As a boy of 8, in the hills of Southern Missouri, I eagerly read my World Atlas and spun my globe in search of big time adventure. Pepperdine Elementary School was not prepared to harness my curiosities. Nor did it guide me to foreign (and often) forbidden destinations that only the unstoppable imagination of a young kid on a flying carpet could desire.

How could that odd shaped Island in the Indian Ocean called Zanzibar not intrigue me? Would I have been equally intrigued had the editors used its English translation of “Sand Island”?

A corporate lifetime of travel led me nowhere near Zanzibar, although it lost none of its original boyhood magic. It always remained in my “Must See Bucket.”

Then after two full generations removed from my childhood fantasies, I figured out how to stitch Zanzibar in between a journey to thundering Victoria Falls and the Great Game Parks in Tanzania.

Here is a beautiful island, a virtual sandbar buffeted by a coral reef. It was made famous by spice exports and infamous as Africa’s largest slave market. Pepper, cloves and humans were the most lucrative. To top that off, the Sultan of nearby Oman, operated his Islamic Sultanate from this sultry haven during the middle 1800s. That is the stuff of forbidden fruit, made yet more forbidden by the futile warnings of my youth minister.

I once took a flight from Mauritius, an island of incredible beauty in the Indian Ocean, to Rome, Italy. The pilot announced that we were passing over Zanzibar. It looked so peaceful, so perfect, a tropical paradise, floating in a turquoise sea.

But the tropical beauty of Zanzibar is subtle. It has none of the awesome drama of Tahiti, Bali or Hawaii. There are no sweeping bays, towering volcanoes, or lush valleys with plunging waterfalls. It is after all, a giant sandbar, created by wave action, scraping the sand off of the ocean bottom like a huge broom.

The imposing city center Cathedral has the heft of a medieval castle. This landmark covers the spot where millions of assembled slaves passed in eternal pain from seller to buyer from the 16^th to 19^th Centuries. It is no moral high ground to recall that the Persian, Grecian, Roman and Byzantine Empires were also slave laden. Tanzania officially adopted Zanzibar, 20 miles off shore, in 1964. The political result is a collision of cultures.

Sand Town, the main city of 1 million, has a worn out, tired look. The fort dates from 1701. It has been assaulted by the very elements that attract the well-traveled rich and famous to its few 5 star hotels, beach enclaves separated from the lazy, rambling villages. Bazaar Souks wander mysteriously along narrow streets offering exotic local treasures and spices from stalls and cramped shops. My hotel looks like a scene from a jungle movie. Buildings crumble; cement is tarnished with age and salt air. Maintenance is scarce. But it is always very hot and humid here and everyone swelters.

Indian entrepreneurs migrated to Zanzibar centuries ago and have organized shops and successful restaurants, adding Hindu temples to the mix of mosques and churches.

There is a fascination as I wander around and try to absorb Zanzibar’s culture, its agonized history, and its Darwinian attempt to adjust to its environment. And that is the puzzle that is hard to figure…the beauty of a sparkling gem embedded in an azure-hued ocean that creates the luminous bookends of each day. Brilliant sunrises and incandescent sunsets flirt with sun-scorched clouds over wide sandy shelling beaches lapped with lazy waves. The appearance of a paradise, hiding an inglorious past and this is the enigma. Zanzibar is a microcosm for so much of Africa: So much beauty, so much poverty.

—The story and photos were submitted by Bill Helmuth, a world traveler and Oak Brook resident who gives travel lectures on cultures, history and arts and humanities to libraries, schools, colleges and civic organizations in the Chicagoland area. Helmuth will be giving lectures titled Modern Iran, Ancient Persia March 8 and The Amazing Amazon and Its Incredible Rainforest March 10 at the Vernon Area Public Library District in Lincolnshire. For more information on Helmuth and his programs, go to www.billhelmuthtravels.com.