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.