Coconut palms, mango trees, citrus fruits, rice and spice and fish. Turmeric, vanilla beans, hot chilies, black pepper, and cinnamon curls…
Zanzibar cuisine.
When we arrived on the island, a spice tour and a cooking lesson were my two highest hopes. Rather than find a touristy cooking lesson in Stone Town, I waited to look for a teacher until we left the city and settled into our spot an hour east, on the beach near the little town of Bwejuu. I’d read about a project in a neighboring village where local women taught cooking lessons as part of a grass-roots community development project, but as it turned out, I didn’t even have to look that far to find exactly what, or rather who, I was hoping for.
Removed by sea and time from the hazy city of Dar es Salaam (a gritty place on mainland Tanzania, ironically bearing the Swahili name Haven of Peace), a woman named Peace sits inside a woven-palm-walled hut on the white sands, selling her wares, saving her earnings, and offering kindness to strangers like me. Continue Reading…
