Voyage of the Peace Corps: Zanzibar, a Capitalist Story

The sun of Zanzibar dawns bright and hot, and we breakfasted and went to explore Stone Town.  Also shop.  We found we could begin right outside our hotel, at the childhood home of Freddie Mercury.  It must be difficult to be a homophobic society whose only famous person is Freddie Mercury, but if it sells merchandise to the tourists it can be dealt with.  And this is why capitalism will always triumph over bigotry.   The place is really just a hotel now with the occasional picture of Freddie but the shop next door sells t-shirts and postcards, which is the important thing.

That is really what most doors in Stone
Town look like.

Stone Town is a very cool city, being made of tall buildings with twisty windy streets wherein it is easy to get lost.  There are also stray cats everywhere, but at least people don't seem inclined to kick or throw stones at them and most of them look decently fed.

My goal in shopping was to buy a baibui, a long black gown with lots of beading and embroidery that some Muslim ladies wear here.   Baibui is a very difficult word for me, because it is close to buibui [spider], so it is possible that while asking directions for a shop that sold them (it's hard to find places that sell things people actually wear for all the shops that sell things that the tourists wear) I may have told people I wanted to buy and wear an arachnid.   I found one (the dress, not the arachnid), it was somewhat expensive, but I'm paying for the hand beading and the little crystals.

The thing doesn't fit right now because you buy them in very large sizes and then are supposed to take them to your own dressmaker to have them tailored to you and I haven't done that yet.  This custom makes me happy because it means that the younger and more fabulous ladies who wear them extremely tight (and sometimes with nothing under them and so tight that you can tell) are doing that very deliberately.  Take that modesty!  I also got a pin for it because Muslim ladies get fancy pins to hold their headwraps in place here.  At the shop I just showed the proprietor my baibui and she told me which pin would go well with it.

On my way home I stopped at the fancy hotel in Morogoro with the best cocktails and pedicures in country and was showing off my purchases to my old sitemates.  While they were exclaiming about how pretty it was, some annoying Americans at the next table demanded to know, in incredulous tones, why I had bought that. To which I replied "because it is pretty."  It will also work for a belly dance caftan or possibly just outfit, but I don't feel a need to tell disapproving strangers such things.  I was told by the Americans then that it would be fashionable for Iran, and when I explained that that was not true, since in Iran the chaddor is worn, and that is different, I was told that I could wear this for Halloween.  No actually, I don't think so.  Going as a Muslim for Halloween in America would be at best in poor taste.  Americans.  They have the right to wear just about whatever they want, but they get so judgmental about clothes and all end up in drab jeans and uninteresting t-shirts most of the time anyway.  But can I get stridently idealistic to them?  Well, no, because they have a car and since it was raining I fully intended (and managed) to beg a ride to my sitemate's house where I was staying so I wouldn't have to walk.  Poverty and idealism do not mix well.  At least I got my nails painted alternating Easter egg pink and blue.

Whatever, we also discovered that beside our hotel on Zanzibar is a coffee place that sells cakes and pastries, including key lime pie and passionfruit tarts, and some evenings a musical duo with a violin and guitar are there playing the occasional traditional music interspersed with Abba.  I love this country.

Next: We get stuck on a tropical beach with too much money.  However will we survive?!