Stonetown Fort
Thursday, September 8, 2005
We met our tour guide this morning out in front of the hotel. He was a local man named Ali, as cheerful and chatty as a bird. a little hat perched on his head and he used his hands as he talked.
His voice had a soft and beautiful African accent that stretched the vowels to the limit. When he said 'water' it came out as oooo-otter. But to the amusement of all the folk from the U.K. amusement, he was very good at mimicking different British accents and had a crack at an Irish accent too.
"Top ah the morning!", he said to us. He'd heard it first on a foreign newscast and had to puzzle out the meaning for a while.
Ali walks us down our street to a well-known building, the house of Queen's Freddy Mercury, who was born in Zanzibar.
Then down the narrow streets to the nearby waterfront, past brightly-painted wall murals and a multitude of roaming cats. Fishing boats bob in the bay and an open-sided bus full of white-veiled Muslim school-girls shout and wave.
Our first destination is an old Arab fort which is now a public building housing a restaurant and art gallery. It is right across the street from the market-place we wandered in last night and dates back to the late 1600's.
We climbed steep stairs to the top of the walls which were topped by castellated battlements. It had that big, empty, bleak feeling that many old stone buildings seem to have but it had a good view of the town from up high.
I preferred looking at the paintings in the art studio within the main building. Two brightly dressed women lounged by a window-sill chatting and I asked their permission to take their picture because they looked so beautiful.
They leapt up and posed, standing up straight and stiff. I told them I loved their original pose even better and so they gracefully re-arranged themselves again and tried to pose candidly without giggling.
We met our tour guide this morning out in front of the hotel. He was a local man named Ali, as cheerful and chatty as a bird. a little hat perched on his head and he used his hands as he talked.
His voice had a soft and beautiful African accent that stretched the vowels to the limit. When he said 'water' it came out as oooo-otter. But to the amusement of all the folk from the U.K. amusement, he was very good at mimicking different British accents and had a crack at an Irish accent too.
"Top ah the morning!", he said to us. He'd heard it first on a foreign newscast and had to puzzle out the meaning for a while.
Ali walks us down our street to a well-known building, the house of Queen's Freddy Mercury, who was born in Zanzibar.
Then down the narrow streets to the nearby waterfront, past brightly-painted wall murals and a multitude of roaming cats. Fishing boats bob in the bay and an open-sided bus full of white-veiled Muslim school-girls shout and wave.
Our first destination is an old Arab fort which is now a public building housing a restaurant and art gallery. It is right across the street from the market-place we wandered in last night and dates back to the late 1600's.
We climbed steep stairs to the top of the walls which were topped by castellated battlements. It had that big, empty, bleak feeling that many old stone buildings seem to have but it had a good view of the town from up high.
I preferred looking at the paintings in the art studio within the main building. Two brightly dressed women lounged by a window-sill chatting and I asked their permission to take their picture because they looked so beautiful.
They leapt up and posed, standing up straight and stiff. I told them I loved their original pose even better and so they gracefully re-arranged themselves again and tried to pose candidly without giggling.
posted by Spider Girl | 5:30 PM
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