Landscape Photography Magazine

Have you ever lost yourself in the moment completely, moving around the subject, looking for the best angles, shooting, and moving on? It could happen to all of us. Here is Jonathan Chritchley with his story

“There, you can see all the people drying their clothes”, said my driver as we passed some brightly dressed locals sitting around large batik sheets spread over the red dusty soil. I studied the scene a little more closely, but for the life of me I could not see a single item of unworn clothing, dry or otherwise. Not one pair of Y fronts, or even a tea towel, just some little black seeds, which, by no stretch of the imagination, could I envisage anyone ever trying to wear. I mentioned this to Tareef, my driver, a delightful man blessed with a wide and enormously infectious grin, and he gave me the look that he had clearly mastered over 20 years of dealing with “wazungu”, the Swahili word for foreign tourists: somewhere between amusement and disdain; the sort of look you would give a 4 year old child if it had just spread Nutella on your iPad. “No, not clothes to wear, clothes to eat. Smell good”. Now, I must say at this point that I had carried out quite a lot of research into the wonderful Island of Zanzibar, where our story takes place, and felt pretty well informed. I knew all about the dhows, those beautiful triangular sailed wooden boats and how they used to sail between east Africa and Arabia trading goods; I was aware of the spectacular array of spices and fruits grown on this paradise island, roads lined with orange and banana trees, fields of pineapples, mangoes and lime; spice plantations growing black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. But nowhere in my research had I encountered any evidence that on Zanzibar the locals ate their clothes. I was just about to make this point to Tareef when the penny dropped…