Like every beach town I have visited in East Africa, Zanzibar's Stone Town is full of beach boys. Here they are more properly called papasi, which is Swahili for "tick" -- an apt name, as their method is to latch and hold on to any tourist they can. The papasi are essentially touts, both of good and services. Along the main roads, you'll find innumerable young men standing around, waiting for a hapless mzungu to pass by. Then they pounce, holding out a plate bearing cashews or cds or sunglasses, or waving t-shirts or paintings like a bullfighter might wave his cape. Others will walk along with you for some time and try to fast-talk you into going on a tour with them: a city tour or spice tour or a trip to a nearby island. When you turn onto the market street where tourist wares are sold, everyone tries to entice you into their own shop, and wants to show you around town.

The papasi are generally friendly, polite and even fun to talk to, though it's not recommended to accept tours from them as some are less than savory characters. They're mostly in their twenties and thirties, but once in awhile you'll bump into one considerably older or younger. One in particular sticks out in my mind. A few of the papasi are now familiar to us, as we keep passing them on the street while walking around the neighbourhood. One of these is a young guy -- I'd say he's about fifteen or sixteen. He has a real baby face and looks like he still has a growth spurt in him, and like many of the beach boys, he's always wearing the same clothes. On the first day we were here, he discovered that I not only know the responses to the standard Swahili greetings, but also to the slang greetings. Actually, a couple of beach boys have picked up on this, now that I've walked past them a good dozen times and responded to their chorus of called greetings. But this boy in particular just gets me because he seems so genuinely delighted and amused each time he sees me. And he's so young. Looking at him, one can easily imagine the gaggle of small boys playing on the beach and in the alleyways growing up to become papasi. And while it may be a way of making money, I just think it's such a shame to spend all that energy and talent pandering to tourists for a couple of bucks a day.

Though the backbone of Zanzibar's economy is really agriculture (mostly spices and fruits) and fishing, some of the island's politicians own fancy hotels and resorts, or have deals with those who build them on government land, and so it is in their own interest to promote tourism to the island. However, as Kenya discovered this year, and regions that have experienced natural disasters, terrorism or political instability know, tourism is not the most reliable industry. It is also frequently practiced unsustainably, as tourists often use up resources which are scarce to residents (like water, for example).

Still, I can't deny that we are tourists here, though we can try to lessen the negative impact of our presence. Yesterday we did a spice tour with a local tour company which is also an NGO, supporting sustainable economic development and environmental education in Zanzibar. Actually, we came upon them accidentally, so it was quite a stroke of luck. The spice tour was really interesting -- we drove to a local plantation and sampled the different fruits grown there (which included jackfruit and custard apple in addition to the standard tropical fruits -- delicious!). Then we walked around and saw the various trees and bushes which grow spices, smelling and sometimes tasting them in their fresh, unprocessed forms along the way. There we found pepper, vanilla, cloves, cardamon, lemon grass, ginger and turmeric, among others. There was even a plant called the "lipstick plant", which bore a red, hairy sort of pod that looked like a litchi. It was split open and the seeds ground up and then unceremoniously spread over my lips, producing a bright shade of coral which looked ridiculous on me! But it was amazingly like lipstick. We also drank coconut water from young coconuts just cut from the tree. It was fantastic. Following the tour, we went to a local woman's house for a wonderful lunch of pilau, matoke (green bananas), fried fish and stewed cassava leaves.

Today is our last day in Stone Town. We've explored the maze of alleyways further, happening upon little squares where red and blue banners are hung and old men in kofia hats are sitting taking tea, many small fruit and fabric shops, and huge spiderwebs with giant, terrifying black spiders hanging in the centre. Tomorrow we leave for Metemwe, on the North coast of the island, for three days of beaches with fine white sand and transparent turquoise waters. I'm not really a beach person (too much laying around and "relaxation" makes me restless), but I think three days will be good for getting rid of whatever stress remains in my system before it's back to the real world.