Economics and Eating

Perhaps the first shock upon arriving in Zanzibar was the money: the Tanzanian shilling is the currency and there are about 1400 of them to a US dollar!! So a bottle of coke or a 1.5 liter of water (which we bought everyday) was 1,500 to 2,000 shillings; an hour of internet 2,500 shillings; a typical dinner 10,000 to 20,000 shillings...it took a little while to get used to this!! The tour guide for our spice tour, who is in his mid-30's, told us that when he was a boy, the rate of exchange was 5 Tanzanian shillings to the dollar and now it is 1,400! Quite a devaluation... So while the numbers are huge, when you stop to figure it out, most things are pretty inexpensive comparatively.

As for the food, the first day we arrived we had a traditional Swahili meal – mostly rice and curry dishes (Zanzibari curry is a little different than Indian curry-not quite as spicy). Each morning for breakfast, there was fruit juice – the most intriguing and one of my favorites was an avocado/passion fruit combination which was really tasty and very unique; we had slices of papaya and other fresh fruit as well.

Because of the many influences on the island (Indian, Arabic and Swahili), the food is quite varied. The most common foods are “chips,” also known as french fries...it is difficult to get through a day without them because they are served with so many dishes. Rice is also used a lot; I ate vegetable curry for the majority of my lunches – mostly to get more vegetables in my diet and to avoid the fries, which were delicious, but not something I wanted to eat every day.

One evening part of our group had a meal in a home; it was a traditional meal that would be served during Ramadan, after an entire day of fasting (it was not Ramadan when we were there, but the food was what one would eat for the special meals of the year – much like our Thanksgiving feasts). We ate really well – everything was eaten with the right hand (no utensils), sitting on the floor. We had a delicious grilled kingfish, chicken with a curry sauce, naan and another type of bread, a potato filled with beef that was really tasty, several banana-type dishes and a couple other things unlike anything I have ever eaten. It was incredible!