Pemba

Pemba has been part of the Swahili coast trading system since at least 600 AD, and the archaeology across the island is dense — settlements, mosques and tombs at Ras Mkumbuu, Chwaka, Mtambwe Mkuu and elsewhere. Ras Mkumbuu, on a long peninsula reaching west, holds the Ndagoni ruins, probably fourteenth century, including a substantial mosque and pillar tombs.

The strangest site is Pujini, in the south-east: the Mkama Ndume ruins, dated to the fifteenth century and the only known early fortification anywhere on the Swahili coast. Earthworks and defensive walls are simply not what coastal Swahili towns built — they were merchant cities, not fortresses — which is why Pujini has attracted so much archaeological argument. Local tradition attributes it to a tyrannical ruler whose nickname, Mkama Ndume, means something close to 'squeezer of men'.

The later history follows Unguja's: Portuguese presence in the sixteenth century, then Omani rule, then the British protectorate, then the 1964 revolution and union with Tanganyika. But Pemba's politics have consistently run differently from Unguja's, and that divergence is still live in Zanzibari elections. Visitors will not see it, but it is worth knowing that Pemba is not simply a quieter version of the main island.

Pemba has long carried a reputation across East Africa as a centre of traditional medicine and of magic — uganga and its darker relative — drawing people from the mainland and from as far as the Great Lakes to consult practitioners here. It is spoken of half-seriously and half-nervously, and it is a genuine part of how the island is regarded rather than a tourist story. Visitors are unlikely to encounter it and should not go looking.

What visitors do come for is the diving, and the consensus among people who dive this coast is that Pemba is the best of it. The Pemba Channel's steep drop-offs mean walls rather than the shallow reef gardens of Unguja: coral in unusually good condition, dramatic topography, and pelagic fish coming in off deep water. It is not beginner diving and it is not crowded.

Ngezi Forest Reserve in the north protects the last significant block of indigenous forest, holding the Pemba flying fox — a large fruit bat found nowhere else — and the endemic Pemba scops owl. The island's culture otherwise is Swahili, Muslim, agricultural and conservative, with markedly fewer visitors than Unguja and a correspondingly different reception: more curiosity, less transaction.