Our little Embraer soars light over a carpet of lamp posts. Outside the window, the sky turns as dark as Lake Victoria’s bottom and shortly after a breakfast is served in a red box, the Kenya Airways flight arrives at Jomo Kenyatta Airport squeezing through the dim morning twilight.

A famous Colombian soap opera dubbed in Swahili blazes through the speakers of a box TV in the long connections lounge where I check myself in for the flight to Dar es Salaam. An Indian couple borrow my guidebook and fiddle through its pages in honeymoon giggles. We board our cramped turboprop and the cabin reverberates as we accelerate through the wide runway in the Rift Valley.
Breakfast is served as we fly right next to Mount Kilimanjaro and coffee washes down as we fly over Mombasa to line up with the blue Indian Ocean.

Reefs form patches of turquoise and scatter through a sea of choppy waves. Underneath our wings, the Spice Island emerges like a mirage under the sun and once the cabin crew take their seats, we nose dive into Old Town. The doors are opened and a warm breeze refreshes the stale airplane air. I glance a horizon of palm trees and try to leave the aircraft but my request is denied for safety reasons. Tanned honeymooners fill the empty seats and we rocket up and down to the capital of Tanzania in no less than fifteen minutes.

At Julius Nyerere Airport, a fifty U.S. dollars note attached to a long arrival form ensures entrance into the Republic and once I retrieve my luggage, I am transferred to the Domestic Airport in a battered Grand Vitara.
Lights flicker amongst burned lightbulbs while I wait for the flights to be organised and the fees to be paid. I charge my mobile and change into flip-flops before two locals and I board a small Cessna Grand Caravan piloted by a blond South African.

‘Oh to fly in small aircraft. The last time I did it, my dad had kidnapped me from school to take me flying. It was a one-hour flight of bumps in which I clutched to either my seat or a sickness bag. Nevertheless, I never forget seeing the city from above, the countryside, the hills. We returned the same day at sunset and I saw the same city morphing into a cobweb of lights extended to the Amazonian mist before we landed. My brothers were jealous, I was the happiest.’

The door is closed and the navigation instruments vibrate with static. The tiny wheels roll down the main runway like a mosquito in a dinner table. We are lifted by a gust of wind and in front of me I can only see sky. We are flying over the port and turn right towards the narrow strait between continent and island. In fifteen minutes, we descend through bumps of rough air that rock my seat in nervous and rough giggling. I am back in Zanzibar three hours since I first landed here.

Upon arrival, I learn that the word ‘dalla-dalla’ (bus in Zanzibar) will take me anywhere and I cruise down to Stone Town on a long avenue lined with tall date trees. Sleep-deprived, the largest cluster of houses in the island looks dirty, cramped and uncomfortable. I dodge cars on streets of white sand and open sewage, and I am charged triple for a bottle of water. I retrieve cash from the ATM, walk towards a truck-made-bus and cram into a wooden bench that wraps around a floor packed with sat passengers.

Away from Stone Town, Zanzibar breathes green, white and blue. Green from the spices, white from the corals, blue from the ocean.

In Jambiani I find my reward and, stepping off the dalla-dalla, I walk barefoot through a long street of white sand, lined with houses made of coral mud. Children wearing pink abayahs play hide and seek under bougainville trees that caress a cloudless sky and after nearly a day of traveling from Kigali, I finally find my Zanzibarian wood bed for a long rest.

For the next three days, the hours elapse in a blissful monotony. In a ‘good morning’ greeting at the sound of Bob Marley, followed by pancakes slithered in Blue Band, Tanzanian coffee and fruit. The lunches come in triangular samosas -here called samusas– dipped in curry, and the afternoons are spent napping or reading under the shade of coconut trees until the tide is up and inviting, and the Indian Ocean caresses my sunburn skin with its gentle warm touch. At nights, the diesel engine goes, lights go off and I am treated to a Milky Way of flaunting and flamboyant stars.

On the fourth day, interaction is needed and I move my belongings to nearby Paje. Luxuriously equipped with two supermarkets and a hostel, Paje is where I find fellow foreigners indulging in the beauty of South Zanzibar on a shoestring. A sign at the entrance of the hostel reads ‘No shoes allowed’ and at my shack just like in every part of the complex, the floor seems to have been replaced by shifted white sand. 

I change into swim shorts and spot a shy German girl while walking by the reading shack. I run towards the long causeway to the high tide and jump in the water like a child doing cannonballs. A voice chants ‘I know you’ as I come out of the foamy waves and the two girls with thick sunglasses smile at the memories of our eventful night in Nairobi a couple of weeks back.

Shaking off the sand in the sandy bedroom, I meet my roommate: the German girl. Her hair is blonde and her blue eyes gaze gently from a delicate face on top of a delicately slim body. Awkwardly, I learn about her while we both stand arms crossed introducing each other. A pre-Med in Magdeburg, she has been volunteering for the summer in nearby Zambia, with Zanzibar being the last stop before returning to the German winter.

The girls from Nairobi, the German girl and I are joined by an Israeli couple and we are invited to passover with apples and honey in the hostel wooden lounge. Starved, we walk down the beach in pure darkness and find a bar of locals where we have chips with eggs and beers in the middle of tables empty with patrons but full with drunk men.

In Paje once again, hours merge into a whirlpool of naps adorned with walks and kayaking. Hours of relaxing under palm trees and flirting over white sand.

The girls leave for Zambia and the German girl and I decide to head to North Zanzibar. At Stone Town, stop for every possible route in the island, I roam through saffron-scented streets to find the only working ATM this side of the Indian Ocean, and chapattis in hand, we finally set course for Kiwengwa. The dalla-dalla drops us at Pwani Michangani and we walk for four miles under the scorching sun. We giggle and munch on mangoes, while the heat penetrates through both the afternoon and our friendship. At Baby Bush, we cuddle by the wide wooden balcony and fall asleep under a blanket of stars, sandwiched in between the Milky Way above and the wild Indian Ocean underneath us.

‘How many honeymoons can you have in life? I am on my second one.
Her head is resting over my bare chest and her breathing almost synchs with the waves crashing underneath the wooden balcony. The sun has risen over a vanilla horizon and the wind, gusty in the early morning brings a touch of cinnamon from Asia with it.’

In ‘Italian-speaking’ Kiwengwa, we indulge on Nutella pancakes for breakfast, and chips with eggs for lunch. We walk for hours on the white sand and kiss. We build sandcastles and nap over colourful throws. We steal pineapple slices from a nearby wedding and we dodge Masaai beach sellers shouting ‘Ciao Hakuna Matata!’ to us as we embrace. Most importantly, we live the Zanzibar people dream of, the Zanzibar of saffron-spiced magic.

As the clock ticks, I make the decision to return to Ireland and a deferral is sent to Coventry as I smile at the old computer in the sultry internet cafe. On our last night facing the Indian Ocean, we cuddle in harmony. The harmony only right decisions can bring. On to Stone Town, on to Germany, on to Ireland, on to home .