Copyright
2003 William D. Snyder
All
Rights Reserved
The next
stop for the Gatti-Hallicrafters group: the fabled clove island of
Zanzibar.
We arrived from Dar es Salaam and dropped anchor out in the harbor late in the day. By 8 p.m. Bob and the
ship’s purser, Mr. Parker, along with a couple other “explorers” took a small
boat to shore for a visit of the fabled island. I stayed on board.
When Bob
returned to the Pilgrim, he was excited about Zanzibar. “It’s just like being
in the Arabian Night’s world. The streets are crooked and in places you can put one hand on each side of the street. They’re really narrow. I’d hate to be a shoe salesman on this
island everyone is walking around barefoot.”
“Did you
get lost in the maze?” I asked.
“No,”
said Bob, “but we stayed where we could see the harbor. There’s practically no
one on the streets. Parker says there is no crime on the island, but I’d hate to get lost in that street jungle.
Every
street is anything but straight, but they are narrow!”
I looked
forward to going ashore in the morning.
In 1948,
Zanzibar, the exotic tropical island off the east coast of Africa, was a
protectorate of the United Kingdom. The cargo carried on the African Pilgrim
destined for the tiny island was being off-loaded onto small boats when we
awoke. After breakfast, Gatti issued orders for all of us to go ashore and
shoot pictures of the ancient city.
“Zanzibar
is where newspaper reporter Stanley outfitted for his trek into the center of
Africa when he started out to look for Livingston,” Gatti said. “This is where
Kiswahili is the basic language; a ‘kitchen’ version is spoken all over East
Africa.” Gatti had a good knowledge of African trivia.
When we
went out on deck, we discovered three Zanzibar merchants—perhaps peddlers would
be a better description—loaded with trinkets and souvenirs operating on the
fan-tail of the Pilgrim. Some of the ship’s crew were heatedly bargaining with
the souvenir peddlers when our crew stopped to observe the traders in action.
“Did you
lock your cabin door?” whispered Jim Powers.
“You
bet,” I answered. “I just hope the locks hold.”
One of
the peddlers turned on me. “You like nice ivory necklace?” he asked while
holding up an intricately carved string of beads.
This was
my first real bargaining session with a native African huckster wearing a snow
white toga and brownish red fez, so for the fun of it, I started dealing by
saying, “Ten shillings.”
He
dangled the intricately carved necklace with a tear-shaped pendant closer to my
eyes.
“Only
120 bob; that’s special price for Americans,” he said with a broad toothy
smile.
I wasn’t
sure it was ivory, but he assured me it was. The asking price of 120 shillings,
at 20 cents American to the “bob” (English jargon for shilling), amounted to 24
dollars.
I’d
heard many stories of “how to bargain” with Arab peddlers, and the consensus of
European opinion said: “never take the first price,” so, just for amusement, I
bravely restated my bid, “Ten shillings, that’s all.”
The
crafty peddler came down a bit; I stayed at 10. He came down more; I stayed at
10. He came down more, and I still stayed at 10. The minute our boat for shore
was ready to leave, I walked to the gangway.
The
peddler followed me right down the stairway. “Okay, ten shillings,” and so I
bought the necklace which I later gave to my mother in Fargo.
“I’ll
bet he made five shillings on that deal,” laughed Powers. “He was smiling when
he got the money.”
Just
before our long boat was to leave the ship, Captain Graham came down the
ladder. He was carrying a brief case “I’m going to our agent’s office here,” he
said, “anyone want to join me?”
Bob and
Jim Powers volunteered. Errol, Weldon and I had our photo mission from the
boss.
As the
noisy little launch headed for the Zanzibar shore, Bob leaned over to me and
said, “It’s too bad Gatti didn’t get a ham license for this place. VQ1 is a
rare prefix. I can almost hear the pile-up of calling stations we’d cause!”
“I’ve
never ever heard a ham from here,” I said. “It’d be fun to put VQ1LHS on the
map.”
“Or
VQ1PBV!” Bob chimed in.
Powers
added his thoughts, “There’d hardly be room for Gatti and his fancy trailers on
this dinky island.”
The
shore bound launch approached the quay for unloading, and we began to smell
Zanzibar.
“What’s
that smell?” asked one of our group.
“Stinking
diesel smoke,” answered another.
“No, not
that. It smells like baked ham.”
“It’s
the smell of cloves,” said Powers, “Don’t you guys know that Zanzibar, and its
neighbor Pemba, make up the clove capital of the world?”
The
native launch pilot was listening to our chatter. “Those big sheds are full of
cloves waiting for ships.” He pointed to the buildings on or near the wharf.
Now I
could smell the aromatic spice. The aroma made me hungry.
Powers
then asked, “Don’t you know what cloves are? They’re the dried buds of a flower
that grows on trees.”
“How do
you know so much?” someone asked.
“I read the travel
literature,” said Powers. “That’s how!”
The long boat docked
and we stepped ashore carrying our cameras. We were met by a fez wearing native who approached us. “Carry your kamerra,” he offered.
“What’d
you say,” I asked.
“Carry
your kameerra,” he repeated. He was wearing a white ankle length robe and
carried a very big smile on his shiny black face.
“You mean camera?”
“Ndeo,
bwana. Kamerra,” he answered in Swahili. I was barely familiar with the word
“yes” in that language. “And I guide you in city. You get lost without guide,”
he said in broken English.
That did
it we were hiring a guide for our stroll through the city. So I said “Okay,” and handed him the case with the Bell and Howell hand camera in it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see it again, but it
belonged to Gatti.
“What do
we call you?” I asked.
“George,”
he said, “George Washington.”
“George
Washington,” Bob repeated. “If we were from a British ship would you call yourself
‘John Bull?’”
“Hapana,
Bwana,” he switched back to Swahili for the negative, “name would be Winston.”
He laughed, and we did, too. So under the leadership of George, Weldon, Errol,
I set out to see the fragrant island of Zanzibar. Bob and the captain headed
for Smith-McKenzies, the big British shipping agency.
George
began by taking us past the Governor’s mansion and some homes of local royalty
and then headed for the market area. As we began to walk through the narrow,
twisted streets of the city, I became aware of what George meant when he said
we’d be lost in the maze-like streets of the Arabian nights city.
Our
guide was a veritable encyclopedia of information on Zanzibar. He had lived all
his life on the island, and he kept telling us all the facts and figures he
could think of. He smiled when he told me about the four million clove trees
that were producing 80 per cent of the world’s cloves.
And when
we passed the Sultan of Zanzibar’s residence he babbled on about how the
government was run by the Sultan along with the British. George also told us
that the law of the island, and that included neighboring Pemba, and a strip of
land in Kenya and some other neighboring islands, was Islamic, but the decrees
of the Sultan were based on the law of England and British India. I was amazed
at his knowledge. He kept on reciting facts about the island, “Do you know, “he
said simply, “This island has 170 miles of road?” I pleaded innocence; I
couldn’t believe the small island would hold that amount of anything. George
was a great guide and worth the few shillings we paid him for his services.
George
steered us into the Mooloo Brothers curio shop as the first stop. I think maybe
George got a little spiff from the Mooloo Brothers for dragging us into their
store. It was everything a curio shop should be, a gigantic department store
crammed with tourist-type curios. There were many beautiful things from India
because the Mooloos were Hindu merchants. They also had a great display of
Chinese art, too. The really interesting things that caught my eye were ivory
carvings made on full length tusks from African elephants. One I would have
liked to purchase was a tusk which had a line of tiny elephants hooked trunk to
tail as if on parade. It was carved all the way along the side of the tusk. The
Indian merchants were tough to say “no” to, but I managed, due mainly to lack
of funds and no credit card. Plastic
credit cards were still to be invented.
When we
started to leave the Mooloo store, one called to us, “We have store in Mombasa,
if you go there!” The Mooloo gang were tenacious salesmen when American
prospects were in their shop, because, in those post war days, they didn’t see
many Yanks with money.
After
the Mooloo Brothers store, we stopped in the “Near Africa Hotel” bar for a
Dutch beer and a delicious curry lunch. Except for the absence of a native
piano player, the hotel was a page out of the movie “Casablanca.” The
architecture was typical tropical: high ceilings, thick walls and lots of
arches. The minute we sat down, a parade of native peddlers tried to sell us
amber trinkets and, after that failed, raw amber in chunks. Weldon was the most
knowledgeable on the subject of amber, so he bought the raw gems from one
friendly salesman. I was afraid of my bargaining power, so I declined all
offers.
From the
hotel George led us deeper into the native market area of the city. We wound through crooked streets that were
sometimes only six feet wide. The sights and sounds of Zanzibar were about like
the movies portray them. Shops selling spices, presided mainly by Indian
merchants, were very aromatic and colorful. The shop keepers sat noisily
playing scratchy Asian and African phonograph records on old-time windup
mechanical phonographs while waiting for customers.
They must
have been all using extra loud needles on the 78 rpm disks, for the music was
echoing through the tight streets of the bazaar. The music and chatter of
foreign tongues seemed to replicate other scenes from the movie. I was really
thrilled at the atmosphere, and at any moment I expected to see Humphrey Bogart
come walking down the street.
The
doors on many of the old buildings were beautiful, and according to George,
functional. The building entrance doors were ornamentally adorned with brass
spears sticking out of each panel on what looked like teakwood. “The spears are
to keep elephants from crashing their head through the door,” explained George.
“Elephants are very sensitive on their foreheads, so they don’t like the
spears.” I wasn’t sure of his explanation, but it did sound African, and it
seemed somewhat of a logical explanation, although I didn’t think there were
any wild elephants left on the island of Zanzibar.
George
guided us easily through the twisting streets. At one juncture of four streets
Errol commented, “Now I know why George told us we’d get lost if we didn’t hire
him.” We all agreed.
We
finally came out of one very narrow street right in the middle of the public
market place. I tried to shoot movies of the people milling about the streets,
but they would stare into the lens and spoil the shot.
The
sights, sounds and smells of the market place were deeply imbedded in my memory
when the clock told us we had to start back to the ship.
George escorted us back to the quay where we
tipped him generously.
“Thank
you, Americans,” George said as the shillings vanished into his togo. “I like Americans, especially American’s like you,” he added when he felt the handful of extra money we paid him.
“I hope
Gatti’ll not think we gave him too much when he gets the expense account,”
Weldon said as we waved good bye to our valuable guide and climbed aboard the
boat that would take us to the ship.
Back on
the Pilgrim, the peddlers were gone and the captain was about to weigh anchor
and head up the Pemba Channel to the port of Tanga in Tanganyika. Bob was full
of Zanzibar lore when we sat down to dinner.
“At
Smith-McKenzies office we saw a bunch of artifacts,”said Bob, “the best thing
was an old ledger where they outfitted Stanley with a safari when he went into
the interior of Africa to find Doctor Livingston. He had 620 natives in his
safari, some getting about five bucks a month—the highest paid got only 14.”
“Gatti doesn’t pay much
more,” I said, “ but he feeds us!”
The
Pilgrim was whistling good bye as we headed across the channel to next port of
call, the Tanganyika city of Tanga. Zanzibar had been a delightful shore
adventure, thanks to George.