Drawings from Zanzibar

The first weekend of December my parents, my sister, my nephew, and I flew over to Zanzibar for a weekend of hanging out at the newly opened hotel that my parents designed - Sea Cliff Resort and Spa Zanzibar.  It was a ton of fun and even more fun because I started a new sketchbook!  The sketching began at Dar es Salaam Airport Terminal 1 (domestic flights), continued through the weekend and ended on the plane ride back to Dar.

 Since the flight to Zanzibar is 25 minutes (I think it's about 50 miles north) the planes used are the tiny 12 passenger planes - Cessna Caravan planes.  The above drawing I did while standing outside the departure lounge.

The second pilot seat is almost never used by a second pilot, usually a passenger can sit there if you ask.  So I ended up sitting there and drew the dashboard.  It was hard to resist pushing the buttons.

Sunday morning my dad and I took a cab into Stone Town (built by Omani merchants in the early/mid 1800s) so that I could draw the old buildings, narrow streets, muhogo (cassava) roaster, sugar cane juice maker, people sitting on stoops and scooters, and all the jumble of wires and cables that connect one building to the next.

These two buildings are on Kenyatta Street.  The one on the left belongs to Eric and Saada (folks we know) and the one on the right has a carpenter's workshop on the ground floor and a Goan family living on the first floor.  The balconies of both houses are have great detail in them.

 This is the front of Beit el Ajaib (Arabic for House of Wonders).  It was built in 1883 for the second sultan of Zanzibar, then was rebuilt after it was damaged during the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896 (the world's shortest war; it lasted 45 minutes).  I believe it was called the House of Wonders because it had electricity and an elevator, probably other fancy things too.  It's now a museum.  Look it up in Wikipedia for more info :D

Flying back I sat up front again, this time I drew the whole dashboard and the pilot's hand.  The pilot was quite mesmerized by the fact that I draw and paint an entire image in the 20-25 minute plane ride.  My sister said that she was worried we'd end up in Tanga with the amount of glancing he did while flying us back!

This last one was drawn on location but painted at home.  We'd gone to Addis In Dar, an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner (the best restaurant in Dar and one of my all time favourites).  It's located in an old house's terrace.  Mood lighting is provided by fabric umbrellas lamps every few feet along the railing and the tall, free standing candle holders.  The tee-pee like objects are the table covers.  Eating Ethiopian food is a communal activity.  Food is brought out on a large plate lined with ingera (looks a bit like a crepe but made from fermented teff batter) and everyone eats from the same large platter.  The food is delicious.