Ramadan in Zanzibar

I was excited to go to Zanzibar for many reasons such as the beautiful beaches, the seafood, and the spices I'd heard so much about. However, as a religion major, I was also excited to be in a Muslim Majority place during the month of Ramadan (fasting). I knew that since Zanzibar relies fairly heavily on its tourism the normal daily functions would most likely not be interrupted, but I was curious as to what might be different, if anything at all. 

It turned out that hardly anything at all was affected by the act of not eating during daylight. The locals simply ate early in the morning (before we were even close to awake) and we would see people on the streets as soon as the sun began to set, setting up small fires to cook their fish and ugali on. There were certainly more "local restaurants" which did not open during the day due to Ramadan likely because most of their customer base would not be eating and other restaurants opened a bit once the sun had set. 

Due to my excitement of being able to experience firsthand such an important religious practice, I was eager to ask all our taxi drivers as many questions as possible. I learned that often children will start "training" for Ramadan around age 13 or 14 but the typical age to start was around 18. One time, we were driving from Stone Town to a beach on the north of the Island during the midday prayer time and we had to swerve several different times because mosques were overflowing with people so much that they had kayed mats in the street and were prostrating right there. I wish I had asked whether this was a normal occurrences or whether more people attended prayer due to Ramadan. Once we also had to slam on the brakes for a couple of little boys running across the street; our driver said they were running because they were late for prayer. He also told us that boys often start attending prayer from 5-7 years old. This seemed impressive to me as I remember the trouble I sometimes gave my parents trying to get us to Sunday school for an hour once a week let alone 5 times per day everyday. 

All in all, I did not feel like the presence of Islam in Zanzibar was as strong as in other Islamic countries, as daily practices seemed mostly to fall under the raider rather than disrupting the flow of the day. For something that to me seems very difficult (I can't even imagine not eating for an entire day since usually I eat every two hours), it was interesting to see how easily all these people could be so devoted to such a seemingly difficult practice.