Page 72 - NOMADS_NO5

71Moving to Zanzibar, which is 99% Muslim, it was expected that I would respect the normality of dressing modestly. However, over time, my friends and I be- gan to get angry at other foreigners visiting on short holiday, who strutted through rural villages in tiny bikinis. Children would be getting out of a Madressa (Islamic school), fully covered, while a group of fiercely sunburnt, older Italian woman, would traipse by refusing to see the hardened stares or the averted gazes of the local women.Whether this was done because they were truly oblivious or they wanted to force the majority Muslim population, which prides itself on modesty, into some level of “free- dom”, I’m not sure, but the hubris involved was always a bit appalling. I wonder if it is this refusal to “see” that makes people dis- like the West, versus the specifics of religious doctrine.