How I was a volunteer in Zanzibar

Zanzibar is not the name of a nightclub in a provincial town, but an archipelago with a main island of the same name in the Indian Ocean, a semi-autonomous part of the East African state of Tanzania. Translated from Persian, "Zanzibar" means "land of blacks." In addition to the paradisiacal landscapes with snow-white beaches, coconut palms and crystal clear azure water, the island is known for its spice plantations and the slave trade - slaves were brought here from all over the mainland. Thanks to maritime trade, Africans, Persians, Indians and Arabs lived together on this island for centuries. Therefore, Muslim Zanzibar is far from being a classic example of the Dark Continent. The island is a bizarre mixture of different worlds.

I came to Zanzibar as a volunteer. For three weeks I lived in the poor village of Maunganui in the very interior of the island. The project's goals included cultural exchange with the local women's community, learning Swahili, working in the village school, and planting mangrove trees to protect the soil from erosion. I learned different things: how to weave baskets, how to cook the cassava root vegetable (cassava), the skin of which contains cyanide, how to use plants for medicinal purposes, how to wear traditional clothes.

The Tanzanian volunteer organization UVIKIUTA (one of the departments of the Ministry of Youth Affairs) carries out many different projects on the mainland - in villages at the foot of Kilimanjaro, in national parks, near Lake Victoria, etc. The current project in Zanzibar is the first and pilot. Previously, only one volunteer work camp had been held there, but its purpose was only to plant mangrove trees, which local residents mercilessly cut down to obtain coal for sale. Mangroves grow in water or in places where waves come from time to time. The soil there is specific, so the mangrove roots protect it. But this doesn’t matter to the locals, because they need to survive on something - the unemployment rate is amazing, and selling coal for pennies (shillings) at least somehow saves them. Local village enthusiast Iddi decided to involve UVIKIUTA and volunteers. White people sticking mangrove pods into the gray sludge, in his idea, were supposed to attract the attention of the locals to the threatening environmental scourge. The idea paid off - the seeds planted in February sprouted on the gray uprooted wastelands, and some villagers began to plant trees themselves to replace the ones they had cut down. The enthusiast decided to organize a second work camp with a more cultural orientation - “to show yourself, to look at others.” That’s where I decided to take part (it turned out that in the international search database of volunteer projects, this one was the one that suited me in terms of time and geographical location).

Me and three other young girls (from Germany, Poland and Greece) came to Maunganui from Dar es Salaam (the financial capital of Tanzania on the coast). Two hours on the ferry, 40 minutes on a public minibus (they are called daladala - passengers are crammed into the covered back of a truck), then we have to walk a little more deep into the forest from the road - and we are there. A one-story house with a small backyard, which was allocated for volunteers by a local rentier. The decor is more than spartan. The only furniture in the whole house was a sofa, a table with a couple of chairs, and instead of beds there were mattresses. It was not possible to spend the first night comfortably: the unbearable heat with one hundred percent humidity and biting mosquitoes interfered.

The next morning work began (if you can call it that). In the morning they taught us, and in the afternoon we taught. Every day, the local community of women, or “mothers” as they are usually called here, showed styles of traditional knitting, embroidery, straw weaving, dyeing fabrics, taught recipes of local cuisine and all sorts of village wisdom. Our contribution to the education of the village consisted of English (German) language classes with local high school students and “lectures” about our countries and cultures, sometimes classes were held in the areas that we studied at the institute. Thus, local youth learned business secrets from Greece, German chemistry, Russian politics and world literature with a Polish accent. The schoolchildren were adults - the youngest was the girl Nazra (18 years old), and everyone else was 20-22 years old. They finish school late here—there’s nowhere to rush, and the unemployment rate among young people is high. Sometimes work days in the mangroves were interspersed into the daily work schedule.

What do Zanzibaris know about Russia?

Abramovich is the only answer (and all thanks to the love of football). Some have heard something about a man with the last name Putin. That's all. The most frequently asked questions to me are: “How many tribes do you have?” and “Do you still have socialism?” Well, and the classic request - “Teach me Russian.” At first, such a request from new acquaintances puzzled me. “How? It will only take us a month to learn the Cyrillic alphabet,” I answered naively. Everything turned out to be much simpler: a couple of phrases and a translation of the word karibu (analogous to the English welcome), which in terms of frequency of use is even ahead of the word asante (“thank you”). The only difficulty is that it is not so easy for an ordinary Zanzibari to learn “welcome”, “good luck” and “please” with sounds familiar to the Russian ear. But they tried, and every time the high school students greeted me: “Privet. Kak tebia zovut,” which gave them incredible pleasure, especially if I understood the words. They also flaunt their “knowledge” of Spanish, French and German to their friends.

Hello and goodbye

In general, greetings are very popular here, which is why they try to learn as many foreign “good morning-good afternoon” as possible. Life in Zanzibar, and in Tanzania in general, is impossible without greeting, the ritual of which lasts several minutes. At the same time, the islanders greet almost everyone they meet, even if they see him for the first time. For a person from the world of the European atomic society, where you can sit for an hour on a train and not even look in the direction of your neighbor, at first it will be difficult and unusual - why waste precious time on meaningless repetition of the same phrases in different ways a hundred times a day, if Have you already said “hello” once this morning? But the world of tribes and communities does not understand this. Usually, with every person I meet, something like this happens in Swahili:

— Shikamo.

— Marahaba, Hujambo.

— Sijambo.

- Nzuri, asante. Na wewe je?

- Safi sana, asante.

It is difficult to translate this dialogue, since all this is essentially translated as “hello.” Or here's another one in the same spirit:

- Habari ya asubuhi.

- Nzuri sana, asante. Na wewe pia.

- Poa. Mambo!

- Shwari Vipi!

- Safi sana, asante.

It seems that a simple “hello” can be continued indefinitely, repeating the same thing in different words and expressions. The “ritual” is repeated every time you see a person, even if you said goodbye to him only half an hour ago.

Time

The first days in the village were difficult not only because of the climate, but also because of the sense of time. After the bustle of Moscow, it was impossible to forget about punctuality and the clock. Zanzibar has a special sense of time. It simply doesn't exist. Here, even the countdown of a new day begins not at midnight, but at 6 a.m., when it gets light. That is, European noon (12.00) is 6 o’clock in the afternoon for them, and when it is 19.00 on our clock, the Swahili clock will say the first hour of the night. In Zanzibar, no one is ever in a hurry. The usual delay is 30-60 minutes. Therefore, wherever you go with an imposing gait, you will always be on time. “Where to rush, where to run, why be nervous and put yourself under stress?” - local residents ask in bewilderment. For them, the whole year is one continuous hot day, food grows on trees, and a roof over their heads is needed only from the rain. “Winter” only occurs here in the summer, when the temperature drops from 32 to 30 degrees and sometimes there are heavy downpours. Perhaps it is precisely because of the absence of a change of seasons that time here acquires a different speed.

Home and life

In the city center you can find three- to five-story buildings, but on the outskirts and in villages people live in houses. A one-story small concrete building with a porch where you always have to leave your shoes before entering. The windows have nets and wooden shutters instead of glass. The first room is the “reception”, where there is always a sofa. This is where they receive guests and spend their free time. As a rule, everything is limited to a sofa, perhaps an armchair and an old TV. From the “living room” you can get into a couple of bedrooms with modest decoration (sometimes just a bed or mattress) and a “dining room” - a room with a necessarily large table, chairs (families here are usually large - at least, or even more than three children) and sink. The bathroom is a small room - often it consists only of a sewer hole on a low pedestal and a drain in the floor. A small tap with water sticks out right from the wall. To take a shower, you need to fill a bucket with water, which is only cold, and use a ladle. The kitchen is always located in the backyard, partially in the open air. There are no cupboards, sinks or stoves - just a place to make a fire, and a spot near the wall tap where you can wash dishes.

Zanzibar food

In villages located on the coast, fish and seafood are found in the daily diet; in the interior of the island it is difficult to afford such food. There is nowhere to buy seafood, and while you bring it from the city or from the coast, there is a chance that the octopus or squid will not be very suitable. And, in fact, there are no markets in the villages, only occasional roadside sales of bananas and oranges and small household chemicals. For thorough grocery shopping, you need to go to the city and return with baskets and knapsacks on the public minibus "daladala".

The main component of the diet is carbohydrates: rice, pasta, potatoes, bananas, cassava (cassava root crop, which in composition and taste resembles potatoes, its skin contains the poison cyanide), sheli-sheli (breadfruit, which is also very rich in starch). As for wheat, local women know a hundred ways to prepare flour: savory chapatis, boiled sweet, spicy mabobwe buns, fire-fried salted mandas, fried donuts with traditional Zanzibar spices - cardamom and cloves, etc. Even the local uji porridge is just a hot broth of water, flour, coconut milk and steamed wheat grains. There is much less protein in the diet, and, as a rule, these are sauces and brews made from beans and peas. Cows are kept here, but only for milk. Ordinary Zanzibaris have never seen cheese, cottage cheese and fermented milk products. Eggs are not used in cooking; they are only sometimes cooked as a separate dish.

If the villagers have breakfast, it is modest: bread with a cheap butter substitute, which does not melt even in the heat, and jam, where fruit is only the name, the rest is colorings and preservatives. The main meals are a hearty lunch and a hearty late dinner. Sometimes they merge into one incredibly satisfying meal, so that the energy supply is enough for a day.

Due to the heat and the risk of disease, the products undergo long heat treatment - usually deep frying in cheap palm oil. Since only one boiler can be put on the fire, preparing dinner, two or three courses, takes several hours. Food is not stored in refrigerators here; only thermos pots are used. By the way, they eat it on the island and on the mainland with their hands.

The main thing is to know where the tree is

There are no problems with food in Zanzibar, if you don’t have a garden or money, you can always just go into the jungle and find fruit trees - mangoes, passion fruit, oranges (which are always green here, not orange), papaya, jackfruit, bananas, tangerines, coconuts. Therefore, village men always carry a sharpener wrapped in duct tape, or a pocket Swiss knife if finances allow. The unspoken rule is to pick up only fruits that have fallen to the ground, but few people follow this. Picking fruits from a tree is not allowed only if it stands on someone’s property. True, this is not always easy to determine, since there are no fences or fences here.

Women's

If men wear European clothes bought at clothing flea markets in Stone Town (as a rule, these are second-hand clothes brought from the mainland, not always suitable in size), then for women the main element of clothing both on mainland Tanganyika and in Zanzibar is the kanga, long rectangular canvas with a bright pattern. After purchasing the kanga, it is taken to a workshop or to a familiar dressmaker, who will cut it into two parts and hem it. One fabric is used as a skirt (you just need to wrap it around yourself), the second - as a cape over the shoulders or a hijab. In Zanzibar there are at least 10 different styles of how to wear and tie a kanga: from publicly modest and wedding to intimate and home, when a woman is seen only by her husband. True, most often women here wear a long, floor-length black dress and tie a kanga on their heads. The second piece of kanga is often used as a sling for an infant. A distinctive feature of the kanga is the obligatory inscription in Swahili at the bottom of the canvas. When buying a kanga, a woman chooses not only the color and pattern, but also the inscription (jina), because this is the message she conveys to others. “Luck is like the wind, and today it is on my side,” “They love each other and will get married soon,” “We are all passengers, and God is the driver,” “Even if I have nothing, I never give up hope of getting what I have.” I want”, “Parents are gold, taking care of them is happiness” - some of the messages I came across.

In Zanzibar, Muslim women do not wear jewelry or use cosmetics. City ladies love to paint their bodies with ornate ornaments and patterns. To do this, they use henna and the cheapest black hair dye to apply the outline. The pattern can be applied to any part of the body. But others see the drawings only on the palms and feet. Fingernails and toenails are also painted with henna (this manicure is far from European standards and often resembles fingers smeared with iodine).

Baskets

Only after some time did I realize that I had not seen a single plastic bag on the island. Zanzibar has passed a special law banning the use of plastic bags. The owner of this can pay a hefty fine if caught in the act. This is how the island government fights garbage: there are no street bins or landfills on the island. At the store, all your purchases will be placed in bags made from recycled paper, and shoppers will come to the market with their own baskets and woven wallets. There are these in every home - of all varieties and sizes, because Zanzibar is famous for its weaving. Local women purchase special dried grass from the nearby large island of Pemba, dye it and weave it. Zanzibaris love their baskets and will certainly boast about their durability and practicality.

Racism

Only university students and graduates of good schools know what racism is. The villagers only know about the slave trade, since Zanzibar was the world's main slave market, but the history of South Africa and the experience of the States are not familiar to them. Here it is normal to call a person by the color of his skin, especially if that person is white. "Mzumgo!" - a familiar call for a European. I heard this word all the time on the street. After the European culture of political correctness, it was a little strange to encounter this. But the locals reassured us: the word mzumgo does not carry a negative connotation; in translation it only means “white man” (exclusively of European appearance).

Water

Residents of Zanzibar and mainland Tanganyika (and the country is mainly located along the ocean) do not know how to swim and are afraid of water. “I lived on a small island south of Zanzibar with my aunt. Every time I went to the coast, she cursed and screamed, and forbade me to go into the water. My aunt was afraid that I would die,” says village boy Kassim in broken English. . “And here, parents usually teach their children to swim at a very early age, because they are afraid that they will drown,” answers the girl Heike, who came to teach German at the village school. To show that he was not a coward, Cassim climbed into the water. In 10 minutes he did not drown, but the next morning he complained that his legs hurt because he swam “too much.” Only fishermen know how to swim, but swimming in the ocean does not give them any pleasure either. Beach holidays are only enjoyed by tourists who travel to the north of the island - where there are hotels and sandy beaches.