20 Feet Below Spice Island

by Amalee Nsour (Jordan)

Making a local connection Tanzania

My bag held small treasures of this island - a rainbow of spices, tea, coffee beans, and fresh mangos. Overstimulated by the race it took to arrive, I sat on a bench and waited for my friends to return from the ticket booth. We started before dawn in Dar Es Salaam, dragged ourselves half-asleep onto a ferry and two hours later arrived on the shores of Stone Town. Minutes after stepping off, our senses were seized. Zanzibar, famous for its turquoise waters off the East African Coast, was pushed and pulled between foreign grips for centuries. The reigns were controlled by the Portuguese, by the sultan of Oman, and finally by the British before being taken back by the people of Zanzibar. Combined with Indian and Asian trading, the island is stained with the fingerprints of foreign cultures. “The last tour is in 5 minutes..are you coming?,” yelled my friend from across the cobbled road. My feet moved with the speed of an anchor dragging through sand as I crossed to meet her. Hours earlier, as we navigated through spice markets and papaya stalls, I had no shortage of energy. Standing here, outside of the Anglican Cathedral Church built on one of the last remaining slave markets in the world, I searched long and hard for the interest to go with them. I spent all my energy on being a tourist, I forgot to save some for being a traveler. “Mambo!”, our guide, Afif, greeted us with the enthusiasm of someone starting off his day, not finishing it. We walked towards the church and headed inside. In less than a few minutes, we went from the packed streets to a narrow passageway leading to a cramped holding cell beneath the church. Afif narrated the nightmarish history contained in these 10x10 cells that were used as holding places in the East African slave trade. The ceiling nearly grazed our heads and within a few minutes of crouching in the rooms, the stench of the musty room and history made us want to leave immediately Afif so articulately compressed the hundreds years of history that affected over a million lives. He took us into the main church that was built on the trading market. In the middle of the grand architecture, he pointed out an inconspicuous circle in the marble at the altar. It was the outline of the former whipping post, where slaves were whipped as a filtering system to separate the stronger and healthier ones from the weaker ones. At this point in the tour, it was the only time Afif shook his head and revealed his own personal disgust at the recollection. The sun was quickly setting and went outside with enough light to see the final stop, statues of five slaves chained together made in commemoration to the lives horrifically scarred and stolen. As we came to the end of the tour, I felt the return of a familiar and conflicting feeling when visiting places that witnessed the worst of humanity. Afif walked us into the museum, the end of the tour. As he explained some of the pictures on the wall, a voice from the back of the room boomed. “Keep it down!" a voice yelled. Afif gently responded back clarifying he was the tour guide. “I don’t care who you are, have some respect and be quiet!”, the voice instantly boomed back. In an instant, Afif’s eyes widened and his hands started shaking. The security guard, clearly his friend, saw the impending disaster and ran to grab and subdue him. The voice emerged from behind the wall he was so diligently absorbed in reading. An older British man in his seventies stood a few feet in front of us, without any recognition of the effect he was having on Afif. He continued to loudly scold everyone for speaking. The guard quickly escorted Afif out. So quickly that we could not say goodbye or give him his tip. In that moment, I understood two things. To truly respect a history is to respect the people still living it. And the best souvenir for all travelers is always a lesson.