of endless sun and deep-blue ocean made rainy WA a distant memory, and we were excited to land and figure things out. Our luck held out the rest of the day – we got through the airport quickly and without any issues, our ride was waiting, we found a decent apartment in Stone Town (Zanzibar’s capital), got hooked up with cell phone/Internet service – you know…the basics! The guy who had arranged our airport transfer and was showing us around pointed out a place where we could eat in the evenings - Forodhani Gardens…with the ringing endorsement that the locals love it, but for us (tourists), “maybe you might get a little food poisoning.” Grreeaaattt…maybe we try that not on the first day, hmmm…?

We opted for the safe option of the Zanzibar Serena hotel for a snack that evening. A little expensive and certainly not an every-day option, having a glass of wine while watching a beautiful sunset over the Indian Ocean was a perfect end to a great day. And we figured food poisoning was a long shot.

Back at our apartment later that evening, we knocked on our upstairs neighbor’s door – another American student doing an internship on the island (we’d been introduced to her via email); five minutes later, we had a new roommate (Maggie) to add more laughter to our new apartment.

So what that power went off in the middle of the [very hot] night and we woke up, all sweaty and sticky, to no water the next morning? TIA. We’re in Zanzibar!