“Zanzibar has neither dock, jetty, nor wharf, passengers and packages alike being disembarked in small boats and carried through the surf on the shoulders of Swahili boatmen.”
The business portion of Zanzibar is a wilderness of narrow streets and dim bazaars, hemmed in with tiny shops and wretched dwellings, with here and there an ancient house dating from the Portuguese occupation.
Photograph by DeLord, Zanzibar.
THE GATEWAY TO EAST AFRICA.
You are advised to go to bed in the dark, as a light would attract the mosquitoes, and never, never, under any circumstances, to get into bed until you have assured yourself that there are no mosquitoes inside the curtains, though the proprietor cheerfully adds: “But you can only get fever from the black-and-white-striped ones.” Likewise, you are solemnly warned never to go out of doors during the day without a topée lest you die from sunstroke (I knew one man who took off his helmet long enough to wave good-bye to a departing friend and was dead in an hour in consequence); never to drink other than bottled water (at two rupees the bottle) lest you die from typhoid; never to stay out of doors after nightfall lest you contract malaria; never to put on your boots without first shaking them out lest a snake or scorpion have chosen them to spend the night in; never to return late at night from the club without getting a policeman to escort you, lest a native thug run a knife between your shoulder-blades; and never to put your revolver under your pillow, where it cannot be reached without attracting attention, but to keep it beside you in the bed, so that you can shoot through the bedclothes without warning if you should wake up to find an intruder in your room.
The best and most interesting thing about the Afrika Hotel is its bath, a forbidding, stone-floored room, totally devoid of furniture or tub. It is separated from the sleeping-room by the hotel parlour, so that lady callers unaccustomed to Zanzibar ways are sometimes a trifle startled to see a gentleman whose only garment is a bath-towel pass through the parlour with a hop-skip-and-jump on his way to the bath. You clap your hands, which is the East Coast equivalent for pressing a button, and in prompt response appears an ebony-skinned domestic bearing on his head a Standard Oil can filled with water. Running through a staple in the ceiling is a rope, and to the end of this rope he attaches the can, hoisting it until it swings a dozen feet above your head. Hanging from a hole in the side of the can is a cord. When you are ready for your bath you stand underneath the can, jerk the cord sharply, and the can empties itself over you like a cloudburst. Then you clap your hands and wait until the Swahili brings more water, when you do it all over again.
The first thing the new arrival in Zanzibar does is to bathe and put on a fresh suit of white linen, for to appear presentable in the terrible humidity of the East Coast requires at least four white suits a day; and the second thing he does is to call upon the consul, a very homesick young gentleman, who is so glad to see any one from “God's country” that he is only too eager to spend his meagre salary in entertaining him. If it is drawing toward sunset you will probably find him just starting for the golf club, which is the rendezvous at nightfall for Zanzibar's European society, whose chief recreations, so far as I could see, are golf, gambling, and gossip. With a sturdy, khaki-clad Swahili, a brass American eagle on the front of his fez, trotting between the shafts of the consular 'rickshaw (the Department of State refuses to appropriate enough money to provide our representative with a carriage), and another pushing behind, you whirl down the bright red highway which leads to the suburb of Bububu; past the white residency from which the British consul-general gives his orders to the little brown man who is permitted to play at ruling Zanzibar; past the police barracks, where, at sight of the eagle on the 'rickshaw coolies' fezes, the sentry on duty shouts some unintelligible jargon, a bugle blares, and a group of native constables spring into line and bring their hands smartly to the salute as you pass; past the Marconi station on the cliff, where the wireless chatters ceaselessly with Bagamoyo and Kilindini and Dar-es-Salam; until you come to a sudden halt before a bungalow, almost hidden in a wonderful tropic garden, whose broad verandas overlook an emerald velvet golf course which stretches from the highway to the sea.
Playing golf in Zanzibar always struck me as one of the most incongruous things I ever did. It seems as though one ought to devote his energies to pirating or pearl-fishing or slave-trading in a place with such a name. Moreover, there is such a continuous circus procession passing along the highway—natives in kangas of every pattern and colour; Masai and Swahili warriors from the mainland; Parsee bankers in victorias and Hindoo merchants in 'rickshaws; giant privates of the King's African Rifles in bottle-green tunics and blue puttees; veiled women of the Sultan's zenana out for an airing in cumbersome, gaudily painted barouches, preceded and followed by red-jacketed lancers on white horses; perhaps his Highness himself, a dapper, discontented-looking young mulatto, whirling by in a big gray racing-car—that it is quite out of the question to keep your eye on the ball, and you play very bad golf in consequence. Another trouble is that the caddies are all natives, and golf is discouraging enough in itself without having to shout “Fore!” or ask for a mashie or a putter in Swahili.
After a perfunctory round or two you go back to the club-house veranda, where the European society of Zanzibar is seated in cane chairs, with the English illustrated weeklies, and tall glasses with ice tinkling in them. The talk is the talk of exiled white folk everywhere: the news contained in the Reuter's despatches which are posted each evening on the club bulletin-board; the condition of the ivory market; the prospects for big game-shooting under the new German game laws; the favourites for the next day's cricket match, the next week's polo game, or the next month's race meet; the latest books, the newest plays—as gathered from the illustrated weeklies; what is going to become of Smyth-Cunninghame's widow, whose husband has just died of fever; is it true that Major Buffington has been transferred from the “K. A. R.” to a line regiment; and is Germany really looking for war?