Going to Zanzibar alone is like sending yourself a saucy sms. Or “liking” your own picture of Facebook. Or looking at yourself in the mirror and muttering with a wink, “they don’t make them like this anymore.” It’s desperate. But two weeks ago, I found myself in Zanzibar airport at 6:30Pm, alone. I was catching the tail end of Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF). My trip
immediately started off on the wrong foot. “Malindi hotel,” I told the cab guy as I threw my bag in the backseat. Now the cab guy, like everybody else in the island, talks fast. Get someone who speaks fast in Kiswahili and it’s like listening to a tape recorder on fast forward. But they are friendly. I suspected things were awry when the cab guy arched one eyebrow and asked me if I got the name of the hotel right. Sure, I said and he groaned and drove on.
We drove into Stone Town; me silent and him banging away. We nipped through alleyways as dusk descended on us, and passed by a fish market, past loud men and buibui-clad women who now looked furtive under that ailing light of the evening. The streets got seedier by the minute until finally he stopped in the middle of a narrow street and said, “haya ni hapa.” “Hapa, wapi?”I asked because there wasn’t anything around that looked like a hotel- at least a hotel that I would like to stay in. He mentioned that when I mentioned the name of the hotel he didn’t imagine that it’s a hotel that befitted someone who walked out of the airport. All the media chaps were living there, I was informed. I told him to wait and walked into the doorway of an old building that was the hotel. The officials of ZIFF had reserved a room for me but the chap at the main desk shook his head and said there wasn’t a Biko on his list. There was a Jackson, yes, he said, but he already checked in. I suspected it wasn’t me. And the hotel was full, he informed me. Sweet.
Just sweet. So I called the lady from ZIFF who I had been corresponding with and her phone was off. I went on Chat and saw her online. She said that I hadn’t confirmed my flight arrangement and so she had not reserved me a room. I was pissed because that was such croak; we had agreed about the room even before I called the airline. But it was late and I needed an abode quickly or I’d sleep in an abandoned ship. The cab guy drove me around and we checked out some few hotels in a better address. All were full -most hotels are fully booked during the film fest. Finally we ran into a hotel called Zanzibar Marine Hotel. I got the last room for 50 dollars a night and paid immediately.
In my line of business, I spend a lot of time in hotel rooms. I’m lucky that I spend most of that time in high-end hotel rooms where the management leaves a chocolate bar on your pillow together with a personalized note welcoming you to their fine establishment. Since I’m mostly writing about those establishments, I’m always treated slightly better than a paying client. I get more smiles, even if they are more artificial. I get free spa treatment if I ask. I’m often called by the manager who wants to find out if “you are having a good time and if you need anything that would make your stay more comfortable.” I once told one, “Yes, actually, can I have one blonde Russian dancer and a petite south east Asian with a gap in her front teeth… and some red wine. Thank you. ” There was a shocked silence on the line before I added; “It’s a joke.” An uncomfortable laughter followed from his end.
I never make tea in the room, or wear their bathrobes. I never use their closet because I never unpack. My room is often shabby, which I suspect mirrors the state of my mind. Unless otherwise, I never use the air cons, breath that cold for too long and feel your lungs calcify. I normally like to strip down to my boxer and hang out in the room that way. If there are peanuts in the mini bar, I will have them. I avoid chocolates, even the complimentary once. I love hotels that have a huge bowl of fruits in the room; it makes me feel like I’m in Game of Thrones. When you stay in numerous hotel rooms they all start looking the same. They blend into a murmur of walls and windows. I find hotel rooms vacant and sad. And too prim.
All of Zanzibar Marine’s key rooms are attached to these large wooden planks with the number inscribed in it. Yes, just in case you were thinking of taking it back home as a souvenir. My room, 105, sat on second floor of the three-floored hotel. It was a basic room: a bed, a wooden closet, a toilet, two bars of soaps so small they wouldn’t lather if you used both of them at the same time, a towel and no sandals. But it was impeccably clean. Plus the windows opened into an empty half arched parking lot downstairs where at night the sound of loud Zanzibari men seated under the tree down there drifted up into the room. A rotary fan whirred overhead.
Hotel rooms bring out a certain uncomfortable horror in me, mainly because I dislike my own company. I don’t do “me time”. I think it’s an excuse for people who want to touch themselves. Being alone for a whole day makes me depressive. If I was stranded in an island alone, I’d eat myself than die there alone waiting and hoping to be rescued. I love the warmth of human presence, even if they aren’t saying a word. I love to hear someone breath, or the sound of the shower in the bathroom or the sound of a cough. It’s reassuring. It says I’m not forsaken, that I’m not a castaway. It says I’m a human being, not an animal in the woods.
The film festival mostly happened in the evenings, and so during the day, I spent time nosing about Zanzibar, taking pictures and tasting food from the streets. I would go down to the beach and watch boat makers chip off the side of a boat. Since I suffer from attention deficient syndrome, I would get bored fast and recede to room 105 where I would slip out of my clothes and lie on bed, reading magazines and pretending I was having a good time. But I could feel the walls close in on me, stifling me, my own company cornering me in. When it promised to strangle me, I would go downstairs to the “business center” in front of the reception where I would sit before a computer and feel like the color flood my soul again when I hear voices and traffic outside. Plus the two young girls manning the reception always giggled. They giggled if I asked for water. They giggled when I asked them why my loo wouldn’t flash. They giggled when I asked them why the printer wasn’t working. Those giggles helped.
As evening neared I would walk to the seafront, where I would sit on shiny metallic seats at this café by the seafront. There I would look out at the sea at the boats bobbing in the calm waters and wonder if in them sat someone who was miserable of the sea. I watched couples walk by, licking on a ice-cream cons, sipping from bottles of water and giggling like randy hyenas. Their happiness turned my gills green. So I sipped glass after glass of cold juice, served by a young chap in sagging black pants and a quick tongue to any unaccompanied white client. I found him amusing this boy, because he always had to check the price list to tell you the price of anything. When I was sick from all this seafront tableau I would go back to my room, grab a cold shower and as the sun dipped, head out to interview some Tanzanian moviemaker who wouldn’t string two sentences in English without looking like he had swallowed a coloured bug.
I loved evenings because it meant human interaction. Breakfast was served right outside my door, on this low waiting room like seats, because Zanzibar Marine didn’t have a dining hall. For 50 dollars you didn’t raise your expectations. For 50 dollars you sat alone and you ate your breakfast wordlessly, a breakfast consisting of banana, water melon, white bread and tea. Guests from other rooms on the floor would walk out of their rooms to find you seated there, and since they wouldn’t want to share the “table” and be forced to engage in some small chitchat, they would recede back into their rooms and wait for you to finish. The first morning, I ate my pineapple and watermelon and started leaving but a lady in a white uniform ran after me and caught me at the head of the staircase. While fiddling with her fingers, she asked me why I wasn’t staying for breakfast; I said I wasn’t because I don’t like tea or bread. I was out to look for some food, like beans and chapo. She looked disappointed, maybe because I had confirmed what she had thought about her breakfast all these time.
My last night, after ZIFF had wrapped up, I decided to look for a bar to review. I was directed to this area which had bars that opened after the customary midnight. You won’t believe this, but this event I’m about to recount was the highlight of my trip because it’s the only instance I laughed in the island. I had dropped off the cab, camera slung over my shoulder at 1am. As I walked to the entrance of this club, some lady called me. She was seated on the bonnet of a cab, standing between a guy and a second lady. So I walked over, and she asked me in a very colorful Swahili if I was new in town. I said yes. Where from? I said, Kenya. Ahhh, Kenya!
She had a lovely face but with a potbelly that struggled for freedom below that face. She spoke to me tenderly, almost seductively. She addressed me as “mtoto”, and pretended to be intrigued by my camera. Then she extended her hand and said, “Mimi naitwa Roda,” and when I told her I was called John and shook her hand, she sort of firmly and very gently drew me towards her. As in, she did something a man would do to a chick. If I wasn’t so black I would have blushed. I’m not accustomed to that level of confidence in women. Hell, who is? It sort of disoriented me for a while, confused me but also flattered me greatly. At that point I knew she was a hooker. At the point when I was now standing close to her, and I could smell her cheap perfume and see, more closely, her eyes (hard) and feel her hand (harder) I knew she was the girl of the night.
Then, while still hanging onto my hand, and while giving me a once over, she said she liked the way I looked. She said it smoothly, slowly and in a very seductive way, all while calling me “mtoto.” Jesus. As I politely tried to pry my hand free from hers, I told her I really had to go. But she sort of walked away with me a few distant, away from her posse, and then held my hand, looked up at me with these dole eyes, and said, “ Sasa basi, mtoto, mimi nimekuzimia, mbona tusirudi kwenye chumba unipe mbegu zako?” I laughed so hard and heartily I’m afraid I offended her!
Ps. Loading pictures a little later.