Teacher on Two Wheels

Above:  Images from Stone Town.  Click on the bottom image to see it in more detail on its Flickr page.  Click ‘All Sizes’ above the image to see it in a larger size

Taken from my journal:   10/23/09   Stone Town, Zanzibar

Stone Town is the cultural and commercial hub of Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous island off Tanzania’s coast.  Known for it’s labyrinthine maze of allies that dices up the downtown area, Stone Town is a place where shadows thrive; where mosques cry out through the megaphone mouths of their minarets; and where veiled school girls walk home whispering amongst themselves, oblivious to the groups of camera-wielding tourists hunting scenes to shoot and take home.

The charm of the place lies in its close-quarters-ness—the tightness of its streets and the odd angles of its intersections—and the way afternoon light cascades down the faces of its buildings like half-frozen paint slipping down a fresh canvass.

The doors in Stone Town are often so ornate that entering buildings seems pointless, for nothing found inside could stimulate the mind and eyes as much.  Kaleidoscopic designs punctuated with nipples of weathered brass form the doors’ edges, while handles rounded by the touch of a thousand hands bulls-eye their centers.

Everywhere Muslims—almost entirely of the Sunni sect—walk under cap and veil.  The men wear earth-toned, patterned cylindrical hats atop their heads, and women bury the contours of their bodies under ankle-length cloaks and bright head scarves.

The eyes of some women float down the street anchored in clouds of black fabric, two orbs of identity set against masks of flowing obsidian and coal.

Jewelers sell golden pendants and bracelets across from carpeted mosques and next to cluttered stationary stores.

Chef-hatted fish slingers sell kabobs of tuna, kingfish, and lobster for a buck a piece each night under bare light bulbs in the plaza by the waterfront.

Fanny packs donutting the guts of toursts bob and stop and float down aisles of souvenir manifestations of African cliches and stereotypes—zebra-head-tipped pencils and banana-leaf-jacketed journals, for example—and occasionally these same fanny packs spill forth their innards of shillings and plastic to purchase some kitsch trinket or another.

Old men stew in groups of three and four on concrete ledges in the afternoon sunlight like lounging lizards, nodding at passerby and sipping spiced tea from plum-sized glass cups.

Cats with matted coats that betray their bastardness lay sprawled across stoops and gutters like 3D smears of looming death, disease, and sadness.  I pay them no mind, but one man tries to spoon milk into one dying, emaciated cat’s mouth.  Too weak to swallow, the cat rejects his offering, puddling a white, watery halo around its fallen head.