Looks Like a White Christmas
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008Day 267
We left Florida Guesthouse at 8am for the hour or so trip to the east coast beach village of Bwejuu. We plan to spend the next few days here. Christmas in Zanzibar? It promises to be a strange Christmas.
The mini van arrived in the very small and spread out village near 10am. We had read about a backpackers called Mustapha’s and sent them an email to book a room. The one huge issue with coming to Zanzibar over the holidays is that its busy and accommodation prices soar. We are paying $50/night for a room that would normally be $25. Mustapha’s is a laid back typical backpackers place. Its run by very laid back rastas and while our room is large and would be decent value for $25 it sure isn’t worth $50. Then again it was the cheapest we found. The only real drawback is that its across the road from the beach. I say road but its actually a sand track.
We settled in, dumped our bags and headed off to checkout the beach. Walking to the beach the sand on the “road” was even blinding white. Up ahead the incredible blue and green colours of the water looked unnatural. “Oh, what’s with all the seaweed?” We walked out onto the beach to discover a beach covered with seaweed. Apparently seaweed can be a problem in December. The water still looked amazing but as we walked towards Bwejuu town the beach had quite a bit of garbage scattered around. We were discouraged, we’d heard so much of the perfect beaches of Zanzibar. I can’t tell you how many people in Mozambique told us, “well if you are going to Zanzibar then these beaches don’t compare”. Jordana and I are a bit confused about those statements at the moment.
Eventually we figured that if we walked the other direction, toward Paje beach, the beach was cleaner and the water had less seaweed. We found a quiet spot with nobody around and laid out our stuff. With the air temperature well into the thirties we were both dying to get in the clear waters. I walked in, “Wow this is hot! Bathtub water!” I’m not sure I’ve ever felt seas as warm as this. It was beautiful, although not refreshing at all. we felt a bit better about finding a good spot to swim, although it was a good 20 minute walk from our place.
Back at Mustapha’s we showered and ordered dinner. In keeping with the laidback theme dinner took about an hour to receive but was OK. Grilled squid and chips, although the beer could be cooler. I think the issue is the power goes out pretty much daily here for varying lengths of time so the beer gets warm. Actually a huge problem when you are on a sweltering hot beach. Warm beer, another challenge for Africa to solve. I thought about forming an NGO to combat the issue. Any volunteers? Of course I’m just joking, but judging by the sheer number of volunteers here in Africa I wouldn’t be surprised in the Cold Beer NGO exists.
Of all the foreigners staying here at Mustapha’s, about 11, all are volunteers, and the ones that aren’t are here for Christmas visiting a sibling, friend or boyfriend who is a volunteer. We’ve met more volunteers in the last few weeks than tourists. At first I felt like maybe I should be doing something, but the more I see and learn about what some of these people are doing I’m not so sure who is benefitting. Take for example the girl we met who isn’t even volunteering, she is actually getting paid, a local wage, in Uganda to do PR work for an NGO. Could this NGO not find a Ugandan to do the same job? Or how about the girl who was teaching physical education to kids. You don’t exactly need a foreigner to teach that do you? It seems to add to the problem of dependency on the rich white foreigner to provide. I don’t have the answers and no doubt there are some fabulous programs out there. However it seems there are far too many cases like the two I just described. Who is truly benefitting in the end?
Right, rant over. Our room is hot, damn hot. It seems we don’t get much of a breeze through our windows and the ceiling fan is pretty weak. We decide its best to sleep on separate beds, we have 2 doubles and a single in this long room. Its just way to warm to be near each other. I take a cold shower and barely dry off before I hit my bed, trying to keep cool. Its a good thing I’m wiped out from all the sunshine as I fall asleep quickly trying not to think that its actually Christmas eve in a few hours and we are on a beach in Africa.
Michael Coroneos