Old ways beside new in Zanzibar

With 177 countries ticked off, sports reporter Alistair McMurran set off last year to add a few more to his list. Today, he visits Zanzibar.

The home fires keep burning when you travel overseas.

It is not possible to put local interests on the backburner.

I watched on television as the Wallabies beat South Africa in the Tri-Nations rugby test at Brisbane when I was in Lesotho and I found out in Malawi that the Springboks beat the All Blacks at Hamilton.

But I had to wait until I could get on to the internet at the Jembo Hotel in Zanzibar to find out that Otago had lost its second Ranfurly Shield challenge of the season to Canterbury, 36-16.

I also wanted to find out who won the Moro marathon in Dunedin, but the results had not yet been posted on the website.

Zanzibar is part of Tanzania and the new president is keen to promote sport to get publicity for his country.

He has appointed former world 1500m record holder and 1974 Commonwealth Games champion Filbert Bayi as secretary of the Tanzanian Olympic Committee to bring a higher profile to the country.

George was our guide in Zanzibar and he had a passion about his job.

He related well to the locals and was able to pacify them when they became upset about the actions of tourists.

This was necessary when I took a photo of him and Dunedin's David Horne at a tubor tree.

An older woman claimed that we should pay her for taking a photo on her property.

George, who grew up in that part of the country, pacified her.

"The rule is that you only pay for photos of people in Zanzibar," he said.

It was funny standing back and watching the squabble the woman was making.

It amused the younger boys and girls, who giggled on the sidelines.

"It didn't used to be like this, but it has changed in the last two years," George said.

"Some rich tourists splashed money around and everyone assumes that it should be like this."

There are two parts to Zanzibar City, on the island of Unquja in the Zanzibar Archipelago.

About 13,000 people live in the old stone town where we stayed, with 237,000 resident in Ngambo on the other side.

On our way north, we saw more of the old town where we were staying and parkland the sea used to wash into.

We passed the house David Livingstone lived in during his mission to abolish the slave trade in 1868 and a thriving market where an old dump used to be in the 1960s.

Some houses are only partially built because the money has run out.

"Banks don't loan money to private citizens, only to business," George remarked.

Within the old city is the oldest mosque in East Africa, built by the Persians in 1107.

But Zanzibar remains the poor relation to the rest of Tanzania.

"Our voice is not great and some corrections are needed," George said.

"The new president has established a regional ministry, which shows there is a problem.

We didn't have it in our first 40 years of independence."

Zanzibar is a small island, just 80km by 50km.

The population is one million.

It remains an island of contrasts.

We saw new houses built in the 1970s that contrasted with bullock carts pulled by oxen and a man delivering milk on a bike.

In the country, houses are either made of concrete blocks with an iron roof, or a conical thatched hut.

"It's all turned around," George said.

"If you had a thatched roof you used to be considered poor.

"Now, you are considered rich, because you can afford to have your roof repaired every two years."

We stopped at a 400-year-old fort, built when the Portuguese occupied the islands in the 15th and 16th centuries.

It was a domestic house from 1500 to 1700 and had protective stone walls that had angled holes allowing defenders to see the enemy coming from three directions.

The Portuguese were chased out by the Arabs around 1700.

We visited a fish market on the north coast and saw all types of fish, including a large eel, a shark and two stingrays.

Two men were playing a board game with small stones, called bao.

It was the favourite pastime of Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania.

We saw big nails being made at a primitive blacksmith shop.

They are used in boat-building.

A pump blew air to heat the charcoal and two men hammered the scraps of metal into shape when it was red hot and placed it into wood.

At the village of Numus, we watched men building dhows.

They use local material and do it all by hand.

They worked with strong planks and the big nails made by the blacksmith.

Drilling was done in the ancient way, by hand, using a rope device without the use of machines.

Most of the boats are used for fishing around the island, but 400 years ago the large dhows used to make a three-month journey across the Atlantic.

We visited a turtle farm to see the green turtle and the carnivorous hawksbill turtle.

The caretaker of a zoological park had snakes in round concrete enclosures so they could not get out.

But it did not always work, because a large python escaped when a rat (put in for food) dug a hole and got out, followed by the python.

The caretaker knew how to handle snakes.

"You don't stand on them, or squeeze them, or they will bite you," he said.

Zanzibar united with Tanganyika to become Tanzania.

In the early days, Zanzibar was known as the "Land of the Spices'.

At a plantation where trees and herbs grow, two boys made us a basket, a tie, wrist-band and hat from palm leavesAt the village of Kizimkazi we waded out to a boat, operated by a man and his 12-year-old son, to see the dolphins.

The boy manoeuvred the boat with a long pole.

It was a long ride out to the Kizimkazi Channel through choppy, turquoise waters.

The sea breeze made the humidity pleasant.

Jozani Forest, 35km southeast of Zanzibar Town, is home to the red colobus monkey, one of the most endangered species on the planet.

George took us into the mangrove forest that can prove useful - recently it protected the shore from a tsunami.

Zanzibar
Population: 1.07 million
Capital: Zanzibar City
Government: semi-autonomous part of Tanzania
President: Amani Abeid Karume
Islands: Unguja and PembaArea: 2643 sq km
Religion: Islam
Official languages: Swahili and English