Zanzibar
Hello everyone and welcome. In this post, I will talk about my Zanzibar experience. On my second day in Dar Es Salaam, I decided to go on a day trip to Zanzibar from Tanganyika. A round-trip ticket is about $70 USD and the ships leave roughly every hour. The journey from Dar Es Salaam takes about 2 hours each way. Zanzibar is known for its many beautiful beaches and crystal clear waters. I did not go to any beaches because I wanted to use my day in the most efficient way and see as much of Zanzibar as I can see in a day.
Zanzibar is a beautiful island with a population of around 1M people. It is a unique island off the coast of Tanganyika. Tanganyika is the original name of Tanzania’s mainland. Zanzibar functions like an autonomous country. Zanzibar has their own elected president, and customs when you arrive. I traveled and was greeted by my friend at the port. The boat was a high-speed boat and they packed that boat way past its passenger limit. I was thinking to myself I hope nothing happens to this boat because there are not enough life jackets for everyone. I realize that East African public transport is very disorganized. You cannot find timetables online for any type of transport you just have to go to the transportation company and ask or ask people on the street.
When we were in route the wind was blowing very hard and I sitting on the top deck near the back edge of the boat and my left ear pod flew out my ear. I just remember the way it happened it flew off my ear and bounced three times off the boat floor and slid off of the boat into the Ocean. I saw everybody’s eyes following the ear pod as it moved and fell and they all looked at me and I was like oh damn oh well. The Port of Zanzibar is really small there is not much space at the dock for people to board and egress however there are plans to upgrade the Port of Zanzibar to handle more capacity for passengers but you have to pay close attention to what is happening at the docks because it is so chaotic and a foreigner would struggle to find the proper boat to board.
My friend welcomed me to Zanzibar.
The streets of Zanzibar are very narrow. Many of these buildings were built in the 15th century and you can see the different architectural buildings there. People were still driving Bodabodas through these narrow streets. I was scared that I would get run over. My friend and I walked around Stone Town which is the older buildings. These buildings were built so long ago that they used some type of limestone mortar mixture to build these buildings. I learned that it is forbidden to build buildings in Zanzibar with concrete because of its ability to absorb heat which increases the air temperature in an urban area, which in engineering terms we call the Urban Heat Island effect. Zanzibar is a very hot and humid place also it sits close to the equator.
These were some old castles built by the Portuguese.
East African Slave Trade
My friend took me to the slave castles in Zanzibar which is now used as a memorial. First I would like to state that this experience was so much to process being in that castle breathing in that stuffy hot dungeon seeing claw marks everywhere on the stone walls and seeing and reading about what went on. I cannot even express the whole spectrum of my feelings while there in this post. Some feelings are so great that it is beyond language. I know that these types of emotions are something that only other African descendants of slaves would be capable of fully understanding because of our history. I strongly recommend that all the descendants of the Atlantic Slave trade go to this place in Zanzibar. There is so much information there that you will find answers to questions that you did not even think about. I started to connect the dots between the Eastern and Western Africa Slave trade and realize that they are not independent of each other despite never being talked about or discussed in a meaningful depth.
An important part of Zanzibar’s history is that it was the biggest slave trade hub in the world. The East African slave trade is the longest slave trade to ever exist in this world. It even started before the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade and helped fuel it also. Over 100+ million Africans were brought to Zanzibar from the mainland and enslaved and sent to Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. During the 18th century, Zanzibar was a British Protectorate but was managed by the Omani Sultan who became very rich from human trafficking. At one point the capital of Oman was Zanzibar. Tanzania itself has been under many different colonial rules from the Portuguese, Germans, Omans, and British rule.
Going through that castle brought up a lot of mixed emotions. I learned a lot about the details of what transpired in the Eastern slave trade which is not even talked about in the US education system. They hardly taught us about the Atlantic slave trade when we were in school. I think now with social media people are starting to learn more about these human atrocities because information is so easily accessible now. When you walk into the castle the first thing I saw were monuments of the enslaved Africans in chains.
One of the holding dungeons for Africans in captivity.
The upper level of the castle it is used as an exhibit hall and gift shop nowadays. There is also a church on the other side of the building when we went they were having Sunday service, I sat in the service for a little bit and realized the praising and singing I heard sounded just like the way African Americans conduct worship services. It was very identical despite the language difference between us.
This is the dungeon one of the rooms where they would hold hundreds of captive Africans for long periods of time. Many of them died in these places. Just being in that room for 10 minutes you barely could breathe and it was so hot I was sweating uncontrollably. I just couldn’t imagine being chained up here for months at a time with people defecating and vomiting and decaying bodies just all in this room. The tour guide was explaining the process of breaking down the captives so the slave traders could sell them, but hearing the details this was nothing less than a systematic genocide and the survivors were the ones who would be sent to foreign lands. The slave traders’ mindset was that if they were not the strongest slaves then they did not want them so they would find ways to systematically kill the captives.
With my friend being a local Zanzibarian, I did not really know much about Swahili culture and, I was asking him questions about what languages Zanzibar people speak and he told me they only speak Swahili and do not have tribes like Tanginiyka (Mainland Tanzania) because of the slave history. Their identities were taken from them just like how African Americans lost their identities and only spoke English. We both shared our cultures and history and I learned a lot bout Zanzibar on top of the castle tour. We really started realizing after sharing stories that both of our peoples share ancestors. It was definitely a great bonding experience after going through those castles. We became so close like brothers and we still keep in close contact.
Overall Zanzibar is must visit place when going to Tanzania! I will always be grateful to my local friends really taking me around different parts of the country and teaching me Swahili. I definitely will return to Zanzibar to explore more of the island there are so many things to see.
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