The problem with trying to write about an island like Zanzibar is that all the descriptions sound like tired clichés from a holiday brochure.
“Long beaches of white sand, fringed by tall coconut palms”? Check.
“Warm crystal waters of azure and emerald and jade”? Check.
“Friendly natives, delicious food and exotic spices”? Check.
The difficulty is that all the adjectives and superlatives one might apply seem somehow meagre or stale. It is all these things and more, but possesses a beauty that almost defies classification.
We arrived in Zanzibar in the dark, having caught a 15-minute connecting flight from Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian mainland. Stepping out of the air-conditioned plane on to the tarmac felt like being drenched in warm syrup. Even at 9pm the temperature and the humidity were too high for comfort.
After an hour on badly potholed tar roads and corrugated dirt tracks we reached our guest house at Matemwe, where we were greeted by the somewhat sleepy manager, Munisi. By this stage we were hot, sticky and in desperate need of a cold shower and a good night’s sleep. We could hear the ocean, but could not see it and collapsed without paying too much attention to our lodgings.
Breakfast the next morning consisted of bungu juice — sweet with a tart undertone — and a tropical fruit platter, followed by scrambled eggs on corn fritters, and washed down with excellent coffee. Travelling with a 10-year-old has its advantages, especially in East Africa, and we were lavished with special attention and solicitous requests as to what would make the mtoto happy.
Matemwe Beach Village lies on the eastern side of the island, within the shallow lagoon formed by an encircling coral reef. It styles itself as a guest house, presumably to distinguish it from the many all-inclusive resorts that have sprung up on the island in recent years. These seem to operate as ethnic tourist enclaves, with some catering entirely for Italians, while others market themselves heavily to South Africans. Apparently these function as self-contained cocoons, where all meals and drinks are included in the package and guests need never venture further than the beach or pool, and where the only local people they are likely to encounter are the hotel’s waiters and chambermaids.
Matemwe Beach is not like that at all. The guest house consists of several clusters of makuti, thatched, whitewashed bungalows, set a little back from the beach and revolving around a central dining and relaxation area. Adorned with beautiful swathes of multicoloured cotton kikoi fabric, it is an open-sided structure under a steeply pitched thatch roof with canvas blinds that are rolled down when the onshore wind blows strongly.
It does not bill itself as luxury accommodation (nor does it charge those prices), but there is a delightful attention to detail. The rooms are small and the windows are simply frames of wire mosquito netting. Beds are traditional high Zanzibari four-posters draped with mosquito nets, and made up with beautifully crisp blue and white cotton sheets and covers. Each room contains items for guests’ use during their stay, such as a set of kikois, a pair of straw hats, a woven beach bag and several bottles of the local mineral water (somewhat unfortunately named “Drop”.)
Matemwe is an interesting mix of attention to detail and patchy service. On our first night I complained that our bathroom shelf, a nasty green plastic affair, was falling off the wall and that the shower curtain rail was loose. The very next morning the carpenter arrived and installed a beautifully hand-carved shelf in dark wood. (The shower curtain, however, continued to collapse on me every time I ventured into the cubicle.)
Most guests come to Matemwe to dive the legendary Mnemba Atoll, which lies just a few kilometres offshore, with many combining a dive holiday with an attempt at climbing Kilimanjaro. The One Ocean Dive School, run from the guesthouse, is considered to be the best on the island and attracts scuba divers from around the world.
After meals guests recline on piles of cushions that line the walls, sipping on a Kilimanjaro beer or the barman’s “cocktail of the day” and swapping dive stories. On the down side, the cushion arrangement is less comfortable than it looks and conversation is often hampered by the music, which blares from the lounge’s sound system incessantly from 10am to 10pm. Most guests would undoubtedly rather listen to the sound of the ocean than an almost continual loop of the same songs.
Despite their limited taste in music, the staff at Matemwe are particularly charming. Any minor request is met with an exclamation of “why not?” in a tone implying a certain measure of hurt that you might even imagine that this could present a problem. Slightly more complex requests elicit the reassuring response that “it is extremely possible”. And for those who thought that hakuna matata was just Disney-speak for “make more money out of merchandising”; it is actually Swahili for “no problem”.
After a day or two we learnt that nothing in Zanzibar is a problem (even when it actually is) and that rushing around achieves nothing apart from amusing the locals who chide us to go pole pole (slowly slowly). The appropriateness of this became very obvious when we decided to explore the reef.
On our first day we made friends with Vwai, who runs the Jambo Shop, selling kikois and postcards to guests (at somewhat inflated prices). He soon appointed himself as our tour guide and took us on excursions, introducing us to his friends on the way.
At low tide the lagoon is only calf deep and a walk out to the reef provides a fascinating insight into the marine life of a coral reef. It’s a somewhat hair-raising one kilometre clamber out to the reef, as the lagoon is filled with sea urchins perched atop seaweed and rock, so careful navigation is required, along with a pair of sturdy sandals.
The coral skeleton of the reef creates tiny ecosystems that can only be viewed at low tide. Countless rock pools contain their own perfect little universe.
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Tiny crabs — which have by some mysterious process attached seaweed and bits of coral branches to their shells in an effective camouflage — and entire schools of microscopic, translucent fish, almost invisible to the eye, reveal themselves only by the shadows they cast on the bottom of the pool.
Everywhere we go, everyone we meet, from women farming seaweed in the lagoon to the fishermen on their ngalawas and dhows call out jambo (hello) and karibu (welcome) as we pass. A stroll to the village leads to more than polite greeting (in fact it is a very polite grilling). “What is your father’s name? How is your mother’s health? Where do your parents live?”, followed swiftly, but inevitably, by my favourite, “and where is your husband?”
We meet one local man who enquires where we are from and then nods sagely: “Ah, yes South Africa — like everything”. We learn that tourist nationalities are classified according to the activities they enjoy. Apparently Italians like riding motorbikes along the beach, while wearing very little; Scandinavians like having their hair braided and beaded; and South Africans have a reputation for doing everything — from massages on the beach, to having their hands and feet decorated with henna to quad biking. “South Africans like business, like to make deals,” he told me. Apparently this means we have a good line in haggling, an art that the locals seem to appreciate. And what about the Brits I enquire, observing that there were a fair number of these ghostly pale visitors about. His face fell “Oh no, British just lie in the sun all day.”
After a couple of days on the beach, watching the scuba divers go out early with the dive boat and return exhausted, but full of tall tales about whale sharks and manta rays we decided we needed to snorkel the legendary reef around Mnemba.
The One Ocean Dive boat was booked solid by serious scuba types, and being mere snorkellers — distinctly second-class citizens in these circles — we decided to organise our own trip out to Mnemba with the local fisherman. Our guide Vwai undertook to make all the arrangements and told us to leave it to him — hakuna matata, of course. The next morning he was waiting for us on the beach with a couple of motorbikes for the trip to the next village, where we would meet the captain of our boat.
Because of the surrounding coral reef, it is only possible to get to Mnemba by boat at high tide. We shot off down the beach on the motorbikes, which was fun for the first 10 minutes or so, until we ran out of beach and had to take an inland track.
Not being a fan of motocross I didn’t have a terribly good time bouncing along the rutted, rocky road, trying to avoid ox-drawn carts, donkeys, children and firewood-laden women (particularly as, Zanzibaris being such exquisitely polite people, it is necessary to slow down and greet everyone before roaring off and drowning them in a cloud of dust).
We arrived at the fishing village, which is also the site of a daily fish market for the surrounding villages, to find the beach deserted and most of the dhows and ngalawas way out to sea in search of the day’s catch. Scrambling after Vwai across a particularly long and slippery bit of reef, we reached the boat that was to take us out.
Our captain, an elderly, rather piratical figure with his T-shirt wrapped round his head like a turban, greeted us with a stream of Swahili, and hauled us aboard (no dainty ladders here) and headed toward the atoll.
This is where it starts sounding like a guidebook — but the water really is crystal clear, and it really is an impossibly beautiful variety of shades, and as Mnemba drew closer, it really did look exactly like the backdrop for one of those cheesy rum advertisements.
(Pirates are in fact said to have plied their trade up and down the length of the East African coast, preying on the Arab traders that navigated the route between Zanzibar and Oman, their dhows filled with spices, slaves, silks and gold. Zanzibar is also reputed to be the mythical island where Sinbad was shipwrecked.)
It was low tide and the reef lay less than a metre under water, which, coupled with the bright sunlight, made the visibility perfect. The ocean was like tepid soup, and our scuba buddies later informed us the water temperature was 27°C that day.
Emperor angelfish floated by, nudged along by Moorish idols and Picasso fish who darted between the exquisite powder-blue surgeonfish. A pale puffer fish with huge black doglike eyes and stubby fins whirred past and I took fright at the sight of a lion fish, which drifted past in a leisurely fashion, its striped fins billowing like silk banners, belying the deadly spines beneath. A vast school of zebra fish followed me for ages, making me wonder self consciously if I looked like some kind of huge mother ship.
Our captain soon joined us in the water, pointing out eels and octopuses in their hidey holes. He dived to the ocean floor and picked up a huge caramel-striped cowrie with chocolate lips that he presented to me with a flourish and a shy smile.
After what felt like mere minutes, but must have been at least an hour, the captain signalled us to come aboard for lunch. Vwai had laid on a feast, which had all been lying on the deck amid the fishing nets in the blazing sun. Suddenly famished we tucked into sun-warmed pineapple, mangoes, bananas and chapattis, washed down with warm Fanta.
That night, back at Matemwe, watching my fellow guests tucking into a lavish seafood braai, I wished I was back on the boat. While the chef does try to cater for vegetarians, the non-meat menu is distinctly uninspired. Having said that, it was fortunate we had booked on a dinner, bed and breakfast basis, as the other dining choices around Matemwe are extremely limited — nothing within walking distance — and the local cuisine revolves around seafood.
This was something I wish I’d known when we booked. One of the things I have since discovered about myself is that I’m not tough enough for December in Zanzibar in an un-air-conditioned room. The website tells you that all rooms have ceiling fans and that a strong breeze blows off the beach. What they don’t tell you is that by the time the breeze reaches your room it is about as cooling as a blast from a hairdryer. They do have two rooms that are air-conditioned (and more expensive) but if, like me, you wilt in the humidity, I’d suggest splashing out a little or visiting in the cooler season.
Nicole Johnston covered all her own travel and accommodation costs
The lowdown
A Matemwe Beach Village package is available through African Encounters from R5 882 a person sharing in a standard room. The price includes: six nights at Matemwe Beach Village in a standard room on a B&B basis, one night at Mbweni Ruins outside Stone Town on a B&B basis, return flights on Air Tanzania, and all transfers. The price excludes South African departure taxes (about R350 a person), visas, inoculations and malaria prophylaxis. For more information contact African Encounters on (011) 880 3079 or visit: www.africanencounters.com