I met a new ocean, and she sang to me

Greetings from the Spice Island, Zanzibar!

Upon arrival yesterday, I sank my toes into the Indian Ocean for the first time. It feels different, smells different, and the colors exceed the vividness of pictures. I am staying in Paje, on the southeastern shore of the island, and there is a strong offshore wind that keeps kite surfers, parasailers, and outriggers constantly busy. There is a long reef breaker line offshore, and when the wind was calm early this morning, you could hear the singing roar of the waves breaking over it. This place is somehow both tranquil and yielding unrepressed energy.

My hotel, Paje Beach Apartments.

While my location is quite far from some of the primary tourist spots on Zanzibar - I am an hour’s drive from Stone Town, the spice farms, and Freddie Mercury’s birthplace - I unknowingly chose a hotel just a 5-minute beach walk from the primary reason I came to this island: to meet the women seaweed farmers, and their operation, the Mwani Zanzibar Mamas. Their seaweed farming is done just a few steps from my hotel’s beach, and it’s possible that I saw one of them farming this morning on my run. I have an appointment to meet with them on Wednesday morning for a tour of their facility and an interview. I cannot wait for this!

Early morning, possibly one of the Mwani Mama’s harvesting seaweed? Possibly not.

In my other time here, I plan to see how women are otherwise engaged with the sea, and do quite a bit of sea engagement myself. This morning I hit it off with a SCUBA dive right away. The PADI dive shop associated with this hotel is right next to my room, so another bit of logistical luck. I met both divemasters who would be going out on today’s dive, Ben and Arthur, as well as the other four divers: a young couple from the Netherlands, and a Norwegian father with his 11-year old son who was just learning to dive. Of course, I thought of my Jack, and how much I’d love to help him learn to SCUBA dive one day if he should want to.

Going into this, I knew the diving in Zanzibar would be beautiful. I had read about it and seen some pictures. But when you see pictures or watch documentaries, part of you expects there to be some slight exaggeration. Filters, enhancements, etc. Professional filmography makes a normal scene look its most extraordinary. Well, my friends, I am in no way/shape/form a professional anything with a camera. I have an excellent GoPro with a red filter, as advised for diving to temper the disappearance of red from the water column with depth. That is all.

And what I saw, through my own eyes before through the GoPro, was absolutely stunning.

I can’t believe I took this picture, either.

The water was a very comfortable 26 degrees C, clear up to about 20 meters, and the bottom was covered with some of the most stunning diversity of living things I have ever seen. Soft corals, hard corals, spherical Caulerpa green algae, dazzling fish that you’ve seen in Disney movies, nudibranchs, giant clams, and….my favorite part…a peacock mantis shrimp!! One of my favorite animals of all time. If you don’t know about the peacock mantis shrimp, then allow one of my favorite comic artists to introduce you; you’ll be glad you did. In all honesty, I kind of wanted the mantis shrimp to punch me and break my finger. It would be a tremendous honor. Alas, it chose peace, not violence.

Some of the incredible scenery from the dive. You can see the mantis shrimp in the center of the picture!

We drift dove for about 40 minutes before doing the same at a second dive site, and I was utterly mesmerized the entire time. I have been diving in the cold Pacific, the warm Pacific, the Caribbean, and yet this took my breath away (ok bad choice of words when talking SCUBA). I will be doing three more dive excursions during my time here and will most assuredly be posting more about those findings. If you want to see more pictures and videos from the dive (including my encounter with the mantis shrimp), check out my Instagram page.

The pace of my days is likely to be a little more relaxed here, which fits the Swahili mantra of “pole pole!”, meaning “slow slow!”. I shall endeavor to embrace this.

A jellyfish on the early morning beach.