This was written in 1989, when I was first starting out....

Mr.Mitu's Botanical Safaris

By Eric Lurio

Zanzibar. You start with a name. Everybody's heard of it somewhere. A mythical place that only exist in the Arabian nights or in the lyrics of Billy Joel. The name brings to mind many things; romance, intrigue, adventure. Many, many things, but fruit isn't one of them. But nowadays, fruit is what Zanzibar is all about

I first heard of Mr. Mitu's spice tours from a Scottish lady in Arusha, Tanzania. My friends and I had just finished a safari and she was trying to put together one, and we were comparing notes. She said that there were three musts when I got to Zanzibar—hang out at the beach, go to nearby Prison Island and see the giant tortoises, and take the spice tour. I was intrigued.

So the next morning. I bought a bus ticked for Dar-Es-salaam, the capitol of Tanzania, where it was said transportation there could be had.

One thing that must be said about Tanzania: it's dead broke. It's been that way since the war with Uganda in 1979, and consequently hasn't been able to start repaving the roads until very recently. this makes it very hard to sleep on the overnight bus, a situation aggravated by the driver's playing a tape of "Mammu on the Telephone" at full blast over and over again for most of the night.

Arriving at Dar, as it is called, one becomes aware of another consequence of Tanzania's being broke—they won't take their own money for all but the bottom-line accommodation and travel, U.S.. dollars and pounds sterling only. So having a hundred dollars in Tanzanian shillings (14,525 in 100 shilling notes), I had to spend the better part of the morning looking for a place that would take them. Fortunately the YMCA had a bed at my second try there. I was ready to find transportation to Zanzibar.

Zanzibar is an island about sixty miles northeast of Dar, and there are three basic ways get there, only one of which takes shillings; airplane, hydrofoil, and dhow.

Dhows take shillings. They leave at midnight and take about six hours to make the journey, which is very much like being on one of those slave ships of yore, as a slave. You also risk getting sick, or someone getting sick all over you and getting your luggage stolen. The airplane,which takes credit cards, is usually booked up two weeks or more in advance, and even if they aren't, they'll say they are anyway. This leaves the hydrofoil.

The hydrofoil is called the Virgin Butterfly. Why it was named after the infamous sexual position on L.A. Law is a mystery I couldn't solve. It could be the other way around, or just a coincidence, since nobody in the organization claimed to have heard of the TV show.

Alone among dollars-only institutions on the Tanzanian mainland, The Butterfly also gives change in dollars. This is a lifesaver, because even bottom-level zanzibarbarian hotels refuse to take shillings. It's comfortable, takes an hour and a half to get there and shows tapes of bad movies.

Zanzibar town is a Middle Eastern delight, full of narrow, winding streets full of "antique junk" shops and lovely restaurants where it's extremely easy to meet people with whom you can share bungalows or take a spice tour with...

Many people in Zanzibar give spice tours, but by far the best is that given by Mitu. Mitu is a short, dumpy fellow with big ears, a huge nose, and a prodigious knowledge of the botany and history of the island. He can be found early in the morning with his trusty assistant and two taxi cabs in front of the Malindi sports club, waiting for the tourists who are lucky enough to get ahold of him, which is getting to be rather difficult, as he is one of the best tour guides in the world.

The first part of what is really a fruit tour begins on foot... we walked around sampling the local trees-Things that look like cucumbers but look like but taste like lemons, soap berries, with real soap in them, as natural as you can get. The bark from this tree cures an upset stomach, you don't have one? Then try those leaves over there...

After about half an hour of this we got into two taxicabs, Mitu in one and his trusty assistant Mohammed—an expert in the navigation of what used to be an extensive road system, the other. Our mission to taste every kind of citrus fruit there is! It seems that we almost succeeded too...

Every five minutes or so, we stop to check out a fruit or some weird tree... have you ever tasted rubber? No? You're smarter than I thought... We discover the differences between the many species of grapefruit, some of which can get as big as your head. Lemons can get to be the size of normal grapefruits, kumquats the size of tangerines, and tangerines, um, well, they're the size they ought to be.

Mitu has an amazing effect on children. Everywhere we go hundreds of children come from nowhere and call out his name. We stop for them too, and we discover that it isn't just because of his good looks, he feeds them with the fruits he picks up. They crowd around him while he slices up a soursop, which is a large thin melon-squash like thing, and call out his name. He loves this, I can tell, for there's a big smile on his face.

"Over here's coffee, The Kenyans will tell you that theirs is the best in the world, but don't believe them, ours is much better, taste! Over there's a cocoa tree. The beans are very bitter, but taste the flesh, it's like nothing you've ever experienced before."

On and on we go getting royally stuffed in the process. We stop at what was the residence of a nineteenth century sultan's favorite wife, the daughter of the Shah of Iran. He bids us to climb the structure, and points to the sea."From here you can see Kilimanjaro.

We are higher than it, because we're on an island. The sea is five miles deep and Kilamanjaro is only two miles high. We are above the sea, while Kilemanjaro is only above the land. "The claim is dubious at best, but I swear I saw something out there, and it very well could have been Kilimanjaro. After about ten minutes of squinting, we sat down to a feast of lemon and bananas. Why he chose to ruin perfectly good bananas with lemon juice, I cannot say, maybe to clear out pallets of the joys to come.

Leechees look like almost nothing else. The outer shell is hard and spiky, and the inside is gelatinous mass covering a hard nut. The nut doesn't taste all that good but the gelatin is music to the tongue. Something like a cross between a pear and an apple. It brings new meaning to the word yummy. But leachees are as sawdust when compared to chicklets.

The chicklet does not look like little candy covered square, but is almost a dead ringer of the peach. But it is here that the resemblance ends, for the taste is like nothing else in the world. The closest thing that you can get is sugar cake. "You can spend the rest of your life doing nothing but eating these." Mitu says. I agree.

We stop at a roadside tea shop and drink local coffee. While we do this Mohammed takes out all the fruit we've been collecting and puts it on top of the trunk of the car so it could be photographed. You cannot see the trunk at all. It's amazing.

The last stop before returning to the Malindi sports club is the beach. Zanzibar has secluded beaches that can match just about anywhere. Unfortunately, nobody had told me about this, otherwise I'd have brought my bathing suit. But what a view!

We pay off Mishu and Mohammed after we return to town. Soon after I come across the people I was supposed to go with, and had never showed up. The car broke down even before they left, so they took a bus to the beach. Didn't I get their message? No, I reply. They invite me to dinner. Fish is the perfect antidote...