Market Forces

Night 2 was an improvement on night 1, but I was awoken by an unfortunate combination of back-ache (something to do with all the steep stairs?) and a very early Muslim call to prayer.

We started at the big Malindi fish market. I’ve been in fish markets before, but never anything on this vast scale. Zanzibar has a separate government ministry for the "blue economy", and you understand why when you see the amount of fish being landed and traded, twice daily, at Malindi. Photographically it’s a good location, with a lot of activity and interesting characters, both human and piscine. As you’re not either involved in or impeding the commercial activity there’s no great issue with taking photographs, although you do have to honour the wishes of anyone who indicates that they don’t want to be photographed.

After breakfast we hit another large market, an indoor one focused mainly on foodstuffs. The contrast couldn’t be greater. The spice stalls might be colourful, but the vendors are competing very aggressively for your attention and don’t easily take no for an answer. Other stall-holders are less obviously in line for your business, but many of them either say "no photo" or demand money. Given the relatively limited light as well, I tired very rapidly and beat a retreat, to find most of the rest of the group had done the same. We did have a pleasant wander through the streets back to the restaurant booked for lunch (another excellent meal, I had coconut lobster), but I didn’t get much in the way of images.

Later in the afternoon we wandered back down to the harbour, to find it much less manic than on Sunday, and with a couple of groups of lads doing dramatic jumps into the water. I was particularly taken by a group dressed in honour of the Cameroonian football team, one of whom was wearing a proper superhero outfit including cape. Great fun.

Toward sunset we wandered back to the supposed sunset location. The beach was busier, the riff-raff ban presumably lifted, but still no dhows. We baled early – let’s hope it works at Nungwi.