Still in Zanzibar!

Hi everyone! I’m still in beautiful Zanzibar. After Stone Town, I spent four days in Nungwi, in the north of the island, and three days in Jambiani, on the east coast. I liked Jambiani less than Nungwi, mainly because of the tide, which recedes by hundreds of meters, making it almost always impossible to swim. In both places, though, I didn’t do very much.

In Nungwi, I went on a tour: we went to see dolphins, had lunch on a small island, and I had the best snorkeling I’ve had so far in Africa, thanks to the crystal-clear water. There were loads of colorful fish of all shapes and sizes, lazily drifting around the corals.
There was also a little stall where you could swap used books by adding one euro. I rather reluctantly gave away a wonderful book, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, and somewhat randomly picked up Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett, an author I had never read before. It’s a very good spy story. Spoiler: in the end, he dies. Then I returned it and picked up Christiane F. – We Children of Bahnhof Zoo, which I had read when I was a teenager. I remembered it quite well, perhaps also because I had seen the film as well, which is very accurate.

From Jambiani, one day I cycled to a nearby village to the north, Paje. The distance was just a little over ten kilometers, but the day was extremely hot and humid, and by the time I got back I was half dead.

After that, I went back to Stone Town for a few more days. By chance, I met Min again, the Chinese-Canadian girl I had also met in Botswana and Malawi. She was with a French girl, Celine, and for dinner we went to a small park near the port where, in the evening, dozens of stalls sell fish skewers, baby octopus, sugarcane juice, and other tasty treats.

Now I’m back in Nungwi, where I’ve taken the same bungalow on the beach. It’s really nice here, I’m almost thinking of moving here forever and changing my name to Zanzibaro.


Me and two Italian friends I met in Nungwi. Across Africa, Zanzibar seems by far the most popular destination for Italians.
At night, the local guys light bonfires on the beach, and people sit around drinking under the stars while they play the bongo drums. The hypnotic dance of the flames, the sound of the waves in the background, the starry sky above, the moral law within… sometimes we even end up singing a Swahili song that you hear everywhere here, which goes: "Jambo, jambo bwana! - Habari gani? - Nzuri sana - Wageni - Wakaribishwa - Zanzibar Yetu - Hakuna Matata!". Once you’ve memorized it, you can practically have a conversation in Swahili, because it contains almost all the phrases you need!


Fishing boat in Jambiani.


Women harvesting seaweed in Jambiani.


Rudimentary sailboat in Jambiani.


Jambiani.


Woman in Stone Town.


People in Stone Town.


Street scene in Stone Town.


A cat sharpening its claws on a wooden door, Stone Town.


A kid looking up, despite the sign suggesting not to.


Window in Stone Town.


Glittering sea in Nungwi.


Nungwi.


Young girls in Nungwi.


Boat in Nungwi.


Women harvesting seaweed in Nungwi


Sunset at the beach in Nungwi.


Sunset over Nungwi.


And finally, a little quiz:

Who was born in Zanzibar?

a) Queen Elizabeth
b) Freddie Mercury
c) Prince
d) Martin Luther King