CHUINI – Meandering around Matemwe

Typically, Mangrove Lodge guests go out on a series of excursions during the day. I’ve resisted so far, as I find tour groups all sorts of annoying and it’s never the most exciting thing in the world to be the only English speaker in a group. Yesterday, though, a new group arrived. Still all Italians; but this time with English speaking special powers. The best English speaker is Patricia, possibly because until recently she was engaged to a man from Vancouver. This sets up an interesting dynamic since she loves all things Vancouver but talking about them slightly depresses her. Luckily, kittens make her happy. So as long as we talk in the part of the dining area where stray cats wander in and out, things seem to go well. Some of her companions, who are also lovely, mention to Haji that they’re not fish fans on their first night. He looks worried. I know why; I haven’t eaten a meal in Zanzibar yet which doesn’t contain some form of seafood. Crab, lobster, octopus… It’s all here, and it’s all fabulous. The Italians end up eating a lot of fries.


The dining room at the Mangrove Lodge. In a rare, non-fish related moment.

That said, the majority of the guests at Mangrove this week are much older than Patricia or I and it quickly becomes clear that their taste in excursions extends to, well, the very dull. So I make my own plans to head over to the opposite side of the island using public transport. This intrigues Idris, the tour guide who leads most of the excursions. “How many people are you used to on a bus?” he asks, quizzically. I tell him about the time I once travelled to Foz do Iguaçu on the floor of an overbooked bus. Satisfied that I will not be mortified by Zanzibar public transport, he gives me the numbers of the dulla-dullas I need.


The bay outside the Mangrove Lodge.

East African public transport is, for my money, a lot more efficient than that in North America. First of all, everything tends to start in the same place in whichever major town you’re in. As long as you don’t mind scanning the numbers of several hundred identical vehicles (I pretended I was in The Amazing Race…) then you’ll find what you’re looking for eventually. Dulla-dullas (minibuses, or glorified vans) then leave when they’re full. Not when they’ve been waiting five or ten minutes. And not even when all the seats are taken. When they’re *full.* And, even after that, they’ll still stop to take on board more people. That’s rather impressive when there’s no more than 15 seats to begin with and there’s already 20 people on board. The most I counted was 26… plus luggage!

The slightly annoying thing about dulla-dulla trips is that they come in two speeds. Breakneck; or snails pace. The first trip across the island is one of the latter. Every corner must be stopped at, and everyone who gets in board seems to have some huge pile of vegetables, or planks of wood or even buckets of rotting fish with them. Amazingly, though, there’s always a space for everything. And with 26 people in a confined space, the smell of rotting fish is surprisingly not the most pungent around. The trip takes around ninety minutes. Mind you, for a cost of around 20 cents, I’m not complaining. (The trip back, incidentally, took about thirty minutes. Including several occasions of being bounced around and wondering how long it would be before my head bounced high enough to make skull crushing contact with the roof above…)


Matemwe village, built on the sands...

We arrived into Matemwe village just after lunch. Back in Chuini, the weather had been rather grey but Zanzibar’s reliable microclimates meant clouds on one side of the island gave way to clear blue skies on the other. Matemwe isn’t just close to the coastline; it’s built right on the sands of the beach. With turquoise water lapping on the coral white shore, Matemwe Beach is the definition of tropical paradise. It’s also a little less built up than other stretches of coast on the island, perhaps because of the proximity of the village and the dozens of dhows owned by the locals which are parked on the beach during low tide. It takes a good few minutes of concerted wandering down the beach until I find the first resort and snag a free chair thanks to the deployment of a few words of Swahili to the man who’s minding them. (Jo Russell taught me maybe half a dozen words of Swahili before I left the UK. Most of them variations on ‘How are you?” and “I’m okay.” For the first time ever in my learning of a language, every one of them was not only useful, they pretty much covered every eventuality)


A view from a beach chair. Blue skies, white sands and turqouise waters. Mmmm...

It’s an(other) easy afternoon on a Zanzibar beach; with a few breaks to explore the crystal clear lagoon and to watch the occasional soccer ball get pelted up and down the shoreline by the local kids… After my harrowing dulla-dulla ride back, I have a half hour walk from Chuini to Mangrove Lodge, watching farmers working quietly in the fields whilst an orange sun disappears behind the horizon. I arrive back in time for dinner (fish again, of course) and Patricia explaining the non-wonders of the day’s tour. Apparently the south of the island was grey all day. I try to downplay Matemwe, but after she gets hold of my camera and sees my day's photos, she demands to know how to get there. I explain dulla-dulla etiquette as best I can and draw maps on napkins. Her travelling companions look horrified at the thought of using such horrendous sounding transport, and resolve to do a more interesting excursion the next day to avoid the possibilities of bone crushing accidents, or having to share air space with anyone’s bucket of rotting fish. It leads to a good night for all; with a momentary moment of cultural horror for Brit, Italians and stray cats alike when a Swahili remix of “Who Let the Dogs Out” starts playing on the stereo.


Looking down Matemwe beach; white sands stretching into the distance.