Zanzibar

I've wanted to visit Zanzibar ever since student days in Edinburgh days when one resident of the boarding house I lived in was a veteranian from Zanzibar. A wonderful, gentle, devout soul named Saleh Idris Mohammed with whom we kept in touch for some years and then lost contact. Zanzibar also wafted to the mind magical mystery mixed with pungent smells of spice, of course, as one of world's main producers of cloves for centuries. Over the centuries Zanzibar shipped out fortunes in ivory, rhino horn, gold, copper, spices.

In 1503, the Portuguese moved in, followed by the Omanis in 1698 who made Zanzibar the capital of the Omani empire. Then for a time, under a non-interference agreement with Germany, the British came more and more into play; in part this was was another piece of the 19th century movement to abolish slave trade.

David Livingstone made Zanzibar his base for his last expedition. He was vehemently anti-slavery and instrumental in ending the trade. The reminders of slave trade and its cruelties remain at the slave auction site and dungeons which are now a museum.

Eventually, in 1964, and after a bloodbath of revolution and genocide, the island nation of Zanzibar merged with its neighbor Tanganika, to form Tanzania; however, Zanzibar remains semi-autonomous.

In central area are the wonderful old buildings on narrow winding streets of what is known as Stone Town, which is a World Heritage site.

A few other factoids:

• The Equator runs through Tanzania.
• The oldest mosque in the Southern Hemisphere was built in Zanzibar.
• Zanzibar was the first region in Africa to produce color television (1973).
• Freddie Mercury of the band Queen was born here.

The colobus monkeys endemic to Zanzibar hospitably and playfully performed for us in the groves of the nature reserve. Later I wandered a harbor park and Stone Town on my own, having gotten a bit wearied of piking about in a little herd! That gave me the chance to strike up conversations with a couple young men, a shopkeeper, and--at more length--with two young women who were in the park doing their homework; both are studying at a secretarial college.