Paradise revisited

We left Kendwa today to continue on. What a strange thing it is to feel relief in leaving a place that people come to spend their holidays.

I didnt realize when we left Stone Town a week ago that there would be no more banks, so yesterday I went in search. I heard from a few locals that there was an ATM at one of the nicer hotels in Nungwe, another beach at the top of Zanzibar known to be more upscale and frequented by Italians, so I set off by way of the beach at 10am that morning when the tide was low to cross. I had been warned of robberies, so I put only a few things in in my bag and hid everything else under my clothes

I had felt anger rising in me since the night before when my travel mates were fighting and I had suddenly become sick of everything overnight, the aggressive vendors that prohibited any peaceful walks, the local beach boys who relentlessly bothered us, the strange decadance of the vacationers, the lack of sleep in the mosquito ridden heat, the way i felt i looked ugly with my short haircut growing out and the dark sun patches on my face, and the general absurdity of my being angry at all in this beautiful place.

First I stopped at the Royal Nungwe, which only irritated me more; it is a monsterously ugly thing made to look like a giant castle with endless white decorative walls and huge expanses of overly manicured half dead grass. I walked up to reception passing strange chlorined pools of water and desolate and pristine walkways. a local woman hotel worker sits and prunes a lone bush that doesn't belong. the proportions of space do not inspire anything, instead there is only a sense that you are small and imprisoned inside someones idea of paradise, it's sensibilities indicate wasted priveledge and worse, without any knowledge of itself - wasted and reveling in it. I finally get to the wide cold marble counter and it is not an ATM machine, only a bureau of change and at that they are open, but not open until 3 because of whoknowswhatreason. I walk behind the giant gates of the hotel where local guards dressed as Massai flirt with me and finally tell me to go into Nungwe village for a bank. Jambo, mambo, whatever. I do walk into the village and there is no bank there either, only local life where women carry things on top of their heads and walk down the road, and men sell things or sit in the heat. I feel ridiculous.

I want to escape somehow to give myself relief from my frusteration of not finding what I need immediately, I want to walk all the way back to Stone Town to find a bank but I know this is silly, its an hours drive. and more, I want to walk fast through and out of the slowness of Africa, I want, I want I want. as I walk, things open up and it is not just the bank and these immediate frusterations, but everything else: I want to walk through my dissapointments, my choices, my passivity, my vulnerability. I feel all the power that anger can bring, and I cant help but wonder suddenly how much of us are informed and powered by dissapointment - feeling victims of the world and each other, broken by ideas that were promised us in fairy tales and on commercials, and how little life can seem to measure up when taken at this level. And why do I feel this when I am here, after all? What exactly am I so pissed off about? The fact that I have a life where I can entertain these kinds of troubles is in and of itself a waste because I know they are problems of priveledge - the priveledge to have choices and make decisions. the fact that I feel burdened by them seems absurd. But here I am.

I continue on and finally find a little store at the Nungwe Inn that will give me cash on my Visa card and in that regard things are set right again. I walk back to Kendwa relieved to be independent again and I let the walk back take everything out of me.

I am arriving at a place where there is no reality to my own sense of victimhood. If nothing else, this trip has been all about choices. I have free will to go anywhere I want - separate from the people I am with, go to different places, make different choices if they suit me. and the same with the rest of my life, I can't look to anyone or anything to blame, I can't think of much from the past or present that I have not chosen on some level. this is strange feeling of being an adult having a tantrum - there is no place for victimhood in my life, and there is no walking out of this awareness, there is no one i can look to for answers. It is all the choice, the priveledge of choice that bugs me. It is far easier to put myself into a situation and become a victim of it and claim that I didn't choose it than choosing something else. In this way from here on, I cannot be bothered by the things around me without taking responsibility.

Why does the weight of agency feel so heavy? The idea that we dont have to suffer if we don't want to, that no one can be responsible for our happiness but us, why does this feel so full, so strange? Here in the heat and the walking and the banks and bothers, it is just me, working within.

Now to look up.

Crickets and Canaries

Ghada and i got up before six this morning to meet Mr Haji who was to take us to the fish auction in the village this morning but we never made it. I had barely slept all night - my mosquito tent is very secure, except for when a mosquito manages to sneak inside as I open it up to climb in. i fall asleep, wake up itchy, and the night then becomes a routine of trying to fix the situation. also I keep opening my door and walking outside of my hut staring into the darkness like a hungry person who opens the refridgerator door over and over again even though there is nothing in there to eat. each time i am surprised and dissapointed by the darkness, as if only the morning could offer at least the solution of starting a new day when we can stretch the day as long as it will allow. and so I find myself dreading sleep time, when my body asks for rest and there is no promise of it. Delivered like this into morning, most days start out slowly, except when Ghada and I have ventured into the village for photographing and interviewing.

the first sound of the day is the ocean, the first sight is the light blue water prefaced by white sand and the two mamas on the beach who sleep outside next to their huts with crafts, next to my hut. Jambo!, they say first, before propositioning for a massage. Jambo! Mambo! Hello, how are you? Poa. I'm cool. Massage? Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. or, not today. Asanti. Thank you. Hakuna Matata, no problem.

A few steps away is free coffee and a simple breakfast included in our hut price - a small banana, which is about half the size of the ones we get at home, half of a mango still on the skin offering itself in turned inside out in squared sections, a small oily crepe, and another piece of bread - sometimes a square fried donu, or a piece of white bread. there is a spread that is not called butter or margarine, called Blue Band, and strawberry jam that is almost hot pink in color called Al Diwan, with Arabic writing all over the label, and coffee which is best if you make it like this: mix a spoonful of powder milk, half a spoonful of sugar with a little water to get a milky consistency, then add a bit of instant coffee, then add hot water to the top of the cup. this way it eliminates the chunks of coffee stuck together. sometimes I sit and write, or have conversation with the girls that can stretch into the hot part of the day. There is swimming anytime. as it gets later, the sun can get so bright that you cannot see and it makes sense to retire to the girls hut where we listen to music on the ipod dock that Ghada bought in Johannesberg.

It is hard to avoid cliches to say things like this, but to sit in the hut and listen to music brings such simple pleasure - step out of the heat, stretch out on the floor and just listen, or sing... Mercedes Sosa's voice floats through the afternoon, as she sings Gracias a La Vida, what can you do but smoke cigarrettes and stare through the half open door and feel your heart open and break, close and open and break over and over again. Ghada lays down on the bed and closes her eyes. Teah and I sit on the floor, legs stretched, sections of sunlight catch the smoke as it lifts itself through the air of the hut and rolls out the door.

At some point in the day I like to clean up my little room and sweep it out, refold any clothes from the night before, straighten the sheets, and organize my camera equipment so I can recharge batteries when and if the generator comes on in the evening. When appetite comes in the mid afternoon it is cheapest to go outside of the beach - walk up through other little places and out onto the dirt road behind all the hotels which the tourists forget about as soon as they pass through the gates of vacation. It is 5000 shillings for seafood curry with rice, or a masala dish, coconut curry, things like this, 1000 shillings for a big bottle of water, a little more for a beer. As lunch is being made in the Kinjiji Cafe kitchen I realize that my body is ready for every meal, I feel hunger. It is different than in the last week or so in South Africa, where our road trips forced meals at gas stations, chips and sweets only, and generally there is an abundance of this kind of food . hunger doesnt come the same like this, empty food brings emptiness.

I wonder how it is that a sunset here can make me sad at all, but some of them do. I guess the way the day plays out like this routinely and quietly I can hear everything inside of me. after sunset, we put on clothes, change the spirit with local maize vodka or whisky, and then begins the music, the dancing, the moving.


Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone's song, which is my very song.

Thanks to life
Thanks to life
Thanks to life
Thanks to life