The story of Zanzibar and me being on a Boat

I hate waiting for an adventure. The day before one starts is like the day before your birthday, your belly flutters with butterflies and sitting still makes ants crawl in your whole body. It is not even worth trying to sleep because you know you won’t be able to stop thinking about what is awaiting you.

The night before the day we were starting our trip to Tanzania was just like that, a long wait for it to become 5.00 so that we could get going. When it was finally time I hauled my backpack on to my back and joined Jossy so that we could head for the bus station, and after three hours waiting the bus started and we were on our way.

17 hours in a Kenyan bus is… exiting. You see a lot, sleep a lot, eat a lot and sweat a lot! Chickens, cockroaches, delays and broken tiers are a fact. And, one or two visits to African toilets must be endured.

Then there is the really fun walk over the border between Kenya and Tanzania to look forward to and of course all the interesting people you’ll meet on the journey. My favorite meeting during the bus tour must be the two completely covered Muslim ladies that cut in front of us in the line when we were trying to fix our Tanzanian visas. When I started to complain about their rudeness (in Swedish of course, as a true Swede I close my fist in my pocket instead of actually telling them to get back in line) one of them turned around and said in Swedish “Är ni svenskar?” (Are you Swedish?). I almost felt bad about the complaining two seconds earlier but they didn’t seem to mind and were just happy to meet fellow Swedes going to Tanzania. From this I learnt that wherever you go be carful about what you say because in a world that is, thanks to improved ways of transport, getting smaller and smaller there are Swedes everywhere.

When we arrive in Dar Es Salaam it is 3 o’clock in the night, the rain is poring down and it is pitch dark outside. We had before leaving the boarding asked ourselves if we should bring raincoats but came to the conclusion that raincoats are for losers. We laughed a lot about that a couple of times during our trip, especially when we were soaked from top to toe after just ten seconds outside.

We took a cab from the bus station to a backpacker hotel called Jambo Inn. It is a cozy place with a decent breakfast, good air-conditioning and ugly paintings on walls all over the building. Three nights were spent there. During the days Jossy and I just walked around Dar, a city that can just be described as empty, a bit pointless and pretty unsexy. But we had a couple of pleasant long strolls around the town and many good laughs during our days there so they weren’t wasted.

On Monday 25^th, we packed our bags again and took the ferry from Dar to Zanzibar. I got seasick and slept through the trip so I can’t remember much of it. We took a taxi from the ferry station to the north beach called Kendwa where the hotel Kendwa Rocks is located – a place in my head called “the backpacker paradise”. If you’re young, social and ready to party this is the place for you. If you’re older, have a bit more money and don’t like public showers, go somewhere else. I’ve heard that the Hilton hotel is supposed to be ok.

White sandy beaches and the Indian Ocean as warm and green as ever made us stay by the beach most days, not exploring the island, as we probably should have. We at least had one day in Stone Town doing some mandatory harem-pants shopping and jewelry buying. But the rest of the time we saved for the beach. Or rather for the ocean because the heat made it impossible to stay on land, we just lay floating in the salty water until we started to get all wrinkly.

Even during the evenings and nights we did a lot of swimming; one night we even joined a couple of South African backpackers while they swam out to one of the hotel’s dhows. If you ever get the chance to go for a swim in the ocean at night in Zanzibar, do it! The moon and starlight makes the oceans little algae shine with every arm stroke you take, it is quite magical.

From this night we also got the line which will always to us represent our trip namely “I’m on a boat”, which you might not know is a pretty famous song that the “kids” (we) today listen to.

The trip, even though it was as unplanned as it was, was perfect and without too much trouble until the day that we were going back to school. All the trouble we had to go through made me think that maybe Tanzania didn’t want us to leave.

We had gotten back to Dar the day before our departure to take the same bus as we had taken to Tanzania home. We once again got up really early and headed for the bus station and there, amongst probably 500 other busses, we managed to find the one going to Nairobi and got on it. After two hours the bus moved for the first time. It rolled about four meters and then came to a stop and did not move again during the following five hours that we waited. We hadn’t thought when planning the trip that on the 1^st May, just like in Sweden, some people go out to demonstrate. And that was what all the buss drivers had decided to do.

After a couple of hours at the bus station, when we were starting to worry about the fact that we had almost eaten all our food out of pure boredom, we walked around the area to see what was actually going on. What we saw did not make us feel any better I tell you.

The bus area was fenced in and the only way out was through a huge gate that was closed and guarded by a wound up angry mob of bus drivers. We were locked in. That was true claustrophobia. At around 1 o’clock we decided that it wasn’t safe to stay any more, mainly because some really mean looking military men with shields, helmets and huge automatic weapons had started to arrive and the mob and groups of people moving around the area was noticeably increasing. We did the only thing we could think of (that did not include calling the Swedish embassy and ask them to come in tanks and save us), we took our bags and walked straight up to the police station on the primacies and asked the guy who looked least willing to kill us if he could get us out of there. And he did, thank god, but to do so he had to lead us straight through the crowd by the gate, which was not a fun experience.

When we finally escaped we got the first cab we saw and went to the airport, took out every single penny we had on our cards and bought two tickets to Nairobi. Ironically the plane had to make a stop on Zanzibar (imagine it would have been smarter and cheaper to have initially taken the plane from there instead). But the extra stop was a good thing as well because when the plane landed and the new passengers started to board we suddenly heard familiar voices and turned around to see the Frankels coming onboard. From there on the last part of the trip went smoothly and we even got a ride back to school, which saved us the cab money (Yeay to that when you are as broke as we were).

After this I can only say one thing and that is Zanzibar you just wait, I’m coming back!