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Taking the Jambiani cultural tour

Submitted by rachel on Wed, 27/05/2009 - 10:16


in

* coral rag
* cultural tourism
* Eco + Culture
* ethical tourism
* jambiani
* seaweed farming
* zanzibar

This is a piece that I wrote for Karibu magazine


about the cultural tour that you can do in the
coastal village of Jambiani - would recommend it
for all visitors to the East Coast who want to
understand a bit about the history, culture, flora
and fauna of the area.
"Beaches in Zanzibar are picture postcard
tropical beaches. The fine white coral sand,
enticing turquoise ocean, palm trees waving in
the sea breeze – it’s understandable that many
tourists, having saved to get here and travelled a
long way from their home countries, just want to
lie on that perfect beach for their whole holiday.
But it is also a shame to travel such a long way
and not get a taste of the culture of your host
country.
Guests to Jambiani, on Zanzibar’s stunning east
coast, do have that opportunity. This long,
narrow coastal village hugs one of the island’s
loveliest beaches, dotted with hotels and
guesthouses. Three and a half miles long, with a
population of over 6000 people, this village has
for some years featured a cultural tour that gives
travellers an insight into the daily lives of locals,
and some idea of their past and how their future
might unfold.
Eco + Culture Tours, the creator of the tour,
ploughs all the profits back into community
projects, including a kindergarten for children
from the age of three to seven. It was the first
such kindergarten in the southern district of
Zanzibar, set up in 2000, and provides an early
education for local children in languages –
Kiswahili, Arabic and English – as well as maths,
science and environmental studies.
The tour starts at the kindergarten so visitors
can see where the money from their tour is
going. Next the tour guide, Haji Mande, explains
the history of the island in brief. Not so long ago,
he says, everybody lived in areas of coral
plantations, in huts made from coconut leaves,
and only went to the coast to fish and harvest
coconuts. There was no tap water, no electricity,
no school. But gradually the custom for building
houses from stone and lime that originated in
the island’s merchant area, Stone Town, spread
east, and people started to build more
permanent houses along the shore. The current
school was built, meaning the new generation is
much more educated than their ancestors were,
and there is a small dispensary also in the
centre of the village, meaning that villagers
gravitate toward the heart of the village for their
needs.
Previously young people left Jambiani in droves
to seek work in town, but the current abundance
of hotels – there are at least 18 now in the
village – means that most people are now
staying put in their home village and hoping to
find employment in the tourist industry.
Eco + Culture, which started as an NGO then
added tours to its operations to generate funds
for its community projects, is trying to lead by
example in Jambiani – by showing people
simple ways of making money or food and
improving their lives. For example, outside their
headquarters they have planted lots of herbs
and trees to create shade and demonstrate the
variety of plants that can be grown along the
main street. Many people develop eye problems
from walking and working in the harsh glare of
the sun day in and day out; the planting of tall
trees to bestow shade would make for a much
more comfortable existence for all, but is an idea
that hasn’t been contemplated before. The older
generation, Mr Mande explains, didn’t plant
trees, and so the younger generation don’t
either.
He shows off an Indian almond tree, which was
used to make soft drinks long before the advent
of Coca Cola on the island. There are also a
variety of mints – one type used to combat flu
and another kind that was used in the past to
cleanse and scent dead bodies – as well as
ylang ylang trees and screw palms.
Jambiani, with its curious linear shape, suddenly
opens to reveal further strata. The next layer is
of light forest – here villagers used to come to
pray to spirits believed to be present in the trees.
First there is the beach, then the sandy soil, then
the coral, says Mr Mande, but most tourists just
lie on the beach without learning any more about
the landscape.
Moving onto the next strata, he reveals proudly
a project Eco + Culture have been working on
for some time. It’s designed to show villagers
that coral rock, thought to be barren by most
people locally, can actually provide a home for
most plants given enough time and attention.
There are about 100 species of plants here –
almost everything you can imagine. Look one
way – pomegranate trees. Another way – guava
trees. There is also eucalyptus, golden mango,
lemon, kaffir lime, vanilla, lemongrass, aloe vera
and cloves. There is a henna tree – used to
make up henna paste to adorn the skins of local
women, and also sadly to brew a tea to bring on
miscarriage. There is a glue tree, which
produces white sap so sticky it is used as a local
alternative to Superglue. There are green curry
leaves and small starfruit that can be used to
make vinegars and chutney. Not bad for a
landscape of rock that few people thought could
yield much. The plantation is open to all locals –
anyone is welcome to come and pick fruit or
leaves. Its fundamental purpose is to encourage
people to try to plant coral gardens themselves.
Zanzibar’s fertility is notable – if even barren
land like this can produce such a rich harvest
then nobody should go hungry. It is also
reflected in the abundance of herbal remedies
that locals use to treat ailments. Visiting a fourth-
generation local herbalist’s quarters, it is
revealed that he has had to rush off on an
emergency visit so Mr Mande instead shows the
leaves and branches that make up the art of the
herbalist.
One tree root can be used to treat classic
malnutrition in children where stick-thin children
model unnatural pot bellies. It’s mixed with
coconut milk or oil, fed to the children, and then
their stomachs return to the right proportions
and their diminished appetite returns. Another
leaf can be grinded up and mixed with honey to
treat children with asthma; another is used in a
tea to lower high blood pressure; another is
used to extract poison from a stingray sting. One
leaf can be treated to extract castor oil, used as
an antiseptic in the process of male
circumcision. There is a thin vine that can be
used to treat blood haemorrhages. Trumpet
flowers are dried and then rolled up and smoked
by adults to treat asthma. The list goes on and
on – name just about any malaise and there is a
local plant cure. Many medical researchers have
visited the herbalist, Mr Suleiman, to find out
about the cures that he uses.
Still, the most important tree remains the
coconut. The people of coastal Zanzibar rely on
this palm to meet most of their basic needs. The
tree provides branches to make shelter, food,
drink, rope, oil for cooking and skin, cooking
implements, drinking cups, soap, even
rudimentary toothbrushes. The next part of the
tour takes in a typical local house, where the
woman of the house is using an “mbuzi” – a
small stool with a long extension capped with a
serrated edge – to shred the insides of a
coconut. Then she uses this grated coconut
flesh to extract coconut milk, which she will cook
with rice. She also demonstrates a large-scale
mortar and pestle, used to pound rice into rice
flour and to make uji, the local porridge.
Another local woman demonstrates how to
make rope from coconut husks. The husks are
left to soak in the sea and sun for some weeks
until they start to disintegrate into wet fibres.
These are dried and cleaned by pounding them
with a wooden stick until all excess moisture and
debris is expelled. Women then roll small
lengths of rough rope from the fibres and pleat
these together into longer lengths of rope that
can be used to make local beach beds, or
combined into larger ropes for anchors.
The other major activity here is seaweed
farming. Walking out through the squelching
white sand at low tide, through shallow pools of
darting, silvery fish, Mr Mande finally reaches
the seaweed “farms” – wooden stakes with rope
strung between them, on which seaweed is
grown and later harvested for sale to the Far
East, where it is used in cosmetic products and
in the silk-making process. From beginning to
end the process of growing, harvesting and
drying seaweed can take under a month, so it’s
a quick crop to turn around.
Driving to the very end of the village, Mr Mande
announces the end of the tour. Calling itself a
cultural tour is perhaps misleading – it is as
much a tour of the local flora and geology as the
local people, but it does certainly give tourists
who would normally see only Jambiani’s white
sands the chance to contribute to its future and
to begin to appreciate what life is like within the
village houses they pass in their minibuses on
the way to their hotel."

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