Searching for the Past in Stone Town

Dec 17, 2010

On the hunt for our friend Richard Hann's four childhood homes in Stone Town, Zanzibar. Richard lived here as a child when his father was a British civil servant responsible for Education. In Oman the position would be Minister of Education. His mother worked in the Beit al-Ajaib (house of wonders) palace, which was the government headquarters. Richard used wikimapia to mark his old residences including his favorite right on the sea coast. We studied the maps on the hotel computer and then noted as best we could the houses on our tourist map.

Richard's last two houses were behind the High Court which is a building built by John Sinclair. Sinclair built many of the buildings in Stone Town and used a lot of Moorish features such as domes and arches. The High Court has the characteristic dome, clock and Moorish arches and was easy to find as it was just down the street. We managed to find his 3rd house to the right of the court right away as it had the right look - that being big veranda's to let in the sea breezes. To our emailed picture Richard responded, "This is the house !!!!!............not the one by the sea obviously....we had no A/C in those days so the verandas etc were open...my bedroom upstairs............ fantastic. .....built well it seems." His favorite house was right nearby on the sea. There were 3 abodes there in various states of disrepair. In Richard's front lawn is a big phone tower and perhaps that is why the house was left to run down. The second house over we could not get to as it's front yard had been turned into the Zantel phone customer service center and you could not get to the house. The last building in the row was St. Joseph's school. In talking to a phone company customer and one of teachers, perhaps the school had bought the house next door.

In moving on to find his first house on Vulga Road, we were looking for an apartment building and again had a general location and so were hunting something with balconies. We got confirmation from Richard a day later that yes that was the apartment block. In looking for house 551 near the Zanzibar Hotel we found the Hotel but all the houses had their numbers out of sync so we will keep looking for this one.

Later in the afternoon after a swim in the hotel pool we went out to see the Beit al-Ajaib (house of wonders) palace. In walking down Kenyata street we saw a old photo store and decided to go in and see what old pictures he had. The shop keeper, of Indian descent, said his father started the business in the 1930s. We asked him questions on the Zanzibar Hotel and its original location and the houses around it.

We thoroughly enjoyed Beit al-Ajaib as the museum displays are informative and it was interesting to see the beautiful carvings on the massive doors inside of which there were four on each floor. The top floor's verandas had lovely view from all sides. These had obviously been executive offices in their last use. We even found a old massive safe in one room that had carved walls painted white.