Letter from Zanzibar:The impact of Kenya's political unrest was felt in Zanzibar in recent weeks when petrol ran out. All motor fuel for this fragrant island, a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, is shipped by tanker from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. As the crisis deepened in Kenya, petrol shipments from Mombasa to Zanzibar dried up and a black market dominated by smugglers took over.
Kenya is the economic hub of east Africa. Nairobi, Kenya's capital, is the traditional tourist gateway to destinations such as Zanzibar. Nothing that hurts Kenya leaves Zanzibar unscathed. When European tour operators two weeks ago pulled out of Kenya en masse, hotel-keepers in Zanzibar began to feel the pinch.
Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete, who last week hosted a visit by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, has so far remained aloof from the strife that in less than a month has badly shaken world confidence in the stability of his powerful neighbour. Police in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's capital, have refused requests by Tanzania's opposition parties to demonstrate in support of Raila Odinga, the Kenyan presidential candidate whose questionable poll defeat last month lies at the root of Kenya's current unrest.
"To demonstrate against what has happened in Kenya would divide Kenyans," said Bernard Membe, Tanzania's minister for foreign affairs, supporting the demonstration ban.
Zanzibar's history is closely linked with the sea trade of the Persian Gulf. Slaves were still being traded from Zanzibar in 1911. Arab slavers, aided by Tanzanian chiefs and facilitated by the Sultan of Zanzibar, transported an estimated 600,000 men, women and children through Zanzibar to mainly Arabia in the 18th and 19th centuries.
An Anglican church now stands on the site of the Zanzibar slave market. The original "whipping post" has been incorporated into the high altar.
The Arab influence in this predominantly Muslim island is seen in Stone Town's minarets, in its doorways that evoke Marrakesh and in its dynamic, souk-like marketplace. Zanzibar's chief exports are of cloves and seaweed, to Singapore and the UAE.
Two hundred feet above sea level, near the centre of Zanzibar island, a red clay road curves between palms and banana trees, past schools and a disused tuberculosis hospital, to a privately-owned spice farm. Blue and white butterflies glide in the shade beneath the branches of mango trees. Silence is intense. The spices and flowers are planted in neat plots, divided by paths. The air is a jumble of scents whose identities are sometimes powerfully familiar. Cloves, ginger and cinnamon. Lemongrass and nutmeg. Cardamom. Peppercorn vines.
Meanwhile, in an island with high unemployment (officially at least 20 per cent) and no social service benefits of any kind, tourism alone lifts the lives and hopes of Zanzibar's more than one million people from endemic poverty.
Outside the 80km long reef that runs the length of Zanzibar's east coast, a naval gunship towers over the flitting shapes of dhows. The gunship is "to protect Zanzibar from her enemies", says Michael (25), a boatman from the fishing village of Matemwe. "Enemies from Kenya."
Each day at dawn or depending on the tide, the fishing fleet from Matemwe poles out along the shore to a gap in the reef. These small, pencil-like vessels measure no more than two feet abeam and have been carved in the main from logs. The smallest are manned by a single fisherman, the larger ones by up to a dozen. They will bring their catch home on the evening tide with the wind filling ragged sails. Octopus, crab and lobster will end up in the hotels on this side of the island.
As the sun climbs and the tide falls, hundreds of local women wade out into the salty marsh between Matemwe's shore and reef and work for the day in the 35-degree heat, planting and harvesting seaweed.
The government is urgently trying to increase hotel bed numbers and is reported to be considering forcing all beachside properties not owned by Tanzanians to be converted within two years into tourist facilities. Around Matemwe, where access is only by way of sand dunes, hotels are sprouting up, the most conspicuous under the construction management of the China Railway Jianchang Engineering Co Ltd.
Lloyd and Anita are in their late 20s and got married last June. After spending six months in the bush in Botswana, they've just arrived in Zanzibar to manage a hotel. Neither have been to Zanzibar before.
They have not heard about the US subprime housing crisis, the credit crunch or the plunge in world stock markets. Their long-term ambition is to save enough money to build a house in Maun, Botswana. "Seems like we have a bit of catching up to do on what's been going on," Lloyd says.