It is just after sunrise, the tide is in and I am watching three dhows with their crews as they prepare to depart.  Micah has returned back from his work building castles in the sand.  I sit at my usual desk, the nearest table to the beach under the thatched roof covered platform.

    Yesterday we had some extraordinary experiences.  Unguju Uku’u was the first place on Zanzibar to be settled (in 500 A.D.).  This is our home on a beach by ourselves with a lone family of three from Holland.  Near here is the island of Uzi.  You can only go there at low tide along a coral rock road through the middle of a mangrove forest.  If the tide is coming in when you get to the road it is safer to stay where you are rather than risk getting stranded in water 2 meters deep covering the road.

    Ali had never been to Uzi although as a driver he has been all around Unguju Island.  Snake’s mother is from Uzi so he was our guide.  Nothing else grows in a mangrove forest although there were some tiny islands in it with coconut palms and other trees.

    The possibility of being stranded was always on Micah’s mind, the clock was ticking for him during the entire visit.  3,000 people live on Uzi and many have never been down the mangrove road to Unguja.

    Arriving we saw massive mango trees and coconut trees, small shambas (farms).  The people here rarely see white people so our children made quite an impression.  The village children followed us as we walked from where our car was parked down to the beach past huge baobab trees.  It wasn’t a short walk and the heat was powerful.  The steeply sloped beach had lots of stakes to secure seaweed nets.  Small bulls drawing carts with automobile tires squeezed past us on the double track road.  We worried about the children getting run over.

    At the beach we saw seaweed harvesters at work and met fishermen returning with an octopus, ray and puffer fish.  They cut the puffer fish open there on the beach.  Nick and I walked far out (it was still low tide of course) looking for familiar landmarks and to get our bearings.  We could see the islands and the point that was the edge of Menai Bay.

    On our return to the village we walked much more quickly.  Melia had blisters from another day so I carried her the whole way back on my shoulders.  The soccer field at the edge of town with its scattered grass and bare ground has an enormous baobab tree behind one of the goals.

    Next we visited Snake’s mother – through a maze of cinder block, tin-roofed shacks and banana trees with a dry creek running through it.  Snake’s mother was with two 10-15 year olds, and a woman who could be her daughter.  Another older woman visited while we were there.  There were only a few dark, covered places in this home which was dominated by a relatively large open-air courtyard and with 2 laundry lines strung across it (secured by being tied to two huge pieces of coral that simply hung down on the outside walls).  We talked and enjoyed our time there in Snake’s family’s house.  It reminds us of Ali’s house which was similarly dark and tiny with only a few things in it.  Each object, each cup, plate or utensil must have so much more importance to people who live in this way.  Again, there were always people around although the sexes seemed to usually keep to themselves.  Ali’s crying baby was the reason we left his house, the rising tide was the reason we left Snake’s mother’s home.

    Micah, our border collie kept reminding us that it was time to go.  Soon we were back on the road out of town, away from the children who had never seen white kids before and our new friends in Snake’s family.  This is a place so untouched by the modern world.  People were kind and curious about us and I am sorry to say goodbye.

    That night we returned to Nick’s plot of land with fish and a section of wire fence for a grill.  Nick invited his neighbor Salim and the local Sheha (the chief of the village).  It took us forever to cook the fish and we ate sometime after 8:00 p.m. under great African skies like a kind of table cloth with only a slightly familiar pattern on it.  Heidi and I pointed out the star we claimed in Orion when we were young to the children as the fire flies distracted us and brought our thoughts back down to earth.  We sang the Hawaiian blessing with our African friends on this important night.  Nick’s first meal on the land he hopes to soon make his home.  The crickets sang.

 

 

 

People say that you learn something about yourself in traveling.  You may even learn something about your spouse.  But it may be something that you did not want to know…

I’m sitting on the island visible in the distance from Nick’s land and from the Menai Beach Bungalos where we are staying, looking out on the most perfect white sandbar in creation at the green waters, about seven islands in the distance as the children play in the shallows.  This sand bar is submerged at low tide.

When we first arrived here on the Mambo Bomba 2, Nick and I hurried off to explore the still partly submerged north coast of the island.  Melia in sisted on coming with us.  Micah and Heidi followed us part way and then returned.  It was rocky so we went slowly and at each cape we would look at the next point off in the distance and wonder what was on the other side.  We went a long way past non-stinging jellyfish and the rock crabs scampering along under the coral rock shelf.  Some sections were easier to walk on and others were more difficult until we came to the last point.  You couldn’t quite see around the corner or to the bottom because wave action stirred up the sand.  I saw the sea urchins first.  Nick wanted to go on.

Suddenly the walk wasn’t fun anymore.  We weren’t discovering strange salt water fountains sprouting up out of the sand and the rocks.  We weren’t finding any neat new shells.  The rocks beneath our feet felt sharp, the water was too shallow to swim away.  Nick kept going but I knew that Melia and I shouldn’t.  I told Melia to stop walking and to float as I towed her in search of deeper waters.  I took her out and then swam with her looping back to shore.  During our entire walk up to that point there were no sea urchins.  We must have been above the low tide line and the sea urchins can’t live in places that are dry at low tide.

Without realizing it we passed a threshold going around that point.  Melia and I swam back along the coast to where we had just been.  The only problem was that we had to pass again through the sea urchin zone in order to make it safely back to shore.

We almost made it too.  I put Melia on my back and carried her as I walked across the reef in the shallow water.  But then a tiny wave knocked me off balance, Melia put out her feet and scratched her foot.  We got to the beach and discovered two broken sea urchin spines in her foot.  I got one out myself.  The other one was so close to the surface, I knew that Heidi could take it out more easily.  So I carried Melia on my shoulders all the way back to the boat and talked to her about the more pleasant things that we had seen.

We got back and I told Heidi what she needed to do.  She was so furious with me for foolishly exposing our daughter to the sea urchins that she almost couldn’t see straight.  Melia in turn started getting hysterical and when Snake brought a broken 5 inch long knife to help pinch out the spine, she started fighting in the same way that she did over the malaria pills in Stone Town (now by the way, she is very good at taking the pills.  We do it together ever since our first morning at Menai Bay).  She kicked and struggled but we still got it out without too much trouble.  I feel like an idiot for having taken her out to the point and then dropping her on the way back in and I still have about forty black sea urchin spines deeply lodged in my feet from carrying her over the shallow reef.

Still this day is too great to be spoiled.  We played more Frisbee on the beach as we did both days on Nick’s land.  We enjoyed a fabulous meal of octopus, fish, rice, lobster, curried vegetables and fresh fruit.  We seem so blessed by all of creation in this place.  As the tide comes in we are thinking about returning home.  Micah and Melia are playing in the breakers, Heidi is lying in the sun and I am thinking about how best to share this wonderful experience with you, our distant family and friends.  I wish you could all be here on this perfect day in this perfect place.  We originally planned to visit another island for snorkeling, etc. but the strong winds kept us here.