July 9, Zanzibar

Today is the last day on Zanzibar, tomorrow I fly to Arusha for my internship. The program ended a three days ago, since then we have been at Paje beach, relaxing and enjoying some nice food and coffee before leaving.

Zanzibar is a strange place. We were in Stonetown first, the historical centre with old stone buildings, marked as a World Heritage site. As a consequence, buildings are kept in their 'authentic' state, displaying the mixing of cultures that is characteristic to Zanzibar - Arab, Indian, Spanish, British, German. Now, many buildings seem rundown. The government evicted people out of those homes marked as heritage sites. 

The label World Heritage was meant to stimulate tourism, and it did. But tourism has led to a strange dynamic in the city. As a white tourist, it is easy to jump in between comfortable cafes and resorts, speeding through the rundown streets full of desperate people and beggars (even children). There's something strange about sitting in a rooftop cafe sipping a cappuccino, overlooking the busy streets from a safe bubble. 

During our city tour we learned that more than 90% of residents is muslim. This is a consequence of historical Arab hegemony, stimulated by the British. Our guide told us  everything on Zanzibar is 'hakuna matata', all people live together happily and all religions respect each other. I guess that's easy if there's no diversity... Also, every local seems to tell the tourists there are 'no problems' here, but it is hard to miss the biggest one when walking the streets. The wealth disparity between tourist resorts and local residencies is insane. On our way to the beach, we pass streets where people live, which seem like informal settlements when compared to the resorts at the beach. Still, we sit at those resorts to enjoy our smoothie and some peace away from the petty traders...

Tourism has also led to a huge increase in the amount of plastic and glass waste. We visited Chako, a green social enterprise that recycles waste into high value products. Almost all their employees are women or youth, from a disadvantaged background (usually a lack of education). They are trained and given the empowering label of 'artisans'. The products are sold mostly to Europe, and can even be found in Dutch stores. 

I was shocked to hear that the local resorts and hotels show a lack of cooperation with Chako, even though they are a big source of for example empty bottles of alcohol. Corey explained that businesses like these externalise the costs related to waste, displacing the burden onto the environment or local people - all to make just that 0.1% extra profit. Hotels would rather send the waste to a dumping site than have the slight extra labour cost of sorting it and giving it to Chako. It is great that companies like Chako exist, but it is also sad that they are necessary and that they get no funding from the biggest sources of waste.

That's all for now, I'm going to enjoy my last day of sea breeze, free time and free wifi...