Nungwi Lagoon is one of the most beautiful that Zanzibar has to offer. On the fine white sandy beach of Kendwa Rocks you can immerse yourself in a bathtub-warm Indian Ocean. March is the hottest month here and the sea is a welcome relief. Some of the guests who are here at the moment would still prefer somewhere else. They would like to return to their homeland, but war is raging there. “Zanzibar may be paradise, but home is home,” says Ivanka P., a secretary from Kyiv. At the moment she is phoning relatives every hour via the WLAN in her hotel.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine casts its shadow as far as Africa. Around 900 tourists from Ukraine were stuck on the holiday island of Zanzibar in early March. After the flight connection to their homeland was discontinued, they could no longer fly back. Although they were lucky in their misfortune to be stranded on Zanzibar. The government of the semi-autonomous island, which belongs to Tanzania, immediately promised help for the vacationers. “It’s not in our culture to just throw people out the door,” said a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Tourism. Minister Lela Mohamed Mussa said: “Holidaymakers have enough to worry about. They should have peace of mind here, at least for the moment.”
Zanzibar has dream beaches. But the people who are stuck here and worried about their loved ones back home cannot enjoy it.
(Photo: Matej Kastelic/PantherMedia/imago images)
Africa helps Europe – a novelty in a changed world. According to the broadcaster Deutsche Welle, around 150,000 tourists from Ukraine and Russia are stranded worldwide. In the Dominican Republic alone, around 15,000 Russians and 3,000 Ukrainians were unable to travel home directly. According to official figures, around 20,000 Ukrainians were stranded on popular beaches in Egypt at the beginning of the war; the number of Russian vacationers there was not named. Solutions are still being worked on everywhere to enable tourists to leave the country. Before the war broke out, there were hardly any guests from Russia in Zanzibar. “The Russian market was already non-existent,” says Sabine Emmerich, a German tour operator in Zanzibar. “Instead, Germans, Italians and French are coming back in large numbers.” A year ago, in the first winter of the Corona epidemic, more than a hundred thousand Russians and Ukrainians came to Zanzibar on special flights and filled houses there.
Zanzibar was helpful to the stranded from the start. At the end of February, the Tanzanian government contacted hotels where Ukrainians were stuck – and promised the industry support. Among other things, taxes should be waived. In return, the hotels promised to continue to house and feed the Ukrainians free of charge. According to government sources, they are currently working on organizing flights to Poland. In most cases, the costs for the return journey are covered by the tour operator. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is also to be involved.
Anya Guarana from Kyiv came to Zanzibar’s north coast near Nungwi with a women’s yoga group – and then couldn’t leave. Her case is typical: “Our two-week vacation would have ended on February 25,” reports the Ukrainian, “one day after the start of the war, which we hadn’t expected until the very end.” She is “grateful for board and lodging,” which the hotel continues to take over, she says. And “touched by the locals who give us coconuts and bananas for free on the beach. But of course we are very worried about our loved ones at home”.
Ukrainians have also got stuck in Bali, like this couple, who are using the Ukrainian national flag in Denpasar to draw attention to the situation in their homeland.
(Photo: Dicky Bisinglasi/Zuma Wire/imago images)
The sympathy for the Ukrainians is great. However, many Tanzanians have also been alienated by reports that Africans who had studied in Ukraine were having great difficulty leaving the country. Hundreds of video clips made the rounds. One student, for example, reported that he had to sleep outdoors for three days on the border with Poland in sub-zero temperatures – and not because the Polish authorities did not let him into the country. But because he was repeatedly sent to the end of the queue by Ukrainians. On the ninth day of the war, the Tanzanian ambassador in Moscow called on Ukraine to ensure the safe departure of students; he was “angry” about their treatment.
Around a fifth of Ukraine’s 75,000 international students are from Africa; the first four Tanzanians have meanwhile returned safely to their homeland via Serbia. A call by an African-American blogger from the United States to “return tit-for-tat” and “evict white tourists from Ukraine” was widely shared on social media in Tanzania, but had no effect. Nobody in Africa wanted to subscribe to such radical rhetoric.
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There are still close ties between Africa and Russia today. Zanzibar, which has belonged to Tanzania since 1964, was the center of the Cold War in Africa until the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was the first country in the world to recognize the GDR as a state. Russia supplies weapons – from tanks to planes – to many countries in Africa. Criticism of Russia is largely reserved here. Kenya was the only country in East Africa to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Tanzania abstained from voting on the UN General Assembly resolution, as did 16 other African countries.
It is all the more credit to Zanzibar for helping stranded Ukrainian tourists without prejudice. “For purely humanitarian reasons,” was stressed in government circles, which reiterated that “we would do the same for Russian tourists.”
However, more and more affected vacationers on the tropical island do not want to wait any longer for public help. About half of the Ukrainian stranded people have now left the country on their own initiative, travel industry representatives said. “Our Ukrainian guests flew to places like Slovenia, Germany or Poland,” reported a Ukrainian hotel manager who has lived in Zanzibar for six years. “Many of the men wanted to join the army at home.” The situation is “extremely painful”, including for herself, she says in a choked voice and is reluctant to comment further. At her spa in Zanzibar, she now offers “little escapes”: 20-minute coconut massages. A great escape from the burdens that the war brings with it, she also knows that there will not be any time soon for the stranded vacationers.