Adventure 41: The Spice of Life (August 2014)

Many of you will know, that I have just returned from a fortnight in Africa where I have been staying with one set of my in-laws, who are based in Kigali, Rwanda. Rwanda is genuinely the most remarkable country. Twenty years ago it suffered one of the most horrendous genocides of modern times, yet today, you would never guess, such is the tremendous spirit of this wonderful nation and to build itself anew. I have had the most fantastic time: visiting Akagera National Park where I saw baboons, monkeys, warthogs and even a rare elephant; gorilla trekking in the Volcanoes National Park with these most remarkable and human like creatures; relaxing by Lake Kivo on the Congolese border and generally exploring Kigali, its capital city where Brian and Elena (the in-laws) are based. I attach a couple of photos from this remarkable leg of my trip below for you to enjoy, but really, are all these things truly in the spirit of this blog? Is this blog not primarily about foraging (as well as real ale and supporting local home-sprung businesses primarily around Devon)? So whilst all these things are exciting and I hope to have a link to my journals in the next few weeks if you are interested in finding out more about my trip, the majority of this blog post is going to be about the wonderful spice farm we visited in Zanzibar. What I found out about the origins of many of our spices and how they look when being grown may surprise you.

Zanzibar. It is a real place. A big mysterious fusion of the Africa and the Middle East (it used to be the capital of Oman) filled with winding streets, bustling markets, children playing and on the air, the smell of spices. After wandering around the Old Stone Town, Levi and I perchanced to find The Palace Museum, an old sheikh's palace from the nineteenth century, of peeling grandeur, almost stuck in time. At the end of a rather resplendent tour, our guide made us an intriguing offer. He said that he was training young guides and that they had exams coming up the following week. He explained that though their explanations were exemplary they were not so good at answering questions off the cuff. For fifty dollars (including taxi fare and a tour around the Concubine's Palace thrown in for free) would we be willing to go on a Spice Tour? Well, it seemed too good an offer to miss, and so, we found ourselves suddenly in a taxi across the island to one of the spice farms. Our guide, a young man of around twenty or so, was indeed an excellent source of knowledge on the spices, for which the island is famous (though as the guide had mentioned, his question answering skills were a bit on the weak side e.g. Me: "what is the name of this spice farm, so I can write about it in my blog?" Guide: its called 'spice farm'). He was accompanied by a teenage boy who hoped to train as a guide one day himself who was very talented at making things out of palm leaves. I received a frog necklace, a bracelet and a handbag and Levi, a tie. 

We saw all kinds of spices including: pink cloves (I didn't know you could get pink ones and green ones and that different ones are harvested to make different things); vivid orange tumeric; sweet cinnamon (made from bark!) and an interesting plant called the 'Lipstick Tree' which has seeds, which when crushed, can be used to make masala red, bindis, and of course as the name suggests, lipstick. 

vanilla pods

tumeric

pepper corns

cloves

cadimon

nutmeg (which got me singing "I had a little nut tree" on repeat)

lipstick spice

Our guide demonstrating lip stick spice

cinnamon

There were also lots of fruit trees laden with sweet limes (the guide laughed at us, and said "Your faces are funny! You expected it to be sour!"); papaya; bananas; zanzibar apples (which don't taste or look like apples particularly so their name is rather perplexing); cocoa beans (you can suck the flesh around them and it has a rather sweet sour taste) and a rather mysterious thing called a Jack Fruit which tastes like banana and pineapple at the same time. The thing that got me most, was a small root which I was given which when I smelt it was tea-tree oil! Yes, that stuff you use to unblock your nose when you have a cold. And would you believe it, it is cinnamon root! Bet you didn't know that!

coffee

zanzibar apple

sweet lime

jack fruit

cocoa

cinnamon root

We also got to eat lots of coconuts thrown down to us by an old man who climbed agiley up a fifty foot tree all whilst singing the popular mzungu (white person) kiswahili song which goes: 

"jambo, jambo bwana, habari gani, nzuri sana, wageni, wageni bishwa, Zanzibar yetu, hakuna matata' which was released by Them Mushrooms in the 80s and translates as 'hello mister, how are you? i'm fine, visitors you are welcome, in Zanzibar there is no problem!

If this song is new to you, please find a link to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VWBND1ggF8

And I've been annoying Levi ever since by singing it. If you ever get to Zanzibar, do visit a spice farm, its truly fascinating. But for now, Kwaheri! Goodbye!