Stone Town Streets

Zanzibar is every bit as lovely as we’d hoped, both from the air and on land (the water actually is as blue as it appears in postcards). We will certainly explore the island in the coming months, but mostly, we’ve just been getting to know Stone Town. As any Zanzibar guidebook says, Stone Town is best explored on foot. Personally, I’d be happy if it were only explored on foot. The streets vary from full-size two lane streets (of which there are four in the town proper) to narrow streets of about five feet. Cars go on the full-size streets, as well as on some of the wider one-lane streets. Bikes, scooters, and cars announce their approach to pedestrians with honking and bell-ringing. Almost none of the streets are at right angles, so it behooves the pedestrian to assume that any approaching unseen vehicle is on the same street; better safe than sorry. We’ve gotten pretty quick at ducking to the left and, if possible, stepping up to a curb. Traveling on the big roads has the benefit of being quick and easy to discern on a map, but traveling on the small streets is safer, if almost certain to include some moments of being completely lost.

Everywhere we go, there are storeowners promoting their wares (“Jambo, mama, please look at my nice . . . .). We have yet to see a chain store of any kind, and in our exploring, we’ve seen been trying to create a mental map of the different districts. We live (for the moment) on the edge of the kanga (large printed cloth) and earring district, which is near the shoe district (featuring shoe resale and cobbling), the clothing district (featuring resale and imported clothing mostly), and the school district (school is in session for some students now, and today we walked through a whole several-block section that seemed to be mostly schools). We’ve also spent some time in the electronics district.

Food, especially oranges and limes, can be purchased at several corners around town, but the market is the best place. Shops that sell packaged goods have fixed prices in stickers on each item, but the markets are based on barter. Going to the market is going to be a daily thing, as almost everything is fresh and has a limited shelf life. The ndizi (bananas) we purchased on Tuesday, for instance, had that tannic, underripe taste and texture yesterday, are ripe today, and will be getting mushy tomorrow.