Makunduchi offers its secrets

In the Swahili house, a local woman performs a kanga demonstration – showing visitors how this ubiquitous East African fabric is used for different social and life occasions. One style tells observers that a woman is away from home, on her travels – whether out shopping or going to visit relatives. Another style is for getting physical, whether dancing at a celebration or engaged in serious manual labour – women in Zanzibar are as involved in physical employment as the men, and can often be found, for example, doing heavy digging on new school sites or roadworks.

The next style is for weddings, another is for when a woman is in a hurry, and another style for prayer and devotion. Girls are given a pair of kangas at puberty to congratulate them on making the move from childhood to womanhood.

We are here in this traditional wood-and-earth house in Makunduchi – the birthplace of the Kiswahili language, and a place where it is best never to mention the Swahili word for ‘elephant’ – as part of a recently launched cultural tour programme giving visitors access to this typically untouristy village.

Although Makunduchi has little in the way of hotels and tourism (other than the annual Mwaka Kogwa festival in July), it’s a relatively prosperous village for Zanzibar, and has produced many of the ruling party’s politicians and officials.

In tribute to this being a ruling party stronghold, the lady giving us the kanga demonstration is decked out in a resplendent green CCM party dress. This sartorial statement, however, is the only reference to politics during our visit.

The women are more preoccupied with showing us how they make ‘Zanzibar McDonalds’ (the fast food chain may not have made it here yet but its name is already known...) This treat is prepared when children come back from school and are desperate for a snack before their proper mealtime. Cassava is pounded into a rough powder, mixed with sugar and flash fried. Healthy it isn’t, and a few seconds after partaking of this food, you will be desperately thirsty. But it does fill a gap, and the kids love it.

We take our leave of the Swahili house, and travel down the road to meet local doctor Mussa Ali Simai. He is both a herbalist and an ‘mganga’, one who works with spirits and referred to by some as a witch doctor. Previously he was headmaster of the local school, but he retired to focus on traditional medicine, a specialism of his family for generations.

He explains how diseases such as malaria, yellow fever and high blood pressure are caused by ‘genies’. Treatments usually involve roots from local tree and verses from the Koran. However, he explains, there is also a genie in his head who speaks to him in dreams and tells him how to treat different diseases and patients.

He has piles of notebooks from previous generations that also tell him how to treat patients – they are written in Arabic and are undated, so he is not sure exactly how old they are. On the walls behind him are scrawled symbols – it’s not clear what alphabet they are from although one of the symbols is a Star of David, but the doctor tells us that they represent the starting point of all incantations ‘Bismillah al-rahman al-raheem’ – ‘In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful’. He says that it was written like this in the Talmud before the Koran. The mix of organised religion and spirit beliefs is somehow intoxicating.

Smiling, he explains that modern medicines contain chemicals that can build up in the body but that local medicines can cure this. In fact, he announces, he treats people with AIDS and they recover – but this he must keep secret, and of course he has to advise them to go to the hospital first. What, then, is the cure? Baobab leaves, he says. Pounded, cooked, eaten. It doesn’t taste ‘too loveable’, he says, but you will recover.

The baobab tree, he elaborates, is really the ‘baba tree’ – the father tree. It can cure many ills, but you must also tread carefully near these ancients. There are lots of shetani – devils – living in baobab trees – some are Arabic, some Swahili, and some even European. Only your own kind of devil can hurt you. This means most tourists are safe from Zanzibar devils, but equally Zanzibaris going to Europe will be safe as the spirits there are unlikely to infect them.

This information is reassuring as our next stop is in a vast baobab forest. These bizarre trees are more associated with Madagascar but are common in some areas of Zanzibar too, and are feared by many for the spirits that inhabit them. Their age may be part of their renown – centuries old, they have watched colonial masters come and go from these islands and revolutions unfold, looking on in impassive silence. The landscape is wide, eerie and beautiful, and remarkably people-free for highly populated Zanzibar.

Finally we head on to a state-owned lighthouse, painted in candy colours, on the far tip of Ras Makunduchi, the Makunduchi headland. After a hot afternoon, a dizzying climb and a wobbly ladder (health and safety isn’t big in Africa yet, avoid this bit if you have vertigo or are prone to falling off things) the views and the fresh breeze are like balm to the soul.

Views stretch around 360 degrees; of the clear, sparkling Indian ocean; the coastline stretching back up the south-east coast to Jambiani; back to the strange horizon of the baobab forest; and down to a handful of women harvesting in the shallows, possibly shellfish.

As demonstrated in the Swahili house, they have their kangas tied up around their heads and waists so they can get on with the practical business.As we descend from the lighthouse, they start to head in for the day also. Another day is over, and one group of tourists at least know a little more about this proud corner of Zanzibar.

Our tour guide, Hassan, explains a little about Makunduchi's demographics

See a photo gallery of the cultural tour