Day 33: Stone Town Snipe Hunt, success

After I wrote about Cairo being a less-than-pleasant place for a female traveler, I got a couple of great messages. My friend Lyndsay was on a trip once where some Israeli men tried to trade camels for the women in the group. I thought that was great, because who among us knows our worth in camels? (Lyndsay does- but really, she's priceless.) Kristin, who won a huge travel grant and spent 10 weeks traveling last summer, commented that great experiences always follow the bad ones while you're traveling- to the extent that, when she had a small misfortune, she's immediately starts anticipating a great surprise.

And it's been true for me, too- when you start looking around, all kinds of great things will fall into your lap. Zanzibar has been even better than I wanted it to be- and I was afraid I was overly excited and I knew my expectations were high. Zanzibar in the dark? A really surprising gift, as it just added to the allure and mystique of Stone Town. Stone Town itself? So lively, so colorful, so diverse. The thrill of starting to find my own way, though I stayed lost about 50% of the time- so satisfying.

So while Greg and Kate were here, I kept almost finding my project site from studio. I can find it on Google Earth in about 4 seconds, or on a detailed map in 10, but I had no detailed map with me, and I can't get high enough for the right rooftop view. And my landmark- a huge interior courtyard- is all but invisible from the street. And of course, on the ground, everything looks remarkably similar. I kept saying, "Oh wait! Maybe...no, we're too close to the water. Oh there's a ...wait, which way is north? Isn't the fort over there?" And I felt like I was on a snipe hunt, and dragging very patient Kate around with me. And lordy, it's hot here for extraneous movement.

In the House of Wonders, the old sultan's palace so named because it was one of the first places in East Africa to have electricity, there's a great museum and a giant wall-sized aerial map. Another gift- I figured out every turn and landmark and went for it.

My site, is has to be said, was lacking in on-the-ground information beyond building footprints. I knew there was a mosque, but had to guess at everything other than the roof lines. In my presentation, I used photos of a sample Zanzibar mosque, unidentifed in photos, and a typical floor plan from another source. Because Stone Town is so, so small, although it looks big on the map, it was less than 5 minutes from the palace to my site. Wonders never cease- the typical unidentified mosque I'd been using- was actually my mosque. I peeked in- same with the random floor plan. It looks, but exactly, like the itty bitty model I made. I decided, as I knew I would when I got there, that my project is all wrong and I want to start again- but it was really great to stand in front if it. For the record, the buildings I hypothetically demolished to make room for my building are new and awful and out of place, so I no longer feel hypothetical guilt. I could see beautiful almond trees peeking out over a makeshift corrugated scrap fence, which would be perfect for the small courtyard I designed. I practically ran to the internet shop to e-mail my professor.

One other little bit of travel magic I've already shared with a few of you: I have been waking up every morning to the sound of school children singing chanting songs. I love this. I do not miss being a teacher, but I wouldn't mind a roomfull of these precious little Zanzibaris. The are beautiful children, happy and running about in the streets after school, in full robes and head coverings, no matter how tiny. I want to scoop them all up and read them picture books and buy them all ice cream. My Zanzibar studio project was an Islamic school for girls. When I located the source of the singing this morning, it's an Islamic school, for girls, right underneath my bedroom window.