Pemba Island
                                           
   
   
On the flight from Addis to Dar the woman was told that the plane would have a flight stop-over in
Zanzibar. Enthused the woman asked the steward if she could exit there then she aheaded rather to
Zanzibar than Dar (she didn' t know about the stop because at that time the E.A. scheduled the
preheaded flights fom Addis according to the passangers bookings. So there sometimes were stops in
Entebbe, Mogadishu or somewhere in Kenia. The crew told her they wouls ask the Immigration Authority
in Zanzibar if this was possible. Hakuna matata, no problem, she could exit, only her luggage - just a
rucksack this time - was continuing to Dar but would fly back to Zanzi next morning where she could
pick it up then.

Happy in Zanzibar with her hand-luggage she at first had to buy a dress to have a change after the long
flight. Next morning after her luggage had arrived (allah shall be praised!) she took the ferry boat to
Pemba, to see the Kiweni place of Brian although she didn' t really know how to get there. But she was
told she shall travel with the lokal dallas as far as possible and then ask how to get further.

In the last village where the dalla stopped nobody actually was speaking english except one guy who was
standing at the bus stop by accident. He showed her a man who had a bicycle and said this man could take
her to his village where he had a small shallop. He could take her to Kiweni by this boat. The rucksack
was heaved on the bike and then they were running over hedge and ditch. In the village of the bike man
big-eyed children came running out of the huts to look at the woman scanting "muzungu, muzungu"  -
probably she was the first white woman they had ever seen. But some sweets the woman had with her
helped the children get calm.
After some more running  they arrived to the boat which had to be hauled from the sludge then it was
low tide
 
After the take over with the shallop they arrived in
Kiweni where the woman found Brian on the beach
looking for driftwood. So she had landed exactly where
she wanted to, despite of the lack of travelling info.
That's the way here, somehow everything works out in a
miraculous way. Inshallah! The woman was tired after
all that running but Brian and she were talking quite a
while whereby they finished the bottle campari the
woman had brought with her. Meanwhile the sun had
gone down and the woman was taken to a big tent by the
light of a petroleum lamp and she fell in a deep sleep.
Next morning she woke up very early as the first light emerged at the horizon. She knew that the sun
gets up at 6:30 a.m. and gets down at 6:30 p.m. and that was enough information to organize the life so
she disposed her watch at the very bottom of her bag.
As she went out of the tent, she entered a little terrace and all of this was covered with a roof
construction of wood and palm leaves which made it shadowy and cool. Only a couple of steps and there
was the Indian Ocean. It was low tide and she could hear the waves break at the riff making a
rumbling noice.
The bay was broadening left and right till the cliffs covered with mangroves. The beach was white and
virgin. Not even Friday had left his footsteps there. The twilight and the noice of wind and  waves
infolded the woman like a protecting cover and she felt herself calm and satisfied. Like the dream she
had missed.
As the sun was getting higher the woman was walking along the beach to the mangroves looking for
shells and driftwood which the ocean had flushed to the beach at night. Between the roots of the
mangroves she found a piece of wood washed by sand and water. As the piece had an interesting form
she took it and thought about working it over with her pocket knife.

In the piece of wood the woman had found the ghost of Mwandege
 
Taking the piece of wood and some shells
and other objects she went to her tent
where the cook Ali had served breakfast
on the terrace consisting of spice tea
with lemon, fresh oranges, papaya,
banabas,  home made bread, cooked egg,
cheese and lemon marmalade.
How The Woman finds Mwandeges Story

After breakfast the woman went to the beach with a book.  But she was too lazy to read and was
just looking at the blue sky where the little clouds were passing by. She was imagining to have
landed on an uninhabited island, then emptyed her head and was just lying there like a shell
washed to the shore by the ocean, forgotten and useles.

After a while she got too hot and went to her tent for a shower and one more cup of tea. Now she
was eager to busy herself. She remembered the piece of wood from the beach, took it in her hand
and studied it. It seemed to be hollowed out by worms and at the one end it was sealed by a
veined bulg. As she was skratching it carefully with her knife, a kind of a head of an elephant
seemed to emerge. She was working quite concentrated trying to follow the pattern of the veins.
During this stories and pictures emerged in her head.
 
As a child up in the north she used to believe that the forest
was populated with magic entities: fairies with shimmering
wings and gnomes which lived in tree stumps, vacated birds
nests and under the mushrooms. And she believed to come
nearer to these entities when she brought them little
presents, decorated their dwellings with moss, small flowers,
wild berries and colored pieces of broken glass. She always
was hoping to see one of these magic entities or at least a
reflex of light of a fairy wing or a pointed cap of a gnome
that hushed under a blueberry shrub.
She was thinking of her grandmother sitting on her
sofa doing  embroideries and telling stories and fairy
tales. Sometimes she was telling the child about her
former life, then she believed that she used to be a
princess in an ancient persian court. The woman
remembered the soft voice of her granmother and the
magic that she felt. She also remembered her aunt
who used to read aloud to the child out of her book
as she was snuggling up to her bed in the evening. So
she fell asleep with pictures of Sinuhe the Egyptian
in her mind. She also thought of other people who
used to tell stories or communicated with the child
this way showing respect and care to her.
Long time the woman had not been thinking of
her childhood.  Suddenly here, in the middle of
Africa, she felt a  need again to approach the
world of stories and fairy tales. To hear them
and to write them down.
As the woman was working on the piece of wood she received  the story of Mwandege by and by. She
learned about killing the Tembo. about the curse, about taking the boat to sail to Pemba. She learned
about the storm, the drowning and of the rescue in the piece of wood.

Finally Mwandeges ghost asked for help: „Please find a person who will pity me and will go and find a
wife for me which also is banished in a piece of wood because of a curse or a spell.  When this
person gives us a home in a mango tree to protect us agains rain and sun Allah will bless him, he will
have a good life, a good wife and healthy children then Allah ist great".

Now that the woman was finished with carving the piece of wood it looked like a little magic wand
with small holes all over and with a Tembos head at the one end. She protected it with some sun oil
and took it to the cook Ali who was a nice young man and like the most of the inhibitants of Pemba
hadn' t lost his faith in magic. She gave him the wooden wand and the story of Mwandege she had
written down. Ali promised to take care of Mwandeges ghost and to give him a home in a Mango tree.
"Maybe Allah will bless me and I can top my new house with a tin roof", he said then this was the
biggest wish of him and his just married wife.
The next days the woman spent swimming, sunbathing, reading books and walking around the beach.
She also found more pieces of driftwood but none of them was telling stories. As the woman was
the only guest in Kiweni, her host Brian told her stories in the evening as they were having supper
and the petrolium lamps were lighted. Brian who already lived  a long time in Africa had more
stories than any TV broadcaster.
Brian Tells a Story:

After having visited Australia I was waiting for a connecting flight for Dar es Salam on the
Comoro islands. This connection only was flying on certain days of the week and this week the
connection had failed.  Also the next week connection was anulled as well as the next week one.
Brian started to get troubled then he was running out of cash. There a moslem inhabitant of the
island  (the majority is moslem) came to him to ask for a favour: " You can go to an Indian shop and
buy some bottles of wine", he explained "and then bring them to me". As the people of Indian
origin are not moslem, they can import alcohol. Brian wasn't struggeling too long with his conscience
and got the wine. His partner then was selling the wine in glasses at his home for customers. The
profit they were splitting justly. So Brian was living these weeks quasi as a dealer of alcoholics.
 
These story telling hours at night reminded the
woman of the stories of her granmother, telling
about the persian palace she believed once to
have lived in.
The Rubayat of Jalal Al-Din Rumi
I sought a soul in the sea
And found a coral there;
Beneath the foam for me
An ocean was all laid bare.

Into my heart's night
Along a narrow way
I groped; and lo! the light,
An infinite land of day
Persian Poems an Anthology of Verse
translations edited
by A.J.Arberry, Everyman's Library, 197
 
Jenny's  Story:  

Once upon a time I lived in a persian palace in the high mountains of the province Fars. The
palace was surrounded by wonderful gardens, even inside the wallings there were gardens with
fountains and water channels which gave coolnes in the hot time of the year, a blossom richness of
rosegardens, daffodils and lotus flowers in the bassins. At night there were performances of
musicians, singers and poets in small pavillons which were decorated with brocade curtains and
expensive carpets from Tabris and Khuzistan. Our master was sitting on his divan surrounded by
his friends having the most selected dishes, excellent wines of Shiraz were served and we, the
women were listening to the artists behind the curtains then our master had the opinion that
women should participate in culture as well.
One day we heard about a terrible occasion. A prince of our family had fallen in love in one of
the caliphs slaves and tried to escape with her as she was visiting a jewellers shop in Baghdad.
The caliph had discovered the love story and locked the woman up. She then died of lovelorn. We
at our court were anxious that the rage of the caliph, the dominator of all believers, might hit our
whole gender and destroy us all.
As to me - a young girl educated in lyrics and music, I was fascinated of this love story as the
most women of the harem. We had no possibility to participate with real life outside, so all this
seemed to us as arisen out of the poetry and fairy tales we had been reading or listening to.
After having spent my day in the bathing house I decided to try to meet the prince in the garden.
It was not easy to get out of the harem but I bribed one of the eunuchs to let me pass through a
secret gate and to bring the prince a letter from me. I took my finest robe of silk brocade
decorated with pearls and rubies, hanged my jewels at my ears and around my neck, coated my
head with a silk veil embroidered with pearls.Then I parfumed myself with attar of roses and
incense and went to meet my prince in the garden but I couldn't find him anywhere and after a
while the eunuch came to me and whispered that our master had ordered the prince to sail to
India with a merchants ship because he was afraid of the caliphs revenge.
After that we heard a long time nothing about the prince till one day the news came that he had
taken a maharajas daughter for wife. That was the sad end of my first love.
 
Again at home the woman wanted to learn more about the history of Zanzibar and about the eastern
part of Africa generally. So she started studying the history and the literature of  the region. She
found a lot of information and stories of old times as merchants and travellers had been reporting of
the ancient vivid commerce between Africa, Arabia, India, Persia and even China.
   
Ancient Travellers Narrating of The Land Zanj

The "sewn boats" of the Indian Ocean are already referred by a Greek voyager in about 50 A.D. in a
nautical guide, called Periplus (Circuit) of the Erythrean Sea. It speaks of an east African port named
Raphta where much ivory and tortoise shells could be bought and where the "sewn boats" were built.
(Yet the site of Raphta hasn' t been discovered.)

A thousand years ago a Persian sea captain, called Buzurg ibn Shariyar wrote his memoirs about his
travels around the Indian Ocean which he called "The Wonders of India". Buzurg lived in the port of
Siraf, at the southern end of the Persian Gulf. Siraf (with 300.000 inhabitants at that time) was one
of the wealthiest places of Persia and to its harbour the ships brought cargoes from all lands around
the Indian Ocean and even China.

That time East Africa was called the land of Zanj, an originally persian word meaning the land of the
black. The prosperous island Zanzibar took its name from this word (there are other explanations for
the origin of the name, too) and was the usual destination of Arab and Persian captains sailing to Africa
on the winter monsoon.Some contemporary historians also use names  'Zingbar' and 'Zangistan' about
which is reported that this land lies opposite of India and is full of gold mines.The inhabitants of this
land are prescribed as  having 'a full face, big bones, curled hair and beeing extremely black'.
Travelling to Zanji was rather dangerous then there were tales of tribes who lived on a mixture of milk
and blood and even stories of cannibalism, also it was rumoured that anyone who went to live in Zanji
might find all his skin peeling from his body (perhaps this was a prescription of a heavy sunburn?).

  Another destination of the sailing merchants was Sofala, more to the south of Zanzibar. This was
known as the gold port for the gold that was brought there from the inside of the country, the Kingdom
of Great Zimbabwe. Also black slaves were traded there. To India the merchants sailed because of
embroidered muslins and jewellry, to China for silks and ornate dishes but to  Zanj they went because
of young strong slaves for  which they acchieved  good prices at the Arabian markets as the Arabs had
a great need of workers to build their cities, work on the plantations, in mines and to dig canals during
their centuries of expansion. Already the economies of Greece and Rome had relished upon slavery and
first hieroglyphs account of Egyptians raiding Nubia for slaves 5.000 years ago.

It seems that already before the Arabs and the Persians, people from Indonesia were sailing by boats
with outriggers, called Waka , to Afrca  setteling in Madagaskar and later were called the Waqwaqs.
These settlers from Indonesia brouhgt many benefical crops from Indonesia to East Africa such as
rice, yams, sugar cane, banana, breadfruit, mangoes, lentils and spices.These food plants enchaned the
lives of Africans across the continent from community to community, later beeing nicknamed as the
'Banana Corridor'.

The earliest Arabic settlements in the land of Zanji are dated to  A.D. 750 or earlier. Mostly these
laid out by the fishing villages on the islands where the ships could be loaded and unloaded at high tide.

A legend is telling that two brothers, Sulaiman uns Sai‘id from Oman belonged to these early
settlers.They had fleed from Oman with their families  to avoid the caliphs punishment after having
opposed his orders that all of Oman's independent chiefs should be deposed. Another event in the
expansion of Islam may also have brought emigrates to East Africa, as many supporters of the
Umayyad dynasty escaped A.D. 750 to Africa to avoid the terror regime of  the caliph Abu-al-Abbas,
known as the  „Shedder of Blood“.

Some of the early settlers also might have been fugitives and outcasts from the Arab world. In the
isolation on the remote African shores they would be beyond the reach of enemies. But it isn' t easy to
be sure because there are very many legends about the Arabs setteling the islands at the east coast,
for instance, Mombasa, Lamu, Pemba, Zanzibar, Kilwa and Mafia.These were easy to defend but on the
other hand big enough to be self supplied. As the Muslim pioneers grew richer through the trade they
began building  with coral stone and bricks carried from Persia as ballast. Orange and lemon orchards
and vegetable gardens were planted round their homes. Later the newcomers proudly called themselves
sultan and even claimed to be sharifs, meaning to be descent from the prophet. They built new towns
and mosques; the houses had all kind of comfort, even water plumbing. The meals were taken of Chinese
floral-pattern plates, the drinks served in glass goblets from Persia, the rooms perfumed with attar of
rose and illuminated with gilded lamps, fed with ambergis.
On the islands and some settlements on the mainland, like Sofala, coins were minted of copper and some
even of african gold. This currency replaced the cowrie shells brought from the Maledive Islands.

  A visitor of Zanj was an Arab writer Ali al-Mas‘ud who sailed to Zanj from Siraf in A.D. 916. He
writes down his travels in his World Encyclopaedia, Mumj al dhahab (The Meadows of Gold). The
Population of Quanbalu on the island Pemba he describes as „a mixture of Muslims and Zanj infidels,
speaking the Zanjiya language". This is the earliest description of the local Swahili people of East
Africa and their own language. As a Muslim Ali al-Mas'udi is somewhat indignant about  „these people
have no religios law... every man worships what he pleases, be it plant, an animal or a mineral." Quanbalu
seemed to be heavily fortified as it is told that in A.D. 945 an armada of Waqwaqs from Madagaskar
besieged it and wanted slaves, ivory, tortoiseshells, panther-skins and ambergis but in the end they
repulsed and sailed away.
  Very famous was the city-state of Kilwa which means "fisching place", an island strategically placed
to collect tolls from ships travelling to and from the gold port of Sofala. It is told that Kilwa was
founded by a Persian named Ali bin al-Hasan who bought the island from an African chief with enough
cloth to stretch round the island (about fifteen miles).
Later Kilwa is named in the travelling report of a young Berber lawyer from Tanger, Ibn Battuta who
was travelling more countries in his life than anyone bevore him. He went to India, China and also to
Africa. Actually he only wanted to make a pilgrimage to Mecca (where he stayed two years) but after
he there met the Sultan von Kilwa, al Hasan ibn Sulayman who invited him zo visit his island, he decided
to travel to Kilwa.
In Zeila, the prosperous port of Aden, Ibn Battuta gets on a dhow which quickly in fifteen days brings
him to Mogadischu about which he tells as a brutish place where killing camels to supply meat for
Arabia was one of the main occupations. Also he is wondering about the habit of the men in Mogadishu
not wearing trousers but wrapping sarong-like cloths around themselves. Also twenty years later as he
is writing his memories he was imposed of the amount of food consumed there: "Their food is rice
cooked in fat and placed on a large wooden dish, with dishes of chicken, meat, fish and vegetables
placed on top. Then there were further courses of green bananas cooked in milk and pickled chillies,
lemons, green ginger and mangoes, all eaten with rice".
After a short stop in  Pemba or Zanzibar about which he is not telling much except that "the wooden
mosque was very well built, with wells at each of its doorways, so that everyone could wash his feet,
then rub them dry on matting".
In February, 1331, Ibn Battuta at last arrives in Kilwa, where the sultan welcomes him. To Ibn Battuta 
Kilwa seems wonderful and elegantly built. The town has a defensive bastion above the sea, opposite to
the mainland. Many of the houses vere clinching together but others had  gardens and orchards around
them. He is residing in the sultans palace which seems to be very large, containing many rooms and
gardens. Even a round swimming pool is placed inside the palace. The town seems to be flooded by
Chinese porcellaine as even ornaments of china were immured in the walls of many houses.
The majority of the inhabitants of Kilwa were Zanj, 'jet black in colour' and with tribal incisions on
their faces, most of them slaves. A lot of merchants with their servants are visiting the city not all of
them moslems, also hindu from Gujarat and Cambay were trading there, sailing from India with the
north east winter monsoon.
The sultan himself is busy by armed sweeps through the mainland slave-raiding. Slave trade was an
integral part of life so this was not at least shoking to Ibn Battuta. "This sultan is a very humble man",
he tells."He sits with poor people and eats with them, and gives respect to people of religion and
Prophetic descent".  Sultan al-Hasan ibn Sulayman also was known as Abu-al-Mawahib (Father of
Gifts).
From Kilwa Ibn Battuta decides to sail to India when the monsoon changes. His travelling will still go on
many years and take him to a roundabout of India.
Kilwa, Zanzibar, Mozambik, Pemba, Mombasa and other coastal trading places stayed prosperour
places with the ancient pattern of trade around the Indian Ocean regulated by the monsoons - 'one of
nature's most benign phenomena' until the European presence - after Vasco da Gama had surrounded the
Cape of Good Hope at the beginning of 1500 -  changes Indian Ocean life fundamently. The gunboats of
the Portuguese subdue or destroy these treasures of prosperity one by one and launch the colonization
of the eastern Africa and later of India.
Innumerable bloody battles will be fought between the Portuguese, the Arabs and Indians around the
Indian Ocean; later Holland, England, Germany and even the USA will get involved into the struggle
about the ruling over the eastern part of Africa and yet although the guns of Europe could create new
empires in the East and European intervention was made up of violence and exploitation, it could not be
held down permanently.
Although the history of the eastern coast of Africa and its islands is stamped by the exploitation  and
its inhabitants colonialized by the western nations, they nowadays welcome you as a traveller heartily
and openly and treat you with a politenes according to their tradition so sometimes you actually should
be ashamed.
Mention of source used: Empires of The Monsoon of Richard Hall, HarperCollins 1998
Other books that I'd like to recommend:

Author: Abdulrazak Gurnah (who was born in Zanzibar)
in English:                                                in German:
Paradise                                                   Das verlorene Paradies,
New Press,1994                                        Fisher Taschenbuch, 1998  
 
Admiring Silence                                       Donnernde Stille,
New Press  1996                                       Edition Kappa, 2000

By the Sea                                               Ferne Gestade,
New Press, 2001                                       Edition Kappa, 2002   
  
Also interesting :
several books of Lieve Joris  
Mali Blues, Pieper Verlag
Die Sängerin von Sansibar, Pieper Verlag
Das Schwarze Herz Afrikas, Malik Verlag
Der Tanz des Leoparden, Malik Verlag

Shafi Adam Shafi:
Die Sklaverei der Gewürze, Marino Verlag

Emily Ruete, geb.Prinzessin von Oman und Zanzibar:
Briefe nach der Heimat (Edit. Horst Schepper)

Kevin Kertscher:
Africa Solo Kevin Kertscher,
Streetforth Press, Vermont   
Afrika solo
Ullstein Taschenbuchverlag

Andreas Altmann:
Herz das Feuer, Picus Lesereisen

Katrin Rohde:
Mama Tenga,  Kiepenheuer &ampWitsch

Ilija Trojanow:
In Afrika, Mythos und Alltag, Sierra Verlag

Bartholomäus Grill:
Ach, Afrika, Siedler Verlag

And anytime:
Thousand and One Night    Und jederzeit: Tausend und  eine Nacht