Jorzani Forest and Sea Turtle Sanctuary

Jorzani Forest became a national park in just 2004.  It is 50 km square of mangrove, coral and swamp.  It is below sea level so it is always very green and lush with lots of ferns year round.  It was really cool!  My favorite thing was the Zanzibar Red Colubus Monkies.  They live only in Zanzibar and are almost extinct with just about 2350 left in the wild.  They seem very tame though and very used to people.  One came up to me and put his little arms around my leg!  The monkies travel in troops of 30 to 50 with one to four dominant males in each group. In 1990 researchers sent about 20 red colobus monkies to the island of Pemba to see if they could start a colony, but now there are only 6 left there.  They eat leaves and unripe fruit because they can not digest sugars from ripe fruit.  They have 4 fingers on their hands and 5 toes on their feet.  I also saw a troop of Sykes monkies that were very blue, unlike the ones that I saw in Kakamega Forest in Kenya.

While at Jorzani we also went on a boardwalk through the mangroves.  I learned that the water in the mangroves is tidal, so that the high tide water come right up to the boadwalk bridge.  The mangrove trees have their roots raised out of the ground which makes them look like they can walk at low tide!  The trees are all protected in the Jorzani Forest, so they can not be cut down even though it is a strong wood and good for building.

After the forest, I visited a Sea Turtle Sanctuary where there were green sea turtles that had been rescued  from fishermen; they would have been used for turtle soup.  The sanctuary keep the turtles for one year before they return them to the wild.  I fed them with spinach by throwing it into the water.  Did you know that sea turtles can only eat in the water and that they shoot the water out of their noses?  Turtles can live for more than 100 years, and one of them at the sanctuary seemed really big, although he was only about 20 years old.

Kizimkazi Beach Walk

Walking alonmg Kizimkazi beah at low tide was very exciting because we saw lots of interesting things like coral, sea urchins, star fish and masses of jelly like material shaped like brains.  We saw three types of starfish: blue ones, red ones with sharp points, and ones that squirmed around in my hand with bodies like brains.  We even saw a samll octopus hiding under a rock but, sadly, we were unable to catch him to pick him up.  I am gald that I was wearing my water shoes because at times the sand was sticky like clay.  They also protected me from the sharp coral stone and the thousands of sea urchins.

Here are some of the pictures that we took during our walk along the beach.

Zanzibar Slave Market.

Srone town in Zanzibar was home to the last remaining slave market in East Africa.  It is now a museum, but as you walk into the small, dank slave chambers, you can imagine how horrible it must have been for the 75 adults plus children to be kept there.  It had a dug out parthway in the middle that would have been the toilet, and it would be washed away in high tide as the current swept into the chamber.  Many slaves died of stravation or suffication.  If they did survive, they were sold in the market place above.  Slaves would have been tied to the whipping tree and whipped to see if they cried out.  The longer they lasted without crying, the more valuable they were - and the more likey that they would be sold and not have to return to the gruesome slave chambers.

The slaves would have been captured from all over East Africa, except Zanzibar, and sold to countries in the Indian Ocean.  When explorer Dr David Livingstone visited Zanzibar, he was horrified by the salve markets, and returned to England to get support to stop the slave trade.  It took 9 years to convince the Sultan of Zanzibar to abolish the slave market in 1873, but sadly Livingstone died just 1 month before the agreement.  After the end of the market, an Anglican Cathedral was built on the exact spot where the market had stood, and the whipping tree post became the alter - a gruesome reminder of days gone by.  There is also a crucifix hanging in the cathedral which is made of wood from a tree in Zimbabwe, under which Livingstone's heart was buried.