Off to the bush

This will be my last post for a month- our group is off for a month long safari out of all internet contact. We just finished an amazing week snorkeling and studying coral reef ecology. I'll post some details when I return to civilization.

Zanzibar Cathedral

Today is the third day of our free travel week. We have all been given 300 US dollars to travel on for eight days, including providing our own transportation to our next stop at Tanga on the Tanzanian mainland. The majority of students have broken up into smaller groups and are staying at various beach and party locations through out the island of Zanzibar. I wouldn't have minded spending a few days at a beach, but a whole week is more than I can handle (especially since the next week will be snorkeling and studying coral reef ecology every day). So I'm staying here in Stone Town, the main city on Zanzibar, at St. Monica's hostel. It's right next to the Anglican cathedral, which was built on the site of the former slave market. It's a nice place- I actually like it better than the more expensive place we stayed as a group. I just try not to think too much about the thousands of people who were bought, sold and died in grimy stone holding chambers directly underneath where my room is now.

The cathedral seems very odd to me. I'm not sure if it is even technically a Cathedral- I know that the seat of the Tanga Diocese (the mainland) is on the mainland, and also that there are very few Christians in Zanzibar. The overall population of the island is 90-98% Muslim, and the English service I attended had only 5 other worshippers - two of whom were readers and ushers. So if Zanzibar is a separate diocese, it must be a very small one.

The cathedral is also a tourist attraction. All day long, steady streams of Europeans and Americans arrive to pay 3 dollars to visit the church and the one underground cell that has been preserved. Before I moved to the hostel, I asked if I could go in the Cathedral- not as a tourist, but just to pray. The answer was a flat no- something that really disturbed me. I understand the need to regulate and maintain a historic site with heavy traffic- but my gut rebels at the thought of ever requiring people to pay for access to religion.

The inside of the church is very reflective of it’s origins- the stained glass windows, the wood carvings and inscriptions are all dedicated to recounting the history of the British crusade to end slavery. (British economic and naval pressure forced the Sultan of Zanzibar to close the slave markets around the 1870’s, at great financial loss both personally and to the Island economy) The altar was built on the exact site of the former whipping post, and near the pulpit there is a crucifix made from ‘wood from the tree under which David Livingstone died’. For an Anglican church, the de facto beautification of early missionaries and anti-slavery crusaders was unexpected.

My overall impression of the cathedral is that it was built not as a center of worship, but as a monument to moral achievement. I often hear talk about the effects of economic and occupational colonialism on the attitudes of locals peoples, but my impressions of the cathedral have led me to wonder if there is not also a major aspect of moral imperialism in world history.




This will be the last week that I have anything resembling regular email access, so if anyone wants to contact me, now is the time.

Midnight train

Our finals are done, and we have left Nairobi for good - at least until we pass through to fly home. They were moderately hard- I'm really not sure how I did onthe Swahili exam, but since the politics course is going to be graded on a curve and half the class claims to have understood next to nothing, I'm sure I'll befine for that class. We could have flown to Zanzibar, but as a group choose the much cooler option- taking the overnight train to Mombasa. The train left the station at around 7:30, and arrived in Mombasa the next day at 11:00. A longer journey, considering that even with bad roads it only took us 10 hours by bus. However, the unique opportunity was worth the time spent. The trains in East Africa, some of you (Kate) may be interested to know, are all on narrow gauge tracks. This means that the rails are closer together than they are in most Americansystems, but exactly the same as the ones that I got to walk when I worked at Disneyland.

I can't recall if I've ever even walked around an overnight train before,but I don't think I have. I think I would have remembered how incredibly small everything is. The corridor is just wide enough to allow two people my size to pass- anyone larger and you had to duck into a door way or have one person retreat to the end of the compartment. The compartments are two seats with fold down beds above them – maybe 8 feet by 8 feet total. I slept on a bottom bunk, but those on the top had straps across the opening to keep them from falling out when the train jerked or stopped! One thing that is probably different on an American train- the toilets were basically holes in the floor of the train. This kind of toilet is pretty standard in rural areas here. The difficulty going to the bathroom was, however, greatly increased by the bucking and swaying of the train.

We spent just one day and night in Mombasa and flew out the next morning to Zanzibar Island – a short flight, but the only direct route since the ferry closed. While we were there we visited the Portuguese Fort Jesus, and it blew my mind. Every thing that I have seen- in person or in pictures- in America is puny in comparison. Our wooden stockades seem to belong to a different category than this thick solid stone monstrosity – some of the walls must be 4 stories high. It withstood a multiyear siege by the Omanis – in the end it was being successfully defended by only nine men.