Arriving in Stonetown
Zanzibar Research Diary — Day One
Before you begin, you may want to read Seagrasses in Zanzibar — a quick explanation of what I’m doing here. It should give you some context on why seagrasses are worth studying, and how they affect our climate.
We cross the equator at dawn. As the first rays of the sun wake me from an uncomfortable night’s sleep, the plane descends from the clouds above Nairobi. One swift flight later, and I’m disembarking in Zanzibar.
Stonetown is wet today. It’s called Stonetown because all the buildings there are stone — constructed by colonial powers. The Portuguese, Omani Sultanate and British all controlled the island at different points in history, though the British buildings are the bulk of those left standing.
In the departure lounge, holding a card that said “Duncan”, is Ali — my driver. He bundles my backpack into the back of his cab while I climb into the passenger seat, and we drive through a lake of water that had fallen from the sky that morning.
I’ve been instructed to pick up two things in Stonetown — a pair of diving boots for my supervisor and a pair of coolboxes. I’m also after a local SIM card for myself. Acquiring those things isn’t easy. The one place that has diving boots only has two left feet of a size that’s too small, so I resort to a pair of neoprene shoes instead.
The coolboxes are easier to find, but the stallholder tries to charge me $100 for each, which is a ridiculous sum. We walk off in disgust. The SIM card is also easy to find, and rather cheaper, but the stallholder is trying to screw me here too — he wants to charge me $2 for cutting it to the right size for my phone. I negotiate him down from 3,000 Tanzanian shillings to 1,000 — about $0.75.
The SIM card itself is about $3.20, and costs $0.30 a day for 125MB of data. That’s not really enough, but the 3G data is so slow here that it’s actually more than I’m able to use. Notably, only one person asks me for money — that’s fewer than you’d find walking across a city in Sweden. Most people in Stonetown just ignore me completely. There are plenty of tourists here.
I’m staying on the far side of the island — starting off in Chwaka Bay resort for one night to acclimatise, before moving to a small house in the village itself. The drive over is about 45 minutes, and the village is low-rise and mostly comprised of houses with coral-and-cement walls and corrugated iron roofs.
Chwaka Bay Resort is really very nice. It looks as paradise-like as you’d expect, with swaying palms and thatched roofs. The beach is nice too, but the geography of Chwaka Bay is such that the tide goes out at least a kilometre every day leaving behind piles of greenish seagrass and their accompanying fauna. The owner, as a result, hates the seagrass, because it makes his beach look bad.
The rooms are large, with a huge four-poster bed swathed in mosquito netting. There are flower petals scattered on the cover, and the air conditioning feels wonderful after the sweaty drive. The bathroom is basic, but comes with a full selection of complimentary shampoos and conditions that I bundle into my bag for later use.
When the tide returns that afternoon, we go for a short swim. The water is incredibly warm — like a bath, with the occasional colder current that comes along to refresh you now and then. It’s glorious. The other guests don’t seem to be interested, though — they’re a party of Norwegians who arrange themselves around the resort’s small pool.
That evening, we eat a remarkably good Indian meal (paneer cheese in curry with chapatis) and drink beer. We sing happy birthday to someone we don’t know at one point, and I’m handed a sliver of cake as I chat to my supervisor about his time in Antarctica, London and Patagonia. About midnight I eventually crawl under my my mosquito nets and go to sleep.
NEXT: Read the second part of my field diary: Spanner in the Works.
This is a diary of my fieldwork for my masters’ thesis in environmental science. I’m trying to assess the likely impacts of climate change on coastal communities in developing countries. If you’re interested, you can read more about it here, or ask me any questions you have on Twitter.
