Interviews Complete
Zanzibar Research Diary: Day Nine
Read the seventh part of my field diary: Up the Coast
Picking up anything off the floor of my room is always a heart-in-the-mouth moment. Today, my backpack is home to another one of the massive poisonous centipedes that freaked me out when I first arrived and still do. Today, however, the judicious application of bug spray and a shoe quickly ends its life. Then I notice the detached head of another one about 30 centimetres away and spot a gecko looking down at me from the ceiling. I appear to have disturbed a hunting session.
Leaving the gecko to his prey, I head out for the final day of interviews. We’ve collected 41 exactly, blowing away my tentative first goal of 30 and approaching a more respectable 50. It’s my mission to hit that today by revisiting Marumbi and Uroa.
The dala-dala is late, so we walk along the road and talk about Islamic life again. We talk a little about women’s rights, but the most interesting part of the conversation is when Said describes the way that some Islamic scholars use science. It’s well-known that Muslims don’t eat pork, but it’s less well-known that they also won’t eat fish and milk protein in the same meal. It’s apparently bad for you, according to the prophet Mohammed. Said describes how “scientists” (I resist the urge to yell “citation needed”) tested this and found it out to be true. I asked what would have happened if they’d tested it and found out that it wasn’t true and there’s no problem with people eating milk and fish at one meal. “They’d have been wrong,” Said replied.
We also disagree when it comes to punishing people for wrongdoing. Said defends capital punishment for murder and cutting off the hands of thieves, as laid out in the Qu’ran, and I ask what happens if the courts get it wrong — people make mistakes after all. His response is that compensation can be offered to the person or their family. I’m not convinced that’s good enough, and say so — even if a god is infallible, mankind certainly isn’t. The one thing we can agree on is that religion is best thought of as a way of being a good person — and it’s for this reason that most religious teachings are quite similar.
Despite the rather combative way I’m presenting it here, the discussion is very amiable — we both have respect for each other’s choices, and agree that religion is a personal choice for everyone.
The interviews go smoothly, with no real surprises. The most interesting comes from the leader of Marumbi village, who explains to us that policing their protected no-net zone is very difficult because the boats that violate it tend to be owned by the leaders of Chwaka village. As such, they can’t just make wild accusations, it’s a deeply political situation. We also learn that the previous leader of the village was at one point taken away by the police and threatened after he prevented a group of Chwaka fishermen from using their nets in the protected area.
But the current leader has a plan to save his village. Inland a little way from the coast, he’s setting up a village farm that’s shown impressive output considering the stony soil in the area. They’ve dug a well to provide water, but they need about $3,000 of investment to set up a proper irrigation system that’ll allow them to employ five people full-time. They’ve lined up $2,000 of that but the last thousand is proving elusive.
I get a short tour of the farm and it’s ramshackle but impressive in scale and about ten different kinds of butterfly are dancing around the well in its centre. They hand me a slice of watermelon to try, and I chomp it down gingerly (I have a food intolerence to watermelon — but it would have been rude to refuse). It’s delicious. I tell them I hope they manage to raise the last thousand and they ask for my email address to keep in touch if they do — which I happily provide.
In Uroa it’s dry and dusty. The fishmarket is in full swing, so many people are too busy for interviews. We also get an echo of Chwaka here as one man refuses to talk to us without being paid. After retreating from the seafront a short way, however, we quickly gather the last few interviews we need and I pay Said what I owe him for his services. I’ll see him again in a few days in Stonetown.
The short journey back on the dala-dala is very cramped. More and more people pile in, sitting on the floor until there’s no space remaining and I’m at the far end from the exit. I’ve been baffled in the past by people’s inclination to sit right by the exit, making it harder for new people to get in, but now it makes sense — they just want to be able to get out of the truck easly. As my knees are pushed up to my ears, Said says that I might need to climb out through 30-centimetre wide gaps on the side of the truck. I’m not totally sure if he’s joking. When we get to Chwaka, however, it clears out just enough for me to clamber through and escape.
The walk back through the village is hot, and as I’m nearly back at the house the same guy calls out to me from a few days ago. I join him for another chat, and he asks if I remember his name. I apologise and tell him I don’t as I’ve met about sixty people over the last few days, and he tells me that it’s Khalid.
He asks me an awkward question — he’s heard that in Europe and America there are some people who don’t like the idea of black people marrying white people. Is this true, or something that people made up? I explain that unfortuntely it’s real, but it’s very rare today — and that people from all over the world live in London without any problems. It’s not quite as nuanced an answer as I’d like to give, but the best I can do with the language barrier.
He asks another question — his classes are taught in English, but not everyone in the class is good at English. What can they do? I ask if they have access to computers — they do — and suggest that they use videos on the internet to learn from. Then if they don’t understand something they can watch it several times over to try and get it. He thanks me for the suggestion and says he’ll tell his teacher.
As I stand up to go I notice that he’s holding a DVD. I ask what it is and he shows me. It’s a movie called “DEAD BRIDES”, proudly featuring “ZOMBIE STRIPPERS”. Once again, I’m reminded that some things are the same the world over.
The evening passes without incident except that Mcha shows up for a chat. His sea urchin wound may in fact be the result of a stonefish or other nasty denizen of the bay, but he’s seeing a doctor in the next few days so he’ll be fine.
We have a brief chat about my interview results, but he’s a proud Chwaka resident and won’t accept that the nets are doing any damage to the bay — citing as evidence the fact that the seagrass hasn’t died in the mangrove region (where the water is deeper) despite the use of nets there. Instead, he says, the problem is the sea urchins. The same sea urchins that are no longer being eaten by the fish, because they’re being caught in the dragnets, so are experiencing something of a population boom. Everything has an effect.
The most interesting point he makes, when I suggest that more people in Chwaka should use the “dema” traps to fish, is one I hadn’t thought of. He says that there are 600 fishermen in the village (from a population of about 4000), and if they all used the “dema” traps — which are woven from wood — then the forest would disappear in months. He’s got me there.
Coming soon: read the tenth part of my diary: Isopods Attack
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.
