Zanzibar

In the morning of the 16th of March of 2022, I woke up from a dream about a grand amusement park where people did make-believe that they were really in a colony on Mars. The setting was a town that was a kind of bizarre fusion of Zanzibar and Hawaii. It was rustic and believable!

The study in Zanzibar, part of Tanzania, involved a three-drug regimen of ivermectin, albendazole and praziquantel. The drugs are active against worms that cause elephantiasis and schistosomiasis and soil-worms or helminths.

Experts say many people in Zanzibar and other parasite-endemic regions are usually infected with more than one type of worm.

It's the 26th of April of 2025. At Tim Hortons café, in the morning, whilst I was drinking my Classic Lemonade and eating a croissant, I met two young Kenyan men, who were lining up to the till. We talked about their language Swahili—Kiswahili. I said how its staccato beauty reminds me of Japanese! Then our conversation led to safari tours, rustic Zanzibar, and our voyages throughout the world.

A sunny day it was, this 30th of April of 2025. I walked several times to Tim Hortons café, here on Lulu Island, to enjoy various teas with oat milk, a Classic Lemonade, and a Turkey Bacon Club Sandwich. I went also to Starbucks café to enjoy an Iced Cherry Chai with oat milk. My Filipino friends, the baristas Anna and Jam, were there. At home, my family received a guest from Kenya: Moko. We talked about Swahili—or Kiswahili. She said that in neighbouring Zanzibar in Tanzania, one spoke a prestige dialect of Swahili. I recounted my fantasy of one day visiting Zanzibar. "Why not a safari tour?" she added. Yes, such would be nice, too—the fun countryside! Kenya is like the Philippines, we agreed, as many people might speak a local language, a regional language, a national language, and an international language. At home, in my bedroom, I could hear my Fijian neighbours, who are Cantonese, East Indian, and Black Caribbean in blending, chatting away!

Other examples of nonhuman self-domestication in the wild exist—for instance, the Zanzibar red colobus monkey diverged from the mainland African red colobus in similar ways during its island isolation—but bonobos are the closest and most relevant to us.