A marvellous holiday

When we arrive in Dar es Salaam we have one week to bridge, before meeting Peter's parents on Zanzibar, where we will spend a two-week holiday with them. Dar es Salaam doesn't live up to her fame of lively town, cosy bustle and lots of things to discover. It's too neat, too organised and especially too dead during the holidays and the evenings. Thanks to Ramadan and Sugar-feast we witness three Sundays in this town, three days on which everything is closed and there is not a soul about. Even at night people have locked themselves in their homes and there is not a lot to do.
We do a number of sensible things: take medicine against a possible bilharzia-contamination, inquire at the Tanzanian immigration-office for an extension of our visa and visit the Mozambican embassy. And, like we're supposed to do, visit the National Museum and the oldest buildings in town. The completely renewed fish-market is a feast for our eyes and a punishment for our noses. The wooden fishing boats come and go. The catch is carried from the boats to the stalls in bags made from palm-leaves. Men and women descale and fillet the fish with sharp knives; the highest bidder is the buyer. Part of the market are the dozens of hoteli's, small open air restaurants where fat cooks prepare rice-soup with fish. We enjoy a nice meal for which both of us are rewarded the next day with a nice portion of diarrhoea. We'd better keep preparing ourselves.

Friday we take the ferry to Zanzibar. The fast ferry (one hour and a half) is twice as expensive as the slow ferry (two and a half hour). We take the latter, we're not in a hurry. The original two and a half hour-estimate wasn't very accurate, it takes us four hours to reach the island. The boat is really slow, we are inches away from having to go into the water and push it. Ironically the boat is called 'Mandeleo' which means 'Progress'.
The old centre of Zanzibar, Stonetown, is even more beautiful than the pictures promised: authentic houses, yellow beaches and waving palm trees at a blue-green bay. Despite our map we're lost very quickly in the hundreds of narrow alleys with name-signs. This is part of being in Stonetown though.
Accommodation is two to five times more expensive than at the mainland. In the Florida-guesthouse we manage to get a 50% discount when we take two rooms for a whole week, thanks to the low season. Then Peter gets into bed, with a throat-ache and 39 degrees fever. The large differences between the air-conditioned internet-cafes in Dar es Salaam and the temperature outside cooked his goose. Peter chest is still crawling with the red pimples we got in Bagamoyo, mine have disappeared.

Saturday Peter's fever has gone and I, doctor Karin, allow him to leave his bed. In the Forodhani-gardens we eat our fill at the stalls that overflow with fish- and meat-barbecue, we quench our thirst with ice-cold sugarcane-juice spiced with lemon.

Then the special evening arrives, St. Nicolas Eve in disguise with mom and dad Mak. Without a drop of rain the reunion is wet and especially warm and emotional. A year is a long time, it's delicious to see and hold each other again. In the hotel we admire the awe-inspiring amount of sweets, spare parts, books, food, booze and loving postcards they smuggled from the Netherlands through the various borders, without overweight?!? While I visit the toilet every three minutes, the three other chat away for hours, play games and drink a Dutch tot. It seems like we saw each other only yesterday. The food in the Forodhani-gardens is famous and delicious, but turns out to heavily attack my intestines. Now it's my turn to keep the bed without 39 degrees fever. A few days later we hear that the cosy open air-market with its dozens of banquet-stalls has been closed the whole month of April, because of a cholera-outbreak. The knowledge and awareness of hygiene leave to be wished for on this continent.

On the ferry to Zanzibar we met Idriss, a Zanzibar Muslim man who has adopted us. Years ago he lived in the Netherlands for quite a while, he speaks a little bit of Dutch. Also thanks to him we have a wonderful fortnight on the island. He helps us to find cheap accommodation on the eastern side of the island, invites us for a meal at his mother-in-law and drives all over the island with us. The obligatory spice-tour is a great success. Zanzibar is renowned for the many spices that are grown here. We smell vanilla, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, iodine and lemongrass. We learn the different ways herbs and spices grow and bloom, we're also decorated with hats, glasses, necklaces, bags and ties made from palm- and pineapple-leaves. At the end we get to taste all the different fruits that grow on the plantation.

Mom, dad and I alternate in being sick, weak or nauseous, but it's never serious enough to skip any excursion. We visit Prison Island, the old fortress and different museums.
At the east-coast we stay in Jambiani, in the simple guesthouse Manufaa. Here we snorkel at high tide, at low tide we walk alongside the many seaweed-gardens the local women tend in the ocean. Mom, dad and I let ourselves be decorated with henna, Peter allows himself to be attacked by the most beautiful sea-urchin he has ever seen: size football, long black spines, blue lines and red shining lights. It looks like an alien space-vessel, only this one is hostile: it shoots its spines at Peter when he comes too close.

We rent two bicycles for a day and plan a trip for the four of us. Luckily enough it's not very cold, which causes half of the platoon to sit and rest in the shade of a tree after having cycled for eight kilometres over a gravel-path. Makunduchi's beach, at sixteen kilometres, turns out to be the maximum for the day, which doesn't matter at all.
Our last day at the east-coast Idriss takes us to Kizamkazi, in the south-west coast of the island. There Idriss, Peter and mom charter a boat, while dad and I fill our pockets with shells. After sailing for fifteen minutes we find the purpose of the trip: dolphins! Peter, dad and I dive into the water with our masques to swim as close to the dolphins as possible. This turns out to be real easy, they're not afraid of human beings at all. Fifteen of them swim all around us, sometimes straight at us to evade at the last moment with an elegant move. At a metre and a half we can see every detail: eyes, fins, marks and tail. They play together, chase, dive and head for the surface like torpedo's. We hear them 'talk' with high beeping sounds and see them relieve themselves in our vicinity without any embarrassment. It's not possible to touch them, they are somewhat faster than my husband, who tries his utmost best. After this experience we snorkel for a little while before returning to the guesthouse.

Then the moment has come to say goodbye again from mom and dad. Their flight is seriously delayed, but eventually they get in the silver bird that flies them back to the Netherlands, leaving us behind, sad and happy at the same time. It was great to see them again, the departure is always painful. But the memories are great, memories of a marvellous holiday!