Paradise lost

The hotel next door to us has just changed hands to become an all inclusive italian resort, complete with animateurs and a terrible shit disco. And it's all private property now. Yup, I can no longer cross their patch of beach to go to work, i gotta walk around their property. The masai security guards are evidently unhappy about this unAfrican custom they're being asked to enforce and sheepishly ask you to leave - it seems to go against every bone in their body to take land that belongs to everybody and make it into the private domain of ignorant and spoilt tourists.

But all along, the beach it's the same story. Local artists who scrimp a living in their shacks along the beach are being told at gunpoint to clear off or see their livelihood burnt down. No reason given but evidently these locals who have lived on this beach for generations are a "nuisance" to the tourists who want to fly halfway across the world in order not to leave their hotel. Greedy developers are hungrily eyeing their land, which legally belongs to everyone but as is so often the case, will soon come under the relentless steps of privatisation and "free market capitalism." Some paradise.

Driving around the island has really made me realise how out of control the development is here. Zanzibar is being carved up into small sections of walled concrete, locals being driven from their traditional homes. In Jozani forest, a local nature reserve, I learnt that if every tourist who comes to Zanzibar eats just one lobster or crab, that's 63,000 crabs or lobsters a year. How long is this sustainable? Everyday I see reefs being agressively overfished as the demand for seafood escalates but noone's thinking about tomorrow.

You could argue that tourism is good for the economy and sure, a lot of people do find employment in the tourist trade. Driving around the more touristy spots, you could be forgiven for thinking that Zanzibaris enjoy a reasonable standard of living: houses are well built from bricks, not just wooden shacks. But stray off the path a little and you'll find farmers struggling to make a living. As we learnt on a tour of a local spice farm, not too long ago Zanzibar was self-sufficient and bountiful, noone paid for food, you just went to the fields and took your fill. Now on the ill-thought out advice of the World Bank, farmers are told to grow only export crops, the price of which is being driven down and down by unfair free market policies. I was invited to a local home in the village here in Kendwa last night, to the house of the well-to-do old man - I was surprised to see that even here, in a village which does much better than most from the tourist trade, not a single house had electricity or running water.

The average waiter here makes about $100/month, working 10 hour shifts, 6 days a week. Meanwhile wealthy hotel owners and frequently foreign investors watch the money flow into their hands. It's the vacuum cleaner effect of deregulated capitalism, sucking the wealth out of an area and making people trespassers on their own land.

Okay, so that's my rant. Rebuttals welcome.

This is Africa, no drink driving laws in Africa!

Last week we rented a car for the duration of my parents' stay. Wow. After months of trudging through the heat along dusty tracks, a car was an unbelievable luxury. I admit I enjoyed it to the full, blasting around the island behind the tinted windows of a Suzuki Jeep, pretending to be some local "big man".

I was quite shaky at first having not driven for over a year and, indeed, never having driven an automatic, so managed to cause quite a bit of havoc in Stone Town as I tried to pull off in park and reversed the wrong way around corners, car lurching forward due to an overly sensitive accelerator. It took us a while to work out how to turn the ignition (no it's not that simple!) so we managed to cause a scene at the garage, while puzzled attendants scratched their heads and a line of cars honked and laughed at the stupid white man unable to work a simple car. Fantastic.

Despite these initial hiccups, Africa's "make it up as you go along" approach to driving (and indeed most things) charmed me and I was soon overtaking around blind bends up hills, narrowly avoiding chickens on rocky excuses for roads and honking my heart out. Ah Africa, no rules in Africa! No pesky speed limits to worry about or drink-driving laws to stop you enjoying your night out or maximum passenger limits - if there's room, you can take your entire family and the cow.

On an island with a conspicuous lack of police, the roads is the one area where the police are noticeably present. But don't worry, they're not interested in your safety or whether you've got a bootload of marijuana, they just want to check your license, chat to you about Man Utd and maybe get a bit of baksheesh cos your brake light's out of order.

The highlight of the week was on the return drive to Stone Town, where I took a wrong turn and found myself on a highway in which traffic had been directed into a single lane due to roadworks. Things were working fine though with cars passing slowly and people backing up or pulling over to let larger vehicles through. Fine, that is, until I managed to miss the unsigned crossover point where normal traffic resumed. I began to wonder why cars were now hurtling towards me at speed and no one was slowing to let me pass. Indeed, everyone seemed quite excited by my presence, waving and honking. Like a good bemused white man, I honked and waved and smiled back, ploughing on the wrong way down a one-way street. Soon I found myself at a busy cross-roads, trying to turn right into on-coming traffic. Luckily a little old man on a bicycle held up traffic just long enough for me to pounce on this opening, rejoining the right side of the road with a sigh of relief. It was only then that I noticed two policeman had been patiently watching the whole drama, arms folded, quiet smiles on their lips. Instead of pulling us over, they merely smiled and waved us on our way.