Paradise Lost

This is a bit of a melodramatic title I know (and to be honest I stole it from a museum exhibit) but I feel that this issue something that needs to be addressed and I couldn’t think of a better title. Zanzibar is so often sold as a tropical paradise vacation and we so seldom stop to think about the costs of this popularity.

People on the island (and here I am referring to the family that I live with, some of the teachers at the school where I take Kiswahili classes and co-workers) are pretty quick to tell you that life on the island is getting harder. Prices are rising and jobs are scarce. Well, prices are rising everywhere, but it seemed odd to me that jobs would be so scarce on an island where tourism is booming – shouldn’t this be creating jobs for people?

But when you ask around in the shops and stall and hotels and taxis one predominant trend that emerges is that the majority of people you talk to don’t come from Zanzibar. They come from Dar es Salaam and sometimes ever further away and they have come to take advantage of the presence of tourists.

Popular knowledge will tell you that the tourism industry considers local Zanzibaris to be too lazy to provide effective and efficient employees in the tourism sector. Local Zanzibaris for their part, are quick to say that this is why people who work in tourist areas are so aggressive: they’re mainlanders, real Zanzibaris could never act like that!

And not only are many of the local people not benefiting from Zanzibar’s growing reputation as a tourist destination but Stone Town itself it falling apart in places. Various efforts to make the town more appealing to tourists have led developers to renovate buildings using inappropriate materials (such as cement – apparently it doesn’t let the buildings breathe enough and tends to flake off after a while). Also, residents do not have the money to maintain their houses and as a result buildings are literally falling apart across town. Apparently every year during the raining season a handful of buildings succumb and crumble down to become improvised garbage dumps (it doesn’t seem like there’s any organized system to remove garbage from town so empty/abandoned lots become garbage dumps). The smell can be pretty bad some days and it attracts large numbers of rats. There is some development and renovation but from what I’ve seen it’s mainly in the tourist-friendly Forodhani Gardens. It’s pretty sad for a city that is designated a UNESCO heritage site.

And it leads to some interesting discussions about the mixed blessing that is tourism. The development of some areas over others, the gradual disappearance of residents as more space is demanded by visitors who can pay more and who drive up prices, the development of certain parts of the culture (the parts that can be sold) while the rest is swept under the rug…It will be interesting to see how Stone Town changes over the next few years…to see if it can maintain the integrity of its history that is so much a part of its charm.

Things I Miss...

I arrived in Tanzania July 7, 2008 and I thought I would commemorate the one month mark by listing off things that I miss (at least that I’ve noticed so far)…hopefully this helps to get it out my system. Although I have to admit that I’m pretty spoiled here in Zanzibar…there isn’t a lot that I couldn’t get if I needed it and was willing to pay for it!

First off: Family and Friends of course!

And now on to the real list! (In no particular order)

- Toilet seats (this is a pretty common one I think)
- Clean feet (I feel like my feet have been dirty for a month!)
- Good chocolate…
- Food that’s not deep fried, even balls of rice are deep fried!
- My feet not being covered in mosquito bites (I keep the fan on really high at work so that they can’t land on me but my feet are under the desk so it’s like a free-for-all down there)
- A house without some version of live Planet Earth playing constantly in the ceiling (between the pigeons and the mice that live up there)
- A house where I don’t name the mice – there’s one that lives in the wall by my bed and I call him Clumsy because it sounds like he’s constantly either dropping things or falling…every day I hear *scratch scratch scratch…thump thump thump thump…squeal squeal squeal…*
- Towns that aren’t made up almost entirely of alleyways (they still make me nervous)
- Supermarkets (I know, this is a spoiled one, but come on!)
- Movies…there’s no movie theatre and I really want to see the new Batman movie…and the new Harry Potter movie is coming out this fall! (Again, this is a spoiled one, but I like movies!)
- Hot showers…I miss those.
- Showers period…I’m supposed to have one but it’s not working so all I have is a bucket.

Differences...

I tried to title this one tactfully. What follows in this post are a few descriptions of events that I’ve either witnessed or be told about…events like the ones you read about in the newspaper or guidebooks or heard about and say, with a healthy amount of skepticism, “uh huh…”.

Thief!
There’s a VSO (Volunteer Overseas Service, UK) in my office and he told me this story. He was walking through Darajani (the main daladala-crazy minibuses-stop in Stone Town) when he heard someone yell "thief!" Now, we’d all heard or read about how crowds treat thieves who are caught red-handed in East Africa, but I don’t know if we really believed it. My Rough Guides book recommends that if you do call thief, be prepared to intervene once your belongings are returned as crowds are known to severely beat and even kill thieves. This story was confirmed to me last week. He said that the crowd got a hold of this guy and started beating him…and then the police came and did the same and then dragged him away and apparently you could still hearing him screaming in the police station later. I’ve heard many people say how scared they are of thieves and pickpockets here but when you realize how much they risk, especially in more crowded areas, it gives you a different perspective.

Superstitions
Sometimes you’ll be having a conversation about something and people make an observation to which you have no idea how to respond. I was talking with a girl the other day about Pemba (the northern island in the Zanzibar archipelago). She was telling me how she had visited the island once and never wanted to go back, because there was little electricity, because there are a lot of thieves, because you have to be inside before dark, and because there are a lot of witches. I had to stop my reflexive snort of disbelief because it was obvious that this was a very serious subject for her. I asked around at work as was told that in fact Pemba is generally thought to be the source of any and all evil spirits that make their way to Unguja (aka: Zanzibar Island) and that this is a really serious situation here. I was told that a few years ago there was mass hysteria in Stone Town as rumour spread of an evil spirit that entered people’s homes at night and suffocated them. Apparently people all over town were sleeping in the streets because they were too scared to sleep inside their homes and the government had to make appeals for calm over the radio. Of course it was assumed that this evil spirit had strayed or been sent from Pemba…I’m also told, although I’ve never read this myself, that Pemba is known internationally as a place where witches from around the world go for training…?

Possession
*Some details of this story have been changed to protect people’s privacy etc.

I was in a *meeting* the other day when all of a sudden the girl sitting next to me goes all tense and starts making these really odd and kind of scary faces and twitching and convulsing. I think she’s having a seizure or something and ask her if she’s okay, what’s happening, should I call someone…but she says she’s fine and asks me to continue with what I was saying. Everyone else is giving her these very wary glances but no one says anything so I’m not really sure what’s going on so I turn back to what I was doing and then suddenly I feel her hand running over my shoulder and back…I jump, I don’t really like people touching me and look back at her. She’s still making odd faces and now everyone is staring at her and trying to talk to her and apparently she can’t hear them or isn’t listening. They are trying to see if she is okay and trying to get her to go lie down, just to rest for a bit, etc. She’s saying “no, no, we’re having a discussion…” She stays for a few more minutes although she doesn’t seem to have any awareness of what is going on around her and then she just gets up and walks out of the room.

I decide to ask the obvious question: “what just happened here?” and they lean forward and tell me, very quietly: “she’s possessed by evil spirits”. I would laugh except that I just saw her and don’t really know what to make of it, and they obviously believe it here and take it really seriously. They’re just glad she’s gone, although I don’t see how leaving her on her own to wait for it to pass really helps…I ask about this and am told that she’d rather be here and she doesn’t like to be home when this happens, so maybe things aren’t well at home either?

I ask around and am told that she’s been seen overcoming men like twice her size; she’s just that strong when she has one of these episodes. Apparently her family takes her quite regularly to a local witch doctor but that it’s not helping. I ask if she’s been to a hospital to be checked out by a doctor and they say yeah, and all of the tests came back clean – that clinically they can’t find anything wrong with her. Anyway, so she starts having these episodes really frequently all week and no one knows what to do about it. But it’s really disturbing to see her twitching and convulsing and everyone is too scared to go and help her. I’m told to be very careful if I’m near her as she is known to become quite violent. We talked to other people about it, just brought it up that we were concerned for her health and safety…and then her husband came to get her yesterday and took her home I guess, and we haven’t seen her since.

It was a really odd situation, especially as my first response was she needs to go to a hospital and see a doctor whereas people here truly do believe in the paranormal and therefore possession by evil spirits is a completely rational conclusion. I just hope that she gets the help she needs and that she’s okay.