Kilabuni Nights – Episode IV: Stone Town, Unturned (Part II – “Blood From a Stone”)

Gazing through his sun-spectacles into the sea, THE TRAVELER leans over the ferry’s rail and eats his last full potato chip. Considering the transparent pouch for a moment, he then turns the bag over, hoping to capture the delicious spiced crumbs conspiring within. Unfortunately, the preponderance slide past the sides of his cupped fingers and fall to the hungry depths below. Another day, THE TRAVELER thinks to himself. Back to work.

Zanzibar history is as an island fortress critical to the slaving routes that criss-crossed the Indian Ocean in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and this legacy manifests itself most concretely in the fortifications and defensive apparatuses that span the majority of Stone Town’s shoreline. The resultant sea wall holds an active relationship with the tides, standing fifteen feet high over bone dry sands at low tide but transforming to a breakwall with half its height submerged as afternoon gives way to evening. Naturally, this condition makes for a perfect diving (and or backflipping and belly-flopping) platform once the sun begins its descent. Eager to get some swimmin’ in, we headed for the sea.

We were not the only ones to be taken with such a whim. Three-hundred or so Zanzibarian youths had been possessed of the same notion.

The appearance of we mazungu at the waterdrome caused a good natured stir. The local children (ranging in age from approximately eight- to fifteen-years old) were brought to the precipice of laughter by our joining in their games. At my first dip into the water I realized I had no properly formulated exit strategy. Through a canny mix of universal gesturing and pretending to drown, I prevailed upon a local boy to lean a hand down to help me scale the sea wall. It was only after I engaged this Samaritan’s grasp that it dawned on me that a 180 lb. mazungu relying on a 110 lb. 12-year old to pull him root and branch from the sea was not the stuff from which successful missions are made. Particularly when this particular journey from the sea is along an 8-foot tall protrusion of rock seawall that, as it turns out, is really, really jagged.

A satisfactory portrait of the site described c. 2002 (summoned from the Google-wire).

My weight overwhelming the strength of my young friend, I slid back to the ocean, slowly and gracefully enough to ensure lacerating myself along the toe and shoulder. More determined than ever (seeing as I was, you know, filling the ocean with blood), I intimated a plan to my young accomplice. Before long several of the boys on shore had arranged the longest human chain I had seen since the halcyon times of St. Giles’ 5^th grade Field Day; surely success was within our grasps.

I take pains now to remind the reader that I was without pencil and paper during my time in the Indian Ocean. As a result of this, I must have miscalculated the leverage equations at play, because before long I was once again making rapid progress in my new hobby of injuring myself on the seawall (this time earning red badges of scourge on my shin and ribcage) and three princely young Tanzanians were tumbling headlong into the sea. Two subsequent attempts yielded no more favorable results, and at last our improvised squadron gave up and swam 100 ft. to the stone steps that descended to the water level.

Refreshed and invigorated from our frolic in the waters of Zanzibar, Boots Himself, I (Myself) and another guy[1] made for a beachfront bar and a round of KILIMINJARO PREMIUM LAGER.™

‘Beachfront’ in this scenario is a literal rather than general descriptor. Our table set in the sand, we sat in our bare feet as the eastern light slowly burned its way to failure over the horizon. Raising our glasses as the truest of companions, hundreds of children performing acrobatics into the sunset-streaked ocean – we were the lords of Zanzibar. It was a moment as sublime as it was surreal.

And then we saw a fucking boat crash!

Allow me to preface this story by relating the impolitic statement that I witnessed many, many times during my stay as a guest in the land of Tanzania a special sort of genius for inefficiencies. None, though, were so brazen as the tale I will tell below.

To begin with, the power cable to Zanzibar from the mainland was dead. Dead as a doornail. As a (hopefully) temporary corrective measure, many of the hotels and restaurants on the island had undertaken the use of petrol-driven generators to provide electricity to their guests and patrons at peak hours. An unfortunate ancillary consequence of this was a glut of container ships delivering trucks of petrol at all hours, overwhelming the island’s solitary port facility.

In sterling examples of impatience and shortsightedness, several skippers jumped out of queue at the port facility and began, and I pause here only to emphasize the inadvisability of this maneuver, to simply guide their vessels as near to the shoreline at low tide as possible, running them aground and hoping for the high tide to release them.

For those of you who are unaware of the mammoth dimensions of ships of this sort, I had McBride produce the following lithograph:

Not very helpful, is it?

Typically, these craft are more than 200 ‘in length, 40’ in width and draft. While we sipped our drinks, two of these leviathans sat wedged upon the shoreline not far from our seats. A schematic:

1800 Hours – Everything at Peace

Soone enough, though, a dark cloud appeared on the horizon. A cloud in the shape of a huge container ship. The vessel – the BARQUOS II – was at a northerly cruise suspiciously close to shore when its bow nosed suspiciously towards the shore. Surely, with literally hundreds of miles of empty shoreline upon which to maroon his ship, the skipper of the BARQUOS II could not be contemplating a maneuver to place himself betwixt the two entrenched vessels . . . could he?

A schematic:

1822 Hours – An Ill-bode

It was then that the unreasonable happened. For reasons beyond my ability and willpower to understand, the skipper of the BARQUOS II turned hard to starboard and leaned forward on the throttle, as though a speedy turn might elude the fundamental geometry of the situation. The maneuver was not successful. In front of God and hundreds of swimming, jumping children the BARQUOS II crashed its port beam into the starboard side of a beached ship at speed, causing a loud rending of metal and considerable shock on the shoreline.

A schematic:

1824 Hours – Cataclysm!

For an indefinite amount of time, the vessels stood as Siamese sentinels over the beach. Then, after a few minutes, a dispirited figure emerged from the bridge of the rammed ship. He turned towards the BARQUOS II and raised his arms skyward, as if to say “Man, what the fuck?” Rendering the whole incident even more gratuitous, the captain of the BARQUOS II then revealed his vessel to possess a stern thruster, bringing his stern hard to port and pivoting the boat in between the two beached ships, distending a fair amount of steel plates on either side of him along the way.

The Bronx beaching complete, it was the moment for the BARQUOS II to unload its precious cargo. The front ramp was lowered, and a small tanker-truck immediately sped off at full acceleration, ready to take Omaha Beach. Naturally, the mushy tidal sand made short work of the automobile’s sprint; the rear wheels were spinning tractionlessly in the sand within seconds. Who can say if this mishap was karmic retribution for violating the law of the sea/shore or if this crowded stretch of sand was simply star-crossed? In either case, a team of men leisurely strolled down the ramp of the BARQUOS II with a view towards sorting out the difficulties.

The stalled truck was painted with the word ‘PETROL’ in large, red script letters. Below that in similar scrawl were the words “INFLAMMABLE! DANGER! HABARI!” The situation team pondered the situation among themselves and soon dispatched their most junior member to dig around the bottom of the rear-wheels with a hand shovel. Simultaneously, the driver employed the time-tested strategy of fully engaging the accelerator for ninety straight seconds. We looked on from (we hoped) relative safety in horror, but much to our thanks the truck did not approach liberation.

Discouraged, the situation team looked to each other in silent conference. They soon took up a set of more leisurely stances (three sitting on the sand against the tanker, three perched atop it) and lit themselves cigarettes. We dropped money on the table and left for our hotel.

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[1] McBride