Zanzibar diary - I

First published in daily Greater Kashmir , 16 Aug, 2009

Zanzibar diary - I

Arjimand Hussain Talib

In the deep blue seas of the Indian Ocean, there is an island called Pemba. The island, popularly known as 'Al Jazeera Al Khadra' (in Arabic, meaning the green island) lies between Tanzania and the Arabian Peninsula. The population of the place is a mix of Arab and the original Waswahili inhabitants of the island. It is part of the historic Zanzibar archipelago, another island, which for many centuries has acted as a launching pad for the Arab and western trade and colonial expeditions in this region. Together, they are known as Spice Islands, since Arabs started spice cultivation here.

Last week, my study of global warming took me to this wonderland land. This island is part of the semi autonomous region of Zanzibar, but technically a part of Tanzania. Pemba sends representatives to the parliament at Zanzibar.

The easiest access to the island is from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. It is a 50 by 28 kms island, and has a small air strip. Only small airplanes operate to and from the island, though the sea travel is also a possibility. I, along with a colleague, flew from Dar es Salaam in a tiny Cessna airplane on a windy and cloudy afternoon. It was something of a roller coaster ride over vast seas of the Indian Ocean before we finally landed in Pemba. The island from a distance looks a spectacle of virgin greenery.

As one steps out of the airport building, the only thing one could notice outside is a mosque just opposite the road. There is nothing else. No buildings, no shops, fewer people. It is just exotic greenery all around.

A drive to the town centre, called Chake Chake, is breath taking. One rarely sees the kind of greenery like Pemba has. Variety of fruit trees, like banana, papaya, mango, orange, coconut, etc. are part of the green landscape. Pemba is a very fertile place. Besides being one of the largest producers of clove in the world, the inhabitants of the island grow rice, cassava and red beans, called maharagwe in Kiswahili.

Pemba has a population of over 362,000 of whom 98 per cent are Muslim. In previous years, the island is said to have visitors very rarely, mainly due to its inaccessibility and a reputation for political violence. It is also widely known as a centre for traditional medicine. There is a quite large Arab community on the island who emigrated from Oman many centuries back.

Pemba’s inhabitants are deeply religious. All Muslim women put on Islamic ‘abayya’ and cover their faces, some completely. Men wear the traditional Arab dress. Almost after every 200 meters in towns and villages one comes across a mosque. In the markets, one can only hear Quranic recitation being played through public speakers. And when there is a call for prayer from the mosque, a big majority of the people heeds the call. Markets turn deserted.

In the town centre, Chake-Chake, one can find the Mkama Ndume ruins at Pujini village. This fortification is the only known early fortification on the whole coast of East Africa; dated to the fifteenth century.

Pemba is one of those islands which remain at a high risk because of rising sea levels as a result of global warming. We visited many villages along its coast to understand the impact of the rising sea levels.

In the coastal village of Micheweni, large swathes of agricultural land would regularly swell with sea water now on high tide days. As sea waters bring salt content with it, the land, even up to two kilometres from the coast, has become largely uncultivable. Earlier they used to cultivate paddy here.

I asked a farmer, Omar Ali, who was busy raising an earth bund to prevent sea water from coming into his field, if sea water did not reach their field earlier. He told me that would never happen in the past. Waters did rise in the past but they did not come this far. Waters do ebb too once high tide time is over, but the fact is that waters never came so deep onto the land.

The farmers whose land has been affected have been offered land for cultivation by other wealthy land holders in higher up areas. Such is the community brotherhood; the owners will not charge these farmers anything. But there would be no ownership transfer. It is just an act out of compassion.

Although the intruding sea waters offer an opportunity for producing salt, the local people lack in the necessary skills and tools to make that possible. They say they had tried to harvest salt, but it met little success. As part of the communities’ efforts to prevent sea water to intrude deep into their lands, farmers are today trying to raise earth bunds. It is a herculean task for them, as they do this job for themselves. Moreover, there is no guarantee that such a measure will succeed.

Some local government departments encourage cultivation of mangroves as a protection to prevent ferocious ebbing sea waters sucking out fertile soils from the land. In fact farmers have grown mangroves. This measure too is a piecemeal effort. For now, no one has a real cost-effective and practical solution to the problem of rising seas. The only option for now seems withdrawal. People are vacating their lands to go to higher planes of the island. But the problem with the Pemba is that the land is very scarce here. Its population growth has put intense pressure on the land.

In other coastal areas we saw coconut and other trees close to the seas dying out, the reason being increasing salination of the soil due to intruding waters. We saw swathes of land which had a tree cover losing that fast.

Pemba is surely one of the most unspoilt places on the planet, yet it is threatened by global warming. As I was writing these lines we were about to begin our journey to the bigger Zanzibar island, another very historical place. Zanzibar Island is special to Muslims: it is the place where the Arabs built the first mosque outside the Arab land in the southern hemisphere after the revelation of the Quran.

Feedback at: Arjimand@greaterkashmir.com