Exotic Stonetown, Zanzibar

Tipu Tip's Residence.  He was the last
slave trader in Stonetown

We left Arusha for Stonetown, Zanzibar, the only real city on the island and the site of the last legal slave trade.  It was a nice and relatively smooth flight, which provided us with a nice, albeit brief, view of the top of Mount Kilimajaro.  We also enjoyed the company of one of one the past presidents of Tanzania on the flight.  We didn’t catch his name, but his presence was duly noted with full acknowledgment (and we were all required to remain seated while he and his entourage departed the plan upon arrival in Dar).

We knew when we were leaving Arusha that we were leaving the comfort of inland Tanzania, where the heat is dry and the nights can be cool.  Getting out on to the tarmac at Stonetown airport was, however, surprisingly comfortable.  That transition was short lived, for Stonetown turned us into noodles with its humidity. 

Roberta admiring a typical Zanzibar door
 to a residence in Stonetown

We stayed at Africa House Hotel in Stone Town, a wonderful and historical building that used to be the British Officer’s Club.  The building is right on the beach-facing road pretty much in the heart of the city.  The street address is Suicide Lane, which was a bit of a worry.  I don’t think we got to a good state of understanding how it got its name (although one rumor is that this was the only way out for the slaves that were sold there).

Knowing that it was the former British Officer’s club was a bit unsettling, but the interior and its decorations has likely changed little since it stopped being a BO club.  This is not to say that the place wasn’t up to quality. On the contrary, the hotel has been kept in great shape, there is lots of detail in the building that made for most interesting viewing and study and the rooms were rich with character.  

Sunset Lounge, Africa House Hotel,
the place to be at sunset in Stonewtown

We each had our own 4-poster bed draped with mosquito netting.  The beds were made from solid heavy wood, almost an ebony wood.  The height to the bed was so high that by the second day we needed to ask for a stool for Mom, just so she could get in and out of bed, otherwise it was a complete jump to the floor for her to get out of bed.  Also, our rooms had these really cool wooden chests that were carved and decorated in traditional Zanzibar style.  Kevin showed me that like his, mine had a secret compartment in one of the drawers.

We had three rooms, which all faced the Indian Ocean, which was only just across this quiet street.  We went upstairs from our bedrooms to the Sunset Bar, perhaps the most famous lounge in all of Zanzibar and every night it proved to be the most popular, at least from about 6 to 9 PM.  The lounge was a rather large sheltered patio region with lots of ceiling fans and it all opened to the Indian Ocean and typical dhow boats anchored in the immediate harbor.  The setting was spectacular, the heat and humidity took some adjustment.

Kevin visiting hooka heaven in the
lounge of the Africa House hotel

Just behind the Sunset Bar was an enormous Hookah Lounge, which had a strong attraction for Kevin.  We had photographic evidence of him enjoying the pillows and hookah-ing away, at least for the camera.  The two lounges and the corridors, the lobby, and stairways were all wonderfully decorated with Zanzibar style and there were plenty of early 20^th century photos all around the hotel.

We decided to have dinner at the Hotel restaurant the first night there, as it was rated highly as one of the better places in town to get dinner.  It lived up to its reputation.  We were eating out on the veranda with only about three or four other tables of guests when a strong wind gust came up and knocked over one of the umbrellas providing shelter for the dinner tables.  Many of us quickly responded to batting down the hatches, but at the same time we turned our attention to the night sky, the full moon on the Indian Ocean and worried if the Black Pearl had come to port.  We prepared ourselves for the onslaught of Captain Barbosa and his motley crew of pirates.  [You just have to watch – Pirates of the Caribbean if you don’t know what I’m talking about.]

Our breakfast dining area, complete with a
view of the Indian Ocean just beyond the veranda

The next day, with our trusty guide of Zanzibar, we went for a self-guided tour of Stone Town.  We enjoyed the outdoor market, although parts of it required a strong nose.  The day’s harvest of swordfish had come in and were being prepared right there in the open area, with some gutting occurring quite close to city drains that head straight to the sea.

We took a tour of the old Slave market area and saw the very gruesome and pathetic conditions of the cells where they kept the slaves before auctioning.  We then went to the open area, which was the city market pits, where the slaves were auctioned off. There is a moving art piece there, a sculpture of five Africans chained by the neck to one another, down in a pit to where their shoulder were at ground level. It is a very sad history of Zanzibar’s slave trade, which lasted to the 1870’s and was only made illegal after David Livingstone made a strong appeal to the British parliament.

Slave Market Memorial in Stonetown, Zanzibar

Later we continued our tour of the old town by stopping in some of the shops, seeing spice merchants, retailers of arts and craft, makers of the famous Zanzibar chests of dark wood, complete with intricate carvings and brass inlays, and other sights.  Mom and Donna checked out one of the churches and found a nun named Winifred.

Later in the day we had lunch, rested and adjusted to the heat of the mid-day.  Kevin and Donna took in the beach and the rest of us relaxed in our air conditioned rooms and later mixed it up with a rousing game of canasta in the Sunset Bar.