Zanzibar!

For our long weekend, a few of us decided to visit Zanzibar, which is an island best described as schizophrenic. Beautiful beaches are a haven for tourists and are covered with great resorts, night clubs, shops, etc - your basic bikini-clad crowd. It's also home to a conservative Muslim community, where women are walk the streets completely covered. Mosques and Sunni madrassas line the narrow streets. Zanzibar has many museums, which tell the history of the spice and ivory trades, the exploitation by Oman, England, and many others, and the eventual union with mainland Tanzania. We visited a cathedral, built on the exact location of the last open market for the slave trade. The cathedral wasn't nearly as old as we'd like to imagine, and we were painfully reminded of our own nation's very large role in the horrific events that took place there.

On our first night we went to a restaurant, where a Tanzanian man invited us to join his table, already full of an interesting group of locals and Europeans. The conversation flowed for hours, with an awkward pause when I inquired about his line of work. He'd said earlier that he'd lived in Zanzibar his whole life. Those who knew him well laughed; he dodged the question for awhile, eventually admitting that he owned the restaurant. The next morning we were touring a former sultan's palace when another Tanzanian man who'd been at the restaurant, but not our table, approached us. He immediately started gushing about how lucky we'd been to hang out with the other guy, which confused us (the place was great but meeting the owner of a restaurant isn't the kind of thing we go crazy over). He looked at us like we were idiots and then clued us in -- the guy does own the restaurant, but he also happens to be the son of the president of Zanzibar!!! We had no idea. (Side note - Zanzibar has been part of Tanzania since the 1960's, but still has their own president - perhaps more like a governor???)

We're on the north shore now, enjoying the beaches. Our hostel is called Paradise and we're not complaining. No clue who we'll meet tonight but I'll keep you posted.