The colour alone of the waters of Zanzibar will quench thirsts in your soul that you never knew existed. You can’t open your eyes wide enough to absorb it- the limitations of the human senses do not allow you to merge with the feeling it invokes inside of you. The waters are striated with bands of dark blue, turquoise, greens and whites against sands that are the colour of simplicity and purity. When you walk barefoot on the wet sand, it is softer than the most imaginable velvet. You feel as if you are walking on a hidden treasure of mother earth’s skin. Never has it been exposed to any of the harsh elements of nature or cruelty of humanity. Perhaps because it was hidden away in the curves of her body waiting for you to experience this moment.
The dance of the of wispy waving coconut palm leaves which
frame the scene are reminiscent of a young girl’s long hair streaming behind
her- dancing like a kite tail while hurriedly riding her bicycle home during
the endless summer nights of childhood. The tickle of the leaves by the wind
result in music echoing soft rains. Every
part of your past, present and future seem to be here in the many moments of
the sands of time.
You watch the rhythm of life so clearly dictated by the flow
of the tides. To imagine that your day is not measured by the hands of the
clock or the conventional cadence created by modern societies where we live
“average” plus or minus standard deviations from “bed time”, “dinner time”, and
“work time”. Rather, your day is dictated by the tender pull of the moon on the
earth’s waters; how tightly the land hugs the sea after hours of dancing
forward and backward into their final embrace.When the ocean is far away-flooding and feeding the currents
of the world-the land shows the jewels of her tide pools. This is where the
women of the eastern peninsula group together-their colourful hijabs and
chocolate coloured skin a magnificent contrast to the white sand and turquoise
waters. They carry with them buckets and sticks to hunt octopus as they
silently chatter during their walk out to the tide pools. Once far on the
horizon, they disperse like oil on water and spend their days coaxing the
octopus out of their hiding places with the skill of any prey-predator
relationship. Afterwards, the women come together to the shore with octopi
dangling from their shoulders; the murmur of the sea and whispers of their laughs
indistinguishable.
Behind them, the tides swell again filling the pools and
bring the shallow waters warmed by the sun. The beauty of the reunion of the
land and the sea cannot be explained. Like lovers destined to part and reunite by
inexplicable forces much greater than themselves providing a beautiful backdrop
for children to swim and destitute boats to come alive again; after all, a boat
without water is merely a piece of wood.
These days the tides bring with them heavy winds called
kaskasi in Swahili (“north winds”). The winds on the island are currently
changing directions; the north winds asserting their dominance with an
unmatched fury and force. The winds are shaking the trees and grasses to remind
the land which was once complacent with this rhythm of life that nothing ever
remains the same. Old palm leaves weighing down the trees are blown away while
deeply rooted plants are given more life from the wind.
You long to peek under the ocean to catch a glimpse of its
mysteries. While floating over massive reefs of pulsating coral-the heartbeat
of the ocean-colourful fish swim by seemingly unaware of life above the water.
You hold in your hand a bright red star fish and wonder if the gentle movement
and suction on your fingers was from the velocity of the star falling from the
sky and caught by the ocean. You savour the tentacles gently wrapping around
your hand as you hold hands with the ocean. In the depths of the ocean, you see
families of dolphins weaving through ocean and air with a rhythm and
playfulness that invokes in you a new definition of freedom. Fisherman
gracefully pull long nets from the waters as rainbow coloured fish flap in their
last protest at being plucked from their homes. These images slowly fade away
as the sun begins to descend and makes way for day’s grand finale.
The sun sets on the opposite side of the peninsula
reflecting subtle colours serving as a reminder of the beauty of phenomena
happening nearby-thus solidifying the interconnectedness of people and places
connected on earth by one sun. Muted golds and oranges tint the sky and soften
the blues of the waters until darkness overcomes the peninsula. The stars
emerge in the minutes of black sky before the moon makes her debut; dancing with
the clouds which temporarily hide them. You long to bask in momentary glimpses
of their brilliance. A large moon slowly rises from the sky. A deep red-orange orb
coloured by her umbilicus to the earth. As she climbs, she draws within her the
remaining light of the day until her brilliance outshines all but the brightest
stars. Dwarfed by her beauty you are forced to gaze deeply at the secrets
hidden in her shadows.
When the moon is big and bright, the reflection on the water
is a narrow dancing line connecting you with the moon like the string of a lost
balloon. Often there is an old boat in the moonlit path gently swaying to a lullaby
in the sparkling streak revealing not more than a hint of the lines of the
weathered wood from which it was born. As the moon rises higher the narrow
stream widens like the slow smile of a shy child until the surface of the water
is bathed in its reflection.
On the nights where the moon is small in her cycle of
rejuvenation, she steps back allowing the most timid stars an opportunity to
reveal their places in the interconnected universe. As you look up to make
sense of the patterns they create, like millions of people who roamed the
planet before us whose shadows we live amongst, clusters and colourful trails
emerge. You, yourself, are reduced to a moment in time where you reflect the
light within you to the light of the sky.
On the nights where the winds are resting
and the sea invites the local fisherman. The horizon far off in the distance is
dotted with dancing lanterns of the fishing boats. They sway in a rhythm only
known to them but calmly familiar. Because the sea is higher on the horizon than
the eye-level, it is difficult to distinguish the lights of the fishing boats
on the horizon from the fireflies of the summer nights. Maybe it’s because the
vision invokes the same type of amazement and wonder-the simplistic desire to
chase after that which attracts and fascinates us-often deceptively within our
grasps when in reality it is merely a moment in time mixed with memories we can
only hope to record in that split second.
In the times when you awake in the middle of the night your
eyes celebrate the state between sleep and awake by resting on subtle glimpses
of bright shooting stars. The moon is now in its path to the other side of the
sky as it disappears over the horizon just in time for the sun to rise.
The sun rise is not nearly as predictable as the sunsets
here. Like an aspiring actress not yet able to execute the complexity of a
scene with mixed emotions, it lives on the edges of the dramatic. Or maybe it
is you who has witnessed a million times more sunsets than sunrises; unable to
decipher the emotions within the sunrise. Similar to a child only able to
colour a rainbow with a pack of six predetermined crayons when a more
experienced artist knows not only the infinite power of colour and the subtle
differences which lie within them, but also the emotions invoked when placed
next to or mixed with each other.
When the sun rises it beams radiance in every direction and is
coloured with purples, yellows and oranges of the spectrum. A few days ago, a
storm came at the time the sun was rising and the birds were recklessly gliding
in the changing directions of the wind-oscillating between panic and
recreational bliss; similar to the first time you rode a rollercoaster and felt
fear and hope in one moment-the vision of your own mortality and the surging
tides of endorphins when you realize you’ve conquered death. Cautioned to tempt
it again but recognizing the bliss in the revelry of laughing at death. This
moment of a stormy sunrise expressed itself in magnificent violets and magentas-streaked
with lunacy and recklessness. 
And so begins the birth of another the day on the Eastern peninsula
of Zanzibar.
