Today we left for Zanzibar and it was only a 10-15 minute flight from Dar es Salaam! We went out for an early lunch at a restaurant called Livingstone that was right on the beach, it was really nice. Then we went to the beach to swim and tan. There were so many people on the beach coming up to us trying to sell things. At 4:30pm we went on a tour of Stonetown and I love it, it was so fun! The buildings are so old and still in use, its really neat. We saw where they used to keep all the slaves at the former slave market. The layout of stonetown consists of many houses/buildings with narrow little alley ways everywhere. Back in the day there wasn't any drainage system in place so our tour guide said the street would fill up with water and you'd have to walk through shin high water if you wanted to get anywhere. We also went into the oldest hotel in Stonetown called Emerson Spice and it was so nice because it's been updated. It's only $100 a night to stay there which isn't too bad considering how cool it is! We stayed at a hostel called the Princess Salme Inn for only $25 a night and it was not too bad and had a nice rooftop patio where they served breakfast and had free internet. They tried giving us different rooms from what we originally booked on line and it took awhile to get it all sorted out, but eventually it worked out. At first glance, Zanzibar is a paradise holiday that attracts many tourists throughout the year, but if you look deeper you realize that the paradise is deceiving. Tourism has some positive effects on Zanzibar and its people, but it also has many negative effects. For example, people have pre-concieved notions about you because you are white. They assume you will just give them money or have a lot of money to spend. On more than one occassion we had young children coming up to us and just saying "give me money" or "give me money for school". Adults do the same and you get the feeling that anything someone does for you or even just being nice is with the hopes they will receive a tip. We did give many tips to locals that took us on tours or for example, this one local man (stage name Butterfly!) climbed a palm tree for us while singing and swinging from it all the way to the top and then cut us up coconuts to drink the juice and then eat. But, tourism mostly benefits large investors rather than the locals. Foreigners come to Zanzibar to buy hotels and large businesses because many of local people can't afford to do so and it is these foreigners that keep getting richer and take away business from the locals. The average wage in Zanzibar is less than $1 a day for locals, indicating the problem of tourism benefitting non-locals. Therefore, if you are going to be a tourist in Zanzibar its good to be aware of this and try to some how benefit the locals.
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