Yes, there is fun in Zanzibar

Kids chasing cart:

Carter shooing kids:

Even the carter had to laugh =)

A sign that speaks for itself

Ramadan, Part 1

Before Ramadan began:

After Ramadan began:

People do not like to be tempted during Ramadan, so all eating, drinking, and smoking is taken into the private realm during daylight hours. It makes some areas of town seem creepily empty, but this place is far too touristy to be much different during Ramadan.

I'll try to take pics tonight of people breaking the fast together in hordes at the marketplace. It is quite a feast. Basically, imagine a communal, turkey-less, ham-less thanksgiving dinner on a community scale, and that is what they will have here for the 40 days of Ramadan. Hardly seems like a fast to me...

And I used to wonder how gravel got in my fish soup

Seafood selection in Zanzibar:

Officially the most useless vehicle I have seen in all of Zanzibar:

This four-wheeler hardly fits in the streets its owner drives through. It manages to make more noise than the deafeners I am now used to. It is used as a joy ride vehicle in a place where it serves as an indicator of wastable wealth, not utter hickness. As I see it, this is the soccer mom Hummer of Zanzibar.

Kids being kids

Kids being kids and parents being parents in Zanzibar are wholly different things from their American counterparts in the States. I just watched one boy with Down syndrome playing with other kids in the street by pushing a large work cart and letting the other kids climb in for a ride. I saw a baby - between one and two years old, I'd guess - toddle toward the cart excitedly from the front. The front is, of course, the blind spot for someone pushing a large cart from behind. I dashed to the front of the cart as the baby was toppled over, but did not start pushing the cart backwards soon enough to keep one wheel from going over the baby's right leg. Pushing the
cart with my body, I reached below to pull the baby out from below, making sure
none of the cart's weight was still on him. The marks the wheels left on his right leg and the scratches on his left would have won any child I know in the States a week of intense coddling after their emergency room visit. Here, if the blood can be wiped away with relative ease, it's all good. No more attention is necessary.

The most interesting bit: the baby knows it. With his scrapes and bruises wiped off by his mom as though she were knocking bread crumbs off of him, he went running back to the cart, still wailing as loudly as when I first pulled him out from under the cart, but still wanting to play.

More on this later...

A temporary pet

With any luck, this chameleon will be remembered as a temporary pet because it was set free back into the wild and not because no one was able to catch it a buzzing little lunch.

By the way, while he is green in this picture, he was purple by the time I left. What mood is purple?