Cindy and Mike Do the World!: Jambiani and Nungwi, Zanzibar

We headed for Jambiani (on the east side of Zanzibar) and found ourselves in a quiet town. The beach had more local people than tourists, including fishermen and kids playing soccer after school. It felt a bit strange to wear my bathing suit on the beach since the locals (especially women) were quite covered up and so I ended up covering up quite a bit too, only taking off my t-shirt and shorts to sprint to the water for a dip and covering up immediately after coming out. We stayed at a hotel run by a German family and they must do a lot of advertising in Germany since it was filled with German tourists! Even the German tourists were commenting on this, hahaha. We got a ride to Jambiani from a man named Iddy (who is a friend of the manager at the tent camp we stayed at during the safari). He lives in Jambiani and before leaving the town and heading for Nungwi, he took us to his house and we met his family and his kids.

Nungwi was a different place altogether, filled with more tourists but also nicer beaches. It did not feel as conservative, although perhaps that was due to the sheer number of foreigners wearing bikinis and speedos on the beach. We took a snorkel tour one day on an old boat called a dhow; they packed this boat to the max with people! Mike watched them spill gasoline all over the wood...not a comforting sight since we subsequently watched many of the tourists light up cigarettes. We were ready to jump over the edge and start swimming at a moment's notice.

Driving from Jambiani to Nungwi and then back to the airport afterward took us through some very small, poor towns. Each town has a school, although they all seemed very basic and without electricity. I began to notice that some of the children were without shoes. I started looking at everyone's feet as we passed through the towns and noticed that this was predominant and of the norm. Many houses did not have roofs and no one was living in them. We asked Iddy about this and he told us that it's cheap to build the stone part of the house but the roof is expensive (since it's made out of wood or metal) and you need to have enough money to pay for it at the beginning (there is obviously no such thing as a mortgage).

Zanzibar felt very exotic, with fresh fruit and spices (including saffron) everywhere. It felt a bit like I stepped back 100 years in time, although in a different way than Tibet. Yet for all of its beauty, including its wonderful beaches, really good food and some very friendly people, there are also problems, ones that you don't see if you are just travelling through briefly. There is an underlying issue of violence against women and female genital mutilation is still practice, despite it being illegal. There is a level of corruption among the police and we got stopped several times while being driven through Zanzibar and again in Dar es salaam (and this time, our driver had to pay them).