Splashing with Zanzibarbarians

" ... This was my first glimpse of Dar es Salaam ... a vast rippling blue-black lagoon and all around the rim of the lagoon there were pale-yellow sandy beaches, almost white, and breakers were running up to the sand, and coconut palms with their little green leafy hats were growing on the beaches, and there were casuarina trees, immensely tall and breathtakingly beautiful ... And then behind the casuarina trees was what seemed to me like a jungle, a great tangle of dark-green trees that were full of shadows and almost certainly teeming ... with rhinos and lions and all manner of vicious beasts. Over to one side lay the tiny town of Dar es Salaam, the houses white and yellow and pink, and among the houses I could see a narrow church steeple and domed mosque and along the waterfront there was a line of acacia trees splashed with scarlet flowers ..."

- Roald Dahl, from Going Solo, written in the 1930s

Sounds like a nice little coastal village, Roald. Dar es Salaam - Haven of Peace - the quiet town of acacias, casuarinas, and rhinos. An appealing place. Between the charmingly decrepit white-yellow-pink-crumbly houses teem over two million residents. All manner of vicious beasts were nowhere to be found. A nice contrast to Nairobi. Please don't infer that I doubt the veracity of Roald Dahl's meticulous account. The man was a true legend. After all, he created one of the world's most enduring and esteemed role models - Willy Wonka. From the mouth of the Wonka to a keyboard near the Indian Ocean ... for we are the music-makers and the dreamers of the dream. As such, we will kindly excuse Mr.. Dahl's fantastical fauna finds and leave Dar to make our music on the fabled spice isle of Zanzibar.

Boring encyclopedic section (skip if prone to narcolepsy ... especially if you are currently driving): Zanzibar (Unguja as it is known in Swahili) is 53 miles (85 km) long, 24 miles (40km) wide, and shaped like a one-horned minotaur diving into a bowl of blueberry jello (or so I view the cartographic Rorschach test). The name Zanzibar is derived from the Arabic words zanj which was used by chroniclers in the middle ages to denote "the land of the black people" and bar which means "coast."

The annals of this exotic island read like a chapter from Arabian Nights (engaging tales for the beach; interestingly, Aladdin was Chinese and his babe was the Lady Badar al-Budur, not the curvaceously yummy Jasmine). Controlled by the Omani Arabs, by the mid 1800s the archipelago had become the world's largest producer of cloves and the largest slave trading place on the east coast of Africa. European explorers flocked ... Livingstone chose Zanzibar to start his voyage in search of the source of the Nile; later, Stanley left from Zanzibar to cross Africa east to west (the famous phrase: "Dr. Livingstone I presume" stems from their meeting at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika).

Sifting forward through the sands of time a bit, in 1960 mainland Tanganyika forged a union with Zanzibar to form Tanzania. If the island had been more appellatively selective and merged with its southern neighbors, we may have had a country named Zamzanzambique. A Scrabble enthusiast's dream.

For those inclined toward tangential alliterative allegory, the following Zen - Zanzibar connection may be of interest. In the Golden Age of China a painting competition was held during the late T'ang dynasty, a time of many such events and gifted competitors, all of whom, brought up in an intellectual and artistic meritocracy, were aware of what success might mean.

Judged by master painters, most carefully arranged, each had its theme, that of this story being Famous Monastery in the Mountains. Ample time was provided for the participants to meditate before taking up their brushes. More than a thousand entries of monasteries in sunlight, in shadow, under trees, at mountain-foot, on slopes, at the very peak, by water, among rocks - all seasons. Mountains of many sizes, shapes, richly various as the topography itself.

Since the monastery was noted famous, monks abounded, working, praying, all ages and conditions. The competition produced works destined to be admired for centuries to come. The winning painting had no monastery at all: a monk paused, reflecting, on a misty mountain bridge. Nothing - everything - more. Evoking atmosphere, the monk knew his monastery hovered in the mist, more beautiful than hand could realize. To define, the artist might have learnt from the Taoism of Lao Tzu or the Zen of Hui-neng, is to limit. Or, as the tripped-out jazzy Zen maxim by Miles Davis goes: Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Zanzibar is a place that polarizes opinion. It is equally praised in prose and vilified in verse. I strongly side with the seraphic songs of splendor. This island is my monastery. To describe it would impose limitations on its wonder. Accordingly, most of my letters are full of shit; everyone's perspective and philosophy is personally unique. Take mine with a grain of salt (and a shot of tequila). Zanzibar is most certainly a place where I'll return someday to imbibe tropical Bungo juice, further discover rare shades of blue, and inhale the scented magic.

- doing a jig with jinns and jinniyahs ... Kevin