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After a lazy start, we set off for the grand old building with the enormous word ‘Post Office’ in English built into its facade, and where a sign said that postal services were available. Posting accomplished, our next visit was to the House of Wonders.
Two Portuguese bronze canons guard the doors. There are many Indian inspired doors and lintels, and large verandahs at ground and first floor levels, held up with columns. The house was built as an Omani mansion. The ground floor had many displays about the history and natural history of the island, and upstairs there were the state rooms and a room devoted to Princess Salme, a daughter of the Sultan who eloped with a German trader.
Evidence of trade with
Traditional Swahili religion prior to Islam did not include religious law or dogma, with people being exhorted to think of their ancestors and past kings, and being free to worship a God or Great Lord through aspects of nature, like a tree or a cave. This continues today and has been blended in and accepted by the form of Islam practised here. By the tenth century new building technology enabled the building of stone houses using burnt coral to produce lime for mortar, but mud brick houses were also still built.
The biggest message of this whole section was how, when you look at a map, it is obvious that there would be lots of contact between the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean, and that the influence of the monsoons in sailing vessel days would have meant that trade also involved long stays in different countries and the exchange of culture and technologies. That ongoing exchange over the centuries had produced a culture here in 
Upstairs the room about Princess Salme had a bed such as she would have had, set up and a picture of her looking very solemn in royal dress. She was wearing a longish tunic over pants with frills around the bottom, a veil and many jewels. Her mother was a Circassian slave, captured when she was about seven years old. She grew up in the royal household and was tutored along with the princesses, and eventually became the Sultan’s concubine. The Sultan had a wife as well, and the arrangement was that the concubines were lower on the pecking order, and not in her palace, but were under her influence. If a child was born, a slave concubine was automatically given the status of a free person, and a step up in the order of concubines. The child had full rights as a royal prince or princess. When Princess Salme was born, she was one of over a hundred children and many of her siblings were older than her mother. It gives you a bit of an insight into the wealth of the sultan, when you consider that all these children, upon growing up, were provided with an annual allowance, households, slaves and plantations, as well as numerous presents of jewellery.
Salme backed the wrong brother in the conspiracy that led to the younger brother attempting a coup, and was not too harshly punished by being sent to a new home in
The views were spectacular from the balconies, and we could see how beautiful it all must have been in the glory days, when the family could stroll through the gardens down to the sea. The gardens are currently being restored and until this view, we had no idea what was behind all the high walls masking the work site.
We lunched in an upstairs Indian restaurant overlooking the bay, in a building whose architect was not at all constrained by the thought that there should be some fairly direct way to move from one room to another. In a previous life a Customs House, it now sheltered businesses and families.
Once again the views were magnificent - of boats and children swimming.
We bought our tickets to leave on the 7 a.m. boat to
Next we called to see a couch surfer we had contacted, called Haji, at the office for Eco Tours, where he is the Director. His tours promote local culture and involve villagers in tourist education. When I asked him if he knew where I could buy a battery for my watch, he took the watch and disappeared, leaving us to talk amongst ourselves for quarter of an hour or more. He returned with my watch working perfectly, which was a miracle, given that I had worn it in the sea when I went snorkelling off
After tea we went back to the foreshore area, to the Fort where there was to be free music.
We walked through the few streets where there were many, many souvenirs for sale, and even we could see that a lot of them were not from this area. There were also many tourists about, more than we had seen in one place in all our travels, except in
A small amphitheatre faced the wall, with a stage in front of it. Way after starting time, a crowd was gathering and being amused by some ten to fourteen year old boys who were dancing and rapping to the canned music. At last a band and a singer started. The singer was wearing a black tube top with silver trim over a red kanga. Her black hair was dyed blond and straightened. The men wore black pants and red kaftan type tops with gold trim. It was pleasant music and the lady engaged in many erotic dance moves, with the band around her responding as much as if they were blocks of wood. Finally, a very agile young dancer got up and joined her, and at least she was not there all alone, and later when he sat down, an ordinary audience member got up for what may have been a joke. The audience was fascinating, being predominantly tourists and young men. I watched the two women in front of me being worked on, one after the other by the same young man, with him tentatively trying out the hand on the shoulder, then nudging closer, then talking looking into the eyes. I hardly noticed that the band had finished because cats were walking along the top of the fort wall, oblivious to what was going on below, and a mother was wrapping her baby up in a jumper and a parker, on this very hot night. He was so tightly packaged that it would have been impossible for him to cry a protest. Young travellers changed seats, laughed and left. A boy was boxed around the ears and shaken for dragging a cat up to the stage, where of course it was frightened and ran off.
The next act was a collaboration between dancers and musicians from
Above: Some sections of Stone Town are in bad shape, while other areas are only just being maintained adequately. Very few buildings or infrastructure are in good condition.Below: looking over the rooftops of Stone Town. On the left is the Catholic Cathedral
This tree is quite a landmark on the Stone Town forshore. It is the site for various market stalls.
Below: more apparently precarious scaffolding. Show this to your local OH&S officer.
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