Sometimes as a travel writer it is hardest to write about the place you live. However exotic it might have been when you arrived, when you call it home, the extraordinary starts to become mundane. Hard to believe, you might think, that somewhere as wonderfully mysterious sounding as Zanzibar could start to seem commonplace and everyday. Yet after a procession of months and then years, regularity gradually erodes novelty.
Shopping in a market packed with pyramids of fruits and vegetables in every colour, redolent of earthy cinnamon and intoxicating cloves, for lush, blowsy mangoes? Do it every week, and you might as well be going to your local supermarket or convenience store for all you notice your surroundings. Driving through a verdant green forest of Indian almond trees, peopled by spiky-haired, wide-eyed monkeys? That’s just the road we take to town every few days. After a while, you stop noticing the monkeys unless they are trying to commit hara-kari under your tyres. Swimming in the rolling turquoise waves of the Indian Ocean and paddling along the powdery white sand beaches dreamt of by so many brides-to-be as they slumber in their pre-marriage beds? Been there, done that, got the diving school and beach bar T-shirts.
Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, then at least the risk of taking your home for granted – wherever you live. But life is unpredictable, and has ways of jolting you out of your complacency when you least expect it.
For example, shopping for avocadoes in the market the other day, I asked a stallholder if his avocadoes were any good? He thought for a good minute as we stood in silence, both regarding his stock of some ten avocadoes. “No,” he concluded finally. “They are not any good.” I thanked him, and left the market, touched at his honesty.
Another day, I took my young daughter to the monkey forest (Jozani, visit it if you come to Zanzibar as well as the excellent new Kiwengwa-Pongwe Forest Reserve where shyer troops live). The wonder she showed, her enthusiasm about joining the monkeys as a permanent recruit – and the fact that one of the monkeys peed on my head – all contributed to waking me up again to this unworldly place in the midst of my daily and all too worldly traverses.
And this morning, I stood on the beach and looked out at the ocean, which rolls all the way from Indonesia without a break before reaching our shores. It made me realise, as we all do on occasion, how small I am, how big the world is, how much there is to explore, and above all how we must appreciate where we are in the here and now – our home and our sense of place.
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I had a good laugh over this one. I vividly remember, after being on safari in Tanzania for a week, pulling into the fifth national park and encountering a herd of elephants. My reaction? Oh, it’s just more elephants. A week earlier, my jaw was scraping the floor at the sight of them. A great post, reminding us to stay in the present moment and be grateful for everything.
Seeing new places through a child’s eyes is a surefire way to appreciate them. When traveling with my daughter she often marvels at sights I take for granted and I get more out of the experience by sharing it with her.
Barbara, glad we made you laugh.
Isn’t it funny, though, if you go back to Tanzania you will probably re-experience that jaw-dropping feeling briefly, then it will all go mundane again. Oh us strange human beings.
Ooh, Sharon, that is such a good point. I love children and their un-adulterated viewpoints. (And I choose that word very specifically, inferred pun intended!)