Cardamom & Cloves

Summer has always meant two things.

Summer is when the travel-bug hits me the hardest. Summer is when, as a born-and-raised bone-fide Californian, I need sand and salt-water. I need a large body of water and a coastal breeze.

I always lived within an hour of the sea. As a child, I never learned to ride a bike, wasn’t a fan of the great outdoors, and could rarely be bothered to get my nose out of a book – but damn, could I swim. Every year I’d celebrate my (June) birthday at the beach. Most summers we got in the car and headed south, rented a house (when we could afford it, otherwise we camped) on the beach in Baja. Teenagers in California take to the beach every summer, all summer, as soon as we get our driver’s licenses. I still have a scar on one shoulder from a second-degree sunburn one fateful day I forgot about sunscreen.

I mean. The beach. That’s the whole point of summer. Right?

Not in England. For anyone not lucky enough to be working the festival circuit all summer (the only way to afford to go), summer in England seems to mean parks, excessive amounts of frighteningly pale skin on display (it would be a crime in LA to show that much white cellulite; an unfair prejudice, but one I can’t shake), and cider. (Any time of year seems to mean cider.) But no beach. No beach that involves swimming, at least. Swimming and BBQs.

(To be fair, I’ve managed the BBQs – I’ve got a large rooftop balcony and while the British, lovely people and terribly enthusiastic about the idea of a BBQ, in general, nonetheless seem to struggle with the idea of grilling anything other than hamburgers. But we’ve been getting there. Skewers, people! Marinade! My friends are appreciative eaters, they usually bring the beer, and several of them play guitar. So it’s all good.)

“Help me, help me sail away – or give me two good reasons why I ought to stay! In the summertime… In the summertime…”

It’s kind of a mind-trip not to be travelling, this summer. Since I’ve “moved out” as an “adult”, I’ve done even more summer travelling. Last summer there were the beaches of East Africa and the warm Indian Ocean. There was an island to camp on. Palm trees. Two summers ago, I’d flown into LA from Kathmandu and took a road trip to New Orleans. (Less swimming, but more BBQs. They’ve almost got the summer-thing down in New Orleans.)

The whole plan was to stay here this summer and “deal with life”. Get a job. Put some money in the bank. Study for that GRE. Plan out my dissertation. Start gardening and get a decent vegetable patch growing. Put some money in the bank. Social network like there’s no tomorrow. Read some novels. (Money – put some, in the bank.) Come to grips with the fact that I really am, seriously now, kind of, sort of, almost-entirely-undeniably, an adult. (Can’t even say that without adding qualifiers….)

But I’m still looking for that job.

(By looking, I mean occasional bursts of application-frenzies. And then agreeing to interviews that, even groggy and pre-coffee ten minutes after hanging up the phone, I know are worthless. “Commission-only” cold-call sales. Or, today’s new low point: staff for an “opulent and glamorous” nightclub which describes its customer service as “borders on doting” with servers constantly “at your beck and call”. It’s name is pseudo-French and suggests privacy and while it sells £450 of champagne but the pictures aren’t selling me on the high-flying sorts of clients who might make sexual objectification worth it in tips. While I’d like to belief I’m the sort of post-feminist to bleed the suckers dry and laugh about it, I know I don’t even own any clothing slutty enough and I’ve never plucked my own eyebrows – not to mention, I was nearly fired from a Starbucks for not being flirty enough with the customers – well, regularly pulled aside by the manager and lectured about small talk, smiles, making a connection, and feigning interest. I might not be a practised flirt but, in my book, that’s code for flirtatious.)

I might be grumpy about the lack of beach in my summer, and the lack of travel – but I’m, belatedly, going to clutch at one summer straw – and try to write!After all – the BBQs, roadtrips, and international flights all resulted in the same thing – journaling and writing!

[Synopsis]

I’m back, I’m fine, I’m busy getting things all sorted out, don’t have internet where I’m staying (with friends) but I’ve found a flat and should be moved in and hooked up by the weekend.

[Summary]

I’ve made it back to Bristol – in one piece!

One piece, minus my appendix and a litre of mysterious unidentified pus that had been in my abdomen, the last remnant of an infection that I’d probably had for weeks if not months. We’re still not certainly what exactly happened – typhoid fever? bacterial infection? – but appendicitis was only a secondary infection to the peritonitis. It was the last straw to finally get me to admit I was ill. I’d put the fatigue, cramps, and nauseia that I’d had on and off for weeks down to the price you pay for traveling in Africa and mistook my distended abdomen – I couldn’t get into my blue jeans – for a weight gain from all the chapatis and ugali. When it got intense I tried to crawl into bed and sleep it off. I kept begging my brother for bottles of water and he kept insisting that I really wasn’t ok. We went to the hospital, were told to go home and take antibiotics; 48 hrs later I was worse a was admitted.

The hospital in Tanzania was a nightmere. Msdiagnosis after misdiagnosis to the dooctors disapearing out of confusion (and panic, not knowing how to treat me?). I had to go chase down nurses to get my IV refilled when it ran out bcause after the first 36 hours in the hospital anyone stopped coming to my room. I was flown to the Nairobi Hospital in Kenya where things got much better. Surgery last week – not even a scar to show for it – and, after the first few days of body-less pain, surprisingly quick recovery. They let me out of the hospital the morning that my insurance flew me from Nairobi to Heathrow – where they put me in a cab to Bristol that dropped me at my friends’ doorstep. They made me dinner while I confusedly tried to explain the entire summer in a few breaths; I was tucked into bed and slept, beautifully.

That was two days ago.

Since, I’ve bought a phone, begun an extensive battle with the bank, looked at two flats and found a decent one in a wonderful neighborhood – bakery on one side, yoga studio on the other. It’s quite close to where I lived last year and just over half an hours slow walk to campus. And two good friends of mine live just upstairs – although I didnt know when I went for the viewing. I’ll be moving in this weekend, hopefully.

[The actual story]

Coming later.

“No get-up stand-up for your rights, here in Zanzibar,” said a tall dreadlocked man who invited himself to join us three days running at a habor-side restaurant that seemed to be the closest thing to a Reggae bar in Stonetown, and one of the few places that locals and tourists interacted outside of the salesman/customer, hunter/prey relatonship. We never learned the name of the restaurant; the man was called Rashid and wandered through the days seeminly stoned and the nights slightly drunk.

The restaurant was hidden behind a typical souvenir and crafts shop – we’d only stopped because Brian had noticed some illegal shells in the display outside, near the shark jaws – through an area of pool tables, and consisted of a scattering of no nonsense plastic chairs and tables. A bar at one end and a grill at the other; there were generally more locals than tourists, the touts from the streets taking a break and businessmen in pressed shirts eating lunch. The prices were almost local; the mishkaki (beef skewers) marinated with ginger and garlic – between that and the view of the sunset over the water, Brian and I (and then Dominic and I) kept finding ourselves there.

Rashid was the first who came up. Swaying, slightly, he seemed to have a car, or maybe it was a boat, and he wanted to take us to Prison Island, or on a Spice Tour. (He also wanted us to know that, you know, just in case, we were in the mood for something to smoke, he was the man. Just in case.) They’d all go through a friendlier, laid back, and propless version of the same apparently prerequisite half-hearted sales pitch that people got cornered on the main streets with – and, when declined, would shrug as if they couldn’t care less, apparently relieved. “Eh, gave it a try,” seemed to be the attitude, and would hang out – slap hands, welcome us to the town, sit down and leaning forward in interest, interview us about where we came from – sometimes letting us ask a few questions, sometimes offering us pictures of their own lives, unasked.

Rashid wanted to talk politics; politics by means of quoting Bob Marley – the rest of the conversation was, as his opening remark, an homage to the man.

The tension between Zanzibar and the mainland is an open secret. Zanzibar did not want to be part of the nation and the mainland – which they often still refer to as Taganyika, rather than the name crafted to combine the two when they joined – is afraid of the “growing” Muslim presence. Rather than the proud nationalism that the rest of the nation displays, speaking of the 120 different tribes and their cooperation with a boisterous sense of involvement, avidly watching the Parliament sessions on televisions in public places, and freely moving throughout the regions (families broadly dispersed), Zanzibar keeps to itself and its people, if involved with the mainland, keep to similarly Muslim conclaves with a sense of segregation that other Muslims, at least those I’ve met here in Kawe, don’t seem to feel.

Religion, class, and ethnicity are in Tanzania – as everywhere – intricately tangled, rendering the poltical issues even more delicate.

The most readily articulated fear is of the imposition of Shari’a Law, which I heard echoed by every person I spoke to, on Zanzibar or the mainland, even the moderate Muslims. The legitimacy of the fear, I’ve no idea. The close political and economic ties with which Zanzibar operates with the Middle East (particularly Saudi Arabia) are a point of contention. The elections tend, apparently, to demonstrate the issues in an obvious, outspokn, and ocassionally violent manner that is otherwise ignored.

Of the upcoming election in 2010, heads were shaken. No specific examples of violence were given, even when I pushed, although they said that it would be – that the elections always were – and that it was because of the corruption. “So, so much corruption. It is so dirty, it is the money,” Dave the fisherman complained. (All of the fishermen seemed to be named Dave, I noted caustically after he’d left; he wanted us to come visit him ater in the evenings when he sold seafood he’d “caught” along the water in front of the posh hotel at what was passing for a street food market).Those who could were leaving the island; I got the impression for safety, as well as to have access to the polls. Rashid was registered in a town near Lake Victoria. Dave would be voting in Mwanza, where his wife’s family lived. would be going.

Dave was Christian. He had been born and raised Muslim, in Stonetown. Somehow he’d ended up in Mwanza; it was unclear how or why but seemed to involve work rather than family. He’d ended up in the far north on his own, broke and out of luck. A Christian family took him in and helped him; he converted and married their daughter. He brought his wife back to Stonetown, eventually, and has two young sons whose pictures he pulled out of his wallet to show us, proudly.Religion He had no family left here in Stonetown and so, religion didnt seem to make much difference to him. He had no prejudice against Islam, he was clear to emphasize. “They would not have taken me in,” he said of Muslims. “They did not help, here, when I had no one. But the Christians did an so I am grateful. And so I am now Christian. But first I am still Zanzibari. I had to come back.”

Ray was also returning to Zanzibar. He’d been living abroad – in Norway. His accent had altered, just, slightly, and he said that he’d approached me (I was sitting on my own that day) thinking I might be European. (He did offer to buy me a drink and invited me to a concert “somewhere, not sure, my friend knows – he works for the Africa House hotel, you know, the biggest one around – it’s tonight” but took both refusals politely, calmly, apologizing in advance that I might be uncomfortable, thinking he was hitting on me. “I know you must get a lot of hassle, being here.”) He was finding the return to Africa somewhat bewildering.

They’d sent him to college in Norway and he’d stayed, gained citizenship, worked in construction. (So he told me.) It had been over nine years. He’d let out his apartment and taken time off work; he already wished that he had more time, lamenting the shortness of three weeks, and the impossibility of tracking down the people that he wanted to see. He had one sister left in Stonetown; she worked with the television, some sort of broadcast – he’d asked her to put out a message to them, saying that Ray was back and looking for soandso. He was disappointed that he couldn’t find any of his friends in town – all were gone, “all to the disease,” he said at one point, and then quickly shut up and looked away. (I didn’t ask if he meant AIDS. He must have; the HIV rate here is obscene – and inflated by the ignorance of people who simply assume that anyone who dies young, or is sick for years, must be positive.)

I asked him about the reception that he got in Norway – being Tanzanian was wonderful, he said, they were fine. The European prejudice was against Somalis; he looked different, they mistook him for an American rapper more often than a Somalian refugee. We talked about health care and social services. At first he said that things had changed “so, so very much” here in Tanzania while he’d been gone – later in the conversation he took it back, upset and frustrated at how little things had changed, how little had improved. Stonetown, though, he said without any prompting for me, had deteriorated – this was not the Zanzibar that he had left, this was a strange land of in-between, neither Europe nor Africa. He pressed me for my opinion and I dodged, saying that he it had been nearly what I needed, but that it must be very different outside of the center – and that I wished I had time to go there, to really see Zanzibar.

“This is Zanzibar. I am from Zanzibar. Many others you will meet are not. They come here for the money. For the tourists. They bring their things – you tourists don’t know better – but those paintings, tintaga, are from the mainland. The Masai here do not belong.The jewelry they sell is not Zanzibar. And why? Zanzibar is beautiful. We have beauty. We make it. But everyone is coming in.” They all said the same thing, in so many words, more or less.

So much for the growing Muslim presence – it is the Christians, in the form of eager entrepeneurs and lost young men, that are flooding into Stonetown. The coast, islands, and the south are more Islamic than the interior and the north; with the exception of Stonetown, moderated by the tourist industry, Zanzibar has at least the surface appearance of a fairly devout Islamic community. As soon as you get out of the most interior maze of old Stonetown, women disapear; simple headscarfs are replaced by full-length billowing robes, hoods, and veils leaving only a slit for visibility. On a dala dala to Jozani Forest, my foreign presence (head covered) was less of a curiosity than an anomaly that I got the impression they really wished would resolve itself. I didn’t feel unwelcome so much as uninvited. Despite the quiet tension – the palpable feeling distaste for intrusion that the islanders radiated – between Christians (which, as a blond westerner, I am immediately classified as) and Muslims, the issue is not religion, however it may be an easy symbol.

It is not the religion itself that is a problem (so far as they would admit outright – although, the men who approached us at the restaurant were generally Muslim, themselves – black Muslim, though, which may have been a key factor) as it is the independence that it espouses, and the imbalance with the mainland, the disconnect with “Taganyika” – that others find frustrating, frightening. That the response is an attempt to disenfranchise even further. Who it is that they are hoping to silence, I’m not sure – and I wonder if they , the political, corrupt, powers that be are entirely certain themselves.

The newspaper this morning reported a series of landmines planted in Pemba (one of the Zanzibarian islands) on bridges and key transport areas. In response, the Zanzibarian Electoral Committee closed down voter registration – indefinitely postponing the process, for “security reasons”.

The dig at Songo Mnara feels like another lifetime, or another world.

It was amazing. The site was incredible, the island was gorgeous, the people were great. The sun was unbelievably strong, straight down on us, and if the wind wasn’t blowing sand and dirt straight into your eyes, it was only because you were downwind of the sieve and getting mouthfuls of it. The minute tonal difference between the types of soils, trying to identify them, to distinguish between them, was infuriating – almost painful – and hours spent looking for traces of decoration or finished edges on pottery fragments had me hallucinating bases.

It was confusing, it was dirty, and it was absolutely wonderful.

We worked dawn to dusk – literally – six days a week. We hit the trenches at 6:30am, trying to beat the heat. I’d scramble out of my tent with a few moments to spare (if that), pulling on my clothes as I went, grabbing a cup of coffee and a banana. We were all filthy by breakfast, getting back to the house in various shades of grey to red (you could have held up Munsell soil-color charts to our arms). Lunch break at noon usually saw people napping, or desperately wishing that they were napping, on the mat after we’d finished eating; we’d crawl back to the trenches, in the heat of the day, desperate to finish (to get to the bottom of a context, to hit sterile, to identify a feature, plan the profile) before we came in around 4pm for finds processing. Afternoons meant frantic counting of pottery shards – then, mad dashes for the shower as it was getting dark. Dinner by kerosene torches and head lamps. A few breaths – maybe. And then the (intensely competitive) cribbage matches or (more relaxed) hermit crab races. Stumbling to bed, asleep before I’d made it all the way in the tent. Repeat.

I arrived three weeks into the dig (after the geo-physical surveyors had left, and some space opened up at camp). I traveled from Dar with a grad student of African History from the States (who, conveniently, happened to be fluent in Kiswahili and very familiar with Tanzania – not to mention wonderfully friendly). After the 6hr bus ride (some of it actually on a road, all of it bumpy) we spent a night in Kilwa Masoko, the closest town on the mainland to the islands.

The Swahili ruins at both Songo Mnara, where we were excavating, and Kilwa Kisiwani, a better known and more thoroughly researched island, are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Kilwa Kisiwani is famous for its large monuments but Songo Mnara, everyone on the dig agreed (and we were only, of course, slightly biased) is far more interesting – in addition to a mosque and a “palace”, the main site has an unprecedented amount of domestic architecture – over fifty houses. Both were trading centers with more intensive inhabitation than the adjacent mainland – or, at least, more permanent remains to prove it. Kilwa Masoko didn’t seem to be much more than a strip of guesthouses and shops a mile or so to the harbour; we came in one weekend and spent another night there after the dig, but other than the fact that it had cold (cold!) drinks, plumbing, and shops selling junk food and phone credit… not much going on. Despite the plethora of guesthouses we rarely saw more than a few other foreigners in town (and this was the height of the tourist season). There was a small locals’ market. A militia parade went by once. The first weekend that we came in, we managed to find a party (Club? We paid a cover fee.) in what was probably the local schoolyard – danced all night to a dj with a couple hundred Tanzanians who thought that the mzungus who’d wandered in were the most bizarre thing they’d ever seen.

It was three hours from Kilwa Masoko to Songo Mnara. We landed at the main fishing post – a few traditional huts, a woman cooking, smattering of boys and men, canoes floating around – and started the “hike” to camp. (It’s a bit of a walk, the Frenchwoman working for UNESCO who’d shared our boat warned us and we’d been told about the swamp we’d have to wade.) It turned out to be a pleasant ten minutes or less across startling white sand under drooping palm fronds; the swamp was less than a foot of clean water, a path through the mangrove forest that surrounds the island.

The camp, a dozen tents in front of one small cement house, was within view of the ruins – the closest only a few hundred yards – with tall swaying palm trees all around, set up on top of a graveyard. (The first time they told me that my tent was on top of three graves, I thought it was a joke; the headstones were low, standing out of the sand only a few inches and one, just in front of the door to the house and the water cooler, managed to trip several people a day. The clearing we were camping in turned out to be where the islanders annually sacrifice a goat in an Islamic ceremony to keep the spirits happy.) There was a coral cove only a few minutes from the campsite, where boats docked when the tide was higher, and we could go swimming (not that there was much spare time).

Like the walk in, the conditions at camp were much better than we’d been warned to expect. Some women from the village cooked for us – the food was better than I’d expected, although the fish (caught each morning; unfortunately, deep fried – until we sacrificed a sieving screen to make a grill) beans, rice, chapati, spinach, chicken, occasional tomato-based-sauce, and cabbage got monotonous. We had octopus once (chewy) and crab (the most incredible crab I’ve ever eaten). We got chickens every few days (even the vegetarians hearts seemed to harden after we discovered that dawn lasts all day for Tanzanian roosters and that they fought with each other – the camp workers loved it, didn’t even have to rig the fights in order to bet on them – and stormed into the house while we were counting finds) and, once, a goat. Fresh water came in by boat every other day, along with peanut butter (we averaged a jar’s consumption a day), a crate of beer, and a couple of car batteries to charge things on – including various ipods that meant that we ate dinner and even dug in the trenches to classic rock (depending on who was in charge – there was the ocassional pop, hip-hop, and Disney interlude). There was even cell reception. (… is there anywhere left, short of the North Pole, without cell reception?)

The dig was lead by Jeff Flesiher from Rice University, who was looking at the social spaces, and Stephanie Wynn-Jones (from Bristol), who was looking at the interior domestic organization. There were four other undergraduates, from Rice, and five graduate students (a specialist in pottery from Nigeria, two African historians, an archaeologist, and guy specializing in inter tidal zones who was doing his own project in the mangrove swamps, taking core samples of the silt). All but three were American – it was odd to hear American accents, to be dropped down into a group of “my countrymen” again, after so long in England. (Halfway around the world to meet up – like my brother arriving tomorrow, I suppose.)

We set up 15 trenches, entering two of the houses and setting others over geo-magnetic areas that had been identified. I spent most of my time in the houses. The first house, whose excavation was quite far along and was supposed to be finishing up a few days after I arrived, had been chosen as an example of a less-affluent residence due to the simplicity of its architecture as compared to others. We found an incredible, unbelievable amount of coins (over thirty, I think, just in the back room), hundreds of small glass beads, and bag after bag after bag of pottery fragments and bones and shells. We sieved each bucketful to make sure that we found everything; I got to dig the first few days, but as the finds started to come in faster and faster. I ended up sorting and bagging things out of the sieve for hours at a time, as fast as I could. The Swahili workers, or Tunde in the trench, would shout “COIN! FETHA!” and we’d all pick up the call – it nearly became a chant as we kept finding them, with silly smiles, shaking our heads at the sheer number. Both of the professors were working in that trench the first week and it was fascinating to listen to the by-blow analysis as we went. The back room (open courtyard and cooking area, I think we decided) that never seemed to end, had a couple of ash deposits, a circle of stones that (once again, I think we decided) was a toilet, an entire turtle shell (in one of the lower contexts) and a shell midden. (I got possessive about the shell midden; I found it first, as a series of sea snail shells in perfect alignment, straight in a row, and switched from a trowel to a brush and uncovered several square feet of it – almost entirely the same type of shell, most of them in roughly the same orientation. It had to go, of course, later on.) I worked in the second house the last week. We barely had time to get a few small trenches in after clearing out the rubble, so we didn’t get to explore the rooms in full.

I liked being in the trenches, but I got to bounce around the various side projects. I went out into the mangroves with Jack (we took core samples and described them – it was interesting, the ideas, but the work was so repetitive, and the real conclusions so delayed… ) and floated soil samples (to isolate the plant remains for later chemical analysis) with Dominic. Andrea, the history student that I’d traveled with, was interviewing the villagers about their oral histories and traditions relating to the villagers – I worked the tape recorder, took pictures, and tried to pretend that not speaking the language well enough to follow the stories was an advantage for focusing on body language and tone. I got to be present for the interview of the local Chairman of the Ruins Committee (the official history, more or less, the islands hopes for increased eco-tourism, and some fascinating side-notes on the continuing interaction with the site – ritual offerings, cleanings, ceremonies) and a few of the elder women in the village (folk legends and old tales).

The camaraderie at the dig was great – particularly given that we were a small group stuck together intensely for weeks. I learned to play cribbage, but only just made it alive through a few games. (The tournament was cuthroat and vicious, but the final – played in the courtyard of the Palace a few days before the dig finished, at midnight to lamp-light and Rolling Stones songs – was quite dignified.) We played a football match against the local village one day (I sat on the sidelines and photographed).

The best part was the satisfaction, the realization, the confirmation that it – that was I was doing – was right. Archaeology and anthropology have been my passion, and my intended career, as long as I can remember. (Some point between learning to – at three – becoming obsessed with mythology – five, six? – and reading all of the Leakeys and Mead that I could find. I knew that I wanted to do anthropology before I knew the word. I remember putting out a vague description of the field; she told me that that was called anthropology and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.) But wandering around libraries in elementary school reading Bulfinchs and making flashcards of the type specimens of extinct hominid fossils (… yes, I was that nerdy; ask my family, they’ll confirm it – and, yes, I did have far superior study skills and an attention span at the age of nine than I do now, at twenty), taking the first years worth of university classes, is quite different from being there, doing it – and having it feel right.

I got to realize, I got to feel, that this – field work – is not just what I want to do – but that I can do it. I like doing it. I’m good at it. I’m really rather well suited for this sort of work. (I still, of course, haven’t finally settled on an exact specialty within the disciplines, or within paleoanth, but I still have a few years for that – I’m not too worried.)

So, yeah. The dig was great.

(Except for that whole robbery thing. Still irritated. Not the first time, though, and probably not the last – guess it comes with the job description. Hazard of the trade.)

…which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong.” – Clifford Geertz

—-

I ate dinner last to the Muslim call to prayer, heard in surround, from the roof of the Pyramid Hotel. The calls came from three different mosques. They started on a slight delay, one after another; out-of-sync, nearly harmonizing. Ascents and vibratto wrapped around each other. The crackling bull-horn speakers turned the male voices into horns – deep trombones and lilting saxophones playing minor, off-key, beautifully. They grew in strength and more seemed to join in – there may have been more than three to start with, it’s hard to say; there seems to be a small neighborhood mosque on every third corner – until they washed out, receeding, drawing back to fade away. I missed the last notes, only realizing it was over when the dogs and laughing children returned to the foreground.

I picked up the oily bits of newspaper that had contained my food – I’d finally found real street food, bought enough for dinner and the next days’ lunch. There had been a fabled food market near Forodhani Gardens but it’s shut for renovations and the heir-apparent, a strip of tables on the waterfront where men in white chef’s hats and coats with perfect English try to tell you that they caught the lobster and crab, seafood on skewers, that they’re selling for 3,000 shilingi a piece. (Roughly the same amount that, on Kilwa Masoko, got a real fishermen to show up with live crabs in baskets, caught less than ten minutes away, and enough to feed a camp of archaeologists for two days.) “Sister, sister,” one of them called out, over-hearing Brian and I laugh at the price, “you come all the way from America and won’t spend a little money?” They didn’t need my money – the British woman in front of me, clutching at her husband’s arm in glee was gushing about how cheap it all was, and filled piled her plate high. I’ve been meandering the back streets, convinced that the locals have to be eating something, somewhere, that they aren’t cooking in their homes and finally, found it.

2,000 shillingi got me two andazi (donut-like-things is the quick description; my favorite type are the fluffly, eggy white ones that are probably nothing but lard and oil, but somehow bear a resemblence to cheesecake and, every now and then, when I’m lucky – and I was lucky – are flavored with cardamom), a small bunch of grapes, three lychee (actually, they weren’t lychee but a thicker-skinned, hairier cousin that taste the same, and, actually, the man gave them to me for free since he was trying to close up his cart and normally sold them by the massive branch), a kebabu (ground meat, well-flavored, with a bit of boiled egg in the center), a samosa, and the most amazing of all oily-fried Indian savory-pastries, a thing that the man in the cupboard of a shop described as “bread made from fish”, looked like a greasy pancake, and involved flaky smoked white fish, carmalized onions, ginger, garlic, cumin, cardamom, and possibly tamarind. (The food on Songo Mnara was good (the crab probably the best I’ve ever had, and the octopus one night, interesting), but weeks of the same permutations of rice, beans, fried fish, chapati, boiled spinach, stewed chicken… Getting to Zanzibar to walk around the expensive restaurants catering to Europeans with menus outside describing Indian-local-French fusion cuisine that I really can’t afford has been rather painful. It’s taken several days in Stonetown to find interesting cheap food and I’m ecstatic.)

I took them all, wrapped in newspaper, up to the roof – normally they serve breakfast there, but it was empty at night – and ducked past the clothes line to sit in one of the ancient, cracked and wilting, fake-leather arm-chairs and stare out at the city. The Pyramid Hotel, so-called due to the steep wooden staircases throughout the halls that lead you up, up, and farther up, is a small guesthouse. It’s in an old local house (or three); dazzling walls, white-washed and sparkling, and carved wooden accents, stained dark to match the mangrove rafters in the ceilings. It’s buried in Stonetown’s maze, off the tourist strip of luxury spas in the old colonial mansions, and not quite to the still-local mess of all-purpose shops and antique sewing machines.

—–

I’m not a very good tourist.

I’ve been in Stonetown nearly five days, now, and I’ve yet to: go swimming at the beach (the mzungu beach outside of town, mind), buy anything in the market (I did haggle – on a friend’s behalf), go into any of the museums, hire a tour guide, get on a dhow to go to Prison Island, watch the sunset from the rooftop bar at the Africa House Hotel, formerly the British Club (… well, fine, I did once, the first day).

I’m not, really, a tourist. I suppose. (Sitting outside the little house on Songo Mnara with flashlights, maps, guidebooks, and several other students, picking the dig director’s brains about Zanzibar – just mentioning his name has opened doors and gets immense smiles here; they all want to know how he is, when I’ll see him again, if he’s coming – he told us to “just go revel in being a tourist”.) I did do a Spice Tour. That counts, right?

I’ve been grumbling about the prices, pretending to barely speak English, and aiming for the parts of town where they’re surprised to see me. I have been taking full advantage of the ocean view (from the small, half-local watering holes with blue plastic chairs and lurching tables), and enjoying the real coffee cup by cup.

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been [and] travellers don’t know where they’re going,” Paul Theroux said. It’s over-quoted, self-aggrandizing – but true.

I’m not even sure if I’m a traveller.

James Clifford, in a book about the anthropology of travel that I wish I’d brought with me as I hadn’t finished reading it and there’s so many bits that keep springing to mind, said that anthropologist are “homebodies abroad”.

I’ve settled in. I’m recognized as a regular at several restaurants and street corners, say hello to the same young girls walking to school and grandmothers sitting under trees each day. I’ve formed a routine – far more of one than I ever keep at home. Brian and I immediately found what seem to be the only two places in town where you can both get a beer and drink it with locals – a feat, in a muslim town – and I discovered the most incredible, amazing, perfectly spiced, balanced, and brewed cup of chai masala that I’ve ever had in my life – at Passing Choo (it’s had nods from travel books, but is still undeniably a local restaurant, where the men sit for hours and I cover my head before I go in).

I spent the first few days in Stonetown with Brian, an archeaology grad student from the dig, and I hadn’t realized what a difference the “male presence” made until he went back to Dar. I’ve heard women talk about putting on fake wedding rings and creating stories of husbands when they travel; I’ve always been a little disgruntled about the tactic, and after trying it once, to my own shame, I’ve decided to try long sleeves and covering my hair instead. It seems to be working. Instead of the young men asking why I’m not with him, is he coming back, how he let me come alone, whether I want some company while he’s away, how they have a wife/girlfriend far away and isn’t it lonely, the old men are telling me that I am welcome to sit as long as I like and teaching me more Swahili. I was afraid at first that, white and blonde, it would be taken as a mockery of their culture and religion – actually, they seem delighted. When I was loosely draping the scarf (not a proper head-scarf, just barely making a hood) and old man stopped to raise his thumbs, tell me that it was good, very good.

I’d been hoping to write more; I’ve had a terrible case of writer’s block for months on end now, combined with nothing to write about – nothing but my own mundane daily life. Now that I have the exotic locals and interesting people to write about, it doesn’t feel right. I’ve been making friends. You can’t write about friends; it just isn’t fair. You can extract bits, here and there, try to reassemble, but that feels inaccurate. (I think I read too much postmodern anthropology, last term, and not practical ethnographic guidelines. I’ve got Clifford Geertz in my head arguing with himself about “webs of meaning” and contextual systems of symbolic decoding.)

—-

Back to Dar es Salaam tomorrow.

I’ve hit the internet cafes a little more than I would like, with a little less accomplished and arranged than I wish – still haven’t made any final decisions about the rest of my trip. I’ve too many wheres and almost no concrete whens. I’ve an invitation to go visit a family in Iringa and be taken to some nearby villages, there’s an organization in Arusha dealing with conservation and research of rock art sites that I’m desperate to volunteer for (RACC) and a paleoanth conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of Mary Leakey’s discovery of Zinjanthropus. I’m eager to get back to Dar to go spend some time in the library at the University of Dar es Salaam. (Between that and the dual Darwin anniversaries this year, its been a big year for paleoanthropology.)