No “pole pole”! I have to see a lady about a sponge farm.

The sun was out all day today! As was the wind. I was excited to start the day with a tour of the Mwani Zanzibar Mama’s facility here in Paje, and it did not disappoint. Well, almost.

The group of us tourists included me, a family from Belgium, and a woman from New Zealand with her partner, a local Maasai. Our guide was a friendly gentleman who first took us out into the tide to the seaweed farm itself, where three of the “mamas” were busy at work, mostly “weeding” away a parasitic green algae growth from the cultivated algae. The farm consists of wooden (or now, ideally, recycled plastic that can last much longer than the wood) stakes in the sand with spans of twine between them stretching several meters in length and forming long rows. The seaweed they grow and harvest is of four to five different varieties, all edible and mostly cultivated for pharmaceutical use, but also cosmetics and skincare products.

Some of the types of seaweed commonly grown on the Zanzibar seaweed farms, Cottonii and Spinosum.

He explained that farming seaweed had not been very lucrative for years, until it began to be used as an alternative to cloves in the 1970s and gained international demand for its many other uses in the 1980s. Prior to this, men weren’t interested or able to do such work for little pay, whereas women found it to be a good way to make their own money and gain some financial independence, and were able to have their children with them while doing the work. Today, it is a women-dominated industry, and the third highest generating industry in Zanzibar after tourism and spices. The biggest threats to the industry: climate change (of course), and storms. It takes about three months for a 1-inch “baby seaweed” to grow to a large bush full that he called “Bob Marley hair” (seaweed grows astonishingly fast that way), but a single large storm can obliterate entire farms like this, and the mamas simply set up a new one and start over each time. Brutal, resiliant.

One of the Mwani Mama’s, hard at work in the seaweed farm off of Paje Beach.

After our exploration of the farm, we got to see what next happens to harvested seaweed. It is first dried and then ground up before being used in making a variety of products on site, or shipped internationally (primarily to Japan and China, he said). We observed the tools used for grinding - simple, hand tools made of stone - and the factory room where soap is made. A couple more mamas were hard at work cutting large slabs of soap and shaping it into bars, and wrapping it in banana leaves.

Our guide told us that in the past, women were paid very little for their work and were unable to attain full-time employment status because of domestic and child care demands. Tanzanian religious and cultural gender roles are still very divided, but protections for women workers started going into place in the late 1990s and were further refined in the early 2000s. Now, women are guaranteed protection from gender-based discrimination in both part-time and full-time employment, have break rights for nursing mothers, and are entitled to three months of paid maternity leave.

(A little louder for the United States in the back.)

We sampled the soap, and it smells amazing. Different scents, of course - clove, ylang ylang, rose, lime, coffee, and lemongrass. Smooth on the skin and made from the sea. I am bringing many of these little bars back with me.

When our tour came to an end, I asked our guide if any of the Mamas spoke any English, or if he or anyone else at the facility would be willing to translate Swahili for a few minutes so that I could ask them a few questions. I explained the nature of my project and my intentions for it, and that I would be grateful for any time at all. He politely declined, saying that none of them speak any English and that he and the other staff are too busy with other tour groups or work.

Of course, I understood. They have a business to run; they don’t have time for some white lady who has all the markings of an “Eat Pray Love” excursion to pester them with what would probably sound to them like annoying lines of entirely irrelevant questions. A bummer, but c’est la vie. I was grateful to be able to see them do their work and to learn about the process.

Some of the soap making materials at the Mwani facility.

The Mwani facility store front. I ended up buying enough soap to possibly cost me a heavy checked baggage fee later. Worth it.

Back at my hotel, I sat by the beach and felt this nagging little thing in the back of my mind.

I am here to learn and write a story, I thought. I need to investigate harder, I thought. That’s what good journalists do, I thought.

I remembered another BBC article I had read months ago about women sponge farmers on Zanzibar and realized I hadn’t found a way to find them. The article gave names, but there was no real way to contact them that I could find. But now, I at least knew where these sponge farmers were relative to where I was. That’s something! Jambiani Beach, only 5 miles south of where I am staying.

I had no other information at all. But it was also only noon, and I had no other plans today. I could get a taxi down there, but I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, or really where, specifically, I was going. I just knew I was looking for a sponge farm, and a woman named Rajabu was involved. So best thing to do: I’d walk the beach. I put on a lot of sunscreen, packed my notebook, water, snacks, my GoPro, some village-appropriate clothing, should I need it (Islam is the dominant religion here and women are expected to wear clothes that cover the belly and shoulders, and down to the knee, when not on the beach), donned my signature “Sinatra hat” as my mom calls it, and off I went.

You should know that the beaches of Zanzibar are covered with tourists, and therefore covered with locals selling goods to tourists. This mostly includes watersport activities (on my long walk, I dodged a LOT of kite surfing lessons, some looked pretty dire), as well as Maasai looking to offer single women, in particular, security services or sell jewelry or other trinkets. They reach out for a fist bump and say, “Hey! Friend! Jambo! How are you doing?” I would nod, say “Jambo, all good, asante sana,” and keep going. I was walking quite fast, as I typically do, and they’d often yell out “pole pole lady!” for me to “slow down!”. But I was on a mission. I had a sponge farm to find.

“No, pole pole! Hakuna matata!”

Jambiani Beach.

This walk began to take a turn in my own mind.

What the hell was I doing? I had no idea where I was going. I don’t speak Swahili. I’m going on a 10-mile round-trip walk based on a 2-year-old article written by a real journalist, which I am not. What am I bringing to this? Even if I find these sponge-farming women, why would they talk to me? Because I’m also a mother? A divorced single mother, at that? Because I am a diver and marine biologist and love the ocean? Do any of these metrics mean we truly share anything meaningful in common? I live an entire world away, and am here funded by my school to uncover a throughline of aquatic feminism that may only exist in my overeducated little head, that privilege and luck have allowed the bandwidth to consider.

As I continued, I asked myself: What exactly is this voice? Was this my impostor syndrome rearing its ugly head as it periodically does? Was this the predictable discomfort of being in a radically new culture, traveling alone at that? A combination?

When I reached Jambiani Beach, I kept a lookout for what might be a sponge farm setup in the waters offshore. There were quite a few outrigger boats, but the tide was inbound and nearly high, which made finding any aquatic farm challenging. I continued walking, feeling like I might know something relevant when I see it. Buildings on the beach were resort after resort, restaurants intermixed, and I knew I should stop soon and ask someone at a hotel front desk or restaurant if they knew about any sponge-farming women nearby. But my legs were in such a rhythm, they kept going.

Eventually, I had to stop. I assumed it might take me a couple of tries before finding someone who knew what I was asking about; it was a long beach. I picked a restaurant and went in, and asked the host if he happened to knew about the sponge farming women. He nodded! He said I needed to go to Okala’s Restaurant...it was only 100m away, just off the beach.

I couldn’t believe the serendipity of my stopping point.

A small thatched hut, Okala himself was in the restaurant, and greeted me with a big high-five. I explained who I was, why I was there, and thanked him for the warm welcome despite my not being a restaurant patron. To my surprise, he quickly got out his phone and began to text some of the “sponge women”, who were apparently all out on the water. He explained that he is himself an ecotourism educator, currently hosting an intern from Turkey, and brings students from all over the world to learn new aquaculture methods, alongside the women who farm sponges and seaweed on Zanzibar (his exact relationship to them I have not yet determined).

Basically, he is the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership of Zanzibar.

Turns out that the sponge women would not be back for a while, so he took my number and told me he would text me to set up a time in the next couple of days when they can meet. We chatted a little bit more about ocean sustainability, students, and my travels on this journey thus far. Okala gave me a flyer for his program and encouraged me to one day bring my students. Of course, I would love to. Now I would just return to my hotel and hope to hear back from him before I leave the island.

Okala’s ecotourism program on Zanzibar.

I walked back to the beach, took a big drink of water, and set out to trek back to “my” beach, Paje. My phone buzzed a few minutes later, Okala telling me that the sponge women are happy to meet with me tomorrow, I pick the time.

I drove my fist high into the air. I got myself an interview with the sponge women.

Is this how you do journalism? You go walking miles and miles with no idea what you’re doing, and you just ask questions until you find exactly what you need?

Is this the beginning of the road from vulnerable to venerable?

Or am I just a lucky idiot?