Beach dogs. Paje, Zanzibar, 2021.
Zanzibar is a pretty crazy place. As far as tropical island paradises go, it has it all: warm, crystal-clear water, rustling coconut palms and ridiculously overpriced bars and resorts lining every conceivable inch of white sandy beach that hasn’t been claimed by sea-urchins or seaweed farming. Save for the rainy season, it’s overrun by tourists the whole year round. Russians, Polish, French and Germans swarm about the place in colourful wife-beaters and boardshorts like sluggish Day-Glo ants, either too drunk or sunstruck to mind paying $6 for a beer or $200 per night for a room without air conditioning.
With tourism being the main source of revenue, one probably can’t blame the islanders for taking the piss. For the most part, local people are dirt poor. A vast shamble of dusty huts, bleating livestock and misfiring mopeds make up the threadbare villages that are forever threatening to hump the posh beachfront from behind. The vast majority of visiting Eurotrash sees this great economic divide as something quaint and intriguing, with the backward Africans - noble savages, no doubt - choosing to still live as primitively as they’ve supposedly always done in the face of neo-colonial extravagance.
In the end, all this silly cash floating about amidst so much poverty makes for a pretty edgy scene. Crime isn’t really an issue here (it is tightly controlled as it would scare away tourists), but the sheer scope of such disparity will always aim to right itself somehow. The upshot is that foreign devils are harassed wherever they go for handouts and with non-stop offers of snorkeling expeditions, dolphin cruises, “fresh” seafood and shitty weed. This is further perpetuated by idiotic looking white women - hair braided tight in the native style against their pallid scalps - and leering men paying handsomely to have smartphone selfies taken with pot-bellied local children. The whole thing would have been a goddamn riot if it wasn’t so fucking sad.
Whichever way, my woman and I - Africans in our own right and on a shoestring budget after an expensive exodus out of China - had no choice but to grin and bear it. Among the throng of hustling kids that swarmed around us every morning as we stepped out, yelling “Money, please” and “Photo, money”, there was a boy of about four years old with a snot-streaked face desperately tugging at our shirts shouting “Fuck your mother” at the top of his lungs. It was weird. I guess some dickhead tourist thought it would be a great gag to teach him this phrase under the guise that it would somehow give him an edge in the begging game. Now the poor little bastard was walking around all over the place like a broken record, repeating the same profanity over and over again, with no hope of understanding why it was having the exact opposite effect. In the deluge of hard-eyed youths who would try to back you into a corner wherever you went, that foul-mouthed little dope was the only one I ever felt truly sorry for.
In the end, all that hustling and getting harassed for handouts has a way of getting you down, and I was really feeling it. Our plan of teaching English in China as a means of refilling our tattered coffers had somewhat backfired, and I had no idea how we were going to make a living once we got back to the Republic. Being squeezed 24/7 for every cent sure as hell didn’t help. We had justified the pricey island detour as a crucial haven from the riptides of totalitarian fuckery before diving back into the stagnant citizenry of home, but now I was constantly fussing about the ragged remains of our hard-earned Oriental nest egg and soon began snarling at anyone pestering me for a piece of it.
On this fine morning I was pacing up and down the deserted beach before dawn, trying to outrun the sound of pennies turning over and over in my head. In the far distance, I noticed two dogs in the pale dawn light. I’ve seen many of these mutts cruising the shore before. They didn’t seem to belong to anyone and were viewed as common property in the village, just roaming around and somehow getting by. As I approached they suddenly broke out in a flat-out low-growling run, loping right towards me. Caught in the fight-or-flight netherworld induced by my relentless brooding I simply froze on the spot, seeing nothing but bloodthirsty muzzles and wondering where the hell I was going to get a rabies shot on this island, and how much it would cost.
They were on to me in a flash. As they jumped up against my rigid frame, swishing their tails and licking my hands, I suddenly realised that they were simply overexcited and happy to see me. By fuck, I thought, is this how far I’ve been gone? All of the backed-up adrenaline of the last few weeks drained out of my frayed nerves in one blinding, awful second and I let out something horrid between a whimper and a roar. I dropped to my knees and scratched their ears and tickled their bellies, rubbing my nose in their sticky coats. I flopped onto my back and we got mangled together in one slobbering, yelping, playful mess with sand and tears and drool flying everywhere. In that strange time and place where everyone seemed to just want, want, want, it felt so goddamn good to truly give and receive like an unwitting child, no matter what filth The Man had been whispering in my ear as I was shuffling like a beggar through the halls of my own life.
It didn’t take long before the playful pooches were lured away by the smell of early morning cooking fires, and I never happened to see them again. I did, however, put out some food scraps from time to time on that spot in the sand where, just for a moment, the cursed veil that the fat cats in black suits have fashioned between us and the divine abundance of Mother Nature had been torn to shreds like it was nothing at all.
Photography, words, narration © Copyright Jac Kritzinger.
Music © Copyright Albertus van Rensburg.
Beach dogs. Paje, Zanzibar, 2021.
Zanzibar is a pretty crazy place. As far as tropical island paradises go, it has it all: warm, crystal-clear water, rustling coconut palms and ridiculously overpriced bars and resorts lining every conceivable inch of white sandy beach that hasn’t been claimed by sea-urchins or seaweed farming. Save for the rainy season, it’s overrun by tourists the whole year round. Russians, Polish, French and Germans swarm about the place in colourful wife-beaters and boardshorts like sluggish Day-Glo ants, either too drunk or sunstruck to mind paying $6 for a beer or $200 per night for a room without air conditioning.
With tourism being the main source of revenue, one probably can’t blame the islanders for taking the piss. For the most part, local people are dirt poor. A vast shamble of dusty huts, bleating livestock and misfiring mopeds make up the threadbare villages that are forever threatening to hump the posh beachfront from behind. The vast majority of visiting Eurotrash sees this great economic divide as something quaint and intriguing, with the backward Africans - noble savages, no doubt - choosing to still live as primitively as they’ve supposedly always done in the face of neo-colonial extravagance.
In the end, all this silly cash floating about amidst so much poverty makes for a pretty edgy scene. Crime isn’t really an issue here (it is tightly controlled as it would scare away tourists), but the sheer scope of such disparity will always aim to right itself somehow. The upshot is that foreign devils are harassed wherever they go for handouts and with non-stop offers of snorkeling expeditions, dolphin cruises, “fresh” seafood and shitty weed. This is further perpetuated by idiotic looking white women - hair braided tight in the native style against their pallid scalps - and leering men paying handsomely to have smartphone selfies taken with pot-bellied local children. The whole thing would have been a goddamn riot if it wasn’t so fucking sad.
Whichever way, my woman and I - Africans in our own right and on a shoestring budget after an expensive exodus out of China - had no choice but to grin and bear it. Among the throng of hustling kids that swarmed around us every morning as we stepped out, yelling “Money, please” and “Photo, money”, there was a boy of about four years old with a snot-streaked face desperately tugging at our shirts shouting “Fuck your mother” at the top of his lungs. It was weird. I guess some dickhead tourist thought it would be a great gag to teach him this phrase under the guise that it would somehow give him an edge in the begging game. Now the poor little bastard was walking around all over the place like a broken record, repeating the same profanity over and over again, with no hope of understanding why it was having the exact opposite effect. In the deluge of hard-eyed youths who would try to back you into a corner wherever you went, that foul-mouthed little dope was the only one I ever felt truly sorry for.
In the end, all that hustling and getting harassed for handouts has a way of getting you down, and I was really feeling it. Our plan of teaching English in China as a means of refilling our tattered coffers had somewhat backfired, and I had no idea how we were going to make a living once we got back to the Republic. Being squeezed 24/7 for every cent sure as hell didn’t help. We had justified the pricey island detour as a crucial haven from the riptides of totalitarian fuckery before diving back into the stagnant citizenry of home, but now I was constantly fussing about the ragged remains of our hard-earned Oriental nest egg and soon began snarling at anyone pestering me for a piece of it.
On this fine morning I was pacing up and down the deserted beach before dawn, trying to outrun the sound of pennies turning over and over in my head. In the far distance, I noticed two dogs in the pale dawn light. I’ve seen many of these mutts cruising the shore before. They didn’t seem to belong to anyone and were viewed as common property in the village, just roaming around and somehow getting by. As I approached they suddenly broke out in a flat-out low-growling run, loping right towards me. Caught in the fight-or-flight netherworld induced by my relentless brooding I simply froze on the spot, seeing nothing but bloodthirsty muzzles and wondering where the hell I was going to get a rabies shot on this island, and how much it would cost.
They were on to me in a flash. As they jumped up against my rigid frame, swishing their tails and licking my hands, I suddenly realised that they were simply overexcited and happy to see me. By fuck, I thought, is this how far I’ve been gone? All of the backed-up adrenaline of the last few weeks drained out of my frayed nerves in one blinding, awful second and I let out something horrid between a whimper and a roar. I dropped to my knees and scratched their ears and tickled their bellies, rubbing my nose in their sticky coats. I flopped onto my back and we got mangled together in one slobbering, yelping, playful mess with sand and tears and drool flying everywhere. In that strange time and place where everyone seemed to just want, want, want, it felt so goddamn good to truly give and receive like an unwitting child, no matter what filth The Man had been whispering in my ear as I was shuffling like a beggar through the halls of my own life.
It didn’t take long before the playful pooches were lured away by the smell of early morning cooking fires, and I never happened to see them again. I did, however, put out some food scraps from time to time on that spot in the sand where, just for a moment, the cursed veil that the fat cats in black suits have fashioned between us and the divine abundance of Mother Nature had been torn to shreds like it was nothing at all.
Photography, words, narration © Copyright Jac Kritzinger.
Music © Copyright Albertus van Rensburg.