A river of red ants winds through the rain forest, forming complex patterns, hypnotic paths and tunnels. I wonder where they’re going with such ambition, and where are we.

My ranger carries a loaded gun. The food chain here is strange and unnatural. Rangers protect the animals from the poachers and the tourists from the animals. I tell him that if it comes down to killing an animal or the animal killing me that he should not shoot. He thinks I’m joking, and I can’t convince him otherwise. I wonder if anyone has ever told him that. If he would listen when the time comes.

The solo safari is lonely at times, but only because the animals make me feel like a third wheel. I watch the dik dik, a small antelope, twitch anxiously. They travel only in pairs, and he fears for his mate. Baboons part each others’ hair and search for insects. I ask a stranger to check mine. Two giraffes eat lunch in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. Bird calls sound into the night— some never answered— echoing silent vibrations in distant hollow caves.

The bus carries me east along vast plantations, rows of yucca and maize that climb the green mountain slopes. The villages we pass in the heavy rain seem quiet; boys in torn western clothing perch on tables in empty, dripping, wooden stalls. Little ones lug milk crates of empty glass bottles on their backs. Women carry bundles of wood or sacks of meal on the crowns of their heads with steady gaits and deliberate gazes. I can see them at work far off in the fields, but their bright cloth makes them seem like jungle birds twittering in the bush. In the backdrop, layers of mist slide in and out of valleys and ridges; one man tells me, “the mountains are undressing.”

The skyline of Dar sprawls across the horizon and suddenly it’s upon us—blocks of glass and concrete and decrepit tug boats with peeling paint or dhows with translucent, skin-like sail and more, higher, piles of garbage everywhere. I sprint up the dock and onto the boat just as it sounds its horn and pulls back. The passengers are all black, and the cargo is all red: meat rotting in the sun and rice bags of belongings.

Zanzibar is and will forever be a trading town. Everyone is shouting, buying, selling, loading, carrying. Fish and trinkets and pyramids of produce splayed across the sidewalks. High stone buildings with intricately carved teak and brass doors-- the only visible signs of owner’s wealth-- form corridors, a maze of alleys to bewilder passerbys. Three young minstrels are making music with wooden blocks and plastic scraps, but they lose their muse and smile at me shyly. At night the park is overcome by a market, where stalls display fresh catches: crab claws, octopus tentacles, skewers of chicken and steak and king fish and red snapper. Liver and mussels. French fries and cabbage. Suddenly everyone is your friend and chants, Jambo! Karibu to my best restaurant. Special local price for you. Poa, cool, murmured as a mantra.

The trades of Zanzibar were once dark and solemn: processions of people in chains brought to Arabs by dealers who overpowered village leaders or seduced them with mirrors and food. My young guide sits upon the ancient basement stones and in a low voice tells me, It was very dark here. The condition was no water no food no light. Seventy-five women and many children with only this thin window forget air. About half of them die before auction. When they go to the market straight wear this chain. One neck here, one neck here. He puts it on, and I wonder how that makes him feel, if he still thinks about it every time. Like this they go. There were many children trapped here as well, taken away with their parents. They would be a gift for you. One person would be worth about 10 rupees; with inflation, the equivalent of 50 cents.

After abolition, the people don’t know where to go or where they’re from. A good man built a church and taught them how. It was erected on the site where the platform for auction once stood. In the center of the platform was a jojoba tree. It was a whipping post. If you cry you are not strong, and your price goes down. If you do not cry you are strong your price goes up. If you are lazy and not strong they will not buy you. If they do not buy you, you will be worthless, and they will slaughter you. So all the slaves, they try to be strong. The large porcelain tub once used by the Arabs to catch the blood of useless slaves is now for baptisms. This has become a place of cleansing, of healing where once there was only great pain.

USUSAFURUE NYOTA YA MWENZIO. DON’T SET SAIL USING SOMEONE ELSE’S STAR. These are the words on one woman’s kangha.

I find a mollusk in the street in the middle of Stonetown. His shell is cracked at the opening, but I can tell his is still alive, because of the bubbles that mean he is trying to move or to speak or to breathe. He is far away from his home, and I wonder how he got here. We should name him, my friend suggests. Starfish. I cradle him in my palm and carry him through the crowds, but no one seems to notice. We come back to the shore, and the ocean is up to the boardwalk because the tide is so high. Boys are doing flips off the side in torn t-shirts plastered to thin bodies, one after another like the flight shows grandpa used to love. I walk a little distance away from them and throw Starfish far as I can, saying, “Not today, my Rafiki.”