Observation
Out of Africa
The residential buildings of Cowasjee Dinshaw Adenwalla and Freddy Mercury still stand in Zanzibar
The Tembo Hotel in Zanzibar, where we stayed in August 2013, is the former home of the Cowasjee Dinshaw family which built the house in 1885. The Hotel owners have reinstated the family name over one of the arches on the entrance to the property. During the 1964 revolution, the house was gutted in a fire, but the new owners salvaged some artifacts from the original property and displayed them effectively in the entrance foyer. On the first floor they have attempted to re-create the family living room, with old style furniture and large paintings of Dinshaw and his wife. The reception staff seemed to know nothing about the previous occupants.
Rock icon Freddy Mercury (aka Farokh Bulsara) was born in Zanzibar. His former residence, Mercury House, is now Tembo Apartments, serviced flats operated by the Tembo Hotel. It has an art gallery on the ground floor. (‘Tembo’ in Swahili means elephant.)
Rock icon Freddy Mercury (aka Farokh Bulsara) was born in Zanzibar. His former residence, Mercury House, is now Tembo Apartments, serviced flats operated by the Tembo Hotel. It has an art gallery on the ground floor. (‘Tembo’ in Swahili means elephant.)
Mercury House and Dinshaw home archway
View from the terrace
We went to the tourist office to ask about the old agiary, but no one even knew what we were talking about. Considering the dilapidated condition of just about all buildings in Zanzibar, we would not be surprised if the old premises were in ruins.
Zanzibar revisited
Zanzibar is very poor. The government still goes by the moniker The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar. Some 90% of the population is Muslim and conservative. Their main town, Stone Town where we stayed, looks like a chawl in Bombay. The mainland Chinese have taken up all the major construction projects, airport, hotels, roads, telecoms, etc. I am sure they have underbid on contracts, and managed the environment. Other than Chinese investment, no one else seems to be there.
Zanzibar is very poor. The government still goes by the moniker The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar. Some 90% of the population is Muslim and conservative. Their main town, Stone Town where we stayed, looks like a chawl in Bombay. The mainland Chinese have taken up all the major construction projects, airport, hotels, roads, telecoms, etc. I am sure they have underbid on contracts, and managed the environment. Other than Chinese investment, no one else seems to be there.
Archway at entrance bearing the family name, Tembo Hotel; harmonium from their home and
recreated family drawing room of Cowasjee Dinshaw
The Dinshaws; Freddy Mercury (courtesy: Wikipedia);
The many beach resorts are populated mainly by Europeans who pay about Euro 1,000 (Rs 84,000) per night and go from airport to hotel and back to airport. It is an interesting place for one visit, but I would not go back. The safari to the Masai Mara and Serengeti sanctuaries was wonderful, quite an experience, but hard going on very rough dirt tracks! There are huge numbers of Gujarati travellers also on safari, all from India, and the hotels employ Indian cooks to prepare delicacies for them.
We also visited the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, which was later attacked by unidentified gunmen over four days in September 2013. Over 72 persons were killed and 200 wounded in the mass shootings. We had visited the same supermarket and all those shops, and also took the same ramp down to the basement car park. It was very eerie watching those sad events unfold on TV a month later.
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