3) Stone Town And All Its Gems

JAMBO!

On our first Monday, we did a Stone Town tour. After our breakfast, consisting of an omelette, bread, honey, dates and tea, our coordinator picked us up with a friend of his and we drove to the host family of another volunteer from Switzerland. After the getting-to-know-drive, we first visited the orphanage, where we were going to work at in Chiaras and mine third and fourth week. There we talked with some German volunteers, who were already working there, for a few minutes, before completing our drive to Zanzibars captial city's old town, Stone Town.

Forodhani Gardens

We started the tour at the Forodhani gardens, a park with a beautiful ocean view. It was opened in 1936 as a part of the 25th anniversary of Sultan Khalifa. In the middle of the park, there is is a podium, where bands were playing for the visitors of the ruler. Before that, the Forodhani park was the old port of Stone Town.

Today, it's a great place to meet up with friends, doesn't matter how old you are. We saw many people hanging out on the stone benches there. In the evening, at around 5pm everyday, the Forodhani gardens turn into a huge food market, where you can find zanzibar pizza, urojo mishkaki skewers and sugar cane juice. There are also lots of fruit and snack stands around.

Old Fort

Our next stop was the Ngome Kongwe (old fort). It was built in the 17th century by the Busaidi-Omanis. They not only evicted the Portuguese, they also overbuilt a portugese church (from 1560) with the fort. In the 19th century, the fort was used as a prison, then as a train station for the train going to Bububu and then as a tennis court for women of the noble english society.

Since 1994, it's mainly used for cultural activities such as open-air theatre, concerts or dance rehearsals. Until now, there was also held the ZIFF (Zanzibar International Film Festival), the biggest music- / film event in East Africa. The ZIFF changed location this year, though, and will be taking place in Fumba for the first time. During the day, there's a gallery, cafés and souvenir shops inside the old fort.

 

 

Beit el-Ajaib - House of Wonders

The house of wonders was built in 1883 by Sultan Barghash, mainly for celebrations. It's the biggest building on Zanzibar. When it was first built, it had marble floors, boarded walls, electricity, running water, a flushing toilet and even an elevator. That's why it's called "House of Wonders", since many people didn't even know, things like that exist and where astonished by the opportunities, this house brought.

People would also tell horror stories about this house, for example, that there were slaves embedded into the walls and that the guy who carved the gate was killed so that he wouldn't be able to make something as beautiful as that again.

It's architecture is remarkable as well, it's a mixture between arab and victorian building structure. The gate is the biggest carve gate in Africa. In front of the palace, they placed two canons, that were from the portugese back in the 16th century.

Now there's the National Museum of History and Culture in there, which had to be closed in 2012 because a balcony part broke down. A reopening is not planned yet.

Beit el-Sahel - People's Palace Museum

This palace is one of the three museums on Zanzibar. It was built as a reconstruction of the palace that was built in the 19th century and destroyed in 1896 by british bombings. Many of the royal requisites are still intact, like portraits, thrones and toilets.

There was an indoor sidewalk that allowed people to walk from this palace to the house of wonders without leaving the property. Inside the museum, you can learn a lot about the royal family, especially about princess Salme, who was part of a huge public scandal when she left Zanzibar to go to Hamburg with a German salesman in 1866.

 

Stone Town Heritage Society

The STHC is focusing on restoring buildings, beach clean ups, student awareness programs and, in general, awareness projects to preserve the heritage and culture of Stone Town. It has about 200 members who work in those different prejects to try and make a difference.

 

Arabian vs Indian Houses - Stone Towns Architecture

Stone towns architecture is mixture between arabic, indian, european and african influences. You can clearly differ between arabic and indian houses.

Arabic houses have two to three storeys, are square and have an inner courtyard which is framed by the rooms, so that cool air can circulate inside the house.

Indian houses have several storeys as well, however, often have a shop on the ground floor and living quarter above, with nice balconies.

 

 

 

Old Dispensary

The former Hospital is right opposite the harbours warehouse in Mizingani Road. It's really important to Zanzibar in terms of architecture, after being restored by the Stone Town Conservation Authority. This was supposed to inspire Zanzibari people to restore their houses as well. Now, the Old Dispensary is used as a culture and business centre.

Darajani Mosque

We also came by a mosque, the Darajani Mosque (at least that's what I think it's called, after trying to google it) but we didn't get much info about it, just that it's a typical mosque.

 

 

 

Darajani Market

In 1904, the houses around the Darajani Market were built. Today, almost everything looks like it did 100 years ago. The market itself works like then as well and it's the main market on Zanzibar. Many many things are being sold here. Fish, meat, different types of fruit and vegetables and, of course, lots of spices.

 

Market, money changing and SIM cards

After leaving the Darajani market, we all went to change our dollars into Tanzanian Schilling (always count your money afterwards, I got 40$ less than I should've!) and got sim cards. Nothing exciting happened there, obviously.

 

Maru Maru

For lunch, we went to an Indian/Zanzibari roof top restaurant, which was also part of a hotel. There we ate shrimp salad and some indian curry with naan bread. We felt really bad for our coordinator and the tour guide trainee, since it was still Ramadan and they had to watch us eat our food (and drink water) while they were basically starving.

 

 

Freddie Mercury House

Our next stop was the house, where the front singer of the British band "Queen", Freddie Mercury, was born. For me, that was especially exciting since I grew up with Queen because my older brother's obsessed with that band.

St. Joseph's Cathedral

The Catholic Church was built between 1893 and 1897 buy the french architect Berange, who also built the cathedral in Marseille. Today, it's still used by local Catholics and it's open every Sunday at 9am for worshipping.

 

 

Soko ya m'hogo - Jaw's Corner

The jaw's corner is basically a small market place in the centre of stone town. It's main purpose is to bring people together, who lost each other in the complicated labyrinth-like streets of Stone Town. If you ask a local about jaw's corner, they know, you're lost and show you the way.

Doors on Zanzibar

Even though, Stone Towns buildings look old and partly destroyed, people can still see, that the previous owners, from 100 to 200 years ago, were quite rich. That's because of the doors. You can find over 500 of those artfully carved doors in Stone Town and each and every one has its own story.

Those doors initially come from countries around the Persian Gulf and India. They were the first thing that was built of a house and are decorated with animal and plant carvings, like fish, lotus and date palms.

The doors are either arabic or indian. The arabian versions were built arched and you can tell that they're arabian if they have sayings from the quran carved. The shape of indian doors, however, is square and aren't decorated as much. One specific characteristic are the pointed brass bar. In India, those were used so that war elephants weren't able to enter that easily. On Zanzibar, they're obviously only there for decoration.

2nd Orphanage

After the Stone Town tour, we went to another orphanage, where there were around 20 children from age nine to 18. There we were greeted nicely by the momma and got to know the kids a bit. Our coordinator told us that we could also work at that one, if we want, and teach the children English. We later decided, that we would teach there for the first two weeks and then work at the first orphanage in the last two weeks

Dinner @ Luukmaan's

For dinner, we went back to Stone Town, where our coordinator brought us to a really expensive restaurant. The view was amazing but since the food wasn't worth the money (in our opinion) and we knew, that our coordinator probably couldn't afford it, we told him to bring us to a local restaurant because we obviously were here to experience Africa and not pay 20$ for a European style dish.

We then went to Luukmaan, where we ate potato wedges, a vegetable curry and chapatti for only 6000TS (~3$) each. And, let me tell you, it was delicious! I'm so happy that we went there instead of that posh hotel restaurant.