…simply withdraw money

Zanzibar is almost like travelling the world 100 years ago. I let the sound of the sea outside my beach hut beat up my tinnitus and surrender to the circumstances. There is very little of that, in every respect. I’ve been completely offline for three days, as has the wind. The time needs to be utilised. I hire a scooter.

The issue of a local driving licence, prepared in blank thanks to a bribe, is completed with the speed of a drop of heavy fuel oil falling from the tip of my nose. After two and a half hours I set off. The arse end of the world is just 15 kilometres beyond Paje. Deepest central African backwoods.

This is exactly where the engine of scooter one dies. Presumably from poison petrol, a local speciality served from plastic bottles: petrol diluted with water. Every cent counts in the arse end of the world. I send the carrier pigeon from the luggage department back to the hire company. It arrives a good hour later. Pushing an automatic scooter with one foot from the other scooter is not very easy, so we stop a beer lorry and load the scooter. The next scooter runs reliably. High noon. The sun is burning high, just above the equator. I don’t need to buy any more fags today. After just an hour I have red hands despite wearing SPF50.

The road leads to deserted South Zanzibar. The owners of the sparse tourist infrastructure all have an extreme tendency. You drive 10 kilometres into the bush on some dust track and suddenly there’s a resort in the middle of nowhere. The arse end of the world really is everywhere here and, as you would expect, it is a very quiet place by nature, with the exception of a few diarrhoeas. But that’s not enough for the developers. They build behind the arse end of the world, because that’s the only way to sell poor service and simple food at outrageously high prices due to increased delivery costs. South Zanzibar really is the most boring and miserable part of the world, right behind the Brazilian pampas of Ceará.

I need money. There are only ATMs in the capital Stonetown, a good 80 kilometres from Paje. At 35 degrees, I struggle through rush hour over endless dusty construction sites, through the exhaust soot of ancient lorries, over stinking markets and the endless sad suburban gloom of Stonetown, until I finally arrive at the first banks after a good three hours’ drive. Bank one eats my card and doesn’t give it back for a while. Bank two is broken, but the friendly soldier with the AK-47 shows me the way to bank three. Bank three is empty, but at least it gives me a pleasant ten minutes in a 50-degree glass porch until I’m reported. I shout. Nobody knows bank four, bank five at the airport has never really given anyone any money.

On the way to bank six in the extremely winding centre of Stonetown, one of the numerous potholes in one of the two to three and a half lane roundabouts gives me a flat tyre. Fortunately, I notice it right in front of a tyre shop. My hero mends the rear tyre in no time at all for 90 cents and is as happy as Gargamel with a Smurf on a spit when I hand him five dollars.

After three attempts, the Barclays Bank in the centre at least hands over 400 euros, in five batches of five dollars each. I’m delighted, because this means that for my remaining three weeks on Zanzibar I’ll only have to eat dust for another 160 kilometres instead of getting on the scooter’s nerves with tourist destinations. After eight hours on the road, I fall into bed in the evening, fall asleep and wake up shortly afterwards to the singing of the bedbug choir in the next power cut of a thunderstorm: “Don’t hesitate, don’t deliberate – it could always be worse.”

So I don’t despair. And it gets worse. The next day, a downpour accompanies me over 160 kilometres to Stonetown and back. From 20 cm water depth the scooter becomes a jet ski, from 30 km/h you are Ghost Rider. One and a half hours of mud fountains from enemy lorries later, the second bank finally gives me enough money for the rest of my days on Zanzibar. Rain protection for my rucksack and myself was absolutely worthless. Everything is soaking wet, including the money.

Yesterday’s thunderstorm caused running water and electricity to fail today, and the internet remains completely offline everywhere. In the evening, the shower works again, at least up to knee height, at 10 ml/s. Travelling is no fun at all right now. The only good thing is the grin on my face at the stories that come out of it. But I can do that too.