The Cave

I suppose this is at least marginally an allegory of a cave, although, per usual, it has none of the depth of Plato.  On our recent trip to Zanzibar we left Stone Town for a couple days and headed to the south part of the island, in the process driving past the turnoff for the resort where I stayed on my first visit to the island six years ago.  During our stay we visited three waganga, essentially Muslim shamans, of which I'll have much more to say. To see two of them we embarked on a bike tour, more on that later, which is one of the odder-themed bike tours one can imagine.  Along the way we stopped at the Mwanampambe Shrine and Archaeological Site, which is a cave that contains some of the earliest evidence of life on Zanzibar.  It also is a holy shrine, and we were fortunate to get a tour from Mr. Ali, the elder whose family looks after the cave, at least the spiritual side of the cave.  He asked us if we wanted the experience or if we wanted to pray, and of course we said we wanted both.  First of all this required us changing into long white robes, which was easier said than done when you're as big as I am.  Happily, they had a robe big enough for me, and soon as I was prepared to walk, barefoot, into the cave.  The pictures below don't do justice to the beauty of the cave, nor does the relative paucity of my words do justice to the experience itself.  Guided solely by the lights from our phones we made our way along the slick, uneven floor of the cave until we were around forty yards inside.  Suleyman, the nice young man who led us on the bike tour and arranged all three meetings with the waganga, told us that he had brought people to the cave several times but had never been inside, and he seemed ever so slightly nervous, which was doubtless for spiritual rather than physical reasons.  Tanzania itself is a mixture of Christian and Islam, but once you get out of Zanzibar itself, both Unguja and Pemba, the folks are almost entirely Muslim.  As we've discussed before, the Islam practiced in Zanzibar is a very syncretic version marked by a definite strain of African spiritualism.  Still, there is sometimes an uneasy balance between the two worlds.  In Islam we are told to believe in the Seen and the Unseen, but out on Zanzibar the Unseen is sometimes a bit too close for comfort.  Mr. Ali told us about the ceremonies performed in the cave, including initially speaking to the spirits of the cave and introducing us - we heard the tell-tale word mzungu, which is the Swahili word that Zanzibaris use when referring to folks of European descent; essentially, it means someone who roams around aimlessly, although busily.  At one point he lit incense and, after his own prayers, he asked us if we wanted to pray.  I knelt and, very quietly, I thought to myself, said the shahada in Arabic, but apparently it wasn't as quiet as I thought because the other folks in the cave exchanged very knowing, and pleased, looks.  At the very back of the cave Mr. Ali showed us a large bronze urn, where he carried out more elaborate rituals.  He said that at times the jinn of the cave would rise out of the urn in the form of a octopus or a giant snake, because if they appeared in their actual form (some sort of jinn-appropriate anthropomorphic image) the visitors would fine them too frightening.  Steve and I later opined that a floating octopus would would be scary enough for us.  And speaking of scary, as we were in the back of the cave we were circled by dozens of bats and all I could think of was how this would qualify as one of Dave Kelley's ultimate nightmares.  Overall, it was an extraordinary experience, although one, for the obvious reasons, we're not going to share with our students when we return in January.

The sign for the Mwanampambe Shrine and Archaeological Site, with the other side in Swahili, naturally enough, partially blocked by our bikes.  It would be an odd place to visit if you were not accompanied by a spiritual elder because you would miss out on an entire world, although, although the cave itself is beautiful.

The entrance to the cave.  You can see white cloth hanging from the ceiling.  On our return trip, in addition to offerings, we're supposed to bring white cloth to include as an offering.

Mr. Ali, the spiritual elder of the family that serves the cave.  He was a very nice man, who, unfortunately, also took a spectacular fall in the back of the cave (something I was certain I would do) and we were certain for a minute or so that we'd managed to kill him.  However, he bounced straight up and was fine.

Steve with the posh camera that the college loaned him, and which managed to, time after time, not actually take the pictures that he snapped.  Still, he looks incredibly happy.

It's not much of a picture, but you can get a glimpse of the bats that circled us during the experience.

Lazarus never looked so old or corpse-like.  Yours truly emerging from the cave.  It was an absolutely amazing experience.