Friday 16 April 2010

Those Amazing Zanzibar Doors

It's one feature of Zanzibar that everyone likes and photographs: its Arabic and Indian style doors. Flat-topped for Omani and Arabic styles, while anything with a rounded top indicates that the original owner was of Indian origin. Many of the doors, and the houses for that matter, look as though they could do with a bit of TLC. I heard that money was earmarked for the renovation of Zanzibar because of it's World Heritage status, but that corruption is so bad little actually gets turned into bricks and mortar, or even paint. We did see several door manufacturers up around the spice market area so obviously there's still a market for wooden doors; probably for the new boutique hotels in evidence around town. The rest of the population still live behind totally unrenovated timber. Which makes them all the more interesting to photograph.


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