Location: Jambiani, Zanzibar

Pauline and I ended up having a few drinks by the hotel pool last night with a wonderful group: Sebastian, Laura, Nesley, and Janina. But don’t worry friends! I didn’t take too big of a bite from that bad decision bagel, and only stayed up until 1 AM. Look at me being responsible in my irresponsibility.

GLORIOUSLY we slept in until 9, and meandered down to the hotel lobby to say goodbye to almost everyone from the tour. I was sad to see some of them go, but luckily Kayla and Janina decided to come along with Pauline and I to visit Stone Town today!

Dula helped us catch one last bus to town, where we wandered the market, also known as the souk, for hours. It was blissful. The 4 of us rehashed the entire trip, talking about our favourite parts, and some characters who were part of the tour group. We each had small souvenirs in mind we wanted to find and so we stepped into a lot of the little antique shops, art shops and tourist shops to hunt down our treasures. Intricate doors are so iconic in Stone Town that you can buy miniaturized versions of them in wood, as magnets, paintings, t-shirts, whatever!

We made our way back to the Old Slave Market Exhibit that Dula had introduced us to a couple of days ago and while it was well worth seeing, it was also very heavy. Zanzibar was one of the largest and most notorious slave markets in East Africa for hundreds of years, which means many of the locals are direct descendants, and we knew that this was going to be a tough exhibit.

Our guide, Ismael, told us all about the history of the buildings and the whipping tree where slaves were tested for ‘strength’ to determine their price on the market. It was extremely affecting to be taken down into the basement where slaves were kept in rooms so small and short they couldn’t stand up or move away from each other. They were kept in the dark for days with no food or water, and had only a narrow channel to go to the bathroom in that would periodically flood from the canals and ‘clean it out’. They were forced to drink from the same water channel to survive which often ended up in outbreaks of cholera or other diseases. Up to 75 people or more were kept in these ‘holding rooms’ at a time, awaiting their appraisal. It was rough to see and all of us were pretty quiet after this as we read through the written portion of the museum. It’s one thing to learn about this in school and an entirely other thing to see the space and read the accounts and look at photos. We all struggled to find words after leaving that encompassed how we felt about it. I am never ever sure how to write about it later in the day because there’s no way to distil hundreds of years of brutal history in a way that does it justice.

We ended up wandering up the road and stopping in at a Swahili/Indian restaurant for lunch to talk about the trip as a whole, and shake off some of the heaviness. There was a lovely moment where I forgot I was on a trip in Tanzania at all and was just so comfortable that it felt like I was having lunch with old friends at home. It was almost jarring to remember where we were! The time passed so quickly it was suddenly late afternoon and we needed to go!

We said our goodbyes as Kayla was off to the airport, and Janina to the other side of the island. Pauline and I are staying at the same beach hotel we’ve been at for the last couple of days and I couldn’t be more pleased to just get to relax in a beach chair for the last bit of the trip. Extra good sleeps, here I come.

Sav