Our plan was to get an early start after an early breakfast at one of the two tea shops we had visited the day before. Barclayville had become a much more cosmopolitan place after 30 years as these omelet/tea shops were more of a French West African tradition. Both shops were closed. We ended up walking across town to the cook shop we had visited the night before and had their wonderful coconut cookies for breakfast.

Like yesterday, the day’s ride was easier than our first time through. By the middle of the afternoon we had reached Blebo where the road markedly improved and we sped up from 7k per hour to about 12k. What a relief. We spent the night with the city mayor and his family in Behwen.

John cut these palm nuts from a wild oil palm tree.

Another Liberian has tapped a wild rubber tree.

Joseph & Annie Betia and family.

We left Buah too soon, but time was running out, as it was best to ride through Cote d’Ivoire before their Nov. 28 elections. I had contacts for Betia now, his cell phone number and a reliable address through the Catholic Mission so I would stay in touch. Thirty years had made a huge difference in communications.

We rode back along the same route reaching Barclayville before end of the day. The road was a little easier this time, perhaps because we knew what to expect, or perhaps because my arm muscles found it easier to push the bike up those hills after the previous days’ workouts. We stayed with Father Krumah in the Catholic Mission as Betia had recommended. In my time, the Catholic Missions had been staffed by priests from places like the US and Ireland. Most were now run by Liberian priests, a very good thing in my mind.

In the evening we searched out a cook shop, a restaurant which served that day’s version of rice with a soup, always with meat. David’s choice was pretty much limited to dry rice (which appalled the cook). In wandering to another cook shop across town, we found delicious coconut cookies, steeped in oil, a treat I remembered well, which supplemented David’s meager dinner. A group of men beckoned us to their table and we recognized one as Collins, a Liberian who worked for an NGO based in Barclayville who we had met on the road several days earlier. We enjoyed a conversation about aid and development with his colleagues, one from Cameroon, another from Benin, another from Liberia. I heard many of the same comments about what needs to happen in Africa spoken in conversations with Peace Corps friends 30 years ago, but this time they were spoken by Africans, another very good thing.

A trail of army ants flows across the road like a living stream.

These mudholes are deep!

Joseph Betia was surprised and delighted to see Julie again.

The trail to Plenplenken.

Plenplenken was a small village about an hour and a half’s walk from Geeken. We turned off the main road at Jlataken and biked along an easily navigated 4km path through tropical greenery to a group of houses where we were told we would find Betia. Would I recognize him or would I have to search my memory like I did with everyone else? We approached his doorway and asked if he were home. The Betia I remembered, a little older perhaps, appeared. Thirty years vanished. Of all my adventures and sights over the past year and a half this was the most thrilling.

In the very short days that followed, David and I visited with Betia and his family catching up on his life. He had married Annie, his girlfriend I had met long ago, and was now the father of 13 children. Six lived with them, one just a toddler. Those of high school age were away from home as there was no high school in Buah. He was the principal of the small elementary school in Plenplenken where Annie taught the youngest class of Kindergärtners and pre-schoolers. He was also the catechist in the Catholic church in Jlataken and as there was no assigned priest he was responsible to give the sermon on Sundays. He and Annie made a small farm of rice and cassava, too. Betia was doing alright.

David and I were treated like royalty experiencing traditions that were coming back to my mind. Immediately after our arrival the neighbors brought kola nuts, pepper, salt, and cane juice to welcome us. We were introduced to the elders in the village and were asked to explain our mission there. Our part in this tradition was to bring an “abissai”, a gift. “Perhaps $3.00”, the person to whom I frantically whispered “What do I do now?” responded. After David and I went into Betia’s house to eat, we watched through our window as the men and women of the village argued amongst themselves in a boisterous, half teasing way I remembered well. The “palaver” was over gender equality. The men had given themselves $2.00 of our abissai and had given the women just $1.00.

The next day, the village called off school so their principal could be with his guests. Then they brought Betia’s house a chicken. This would be cooked in today’s palm butter soup for us, or rather for me. David, a vegetarian, would have the palm butter made without the chicken. This was the tradition for honored guests. How touching it should be done for David and me.

Betia also talked about the war. He was in Monrovia when Charles Taylor and his rebels began their push to take over the country. After managing to make it past rebel checkpoints with his life (some in the bus he was traveling did not) he returned to his home in Plenplenken and spent the rest of the war years there with his family. Being 4k from the road was an advantage for the people of Plenplenken. Betia and the other villagers set up a Civil Defense Force where their young people stood watch and alerted everyone to strangers approaching. With the shotguns they had used in the past to hunt bush meat in the forest they forced any marauders back to the road. The village did not suffer the complete destruction that Geeken and so many other towns in Liberia experienced. Even so, Betia’s 30 cattle and his goats were stolen (in Liberia your wealth is in your cattle, they are like a bank account)and the village experienced great hardship in the country’s chaos and its lack of infrastructure, economy and services. People in Plenplenken worked together to survive those years. Betia and others continued to teach school, without paychecks or any support, to give their children what they could during that time. This story encapsulated for me the humanity, hope and resilience of Liberians which is the other side of that horrible war.

Julie explains our mission to the entire village.

Even the baby is awed.

Everyone wants to shake hands with Julie.

We're surrounded by curious faces.

The bitter-tasting kola ceremony came after the cane juice.

A Plenplenken elder.

More elders (& kids trying to get in the photo)

Thrashing & tossing rice.

Annie's kitchen.

Sieh (1 1/2) on Annie's back.

Brothers...

...and sisters.

Julie addresses the student body of Planplanken Primary School

Principal Joseph Betia at his desk.

Julie returns to Buah

The road to Buah.

In the morning after breakfast, the elder women of the village of Norkwia, about 7 of them, arrived to welcome us. I remembered this was part of the tradition, though I didn’t remember the details. We shook hands with all of them and then we explained our mission through an interpreter. David took photos which they greatly enjoyed. We will send them copies. The old men felt slighted, though they somewhat understood when David explained we needed to save our battery life for pictures of Buah.

We expected to reach Buah Geeken early afternoon. I didn’t know what I would find there. I hadn’t kept in touch with people and after seeing Harper I knew the war had devastated this area. I had heard from people along the way that Betia would be there, a good friend with whom I had taught in

Elder woman of Norkwia.

Geeken and who was still teaching in Planplanken, one of the smaller villages of Buah. I knew I would see him.

Riding into Buah was marvelous. The gigantic “cotton” tree, its local name, referring to the wispy white seeds that floated down from its high branches, still stood after 30 years in the spot I remembered marking Buah Geeken. The homes and places I remembered, the small, four-roomed school where I taught, the Judge’s home where we played cards many an evening, my first house along the road were all gone, but other homes and buildings took their place, some new, some older, many more than I remembered. A surprising number were finished in the modern style with smartly painted concrete. Where the small and shabby clinic had stood was now a huge community health center. A fancy elementary school had opened between Geeken and Chenwrinken. From outward appearances Buah looked pretty good.

Greeting and talking with people was marvelous. Many people remembered me, although I might not remember them. Most of the people I had known were no longer living in Buah but were “away to Monrovia”. A few had died, although generally not in the war, as I had feared. It was wonderful talking with the few people I did remember, Steven Kofa, one of the elementary teachers, Joseph Nimely, assistant to the school superintendent, Otis Brooks and S. Wreh Doe, two of my students. As we talked their much younger faces wormed their way out of the recesses of my memory. Some people had been small children when I knew them, like Lucy Nimley, one of the little girls I joked with and teased when she carried water from the stream every morning to her home. Lucy was now a nurse and married to one of the physician assistants in the new health center. They told me of others of my students, most no longer living in Buah, proudly mentioning those who had gone on to get advanced degrees, like Jerry Toe who had studied medicine in China (of all places!) and was now a doctor in

That's a big belly button.

Monrovia. Or like Victoria Weah who was now married to Blebo’s District Supervisor (a very good job in a country where the unemployment rate is 85%). They also told me some of what happened during the war.

In the chaos and lawlessness of those years, young people with machine guns from all over Liberia, some from Buah, moved into towns along the main roads like Geeken and Harper. People in Buah grabbed what they could carry and escaped into the forest. (In Harper, one young man had described to me of having a gun held to his head and being told he must bring them his mother or he would be killed. I read that 60 to 70% of Liberian women had been raped during the war.) The robbers lived in others’ homes helping themselves to what they found, staying for about a year, until they had eaten their way through the stores of rice and food. Then they left, moving on to other areas, burning what they didn’t steal, leaving nothing for the former occupants, perhaps in an effort to absolve themselves from their crimes. People who had escaped to the forest lived for that year on what they could make for themselves in a country with, now, no infrastructure to depend on, no economy, no supplies to be bought in stores. They built make-shift homes and farmed the staples they had always grown, rice and cassava. Generally, the machine gun “warriors” who were afraid to venture too far from the main road into an unknown forest, fearing natural and supernatural dangers, didn’t look for them. The rain forest had always provided fruits and vegetables and a few bush animals (not very much meat) to people in Buah for which they scrounged and grew that year. Though there were many hardships they survived. One great difficulty was acquiring salt, a necessity people could only purchase, almost impossible to find in the broken-down infrastructure. How does one go a year without salt?

In the aftermath of the war, Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation, like in South Africa and Rwanda, brought some of the crimes committed to light, but punishment or retribution was not the main objective of the commission. How do you get retribution from those who are sometimes your own children? Many, many people were involved in crimes. Today a few of those who looted Buah are living there, some holding a scarce job from the government or in a development organization. My student, S. Wreh who told me this story shrugged his shoulders and laughed when I asked how he felt when he saw them. As David and I walked around, the visible scars left by the war seemed few, but I wondered how the hearts of those in the peaceful Buah I had known would recover?

Sharing fermented sugar cane juice at Mr. Kofa's house.

Kids follow Julie around Chenwrinken.

Esther recalls the fiasco when Julie first tried to cook palm butter.

Many villagers remember Julie fondly.

Bamboo grove near Julie's second house.

Country rice is Julie's favorite.

Boys selling bananas...

...and kola nuts.

This Twin Cities t-shirt made it to Buah faster than we did.

As a boy, I pushed a hoop with a stick, but mine was made of plastic.

Mr. Taplah was Julie's neighbor 30 years ago.

Jessie is Buah's eldest. How old? "She's very old"

The Pleebo-Barclayville road.

We reached Barclayville at noon, after straining up hills, picking our way carefully down and sloshing through pot holes, just like yesterday. We were beginning to feel, with some authority, that Liberia had the worst roads in the world. As we crested the hill near the Catholic Mission the town of Barlcayville appeared rolling out below us and in the hills beyond. I smiled remembering great times visiting Melanie and Monica two PC Volunteers who lived here. It seemed much as I remembered, although I know much had changed. Barclayville was now a country seat and it had become a center for the Danish Refugee Committee and other development NGO’s working in Grand Kru County where Buah is located. They had come here during and after the war bringing needed support. A huge project to dig wells with sealed pumps was one of the most visible improvements. Every village along the road we’d passed since Harper had at least one where we could refill our water bottles with safe drinking water. For the people living here it meant more children would survive childhood with fewer dying from diarrhea, a huge killer 30 years ago when people took their water from streams. Water born diseases, in general, have been greatly reduced since the wells, according to Collins, a Liberian development worker we met along the road. Most people who spoke of the war felt, although it was terrible and senseless, it’s aftermath was bringing needed development.

As we stopped to talk with immigration officials a man approached us, extended his hand, introduced himself as Thessalonian Toe, and explained he had been one of my students. What great joy to see him, although I didn’t quite remember him (This was a scene that played over and over in my visit to Buah). Now I was very anxious to get to Geeken.

We continued on our way that afternoon, the road a little less hilly, but the mud holes a little more substantial. Wet and very dirty, we ran out of daylight at the intersection of the Sasstown road and the Barclayville road. We asked to stay in nearby Norkwia with the city mayor Augustine and his wife Sarah. We were within 30k of Buah. Everything was becoming much more familiar.

Lots of mudholes on the Barclayville road.

Barclayville is the county seat of Gand Kru county.

Church near Pleebo.

We were told the Barclayville road was very bad and were pleasantly surprised to find the first 50k or so was very good. As we turned more westerly, we began crossing many drainages and we began experiencing intimately the topography of this rainforest. Liberia receives about 182 in. of rain per year, making it truly a rainforest, shaping the culture and lifestyle of its inhabitants as well as its landscape. First we went up, up, up, up, getting off and pushing the bikes as the hill became more steep, then slowly (especially me) we dropped back down maneuvering around obstacles on the eroding surface, meeting muddy potholes at the bottom. The next hill met us quickly and we repeated this again and again, over one hill and the next, throughout the afternoon. It was some of the most exhausting biking I’ve done since the winds of Patagonia. Late in the afternoon we got the downpour of rain I remember so well. Then I got a flat which David fixed in the rain. We soon stopped again as the wet patch did not hold. Needless to say we did not make it to Barclayville. With no guesthouse in sight we would need to ask to stay in a village. We had read in South Africa travelers needing a place to stay speak to the village chief. Nearby was the small village of Taplah’s Town and we asked to see Mr. Toe, its chief. He and his son, Alexander, graciously received us. A room with a bed was made ready (Alex and his wife gave us their room). We were given a bucket of water with soap for a bath (which we took in the bathhouse under the banana trees in the rain) and then we were brought rice with fish soup. No payment was requested but as we left in the morning after a comfortable and rejuvenating sleep, we gave them about as much money as we had payed to stay in Harper to thank them for their hospitality.

The driver survived when his truck fell off this log bridge.

Alexander & Sarah Toe & family.

Grand Kru county is sailing forward to a brighter future for Liberia.

No bridge to Liberia; loading bikes into a big dugout canoe.

With the Cavally River stretched out before us and Liberia on the other side, we loaded our bikes in the dugout canoe, bargained a fair price (2000CFA-$4.00), and were carried across. Thrilled to step on to Liberian soil after 30 years, we headed into the humble immigration office where our passport was stamped with a 15 day visa. Next door was a sober faced National Security Officer who wished to speak with us about our route in Liberia. I explained I had been a Peace Corps Volunteer and was returning to visit Buah Geeken. “Trace Beale taught me Biology”, a now smiling Sekou shared, remembering his Peace Corps teachers. “And the other teacher, Joe, played basketball. My brother played with him.” Trace and Joe are both good friends of mine who had been in my PC group. What a great interaction to begin our short sojourn in a country I had visited many times in my dreams over the years, but to which I had thought, since the war, I would not be able to return.

As we biked up and down the 28k hard packed and surprisingly good red-clay road to Harper surrounded by a lush tropical greenery, we met people in thatched roofed villages along the way. Some stood open mouthed as we traveled by in what must have been to them, a very odd sight. Few tourists come to this part of the world, especially since the war, and especially on bikes. The immigration register at the border recorded August as the the last time a tourist had come through. Everyone greeted us warmly, welcoming us to Liberia.

Entering Harper which had once been one of the larger towns in Liberia the devastation from the war became apparent. Blackened cement shells of buildings stood everywhere. At one point during the 14 year civil war, looters and pillagers with guns moved in, stayed until the food was gone, then left, burning what remained. Families have moved back and with the little cash they can muster have refurbished some of the cement buildings in the last seven years. Our hotel, The Two Sisters Destiny Restaurant and Motel was one of these. The grandest are those occupied by the few NGO’s in town, the Danish Refugee Committee, the UN, and Irish Aid to name some of them. The newly built William S. V. Tubman University is the most impressive structure in town. It symbolizes, for me, the sense of hope and renewal I felt in the Liberians to whom I talked. The market near the seaside, filled with women selling some vegetables, fish, and other small, small things, noisily visiting amongst each other (there weren’t many buyers), also displayed this spirit.

No buses and few trucks ply the roads, because they get stuck.

Fishermen head out to sea from Harper.

Ruins from Liberia's civil war in once-grand Harper.

Mary & baby Alison in Yokudi village.

Big snails are common & a good source of protein.

NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and The UN practically run Liberia.

The Masonic Lodge, a symbol of Americo-Liberian rule.

Visiting Brigitte's sociology class at Tubman University.

We enjoyed sharing our adventure with Brigitte's students.

“Scrappy” is the word that comes to mind when I compare Kenya to Tanzania, in its makeshift, ramshackle market areas, in its more persistent and less polite hawkers, in its faster and more plentiful traffic, in its pot-holed roads in areas away from the government favored/transportation funded Nairobi area, and then, in its assertive, conversation initiating and engaging people. We very much enjoyed our tour here, even with its pitfalls. It was great to be able to speak English again and have meaningful conversations with Kenyans. Among many topics, people talked proudly about the constitutional reforms they voted for in a recent referendum that limited and shared presidential powers (using our system of checks and balances as an example). Our president, Barak Obama, and his family ties to Kenya was also a favorite subject of conversation.

Kenya’s views were stunning. My favorites were coming down out of the green highlands after Nairobi into the Great Rift Valley with its vast dry plain stretched out on either side of us, the emerald green tea plantations rolling up and down the hills and glowing in the late afternoon sun, the hundreds of camels dotting the dry landscape near Lake Turkana, and, my favorite of the favorites, giraffe families eating the leaves atop acacia trees as we biked alongside in Hell’s Gate National Park.

One memorable, but not favorite, experience in Kenya was getting robbed in Kigali, a city west and north of Nairobi. As budget travelers without a tour guide we are more vulnerable to being taken advantage of. My personal feeling is it is in this vulnerability where we have richer interactions with people and their culture, most of the interactions having nothing to do with being taken advantage of. I would not give this part of traveling up for the safer organized tour. In reality, we have many more monetary resources than the majority of the people in the majority of the countries we have traveled. In reality, also, 99.99% of people are more interested in our safety and enjoyment than are interested in stealing our monetary resources. I rarely worry about my personal safety, except from traffic on busy roads, but I always try to be aware of opportunities to “lose” my stuff to this .01% of people who might help themselves, given the opportunity. We stayed in a fairly nice hotel in Kigali. Unlike most every other place we stayed, the staff did not seem interested in us, or in our trip, or even in David’s bike (very unusual). We commented to each other on their lack of jovial interaction. In the morning, while eating breakfast downstairs, someone broke into our room through the window and stole our computer, my old camera, about $40 in cash, and my stash of earrings that had more sentimental value than real value. Because it had happened in the same room, through the same window (that looked out onto a small open area inside the hotel), in the same way three months before, the police were certain it was an inside job. They took textbook perfect fingerprints (according to the detective) on the panes of glass removed from the window and brought us and the entire staff to the station to take our fingerprints for comparison. There was lots of drama. Phone numbers were exchanged so we could call and keep track of the investigation’s progress as we continued cycling in Kenya. We were hopeful they might recover the computer (they didn’t or if they did they never informed us). I was disappointed I hadn’t locked the computer away in the lockable cabinet in the room after I had used it, a precaution we usually take when leaving our room. Even though the lock was flimsy and easily broken, at least we would have made it a little harder for the thieves. The lessons I learned from this robbery were to remember a locked door doesn’t mean our stuff is secure. Extra precautions must be a habit. I will, also, pay attention to attitudes and interactions with hotel staff. A bad feeling may be a good warning to be a little more careful.

Almost half the time we spent in Kenya was in Nairobi. I didn’t find it a particularly attractive or inviting city, although its skyline with its numerous tall buildings and its busy downtown area was the most American-like we had yet seen in Africa. In David’s blog, he talked about a Nairobi malaise. We often feel aimless and out of sorts when in large cities with too much time off the bikes. The highlight, however, was our hotel, Milimani Packpackers. The staff was exceptional, in their friendliness, their ease, and in their concern for us that extended beyond just our comfort. It was wonderful to see Bill, the American cyclist we first met in Mozambique and then again in Malawi who we knew would be staying there. Catching up with him and comparing our adventures in and our impressions of the places we had been since we last saw him was very fun. There we also met Chinese cyclists Juesheng and fiance Xouli. Juesheng, our age, a former businessman owning several coffee shops in Shanghai, is spending 7 years cycling the world. Xouli is a Chinese Literature teacher who on her vacations meets Juesheng with her bike in different parts of the world, much like I considered doing when David and I began talking about this trip. They convinced me that whatever differences there are between us as Chinese and Americans, they are very few compared to the similarities we have as cyclists. We hope to see Juesheng in the United States on that leg of his journey and perhaps Xouli will have left her job by that time to join him.

“Karibu Tanzania!” (Welcome to Tanzania) was a phrase we heard again and again. David and I loved Tanzania. We were witness to and were treated with an old fashioned politeness that even Kenyans comment is a part of their neighbor’s psyche. Several observations stand out as differences to our experience in Malawi and Mozambique. There was a lot more truck traffic, hauling goods from town to town. More buses took people from place to place. Affordable guesthouses, fancy and not so fancy, were in almost every town, catering to Tanzanians, who generally traveled for business, conferences, or family matters (tourist travel is considered a waste of time…in fact the word for tourist in Swahili means ‘aimless traveler’). We had breakfast more often with locals in our hotels than in any country in Africa thus far. Towns and cities were bustling with business being done. We enjoyed the fastest, cheapest and most available Internet since South America in many of the larger towns. Everywhere that fruits and vegetables could be grown, women in small markets along the road were selling. Although like in Mozambique and Malawi, most people live on very little money per day, Tanzanians seemed more prosperous than their neighbors.

My favorite experience cycling was along the gravel road through the center of the country. While it was one of the worst road surfaces we had been on since southern Bolivia, I very much enjoyed the villages and our conversations with people. It wasn’t an area tourists frequented, so we were treated differently. As Swahili was more widely spoken than English, especially in the villages, we needed to learn words in this language. Both Swahili and English are the national languages. Tanzania’s first president at Independence, Julius Nyerere, established free primary education for all children and mandated Swahili be the language of instruction. English was taught and used in the secondary schools where parents needed to pay fees, so not everyone was able to learn English. Tanzania, like most African countries, is made up of many different tribes with at least as many different languages. Swahili was a trading language developed along the coast between Arab, European, and African traders. Nyerere’s policy made it easier for everyone to communicate in a language already familiar to many and it unified the country. Perhaps because of this, Tanzania has avoided tribal problems that have been common with its neighbors.

It was along this road we came to Bukulu where the guesthouse was unfinished. As it was late in the day, the owner of the guesthouse, Mr. Vincent, brought us home to stay the night with his family. After being fed great food cooked by his wife, Ms. Mary, in the front room, the table was taken out, chairs were pushed to the side and the TV was uncovered. Neighbors came in and took places in the chairs. Young children, perhaps as many as 15, crowded in spaces on the floor or on the laps of their elders. The generator was started. One of Mr. Vincent’s teen-age sons set up the cable and the 8:00 news in Swahili came on. Everyone watched for that half an hour, including very well behaved children who whispered quietly once-in-awhile. After the news, the electricity and generator was turned off, the TV was put away, the table was brought back in and people went home. David and I got ready for bed behind the front room’s curtain, and the teen-age sons and their cousins worked out their algebra problems together in hushed tones at the table around the kerosene lamp as we fell asleep. My mind was brought back pleasantly to my Murray math classes. In the morning we were treated to chapati and a wonderfully spiced tea. Though we expected to pay for our food and accommodation, we were asked not to. Mr. Vincent wanted us to experience true Tanzanian hospitality. We later sent back an enlarged photo of his 92 year-old mother to thank them which hopefully they received. I felt privileged to have been invited to their home.

Another of my favorite Tanzanian experiences was visiting several of the sites of early humans. People and their ancestors have inhabited this area for millions of years. All of us on the planet, all homo sapiens, came out of Africa’s Rift Valley, some believe as little as 70,000 years ago. We saw hundreds of stone tools used by homo erectus as long ago as 200,000 years ago in a site along a river bed. We visited Oldupai Gorge where a cast of footprints cemented in volcanic ash of three hominids was found dating 3.5 million years ago, showing distinctly for the first time that these animals in this era walked erect like today’s humans, different from apes. These lessons in early human history gave me a very real sense that we are all brothers and sisters on this not so very big earth, one that can be circumnavigated by a 53 year old woman on a bicycle in a few years.

“Meet Cathy who’s been most everywhere,
From Zanzibar to Barclay Square.
But Patty’s only seen the sights,
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights.
What a crazy pair!”

“The Patty Duke Show’s” theme song from the 1960′s was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Zanzibar before our visit. Made up of several islands with Pemba and Unguja being the largest, we spent 12 days here taking a vacation from our bike vacation. It was much, much more than the exotic tourist spot of my pre-conceived notions.

Zanzibar is 97% Muslim. We had the good fortune to be in Tanzania during the month of Ramadan, a period very important in the Muslim religion, and we timed our visit to Zanzibar to be at the end of that holy month. In Stone Town, the largest city on the islands, we experienced a few days of their fasting where it was impolite for us to eat publicly on the street during the day and we sat behind curtained doors and windows in restaurants with other non-Muslims. Then, the morning after the sighting of the sliver of the crescent moon, 5 days of celebration began. At sunrise, muezzins from perhaps a half dozen minarets of mosques within earshot of our hostel, sang praises to God, invoking the name of the prophet Mohammad–none in sinc or in harmony, all different but all the same, like a chorus of deep-throated birds–calling for a half hour or more. Later in the day when walking through the streets the holiday was in full swing. All the young girls, before the age of puberty glittered in lovely dresses, adorned with ribbons and bows. Many had henna designs on their hands and feet (indigo floral patterns painted on the skin lasting as long as 2 weeks). Many wore a beautifully colored hijab (long head scarf) fastened with a shiny hairpin framing sweet, sweet faces. Older girls and woman, depending on how strict their Muslim beliefs, displayed more or less of their new dresses. Some had henna on their hands and feet (only married woman and little girls before puberty use henna, I was told). Most wore a hijab, some in beautiful colors, some black. Most wore full length dresses, also in brilliant colors and patterns which flared at the bottom. Some covered their beautiful dresses completely with a long black cloak where the patterns and colors of their dresses were visible only through the bottom slit as they walked. A few hid themselves even more with a mask-like veil tied behind their head allowing only their eyes to show. I grew to appreciate the beauty of the hijab and I began to understand why strict Muslims believe a woman must cover her face in public. If the Koran instructs them to show their beauty only to their husbands, and truly their faces are the greatest part of their beauty, then, if one interprets the Koran strictly, a woman must veil her face too.

Other parts of the festivities included gift giving to children. Young boys toted new toy guns everywhere in the streets, the labyrinth that is Stone Town being a perfect place to play their version of cops and robbers. Then in the evening, judging by the strength of the crowd, every young child on the island together with their cousins from the mainland and led by their mothers, pressed into a small kiddie ride park. Crowd control was #1 here. People were held back at the gates in a massive clot that for 21 cents a head was allowed to slowly trickle in as others left the park. Older youths dressed in scout uniforms lined the paths of the park to insure orderly travel once inside. Gleeful children, laughed and hooted from hand powered merry-go-rounds, swings, go-carts, delighted, I think mostly, to have survived getting into the park.

David and I survived the bedlam for only a few minutes, and headed to the other side of town next to the waterfront. Here in the park was a gastronomical feast. Tables lined the walkways, loaded with freshly caught, slaughtered, harvested and prepared foods, beef, chicken, fish, octopus, lobster, crabs, shrimp, chapati, crepes, pancakes, mangoes, bananas, pineapples, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbages, green peppers spiced and seasoned with the flavors of the island, grilled or fried in oil over charcoal pots as the chefs visited with their customers. Families, groups of adolescent boys and groups of adolescent girls, young and old couples, tourists and locals, crowded the sidewalks, bought their dinner, and then found rare, unoccupied patches of ground where they picnicked and conversed and observed the hub-bub around them. Everything was packed and swept away sometime before 11 and was repeated again the next night. Very fun.

Zanzibar is rich in the history and mix of cultures as it was a port of trade between Africans, Arabs, Indians, and Europeans in the more recent centuries, and the Persians and other Indian Ocean sea-faring peoples in more ancient times. Spices like cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon come from here. Very profitable ivory from the mainland was traded. And one of history’s most evil examples of man’s inhumanity to man, the slave trade, flourished here. In the Anglican hostel we stayed, formerly a hospital that was built over a miserable chamber where slaves had been kept before they were sold, we met a Tanzanian guest, Michael, who’s last name in Swahili meant “lucky to be saved”. He told the story of his grandfather and great aunt who as young children in the late 1800′s, had been captured in Malawi by slave traders. Missionaries in Tanzania seeing them amongst a large group of captives being taken overland to the coast begged the slavers to give them these two children. They pleaded they would never survive the trek, and would suffer the fate of untold numbers of people who ill and weak, were left along the way chained to trees, presumably eaten by animals, to discourage captives faking weakness. The slavers agreed and the children were raised in the mission. His great aunt, Michael went on to say, did not live up to the name they were given. Some time later she was snatched by other slavers and taken, people believed, to Mombasa. His grandfather was never able to find her or hear news of her.

Touring the island of Pemba was some of my favorite cycling. The road lined with banana, coconut and mango trees, to name a few, curved up and down and around through villages with the aroma of harvested cloves drying in the sun. People along the road greeted us warmly and we enjoyed lovely views of the ocean. We stayed at both the south and north end of the island, two nights in a bit of a touristy hotel with a terrace that overlooked the small harbor and two nights in a more regular hotel in town. On our last night while having a beer at sunset, thousands of large fruit bats filled the sky, like a freaky horror movie, flying from the trees they’d hung and slept in during the day to their nightly feeding area somewhere on the island. I’d never seen a sight like it.

Capturing sunset at the Africa House Hotel.

Toasting a sundowner from 7 stories above Stone Town.

Mango trees line the road to Jozni Forest.

Family on a bike.

Cloves darken as they dry in the sun.

Sailing a dhow to snorkel on Misali.

Kids swimming at Mkoani.