We only eat with our feet here..

After a couple of days in Zanzibar, sleeping on Ian's exceptionally comfortable and gracious couch, its time to move on. I have eaten well, and slept much. Joseph, Ian's housemate, an Indian fellow, makes the most incredible curries, every day. When I say incredible, I mean, each bite redefines your understanding of the experience of tastiness for a few moments, as you fill your bek and nourish your soul with this manna from the Orient.

So to get to mainland Tanzania in a dhow is apparently illegal for mzungu's. You're expected to take the hugely expensive ferry to Dar es Salaam, which everyone says is a huge, rotting open sewer with traffic. So fuck that, I plan to hop on a dhow and sail away over the warm, tropical ocean, trailing my fishing line over the side and grinning smugly to myself, while the police hop up and down on their hats in the distance, shouting and waving in impotent rage.

Its never quite as one expects. I end up jumping on a speed boat and racing up to a dhow, mid ocean, and jumping across. Mission Impossible style, but also the budget. But I'm free! Off Zanzibar, where I spent three quarters of my budget for three months, in a week.

So I make it to my final destination. Aurora Farm, Pangani, Tanzania. My palm frond banda is on stilts, beside a huge cashew tree. I throw down my backpack and have a scratch around. The kitchen is beautiful, with a fireplace, gas stove and wood burning oven. No fridge, unfortunately, but we're working on that. The whole camp is nestled under the cooling shade of cashew trees, which come alive at night with bats, spiders, bush babies, birds and all sorts of lively little creatures, some noisier than others. Several plots of land are being planted and fertilised, and there are already fields of maize baking under the tropical sun, ready to harvest, if the heat doesnt pop the kernels like popcorn.

Further down the road is our beach. A small bay flanked by mangroves, with sheer cliffs on either side and a large, pointy rock in the middle, it has a certain piratical air to it. An enormous baobab tree stands majestically on the beach, exactly where I would bury my treasure, were I so inclined.

If you take a short walk up the road you can find our local village. Three huts and a two shops, where you can buy such essentials as airtime (sometimes), cooldrinks, water and, well, that's about it, really. TIA, as they say: This is Africa, and it really is. The walk to the village passes a few maize and sweet potato fields, some coconut palms and acacia's, a couple of mud and thatch huts, some goats and maybe a cow. Pretty remarkable, in its simplicity. Life here goes on much as it did 50 years ago, if not 200 years ago.

The Party

So Saturday night is the famous full moon party. Despite a certain amount of airport-induced nausea and exhaustion, I plan to head through with Ian. After a quick, greasy, dry and cold meal of chicken and chips with a few foreign types, he picks me up in a taxi with a few other South Africans. We finish a cold beer on the way through. Something about hearing Afrikaans all the way up here amuses me greatly. Ons gaan jol toe!

We make it in, despite the roadblocks and much haggling over entrance prices, and suddenly we're in a music video. Radio pop blares out of the massive reed-roofed dance floor, like angle grinders set to a beat. Horny young travelers gyrate their bodies and knock back drinks like there's no tomorrow. Strobe lights flash, decibel limits are transcended, crotches are ground like Vida e Caffe coffee in rush hour, and hormones rule the day. A sense of the unreal begins to set in, and I take stock of the surrounds. This could be anywhere. Ibiza, or Goa, Thailand, or whatever. I feel like Zanzibar is not quite what I expected, but now that I'm here, it seems silly to have expected anything else.

Ian guides me around, telling me that all of these women are here for one reason. I could have guessed, but a local insight is always good. A quick look at the lithe young bodies on the dance floor that would make your granny shit herself confirms these girls are, as Ian says, DTF. Down To Fuck. We, however, are here for another reason. We are Down To Get Fucked. Doesnt roll off the tongue quite so easily, but it holds its own rewards. Besides, looking at these people pawing each other and rubbing snail trails all over the show actually makes me feel like upchucking the rubbery chicken and chips I just shovelled down my throat.
We head to the bar and push through the heaving masses of dreadlocked locals in Bob Marley muscle vest and slops and British boys in collared shirts and shorts, stinking of sun cream.
"You drink beer?", Ian calls over the Rihanna that seems to be on a loop all evening.
Does a bear shit in the woods? He orders two, and two for himself as well, and we retreat to the starlit beach, to talk shit, like all real men do.

Suddenly, the night takes a vicious downward swing. Lines of cocaine appear on toilet seats. Notes are rolled up. More beer is drunk. The music is still terrible. I am disappointed, I thought this would improve this terrible racket! Let's try more..

Noise. A drunk old man tells me about his mzungu friend. It is not interesting. I try to strike up a converation with someone. We talk about ducks, and their penises. It doesnt go well. I hate this place. Rihanna blares. The stars are spinning. Some reggae comes on. I hate reggae. Why the fuck am I at this party? Why am I in this toilet? Who the fuck is this guy? And how does anyone listen to this music, never mind dance to it? The party ends. I have no money left. I am miles away from my hotel, in a foreign country, and the sun is coming up.

Day one, Zanzibar. Not a huge success.

Fishers of wimmen

Onto the dalla-dalla (much like any African form of public transport), and on to Nungwe. This is tourist country; the white sands of the beaches liberally sprinkled with tourists from every corner of the world, and the beach shores lined with hundreds of bars, restaurants, hotels, dive centres, tour operators and so on. The tourists all rub huge amounts of sunblock and oils into their pale, pasty and tender skins, as if they were hoping to crisp up under the sun like so much puff pastry. Clustered according to nationality, in large, beer swilling groups or close huddling beautiful, lovey-dovey couples, they make lying about under the boiling sun look like a hard day's work. Onto the beach early, oil up, grab some HEAT magazines and gently simmer away until late afternoon, when they all disappear into their hotel rooms to prepare for another night of binge drinking, expensive restaurants, cocaine, sex and pop music. Powder your nose, straighten your hair, shower three times, avocado facial scrub, pop on this season's beach evening wear and flip-flops, and update the Facebook status on the iPhone.

The massive number of scantily clad, gorgeous women drifting about all day on the beach sands hasn't escaped the attention of the locals, of course. Around here they call it "fishing". And fishing, for some of these chaps, appears to be a full time job. A rich mzungu girlfriend from Ireland or Germany is an excellent asset for a young and ambitious Zanzibari chap. The prospect of a tall, dark and muscular African lover seems an equally tempting prospect for many young ladies new to these shores, and it's not unusual to see a white woman strolling down the beach with a Masai man, hand in hand. Or having dinner, or dancing together. This sure ain't South Africa! Some call this phenomenon "Bongo Fever", with only a small amount of envy. But these 'beach boys', as the opportunistic career fishermen are sometimes called, often do well out of it. Many speak European languages fluently (though the first time I saw a Masai talking to a girl in Spanish I did almost choke on my Kilimanjaro beer), and many have even traveled to Europe, sponsored by their gracious young lady-friends. I even heard stories of young men bragging to passing girls that they have a passport . "Take me with you, you sultry Spanish princess!" Fair enough, I suppose. Seems a long shot, but if you get it right...

International Pleasure

Zanzibar. What a place. International destination for the wealthy, the young, and the beautiful. This place is like a Peter Stuyvesant advert, filled to the rafters with stereotypes and cliches for every palate. Its Africa For The Tourist, and the locals know it. The reason is abundantly simple, even from the air, looking over this ancient island. You can see the natural beauty, Zanzibar's biggest natural resource by a long shot, even before you scream over ramshackle huts, cattle and dirty children playing soccer, only a few hundred feet above their heads. When you land on the hot, steaming airstrip, fringed with coconut trees, rusting junk and litter the heat gently bakes you in the aeroplane like some kind of sunblock frittata. Hustle forth, customs awaits! How many things have been nicked from your luggage? And how many times has the fishing rod been snapped by the overzealous baggage handlers? I, inexplicably, had several packets of organic seed, a USB cable and some batteries pilfered. The chap in charge was certain it had happened in Johannesburg; a fair assumption. "Too many skelms there in Johannesburg", he said. News travels fast here in Africa.

So off we set, lets find some fucking lunch before I gnaw my arm off! Fuck the azure blue tropical waters, fuck the sights, fuck all that shit. I need to EAT, now. The egg mayo sandwich I ate on the plane, the mere scrap that served as dinner for last night and breakfast this nauseous morning barely touched sides. Why is it always egg mayo on long trips? What kind of perverse impulse is it that makes everyone think an egg mayo sarmie is exactly the thing for a long trip, cramped up in a big aluminium cigar tube with 200 other people?

After a delicious snack of rice, more rice, some bread, some veggie stuff with coconutty sauce, and some other things, we set out to explore Stone Town quickly, and make our way to the taxi rank, to visit Ian, of Zanzibar fame, in Nungwe. A quick tour through the back streets of Stone Town guided by a crack head , we wander through maze-like streets past tiny little shops selling touristy trinkets (humorously for me, they're identical to what you can buy in Cape Town, but more expensive), coils of terrifyingly disorganised electrical wire discharging from every wall, like snakes in a feeding frenzy, street vendors selling mangoes and sugar cane juice. Scooters, bicycles and motorcycles squeeze past you in the claustrophobic alleyways as you wander about, feeling a lot like Tintin in The Crab With The Golden Claws. Ridiculous prices are quoted in dollars, on chalk boards on the pavements, for any activity you can think of that relates to the ocean. Underwater kite boarding, jetski tuna fishing, scuba turtle surfing, they have it all here, if you have enough dollars. Is Zanzibar a good destination for budget travellers, people ask. Well, lets re-examine your definition of the word 'budget' first. For a brief trip, two weeks or so, I could recommend you bring maybe a million dollars. You could do it on less, but for the full experience, I'd say a million would be a good budget.

Slaapstad

Back home. Things feel different here. All those people that say Cape Town doesn't really feel like its in Africa? They were right. Its windier, for one thing.

I don't know how I feel about Cape Town. While I was in Malawi, I found supermarkets a fairly manageable experience. They were a little dirty, the shelves were badly stacked, the fluorescent lighting might flicker a bit, and the butcheries were often straight-up disgusting. But they were more like large shops, with lots of stuff in them, than the supermarkets we know so well. This keeps running around in my head-and when I go into the (ludicrously) well stocked, cavernous, brightly lit, air conditioned and totally disorienting supermarkets of white suburbia it feels even more pertinent. The range of products here seems ridiculous, compared to the choice I had only a little while ago, in a poorer country. (Maybe the strange thing here is that I feel so distant from these things after only two months away. )

Who needs seventeen different types of baked beans? Who needs a variety of fucking shampoos? I'm not saying a bit of choice isn't good. I like my coffee dark, roasty and wholesome, and maybe you don't. But the sheer scale of choices seems absurd. There are enough fucking things I have to decide every day, without having to choose between three or four types of salt!

Learn to cook, you disgusting slob.

Cooking fairly decent food is not hard. There is no secret gene passed
down to divide humanity in two; the Can Cook’s and the Can’t Cook’s.
Most people eat three times a day, and often more, so the ability to
prepare a decent meal shouldn’t be regarded as anything but a
prerequisite for being an adult human. Can you drive a car? Can you
clean your body yourself? Can you tie your own shoe laces? And are you
capable of making anything but overcooked fucking pasta with shop
bought sauce?
Its easy to find recipes. Its even easy to find very simple, even so
called ‘foolproof’ recipes. But here are a few things you should learn
to do first, some things you should never do again, and a couple you
should feel ashamed for ever having done.


1. Learn to cook pasta.

Boil water in a large pot. Add salt. Add the pasta. Cook until al
dente. This is Italian for “not overcooked and shit”. Strain. Do not
fucking overcook the pasta, ever. If you do, throw it away. Do not
attempt to serve it. Do not put oil in the water, that’s stupid. Do
not start in cold water. Do not pour boiling water over the pasta.
When you eat the pasta, do not drown it in sauce, the sauce should
only coat the pasta.


2. Learn how to make a salad.

Salad does not have little bits of fucking cheddar cheese in it. Nor
does it have gherkins in it, nor raw mushrooms, grated carrot,
nectarines or what have you. You are not Gary Rhodes- stick with the
simple stuff. Furthermore, do not ever buy fucking ready made salad
dressing. Vinaigrette is almost impossible to fuck up: 1 part good
(read expensive) vinegar, 3 parts oil, a pinch of salt. Extra virgin
is preferable. Reduced fat vinaigrette is for hairdressers and gym
instructors.



3. Sharpen Your Knife

Buy a decent knife. You cannot buy a decent knife in the same shop you
can buy some grapes, a litre of milk and some cigarettes. The money
you spend is an investment into the possible hundreds of thousands of
meals you will prepare with your new knife. Learn to keep it sharp.
Blunt knives are for nancies. Girls(or boys) love a man (or a woman)
with a very sharp knife.


4. Do not ever use margarine. Ever.

Butter is the not-so-secret ingredient in French food that makes it so
good. It’s delicious, essential for baking, lends richness, body and
its own delicate flavour to whatever you cook in it. It’s natural,
it’s beautiful, and makes everything taste better. Margarine is
emulsified vegetable oil and water, with flavourants and colourants.
One is delicious, one is Satan’s smegma. And don’t be such a fairy
with the extra virgin olive oil- its good for you, and its delicious.
It won’t make you fat. The ancient Romans used to literally clean
their bodies with it, and look at how lithe and handsome all those
marble statues are.



5. Learn to braai.

Get the coals hot. You should only be able to hold your hands over the
coals for up to seven seconds. Do not puncture, marinade or in any way
fiddle with the boerewors. Do not pour litres of water on the coals
should they be too hot. Do not overcook all the meat. It is not ‘done’
when it is dry and leathery, it is now ‘fucked’. When the meat is
done, at most cooked medium (still a bit pink inside), DO NOT keep it
in a warm oven while you get the chicken ready. Do not stuff a
butternut with spinach and feta and wrap it in tinfoil. And cooking
meat to medium rare, or medium is easy: you just leave it on the fire
for a shorter time.


6. Learn how to make at least one dessert.


You cant invite people over to show them your new flat and have tinned
peaches for pud. You don’t have to be Escoffier to make a pannacotta
or a decent banana split. Do not buy a milk tart from Shoprite. Do not
buy any prepared dessert from any grocery store. Make something
yourself, I promise it isn’t that hard.

An Awkward Topic

From start to finish, Cape Town to Joburg, to Maputo, to Lillongwe, to Harare and back home, my trip has been filled with discussion about South Africa's racial history. A few snippets:



-Driving past the old Boer War battlefields, where the English put my ancestors, women and children, in concentration camps, to deprive the men of supprt, while they burned their farms and slaughtered their animals. I still, bizarrely, feel a strong sense of patriotic support for the Boer's (although in my head, I'm more English than Afrikaans), fighting against their colonial oppressors, despite the fact that they were the same people that soon after created the system of Apartheid.

-Reading a few South African classic novels by white authors, including some of J. M Coetzee's work, and The Story of an African Farm, by Olive Schreiner and flinching every time the word "kaffir" is used.

-Staying the night in some fuckhole small town, in a white owned pub and B&B. The owners' child had been murdered a few years ago in a gay massage parlour- a case that was in the headlines for months. I heard the word "houtkop" used for the first time in my life, to describe black people. It was said to their coloured employee, or "boy", as they would probably call him.

-Arriving in Johannesburg, and staying a few nights at my wealthy relatives houses. Listening to them complain about their servants for hours, while sitting in stupendous, opulent luxury in one of Johannesburg's richest areas, cramped in by nine foot walls, electric fences, security guards, alarms systems and panic buttons. "They're just so ungrateful! I offered to pay for university, but they're just hopeless." I call it the "It's so hard to find good help these days " talk.

-Going to the Apartheid Musem in Johannesburg, where the R50 entrance fee ironically puts it out of the reach of the average South African citizen, who is still desperately poor even 16 years after Apartheid officially ended. That said, the experience was humbling, and not easy to digest. Memories flooded back of SADF Casspirs racing down the streets, of teargas and riots on TV, things I couldn't have understood then.

-Arriving in Maputo, and having a good old think about the Portuguese colonial era, and the decades of South African backed destabilising, infrastructure destroying "civil war" that followed. Mozambique was crippled economically, and 900,000 killed, for daring to give shelter to the SA's ANC and Rhodesia's ZANLA rebels, both fighting against white minority governments.

-Going to Malawi, where mzungu's like me are almost always from Europe. Many locals wouldnt believe I was born in South Africa, and when I had convinced them, they seemed thrilled. "We're both Africans!" The unspoken tension between races disappears, and even the cultural gap seems to vanish. White girls get black boyfriends, black men make white friends, and it feels totally normal. I couldn't think why SA isn't like this. Why do I have hundreds of black friends in Malawi, but none in South Africa?

-Speaking to an American guy who lived in some of Johannesburgs worst areas for a while, as well as Bellville's dodgy bits for six months, I realised his perception of Cape Town, and South Africa was totally different to mine. Even though I've lived here for 24 years, I have never seen some of the things he described to me, and I probably never would. I'd simpy be too scared to go near those places, or I'd feel self-conscious of my white skin. He said, having travelled far and wide for many years, that South Africa was the most markedly different place he had ever been to, because of the legacy of Apartheid. I found, overall, that foreigners who had been to South Africa had a far more refreshing and interesting perspective on it, as they were free of the Fear that locals have. They dont have the associations, the worries, and most of all, the shame, that so many white South African's still have.

-In Malawi, it is still considered normal for a person working in South Africa as a gardener to be called a garden boy, a housekeeper a girl, no matter what their age. You might meet a 45 year old man who proudly describes his profession as "boy".

-Arriving back in Johannesburg, and within a few hours hearing rich white kids complaining about the "ungrateful blacks" and "how lazy they are", again, the "Its so hard to find good help these days" talk. Another piece was from a white, Afrikaans, apartheid generation guy who warned me about the Transkei, where "the local blacks are so flippin' lazy".

-Coining the word "Condescenglish" for the peculiar habit that many white South African's and Zimbabweans have, when talking to a black person. It refers specifically to the speaking in a pastiche of an African language accent, presumably so the other party can understand them better. Its almost like a compromise- "I know English isn't your first language, so I'll speak to you in what I think your accent sounds like." Condescending English. Get it? Im sure if you did that to an Irish person they'd hammer you in a few seconds.