Enock finally arrives at night and we all spend the night at Fred’s house so that we can go to Zanzibar early. Unfortunately, the ferry does not run on Africa time like everything else, and left sharply at 7:15am. We arrived at 7:20am and had to wait until 9:30am to catch the next ferry to the island that was once an independent country on a 2 hour boat ride. I am glad to be able to pay for Enock and Pili’s ticket, which costs 1/3 of my non-Tanzanian ticket. They have been in Dar many times but never to Zanzibar or on a boat. Sometimes I forget the privilege I was born into and how unfair it was that my friends who were around my age would not be able to afford a $26 boat ride, which is more than even the most educated person in Shirati makes in one day.
Enock is studying marine agriculture, kind of like marine biology with an emphasis on fisheries, so he was delighted to be on the boat. I loved catching up with Enock and Pili. Enock is enjoying his studies and hopes to come back to Shirati and work with the fisheries management on Lake Victoria. Pili is the top of her class at her nursing school but she misses home since is about a 24 hours bus ride away from Shirati. Pili, the headstrong and determined no-b.s. woman, is in love to my delight and her boyfriend is a economics student near Dar named Gerry and I get to talk to him on the phone when he calls like 10x’s a day. Pili and Enock spend half of the 2.5 hour boat ride outside enjoying the wind and rocking of the boat. They are also very happy to see each other again since the childhood friends have not seen each other since last October before leaving for university in Shirati. Unfortunately, the last ferry leaves at 3:30pm and we arrive at about 12pm and spend about a half hour buying a return ticket and waiting in line so we have such precious time on the island. I briefly meet up with some of the mzungus that stayed in Shirati since they coincidentally happened to be in Zanzibar as well. Then the three of us wandered to an old church to learn about the slave trade from a personal tour guide.
Zanzibar used to be a slave trade hub where the slaves captured from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and other East African nations were chained at the neck and forced to Zanzibar. They were then crammed into tiny underground chambers for men and women and without food, water or bathrooms for several days. Once slaves were ready for auction, they were brought out under a big tree and whipped. The ones that cried were worth less since they were not deemed as strong. Men were sold and sometimes a child or two was thrown in for free, an extra incentive for your property. Women were also sold. Leftover children that were not given away were slaughtered and thrown into the ocean since they were considered useless for working and time consuming to raise. Most slaves sold ended up in the Middle East and some slaves were brought from Zanzibar to West Africa. Male slaves were castrated in the Middle East to prevent them sleeping with the slave owner’s wife. Pili and Enock were as horrified as I was as we were learning about this gruesome history and witnessing the small cramped underground chambers and the very tree that the auctioning would occur. Humans are capable of so much good and so much evil. I still can’t imagine viewing slaves as property and not as human simply because of the color of their skin. One priest back during the slave trade days felt the same way. He would purchase the most sick slaves and provide health care and release them. I forget his name, but he eventually built a church after the abolishment of the slave trade and the church sits above where some of the 15 underground chambers used to be. A monument was created in his name as well as the memory of all who perished and suffered during this horrible human rights violation.
As an American, I am always appalled to recently learn of all of these different human rights violations in the past and present and feeling so ignorant for not knowing. It’s not completely my own fault since our media features stories centric to America or the war. Our history books revolve around American history and once deviated to the Holocaust. If the purpose of learning history in public schools is to teach us about the past and not re-learn mistakes, then why don’t we learn about it all over the world. The ethnic cleansing in Rwanda in the 1990’s. The current oppression and human rights violation in North Korea and Burma. The utopian agrarian society model that failed in both Tanzania and Cambodia. I only recently started bringing to reality all of the atrocities in Cambodia from 1975-9 from which my dad fled as a refugee and learned that 25% of the population was slaughtered especially city-dwellers and intellectuals and the survivors were forced into concentration camps. The weapons for this massacre were provided by the US and China. There are also policies that undermined Haiti’s government and development by the French and US. The more I learned about US military history supporting Mubarak in Egypt until his overthrow or involvement in Libya prior to the current situation, the more shocked I am about the infliction of violence and control and how this ultimately makes the poor of the countries suffer while supporting the corrupt. Maybe it is no coincidence our education ignores international history.
Regressing back to Zanzibar, we run and catch the last ferry and Enock and Pili again enjoy their second boat ride. Since today was full of new experiences, I suggest that we try a new ethnic food that neither of them has tried. We rule out hamburgers since both have tried it. Pili is decided on Indian food and Asian food when I bring it up and Enock wants to try that and pizza. To our luck, we enter a sort of food court with 5 fast food places. So it’s definitely not going to be authentic and gourmet food, but it’s a good way for us to try Indian, Chinese, and Thai food as well as pizza and ice cream. I found bottled diet coke and was quite pleased. What a great day in Zanzibar and a perfect last night with my two good friends. We all have to return back to our schools/home tomorrow but know that we will meet again. I know that sadly I won’t be able to return for probably another year or two but promise to come back again.
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