#redmonkeylodge

[nvlpgrl]

Zanzibar, February 2016

[davecornthwaite]

Zanzibar Life

  The man in a royal blue long sleeved football shirt pause, the number on his back half worn away by time. His legs are split at 90 degrees beside his wheelbarrow, into which he's been packing the mounds of seaweed that washed up onto the beach during the early morning tide.

He straightens up and looks left, then right, and then up at the skies from where the rain has begun to gently fall. Sunny and clear just ten minutes earlier, a light grey has replaced the sharp colour of usual. The man shrugs and continues his work, which has left a clear rectangle of sand surrounded by seaweed. It'll make a perfect pitch, later.

Only two kids kick a football around, although soon there will be a hundred or more. The smaller children, not yet strong or quick enough to compete, enjoy a ready-made sea saw in the form of a redundant dhow and outriggers. Others sprint up and down, deftly keeping a bicycle wheel rolling with the odd whack of a hand.

Small, half-domesticated cats stroll happily through the grounds of the lodge, occasionally casting a glance into the trees to trace the buzzing of a fly or, more likely, the rustling of a red colobus monkey. Another cat, not interested in the antics of his primate neighbours, has eyes fixed on two soldier ants which scuttle around beneath its nose. They're each a full inch long, yet the aimless pattern of their trail decreases their menace.

My world, only last week soundtracked by the sirens and taxi horns and occassional arguments of a cold London, now enjoys the brief patter of rain on the thatch and the cheeping of baby birds in their hidey hole, a tinkle from the kitchen and happy, rhythmic chatter from the clusters of immaculately dressed women sprawled around the edges of the beach.

Gladly, one sound hasn't changed. The thuds beside me signal the arrival of coffee. Good morning, Zanzibar.