Zanzibar

Zanzibar, light rain, few clouds. 30C, feels like 36.8C. Wind southwest, 8.0 knots. Sunrise: 05:55am, sunset: 18:22pm.

I walk slowly, step by step. The small battery-run transitor radio in my pocket makes harsh noises while I walk down the road. I love to listen to the weather report. I've also done, since I was a kid, sitting solemnly in front of the creaking short waves, which makes it all sound even further away than it is probably. Slowly and monotonously, the words flow out of the speaker. I can't hear the voice clearly, neither whether it's a woman or a man speaking. It doesn't make any difference. What keeps me on this ether are the words. Foreign names, whose sounds create a full ambience of some mysterious spots far far out of here. Jakarta, moderate rain, broken clouds. I can hear the endless rain dripping on the huge leaves, drop drop drop-drodrop, in the thick humid air while the wind is waving the trees of the dark foggy forest, right before sunrise. There's a tick of me, I'm passionate about the most complicated town names. Last year I was in love with Ouagadougou. It was a wizzard term, knocking me unconcious, letting me wake up again in a savannah field, where I help collecting the crops. After that, Upernavik, cold ice, fish every day, the icy shores on an island that doesn't really exist in the world of most of the people. My neighbour just passes me in his slightly rusty car, listening to hip hop on full tunes. He pulls the breaks, and a cloud of dust enwraps me. He looks relaxed, chilled, cool and gives me a provokating glance. Asks me whether I need a lift, but I deny. I got a mission to complete, man, that's why I am here. I got a lot of dreams and one destination, my bag full of crazy stuff and my shoes. That's what everybody needs. Dreams and a destination, I mean. Me, for instance, I'm on my way to Zanzibar. I don't remember anymore where I heard it the first time, no, it wasn't on the radio, that's for sure. I think it's one of the few places everybody of us knows, and that maybe many people seek without being concious that they do so. They run around desperate without knowing what they want, get lost in money, career, consume, looking for a sense, searching for a meaning, while the word keeps silently engraved in their hearts. Some might never discover it, so I got it a bit better. I just keep on walking down this dusty road, out of this town, out of this country. Timbuktu 31C, Kinshasa 26C, the radio voice refers on, Tunis 17, Nouakchott 25. To cross the sea, the desert, the grasslands, see countries, villages and people. Towards the sun at 11 o’clock, down on the way to Zanzibar.