The name Zanzibar refers to the archipelago
of islands in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of mainland
Tanzania, made up of Unguja, the largest island, commonly called
Zanzibar, Pemba, Mafia and other smaller islands. Compared to
the mainland, Zanzibar can often seem like a different country
and that’s largely because up until the unification in 1964, it
was. The archipelago and its people have their own unique
history and culture, influenced strongly by the traders and
invaders over the centuries, from the Portuguese and Omani Arabs
to the English.
Unlike mainland Tanzania, Zanzibar doesn’t have tribes. Instead
local traditions are a fusion of different ethnic groups that
settled on the islands, resulting in events like Pemba bull
fights from the Portuguese and Mwaka Kogwa, the celebration of
the Persian New Year. In recent years, Zanzibar has gained
internationally prominence as a cultural centre, hosting the
Sauti za Busara music festival and the Zanzibar International
Film Festival, showing how the islands have succeeded in
celebrating their heritage, while moving towards the future.
Lifestyle
According the United Nations, Tanzania is one of the four
poorest countries in the world. Although Zanzibar benefits from
tourism, the majority of the population still make their living
from subsistence farming and fishing. A recent census showed
that there are now over 1 million people living across Unguja
and Pemba, which remain predominately Muslim. Islam marks the
passing of days, the muezzin’s wail, echoing across the islands
from sunrise to sunset. Women veil themselves in buibuis or
kangas, children learn their prayers and their manners at the
madrasa, and the archipelago becomes a place of celebration at
Eid, after Ramadan, the time of fasting.
By Zanzibar standards, Stone Town is a sprawling metropolis and
Pemba’s Chake Chake is a bustling, industrious town. The area
outside town is known as shamba, meaning farm, where the
majority of the people live. Village life is simple. Most people
live in mud houses with woven palm frond roofs, known as makuti.
There is no electricity or running water in rural areas,
instead, water is carried from wells or rainwater is collected
in buckets during the two rainy seasons. Diet centres around a
few local staples; beans, maize, breadfruit and cassava, which
families grow on their land and cook over an open wood fire or
charcoal stove. At times of celebration, pilau is cooked; rice
flavoured with the island’s spices, cardamom, cinnamon and
cloves.
The history of the Swahili Coast
While most of Europe was still floundering in the Dark Ages,
the light of the Oriental world had already fallen on Zanzibar.
It nestled in the middle of a well established mercantile
civilization, constructed from a series of independent coastal
and island city states, which stretched down East Africa, from
the Somali coast to the mouth of Zambezi river. The Swahili
civilization was born on the coast of Africa, and nourished by
the waters of the Indian Ocean, crisscrossed for centuries by
merchant vessels bearing traders and adventurers and pirates
from India, Arabia, Persia, China, Japan and Russia. They
arrived on the East African coast with the monsoon and left
again, their holds groaning with trade goods. They brought metal
tools, weapons and jewelry and took away ivory, tortoiseshell,
slaves and palmoil. The 9th Century Tales of Sinbad the Sailor
from the eastern fairytale Arabian Nights reflect the seafaring
tradition of the people of the Persian Gulf. It was they who
named the coast Zanj el Barr, meanig “land of black people”
The African people of the coast intermarried with the visitors,
fusing their traditions with Arab customs until the Swahili
became a distinct race, with its own language, feudal rulers,
art forms and decorative traditions. They were named from the
African word sahl, meaning coast. Driven from their homes by a
succession of wars and conflicts that beset the countries of the
Persian Gulf, Shirazi and Arab visitors settled permanently in
Swahili towns, bringing the religion of Islam with them.
The Swahili had no one overall ruler, they were organized into
separate communities each ruled by their own sultan, but with a
constant flow of populations between the trading centres that
rose and fell with the progression of the centuries. Zanzibar
was ruled by a dynasty of kings and queens with the hereditary
title of Mwinyi Mkuu. The Mwinyi Mkuu were Islamic rulers, but
they were credited with older powers – they held in their
possession a set of magic drums, which beat of their own accord
when the kingdom was in peril. The last Mwinyi Mkuu died in
1873, and his mansion at Dunga in the centre of Zanzibar Island
is thought to be haunted.
Trading and life
Zanzibar rose to prominence as a flourishing commercial
centre in the thirteenth century. Swahili communities on
Zanzibar and Pemba built stone mosques decorated with carved
inscriptions, minted silver coins and used delicate Syrian style
perfume bottles in green and blue glass. The graves of their
more important citizens featured stone towers at either end,
with Chinese porcelain bowls sunk into the cement walls. Mosques
and private dwellings had dressed stone lintels, rectangular
patterned wall niches, plasterwork friezes and stone latticed
windows. The Swahili decorative tradition arose from the fact
that the dictates of Islam forbade the rendering of images of
people or animals. Patterns on walls, ceilings, furniture and
utensils were always abstract, or composed of verses from the
Koran in Arabic lettering. The floors of the richer houses were
covered with Persian rugs. Wealthy women went about richly
decorated with gold and silver jewellery, and prosperous
merchants wore robes and turbans embroidered wi gold thread.
Swahili houses were built of fossilized coral held together with
limestone cement and thatched with makuti leaves. Stone benches
ran around the outside porch, providing a space known as a daka
where the master of the household received visitors. A carved
double leafed door led into the interior of the house where the
privacy of the Swahili women was jealously guarded. Their
quarters were in the innermost recesses of the house, beyond an
inner courtyard and visited only by the closest of family
members. In the wealthier areas of Swahili towns covered
walkways crossed high above the streets to allow well born women
to glide between the houses without being seen by strangers.
Swahili domestic furniture was both decorative and ingeniously
designed. Food trays had saucers to hold dishes at either side,
corn grinders incorporated large flat stones, and high backed,
formal wedding chairs were inlaid with ivory or bone. Babies’
cradles woven from cotton cloth hung from the ceiling or from
struts of springy wood. Beds were wooden frames, often carved,
covered with coir rope made from coconut husks. They were sat on
during the day, slept on at night and carried the dead to their
graves. Brass coffeepots were engraved through hammering or
chiseling.
In Zanzibar today, Swahili artifacts decorate hotel lobbies and
private houses, and men still weave through the crowded streets
of Stone Town wearing long, flowing white kanzu (robes) and
embroidered kofia (hats). Swahili cuisine -curries made with
coconut milk and spices, maandazi donuts, fried octopus - is
eaten daily by most of the population. The traditional music of
the Swahili coast, taarab, is played alongside gangsta rap and
European house. Despite deepseated traditions of hospitality and
of religious tolerance, colonization over the centuries by
successive Portuguese, Omani and European invaders has done
nothing to dent the unique cultural identity of the Swahili
people.
Henna
Henna has been around for centuries, from as far back as the
Bronze Age across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It’s used to
decorate the body and hair and even as a dye for silk, leather
and wool. It was said that the Queen of Sheba was adorned with
henna when she went to meet King Solomon. Traditionally, henna
is worn at times of celebration, for weddings and religious
festivals such as Eid. Henna is made from the leaves of a
flowering shrub, which thrives in tropical regions and can be
found across Zanzibar and Tanzania. To make the dye, branches
are cut down and left to dry in the sun, until the leaves fall
off. The leaves are then collected and ground into a powder,
then sifted to remove any impurities. The powder is mixed into a
paste with lemon juice and sometimes essential oils like
lavender, tea tree or eucalyptus are added to the mixture to
strengthen the colour, making the dye last longer. When the
paste is ready, it’s applied to the skin, usually piped through
a cellophane cone although sometimes toothpick is used to trace
out the designs. The paste is left to dry and flakes off to
reveal the reddish brown patterns underneath. The dye darkens
after the first couple of days and can last for up to a
fortnight. Henna can also be used as a hair dye, fresh leaves
are covered with coconut oil and left to infuse over a stove for
30 minutes, and then the coloured oil is applied to the hair,
giving a red tint and leaving the hair healthy and shiny.
Black henna, known as wanja in Swahili, has become increasingly
popular in henna designs. Wanja used to be made using seeds
which were burnt and then cooked with coconut oil to make a
paste, similar to red henna, but nowadays, black hair dye has
been increasingly substituted for the organic paste. Hair dye
can cause allergic reactions, blisters and sores if it is used
as henna, so if you want a design in black henna, try to make
sure the paste made from indigo and not hair dye.
For a Swahili wedding, the bride is decorated with henna for
luck and to bless the marriage. A bride can sit for hours, as
the henna artist paint flowers across the her skin, flowers
blooming over her arms, decorating both sides of her hands and
over her feet and legs. Her finger nails and toe nails are
stained orange with the dye and some brides choose to have their
backs and shoulders decorated. Henna patterns in Zanzibar are a
fusion of Arab and Indian designs, combining the intricate fine
floral and paisley patterns found in Indian mehindi with the
larger flowers found in Arab henna. Both red henna and black
henna can be used and it’s a Zanzibari tradition that the bride
does not have to do any housework in her new home until her
bridal henna has faded.
Designs and patterns change over time, falling in and out of
fashion. Western influence can clearly be seen, with mamas at
the beaches offering henna along with massage and hair braiding
to tourists, as part of the beach beauty package. Chinese
symbols, Celtic tattoos and pictures of dolphins are
increasingly found in pattern books but henna traditions remains
strong and will be used for many centuries to come.
