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Zanzibar - that sounds like colonial grandeur, dream beaches, swimming with dolphins. Nowhere beautiful Africa can learn Kiswahili. At the University of the East African island group of German students come but only if they are good.

 

The entrance to the Institute of foreign language at the State University of Zanzibar is like a gate of the Cursed Sultanate. Behind the wooden door richly opens a courtyard with arcades and Holzbalustraden. On the colorful levels sit veiled female students, some holding a mobile phone connected stoffbedeckte ear.

On this staircase enjoyed in the last Sommersemester Nathalie Anthony also the sun. Now faces the 26-year-old Afrikanistikstudentin shivering the door to the Café in Hamburg "Africa House" on. Outside crackles cooler continuous rain over the cobblestones. "The weather was without question better in Zanzibar," she says and laughs. "It tastes to me after the eternal chicken with banana eating here again pretty good."

Two months Anthony has awarded a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) on Unguja, the main island of Zanzibar, Kiswahili studied. More precisely: in Stone Town with its picturesque Old Town. "That was not a holiday, as was right," says the daughter of a Ghanaian.

Who are active in East Africa, should Swahili (Arabic: "coastal dwellers") dominate - it is the most widely spoken language in Kenya, Uganda and also in Tanzania, at which the autonomous Zanzibar heard those islands 40 kilometers off the coast in the Indian Ocean. 80 to 90 million people in total who speak Kiswahili, at least two words to know that most Germans: "Daktari", doctor, and "Safari" trip.

In the rainy season is for outdoor sauna Zanzibar

Anthony's photo hangs together with the DAAD Konterfeis the other students are still on the wall in the bare room furnished business of the "Institute for Languages and Swahili in Zanzibar", beside pictures of students from the USA, Britain, India or Italy. The photos will only be exchanged if the guest comes next swing, which will be coming fall semester.

The lecturer Ramadhan Abdalla Kututwa certifies the young people from Germany "great diligence." It is the exercise of this virtue for an average of 30 degree heat and a humidity of 110 percent is not perceived self-evident. In the rainy season, in March, Zanzibar is transformed into a kind of outdoor sauna. Neither the Library nor the spartanly Vorlesungssäle are furnished with air conditioning. That is blowing in the walls Stone Townsville by a constant breeze which is always open wooden shutters.

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A small roofed kiosk in the courtyard next to the bike rack provides shelter when the rain fall in torrents from the sky - and strengthening the Bude is the cafeteria. "Then you can experience something different," says Jennifer Domnick, 27, also Hamburg, also Afrikanistikstudentin, now in the 7th Semester. In Nairobi, Kenya, she had previously completed an internship at the German press agency. Now she sits with Anthony in the café and the two remember the white beaches of Zanzibar. "But I'm not because of the beaches there," asserts Domnick. "I especially wanted me to prove that I can grab it, more so in a foreign culture to live."

Unguja and Pemba - the second largest island of the Zanzibar archipelago - are on the main trade route between India and the South African chapter thus acquired the former Sultanate of early significance: It served as a transit point for ivory and spices from the Tanzanian hinterland - and for slaves . There followed a checkered colonial history, trading companies in Germany also had offices early in the Sultanate. In the so-called Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty was 1890, as part of a reorganization of the colonial territories in East Africa, the North Sea island of Great Britain to Germany. Today the autonomous Zanzibar seeks a partnership with the Schleswig-Holstein Helgoland to.

"With scholarship to get well on the rounds"

Some 70 German students compete for the 16 DAAD places in the State University of Unguja. Before the chosen direction Zanzibar break, they must be at least two semesters behind and brought a good Final Exam wrote. And they should be cogent reasons why it absolutely must be Zanzibar. After all, they could also Kiswahili six German universities to learn: Bayreuth, Berlin, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Mainz and Munich.

For the German guests in Zanzibar begins the daily workload at 8 clock and goes only until 12 noon clock - a part time student, even with intensive care: in the groups sitting only six to eight students. After the internal fee structure of the language faculty, each time with the language currently seven U.S. dollars and equal to cash-Tribune earlier this month.

The DAAD supports the Zanzibar young Germans with a partial scholarship from around 1100 Euros, 500 for the school and 600 for the host family. "So good to get on the rounds," says Jennifer Domnick. "Although the flight part of them pay."

Who at the end of the East African language, allowed to "increasing job opportunities by NGOs or from the economy" hope says Hamburg Kiswahili Lektor Ridder Samsom, together with his wife Sauda Barwani this is a partnership between the Africa-Asia Institute in the Hanseatic city and the State University of Zanzibar, to forge.

Nathalie Anthony can not really complain about labor shortages, and their language skills you already have a job with the Afrika-Verein Hamburger negotiations in Tanzania is going to a job with a German pediatrician applies.

Today, approximately one million people in Zanzibar, 98 percent are Muslims. This has implications for foreign students: The strict Islamic Etiquette forcing women to dress more zugeknöpft if it between the crumbling facades of the Stone Town streets stroll.

Wildes student night life? Nothing

Close to the western foreigners, the conflicts of an Islamic society. "My host mother had a child, she was the second wife of a businessman, every second weekend in Dar es Salaam by ferry arrived to raise money to leave," recalls Jennifer Domnick. "In our Western European sense, that was not particularly happy marriage."

One night debauchery student life can be from such backgrounds tend not to expect. After all, Blue hour to hear the melancholic and rhythmic Taarab music, which the Hamburg mosquito Quinckhardt also at the local Dhow Countries Music Academy is promoted by the terraces of the major hotels in Zanzibar. And the evening can be wonderfully with octopus skewers on the grill for very little money to spend on the bank market, including Sunset. A water pipe with apple tobacco in a restaurant is close to the traditional hotels Africa House offered as a dessert after a home-made ugali maize meal.

"The nightlife is rather modest," says Jennifer Domnick too. My wildest experience: For private parties, she met fellow in hot pants and no bra, which she hardly recognized as such in the Institute always strictly veiled appeared.

In the afternoon and on weekends, the exchange students on a discovery tour. Old radiate pride and sadness, the original living quarters of Princess Salme the Sultan's palace, which once, from a Hamburg businessman geschwängert, Zanzibar and leave in cold Hamburg had to flee. A happy pastime: snorkeling and swimming with dolphins in the crystal clear waters of the south coast.

And finally, the Kiswahili students - especially meritorious - to the cultural exchange involved. A particular success landed Domnick and Anthony with urdeutschen culinary skills: They served their first baffled and then enthusiastic host parental self-made "poor knights".