Saturday, May 24, 2008

The Slave Caves of Zanzibar

Hello all.

Its been 5 days or so.....

Well I am now in Tanzania working on the Flamingo Documentary. I am in a town called Dar Es Salaam, which is a very arabic influenced city. For fun, you can go to Google Earth and check it out, its right on the Indian Ocean.

Her in Dar it is very very hot, and very humid. The people are nice but there are, as in all africa, many people trying to rob and rip me me off. but i deal with them...lol.

So far we have interviewed the director of Birdlife International, the CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania, the Professor Emeritus of Ecology at the University of Tanzania, a maverick journalist named DEO trying to get to the bottom of the Natron Flamingo Controversy, and tonight leave for the desert to talk with 2 or 3 Tribal Masai Warchiefs near the Lake, and also a field expert who basically lives in the desert working on wildlife research. Also, last week we had a surprise chance meeting with Chris Magine, who is the African Director of the Royal British Society for the Protection of Birds...we just found him sitting downtown Dar Es Salaam smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, and he kindly engaged us in conversation and it just happened to turn out that he was here from England working on the EXACT same project as us...the Lake Natron Flamingos...so how crazy is it that we just ran into him/ So he agreed to interview and it was fantastic!!!!

Also, we had an interview scheduled in a more expotic location....ZANZIBAR!!!!!

About 3 days ago we took the ferry across the Indian Ocean to the famous Island of Zanzibar. Unfortunately, once we got there our contact was unable to meet with us...but since we were already there we stayed for an extra day....AMAZING!!!! The Island is so beautiful, I would suggest going to Google Images and just checking out the beaches, as well as a place called PRISON ISLAND....I met a guy there in Zanzibar who spends his days building ancient Dow boats and sailing around the ocean to the islands, and he finds wood and carves masks and sorts...extremely nice guy. Well he asked us to ride his dow boat out to the island and he gave us a tour and let us go snorkeling in the reefs around the island..and all this was completely unexpected or arranged!!!!

We stayed in a place called STONE TOWN, the coolest architecture in the world......

I think I want to live in Zanzibar.

Also, we went to see the Slave Caves, where the British Slave masters hid their slaves...it was really dark, wet, and creepy inside the caves...there were even remnant of rustly chains and things. I also saw a millipede twice as thick as my thumb and about 10 inches long. yummy.

So Zanzibar actually turned out to be quite a nice experience even though we didnt get the interview.

Now I am back in Dar Es Salaam and we are trying to get ahold of some Masai people near Arusha and we are bussing out there tonight or in the morning. If you didn't know, Arusha to very very near to the famous Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I am very tired, sun burnt, and more tired. We are staying in Dar at a filthy run down hostel downtown...so the people around this area are quite creepy. In Zanzibar, there was no power or running water so we couldnt shower or anything for several days, and coming back to the mainland it was well over 110 degrees with no clouds, its like a desert city.

Everywhere I go Im meeting more people who have more stories to share and its just crazy!

When we were walking through the forests in Zanzibar Island, we ran into a Norwegian couple, the husband teaches English at a rural university in Malawi, he was very very smart and told us to bus down to Malawi and stay at his place and see the extreme poverty of this country, where there are even less Mzungu's (white people) than here. Of course we cant do that.

I suppose I will be back soon...i dont even know what day it is today, i think sunday.

Cheers to all, and hopefully you'll get a Masai Trek update in the early part of next week!

-ben

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