• Home
• Gallery
• Social Network
• Forum

Food in Tanzania

October 30, 2008

Bi Kidude – As Old as My Tongue

January 22, 2008

By Freddy Macha

I am seated in this hall with roughly, fifty people, watching a film. Beautiful, cosy, intimate, Arcola Theatre is based in the Turkish quarter of Stoke Newington, north London.

For several weeks the Africa Mine Music and Movement festival has been here.

This late Sunday afternoon we are looking at a film from Zanzibar and every now and then you can hear me chuckling in the silence of mostly non-Kiswahili speaking audience.

This is because although the movie is sub-titled, most times the translation misses certain moods that you cannot pick up while reading a foreign language.

In other words I am proud to be observing something from my own culture. This is rare and unique, as I am the only Tanzanian in this space.

The other person that would exchange Kiswahili words with me is Englishman, Andy Jones. It took him three years to make this documentary on Zanzibar`s Taarab singer legend, Bi Kidude.

As Old As My Tongue gives a lesson on East African history, culture, music and the role of Swahili women in society.

In their advert flyer, the Screen-Station producers say Bi Kidude (real name Fatma Baraka) is `probably the oldest singer on the world stage today.`

Old? That is the first point. Old has these days become 35 to 50 years in Africa. Poverty and diseases are killing our people prematurely.

But Bi Kidude tells us she was born poor, her father, a coconut climber (mkwezi) and began singing at the tender age of ten in the 1920�s.

She performed with the legendary musician Siti Binti Saad eulogised by writer Shaaban Robert, fifty years ago. Bi Kidude continues singing Siti Binti Saad`s songs.

Both Shaaban Robert and Siti Binti Saad are, sadly, gone but Kidude, which means a tiny thing, (she explains how the name came about) is still here.

While replying to questions, film director, Andy Jones is asked whether Bi Kidude, was affected by the tough politics that we relate to Zanzibar, including the bloody Revolution of January 1964.

`She sang while Arabs ruled. She sang while the British ruled. And she sang around the times of the Revolution and is still singing amidst today�s conflicts of CUF and CCM.`

This makes her as old as modern Zanzibar. That is why her age is so fascinating. Some cynical islanders claim she is cheating, that she is in her 90`s. Others say 105. Bi Kidude herself declared recently, she is 113.

Whatever the number, one truth lingers. Here is a cherished great grandmother still smoking her cigarettes (even the film`s poster uses this image) drinking beer (and Konyagi, some say), sweeping her house and cooking ugali with fish and spinach (as shown in the film). She is also doing the most significant thing.

Touring around the world including (as witnessed in the documentary) Paris and England�s World Music and Dance festival (WOMAD) in 2004 and 2005, respectively.

The portrayal is just as about her music as her life style.

One of the reasons that artists are said to be mirrors of society is the ability to reflect culture and customs.

Bi Kidude plays drums, sings and leads Ngoma ya Unyago ceremonies in Zanzibar.

We see the Women Only rites of passage dancing. It might appear erotic to the foreigner�s eye but it is something fast disappearing especially in East African cultures.

`During Unyago women are taught sex and how to be with husband. Theory and practise.`

Quips a woman in the film. And technically speaking, the best quality of as old as my tongue is that those in it, including Bi Kidude herself, act, freely tell their stories, playing the role of both narrator and participant.

In most documentaries you have the constant interference of the film-maker.

The good thing about Andy Jones is to let Bi Kidude be her own voice, from beginning to end.

Consequently, this work is almost a good lesson for aspiring cinema makers wanting to cast their egos aside and let life narrate it`s own tale.

Plus a subject that has always bothered me.

Reading many warm reviews my attention is especially drawn to London`s Guardian (Sultans of Swing) in January 2007:
`Zanzibar`s music traditions, are it seems, becoming more popular among foreign fans than the young local people who take their home grown music for granted.`

While over a century old, Bi Kidude is certainly a living legend, a treasure of African music, an example of women of great achievement (winner of the international 2005 WOMEX Award), she seems to be appreciated more by foreigners, as exemplified by the one who just made this movie.

We hear a local Zanzibar producer lamenting how her Taarab music is not played in local radio stations especially on Tanzania mainland.

Despite her icon status, the musician is still treated as a nobody, almost a freak.

Sounds very familiar. Another such legend was the late Hukwe Zawose who (unknown to many in his home) used to be the most recognised international figure from Tanzania second only to Mwalimu Nyerere.

Like Bi. Kidude , Zawose was hardly heard in our radio stations.

His Gogo Ilimba (or Mbira) stuff was described as Tanzania`s classical music by London producer Gabriel Prokofiev.

Gabriel, a remarkable musician, speaks Kiswahili and had stage managed Zawose many times; just like Andy Jones became part of the retinue of Wazungu helping value our own exceptional talents, treasures and stars.

The moral? Let us try and applaud, appreciate Bi Kidude and her music while she is still alive. Documentary will soon be out on DVD.

Source: Guardian

Exploring Zanzibar; a Tropical Island Adventure – By Annabel Skinner

January 1, 2008

Exploring Zanzibar; a Tropical Island Adventure – By Annabel Skinner

Zanzibar wraps its reality around you like a lingering fairytale. This tiny archipelago of Indian Ocean islands that once lured sailors, Sultans and slavers to its far-distant shores is so charismatic that it sweeps you into its shadowy romantic past and sunlit present all at once, and finally sets you down, all sun-bronzed and laden with spices and island art, and memories of an exceptionally sparkling and colourfully abundant sea.




The main island is small and easy to explore, with glorious white sand, palm-fringed beaches rewarding you for just a couple of hours’ drive to the North coast and the same to the East, along mainly hopeless but endlessly fascinating roads flanked by simple homesteads, roads worn more by foot or bicycle and frequented by chickens. There is a time warp here, this place where the past is so responsible for the present, where mobile phones, internet connections and television are all relatively recent, and where the history and culture is so imbued that you can simply stretch out beneath the dappled shade of the coconut palms and soak it up. Welcome to Zanzibar, and a world apart.

Sailors and traders from the first century AD came to the lands of ‘Zinj el Barr’, the Black Coast, bringing beads, porcelain and silks to trade for gold, slaves and spices, ebony, ivory, indigo and tortoiseshell. They waited for annual monsoon winds to fill their dhow sails and bear them across the Indian Ocean; today’s visitors usually arrive in a small ‘plane or ferry from Dar es Salaam. But these still afford a measured approach, allowing a breathtaking vision of sparkling cerulean waters over sandbanks and reefs, and then into Stone Town, the ancient island capital, still more of a town than a city, a maze of winding pedestrian streets in a hotchpotch of rooftops, a mass of corrugated iron overwhelming the historic stonework beneath.

Helplessly entwined in its own history, the people of Zanzibar are the Swahili, evolving from the influx of mainly Arabian and Persian immigrants who settled on the East African coast and islands to trade and escape the political upheavals of the Gulf two thousand years ago. Their cultural history was founded in sailing dhows, similar to those that glide by its shores today, boats that brought people, language and cultures and long centuries of power wrangling.

The Arab immigrants were overthrown by the Portuguese in the 15th century, until the Sultan of Oman finally saw them off for good in 1698 and started building the Stone Town of today; the Old Fort on the harbour was built on the remains of a Portuguese church dating back to 1600. Visitors to Stone Town still encounter the grandiose vision and dominant architectural style of a confident young Sultan who transferred the seat of his sultanate from the contentious capital of Muscat to the breezier climes of Zanzibar in 1832, and then began palace building in earnest, and seeding the coconut palms and clove plantations which soon defined Zanzibar as the ‘Spice Island’.

Driving through the island centre now, it is worth stopping to explore the spice plantations, where a guided walk for passing tourists is likely to be more lucrative than vast crops to export, but it is a fine sensual pleasure to crumble cinnamon bark straight from the tree, to breathe the scent of cloves drying in the sun, to taste and guess the spice from a handful of pods and powders. These are well used by the chefs and kitchens in beach hotels, where fishermen daily bring the catch of the day to be grilled, baked, battered or blanched with assorted Zanzibar spice.

The coast is dotted with hotels, self-contained beach hideaways that relish their privacy and provide various levels of style and comfort. I have been to most and head north by choice, to the northernmost peninsula which is occupied by Ras Nungwi Beach Hotel. The name is a very literal Swahili translation, but it says nothing of how this beach is secluded and the coral sands are blanched very, very pale. It does not tell how the wonderfully translucent and clear the sea is here, where a coral reef surrounds the shore creating a shallow wide expanse to explore until the tide rises high and then turquoise waves crash onto the beach. It is a naturally beautiful place.

Turtles come ashore to lay their eggs when the moon is full, and the surrounding reefs are a thriving colourful world to snorkel and dive. Ras Nungwi Beach Hotel is essentially respectful of its place, each room constructed from local wood and coral rag to create a number of thatched round houses along the beach, with lodge rooms in gardens behind. Soft sand pathways link the central thatched and open-sided restaurant to the rooms, pool and dive centre, providing the comforts of a fine hotel with a rustic, beach hideaway style. This is a fine place to lie back and soak up Zanzibar, crack open a coconut, watch the dhows on the far horizon and look forward to spice-scented, star filled African night.

Veiled secrets

January 1, 2008

Veiled secrets

SLAVERY and sultans shadow the East African islands of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania, north of Dar es Salaam.

Slavery is the key historical issue, but with domes and minarets piercing the skyline, it is the stone legacy of the sultans that entices visitors. Stone Town, the old part of Zanzibar City, on the western coast of the main island, is the place to discover it all.

Merchant ships from Persia, Arabia and India have traded with Zanzibar for 2000 years, leaving a potent blend of Eastern and African culture. The islands were long owned by the sultans of Oman, who took over from the Portuguese in 1698. By 1840, Zanzibar was so important for Omani trade with East Africa that its capital, Stone Town, became the sultans’ headquarters.

Like many places in Africa, Zanzibar has reinvented itself as a tourist destination. Since 1964, when the last sultan was overthrown, Zanzibar has been a separate state within mainland Tanzania. It is made up of two large islands: Unguja (Zanzibar Island) and Pemba, plus several islets. Its capital and only large settlement is Zanzibar City, which embraces New City and Stone Town. I spend time in the pungent, narrow streets of Stone Town, the economic and cultural hub of old Zanzibar and now a World Heritage site.

Outside Stone Town are clove and coconut plantations, long, perfect beaches and coral reefs, rare, long-tailed red colobus monkeys and, on the small island of Nungwi, giant sea turtles, all in a humid tropical climate. But in Stone Town I walk beside carved Arab doorways and slave cells, feel the cobbled streets beneath my feet, look up at cool verandas and experience the potent sense of 2000 years of connections between Africa and the East.

Best monument to the slave trade: After the abolition of the Zanzibar trade in 1873, the Anglicans built a cathedral on Stone Town’s Creek Road, where the old slave market used to be. The place where the altar now stands was once the whipping post where slaves were tested for toughness: if they wept, their price went down. The marble around the altar is blood red. Beneath the market are their cramped cells.

Best door: The ornate, studded doors of Stone Town have a clear Persian influence but a distinct style. The maze of alleyways is dotted with these immense, elaborately carved doors. It was a custom in Zanzibar for a builder first to order his doorframe and then build the house around it. In 1857, adventurer Richard Burton commented: “The higher the tenement, the bigger the gateway, the heavier the padlock and the huger the iron studs that nail the door of heavy timber, the greater the owner’s dignity.” The most interesting door, behind the House of Peace Memorial Museum, dates back more than 300 years, which makes it reputedly the oldest in Zanzibar.

Best social quirk: Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim because of the influence of the Omani sultans. The women are supposed to cover themselves modestly but the gaiety of Zanzibaris is evident in the fun the women have with their cotton wraps, worn over their heads and as skirts. The girls wear a brightly patterned scarf, called a kanga. A Zanzibari girl might wear a kanga with a message on it directed at someone in her social group; one I spot says, “Don’t compete with me, you can never beat me.” Another girl, realising the message is directed at her, might go home and change into a kanga that says, “A confident person requires no reason to practise envy.”

Best-named attraction: Built in 1883, the House of Wonders was originally a royal palace. There is a 3.3m door gilded with texts from the Koran, and 12 other magnificently carved doors, reminders of the vast and showy wealth of the sultans. In one room I see traditional, ornate ebony furniture and, on the other side, European couches in flowery, 1960s kitsch, the influence of the other wives, perhaps.

The climax of Sultan Barghash’s flamboyant building spree, it has tiers of balconies, a clock tower, and a grand position on the waterfront behind the Forodhani Gardens between the Palace Museum and the Omani Fort. It houses the dreary-sounding but quirky Zanzibar National Museum of History and Culture.

Best resort: The white sand, azure sea and small pine forest on Mnemba Island, just off the northeast coast of Zanzibar, lead me to suspect Ursula Andress will pop out of the ocean at any minute. The entire island is a resort, and with only 10 evenly spaced villas, it feels as if I own a secret paradise. Apart from the waiter who brings me a drink to accompany the breathtaking sunset, the only disturbance is from the little Suni antelopes that occasionally scamper around my villa. www.mnemba.com.

Best guided tour: If you have ever wondered how nutmeg, ginger, tamarind, guava, carambola, menthol or cloves are grown, a spice tour is for you; such guided tours provide local knowledge you might otherwise miss. Highlights are the lipstick tree, with pods that produce a vibrant red dye, and soapberry trees, with berries that lather like soap when you rub them. Tours from 9am to 2pm include a lunch featuring spices encountered on the tour. Eco & Culture Tours, with an office on Hurumzi Street, offers a genuine medicine man as a guide. More: www.ecoculture-zanzibar.org.

Best drink: Taken in the shade while escaping the tropical midday sun, dawa is mostly vodka and ice but tastes of lime and honey. Dawa means medicine or magic potion in Swahili, for reasons which can rapidly become clear. The top floor of ETC Plaza, at the corner of appropriately named Suicide Alley and Shangani Street, is a good place to try dawa and the bar comes with ocean views; like Zanzibar, this drink is never bland.

Best hangover cure: Everywhere I go, people stand barefoot beside the orange dirt roads, selling sugarcane. I use a knife to slice the raw cane and lick the inside. Taken with a glass of water, it refreshes for the rest of the day. I also recommend corn sold on the streets: it tastes dry and like toffee.

Best mode of transport: A dalla-dalla, or a Zanzibari bus, is a beaten-up Toyota pick-up truck with a wooden roof and wrought-iron sides; these should carry 20 passengers but often 40 pile in, the extras hanging precariously off the sides. A dalla is five Tanzanian shillings, which is what the journey originally cost. They are still very cheap, about 300 shillings (26c) a mile. The No.2 dalla-dalla travels 20km north of Zanzibar town to the Mangapwani slave cave where, after the trade was abolished, slaves who were about to be sold were kept hidden in hollowed-out coral cellars.

Best street food: East Africa’s best street market is held every night by the waterfront at Forodhani Gardens in Stone Town. In the twilight, grilled fish and meat on skewers and octopus look and smell enticing. The crowds can be a little pushy, but it is a great place to wander even if you don’t buy. I have already eaten, but it is still hard to resist the food, fresh and sizzling in the dark.

Best shopping: Fine Zanzibari wooden chests are not quite as good as a door but are still hammered and studded, and have secret compartments. Some of the finest examples are in the Abeid Curio Shop opposite the cathedral. But how to get one back home? Spears and knives pose a similar problem. For those with less ambitious tastes, watercolours of the Stone Town doors are intense and enchanting. I buy one for about $15 in an art studio in the Omani Fort. The abstract carvings of the Makonde tribe are also eerie and powerful, with columns of interwoven human figures.

Bustling Mchangani Street in Stone Town consists of stalls crammed with kangas of every colour and grade of magnificence. Cathedral Street has some of the opulent furniture hastily left by rich Arabs after the 1964 revolution. I also visit Zanzibar Curio Shop in Changa Bazaar for a taste of pre-1964 wealth. And I return to the night market in the Forodhani Gardens for cheap Masai jewellery and carvings.

Best story: Princess Salme, daughter of the sultan of Oman, was born here in 1844 and shocked her family by converting to Christianity after falling pregnant and eloping with a young German merchant. When she died in 1924 she still had the dress she eloped in and a bag of sand from a Zanzibar beach. Her book Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar (by Emily Ruete, born Sayyida Salme) makes good pre-visit reading.

Best sundowners: Africa House Hotel on the coast in Stone Town was the English club from 1888 onwards and still has a colonial expat feel to it. It is a perfect place to end a walk around Stone Town: you can watch the sun sink into the Indian Ocean, with a dawa in hand.

Best end to the evening: Tower Top Restaurant at Emerson & Green Hotel, 236 Hurumzi St, Stone Town, a five-minute walk from Africa House, is world class. Atop a hotel, in a tower straight out of Arabian Nights, the restaurant seats about 20, most lounging on Arabian-style cushions and eating off low tables. The fixed-price menu includes dishes such as battered pepper shark and curried fishcakes with chutney and yoghurt. Enjoying a five-course meal, I look over Stone Town with all its faiths and facets, at an Anglican church, a minaret and a Muslim temple. There is a warm breeze from the Indian Ocean. Children scramble to collect kangas put out to dry on hot tin roofs. A violinist in a white robe plays eerily beautiful music, as if trying to raise a magic carpet, while his robe moves in the breeze. www.emerson-green.com.

Best last word: Locals greet tourists with jambo and enthusiastic tourists say jambo back, thinking they are saying hello in Swahili. But locals instead say mambo vipi, Swahili slang for “stay cool”. Use it to say hello and goodbye and impress the locals.

Reproduced from The Australian – Michael Stothard – August 09, 2007

Grumeti Reserves – Sasakwa Lodge

January 1, 2008

Grumeti Reserves – Sasakwa Lodge

Lodges have come a long way since the early days of safaris, says Lisa Grainger as she selects the best high life amid the wildlife.

Looking through the grainy snaps of my grandparents on safari always makes me smile – and not just because of my grandmother’s leopard-print culottes and ostrich-skin handbag. It’s the absence of comfort: the luggage roped to Land Rovers, the fold-up stools by a fire, the tin mugs, the warm beer, the sausages on sticks.

But then, safari camps in the 1950s were nothing like the African super-camps that have opened in the past year. For a start, they’re not really camps. They’re boutique hotels in the bush, often featuring spas, interior-designed suites, Michelin-star chefs to cook fresh ingredients flown in by private jet, and butlers to deliver it.

It’s not just in South Africa (progenitor of bush glamour) that this sort of safari has evolved. Three months ago in Zambia, two bush houses were opened to accommodate travellers who demand total privacy. In Tanzania, helicopter pads have been built alongside airstrips. In Namibia last year, top American astronomers were flown in to present after-dinner star-talks in the desert. Here are a few of the newest, most exclusive camps on the continent. Prices quoted are per person, per night, on a fully inclusive basis, excluding flights.

Grumeti Reserves, Tanzania

Luxury taken to the utmost. There are just three camps, sleeping a maximum of 56 guests, on this new game reserve and only these visitors have access to the 350,000 acres of grassy plains bordering the Serengeti, the helipad, the 16 polo and thoroughbred horses, the spa, tennis courts, crocquet lawn and the libraries.

Sasakwa Lodge, on the edge of an escarpment, was built in the style of a colonial home – think glossy wooden parquet floors, antiques, grand art, Persian silk carpets and silver, and a private infinity pool with every room. Sabora camp, on the plains, is glam camping taken to extremes. Tents are lined with raw silk, scattered with Persian rugs, and decorated with essentials like wind-up gramophones and silver handmirrors. Beds and baths are adorned with rose petals flown in daily with the seafood.

Reserves of luxury – reproduced from the Telegraph – 21/06/2006 by Lisa Grainger

• Book your Safari now with the Africa Guide

• Recent Posts

  • Dar es Salaam: Discovering Tanzania’s Haven of Peace
  • Zanzibar: The Moon and the Music
  • Sauti za Busara 2009
  • Food in Tanzania
  • Tanzanian Safari Lodges
  • Music Crossroads – Youth Empowerment Program
  • “Climbing Kilimanjaro, Kmart Style” by Doug Lansky
  • Bi Kidude – As Old as My Tongue
  • Exploring Zanzibar; a Tropical Island Adventure – By Annabel Skinner
  • African monkey trail – by Kate Humble
  • Veiled secrets
  • On safari in Tanzania
  • News: Lake Natron’s Flamingoes
  • Southern Tanzania
  • Grumeti Reserves – Sasakwa Lodge

• Pages

  • Forum
  • Gallery
  • Social Network

• Tour Tanzania – Social Network

  
  Visit Tour Tanzania
  

Copyright © 2009 Tour Tanzania · Web Design by Bab Kubwa Media · Log in