Imani Beach Villa

New Year

2010-01-11T17:51:00.003+03:00

Myaka Mpya 2010!
We saw the New Year in “Zanzibari” style, with great local musicians (pictured) drumming and singing until 3am, a fire going under the treehouse, locals, guests and ex-pats all celebrating together, it was just perfect! Having brought most of our guests in from town on the boat, we started off the party with a couple guys doing some very impressive capo-eira on the beach (we had to lock our dogs in our room for half an hour because they were too excited by the jumping and the kicking!) With a big barbecue served at 8pm, we then got down to some fun dancing with the musicians, some shisha pipe, drinking and so on, until at midnight we did a countdown and popped open the “bubbly”! :)
Happy New Year from us all at Imani – we hope 2010 will be a good year for all of us :)

Here is a drunken picture of us!!

Christmas

2009-12-29T20:37:00.006+03:00

We had a lovely, lovely Christmas here at Imani. With a full house, we served a wonderful lobster and seafood buffet on Christmas eve, I played Christmas songs on guitar for a little while, and guests sat around drinking wine until quite late. It was a very nice atmosphere. On Christmas day, everybody had a little shell wrapped in a piece of kanga as a token gift and we put on a big barbecue buffet - beef skewers, goat skewers, tuna skewers and more besides! I was busy since morning preparing a turkey for a few friends, but I’m glad we didn’t serve it to the guests because it was very tough and all the meat was dark! I don’t think I’ll bother trying to cook a Zanzibari turkey again! We had bacon though, which was a treat here on Zanzibar, and traditional English vegetables, gravy and bread sauce! Those of us living here enjoyed that. Then - for everyone - I had also made Christmas cookies with an angel cookie cutter I had found in town!

Christmas night was the classic ‘Christmas leftovers’ buffet. With a small bonfire on, a puff on a shisha pipe, more wine and people seemd to be really enjoying their Zanzibar Christmas! Thanks to our family and friends, Simon and I had loads of prezzies to open, delivered days in advance to our post box in town. Our Belgian friends couldn’t believe how many presents we had!! They say they don’t make such a fuss in Belgium! On boxing day I had a lovely day getting a small Henna design, as is customary to do at times of celebration, and Simon watched Liverpool Football Club win 2-0, which is customary for him to do on boxing day! Now we have New Year to look forward to… I wonder what 2010 will bring to Imani…? we hope a small pier!!!! Or maybe solar panels...

We have neglected our blog!

2009-11-27T12:42:00.009+03:00

Since Simon last wrote our blog we have gotten married in the UK, built a large treehouse at Imani with a new bar, had his best friend to visit and his dad, and been busier than ever with guests!! I will probably write the blog from now on, after going back and forth from the UK alot last year, I am now also a permanent fixture at Imani. It is truly wonderful to be together here now, we're all settled in and just continuing to try and make progress...! Next year we hope to be able to build a jetty over the bit of coral rock in front of Imani, but for now we are very pleased with our 'treehouse'. It provides a great view from inside the villa, and a lovely spot for dining or sitting. At night, once the sun has set, the lights from the fishing boats make a romantic twinkle on the ocean.

The latest highlight has been swimming with dolphins at the south of the island. We were reluctant to go at first because we were concerned about reports that the dolphins felt harrassed. However, some guests still went on the trip and repeatedly told us how the dolphins love to play, and they are free to swim away at any time they choose, and what a wonderful experience it is!! So, finally, when Simon's dad was visiting us we decided to make the trip. And truly, we can endorse that it is a great trip!! The dolphins come back again and again to play with the humans, and they choose to swim up to the surface to see us up close with our snorkel masks on. They come so close!! It is a fantastic experience. We saw a mother and baby very close, and could hear the sounds they make to communicate with each other. It was a fantastic experience!
We don't have an underwater camera, but below is a picture from the boat. There are only 3 in the picture, but we were surrounded by an entire pod, about 15-20 dolphins in a pod, and even another pod came to see us!

Continuing the wildlife theme, Simon's dad was very eager to spot a bushbaby, which jump around the garden at night. They are quite shy creatures, but now the treehouse is on a high level amongst the foliage, it is easier to spot them. Finally, on his last night he saw one. In the same week, Simon and I had been extra lucky- we were sat up in the treehouse about 10pm, both quiet reading, and a bushbaby came inside the treehouse, did some hop skips and jumps and then hopped up on to the adjacent wall. He then hid behind some palm leaves, and gently making a little opening with his paws he stuck his head through and looked right at us!! It was as if he was playing peek-a-boo with us!!! Then he ran along the wall, doing some specatular little jumps stood up vertically (like a kangaroo?!!) and he was away in to the night! It was quite a show!!! And they are supposed to be shy!!! We normally spot one at least once a week, but such a performance is unusual.

I will sign off with a picture of a bush baby from the internet, we haven't tried to picture one with our own camera in the dark! We don't have such a great camera, and also you never know when you will see one, so the likelihood of capturing the moment on camera is quite slim!

Read my latest posts!

Onwards and upwards

2009-02-24T11:13:00.003+03:00

We now have 4 weeks of the season left until we close for the rainy season. We have managed to keep a steady stream of guests coming after the busy season and we have also been taking quite a few bookings for the coming year which is very encouraging. We currently have bookings in every month up until the end of the year, which is fantastic as we still have 3 months before the new season begins. I'm definitely going to have to try and get some rest when I'm back in England as I have a feeling it will be all systems go again as soon as I arrive back here in Zanzibar at the end of May.
I fell ill for the first time last week and had to go to the local hospital, I was having high fever and so went for a malaria test. It was negative but the doctor still decided to put me on anti-malarials and they seemed to help, so I'm not sure if I had it or not, but it wasn't enjoyable whatever it was. Because I'm hopefully going to be here for the best part of the next 10 years I'm not taking anti-malarials as I'm sure both my Liver and Wallet wouldn't thank me for it! Thankfully Tito was around to help me to the hospital and then making sure I was taking my medicine and eating! Which leads me on to say how lucky I am to have such a great team of staff around me. I have to sit some of them down now and again and have a talk with about this or that (as in any business) but in general I would like to think that we are creating the family atmosphere amongst the staff that we wanted to - obviously having pet rabbits and dogs help with that as well! So far as well we have had only positive comments about how friendly and helpfull the staff are here (view tripadvisor.com to see) and it really makes me proud to lead such a great team, hopefully I will be able to lead them for many years to come.
Just a quick note on the rabbits - after migrating to a small home out of sight at the back for a while they now seem to have made a permanent home underneath our restaurant which is absolutely perfect! They now spend most of the day hoping around the restaurant much to the delight of everyone, particularly me! They have even hopped right through the middle of the restaurant a few times late in the evening when there have only been me and a few guests around! On some occasions they have been spotted by the dogs but they are much too quick for them and dissapear underneath the restaurant to leave the dogs wondering what they were chasing - I find it constant entertainment! The next blog I write will probably be just before I get on the plane to go home, and I'm sure I will be just a little bit excited, I ordered the wedding rings yesterday :o) 2 months today we'll be getting married!

Mishi Mishi

2009-01-17T13:36:00.004+03:00

So much has happened since my last post it's difficult to know where to begin! I suuppose I have to start by saying how much I enjoyed having some of my family come out to visit at the start of December. We closed the hotel for 2 weeks and so I managed to have a little break from everything when they were here, almost! I also managed to get around to doing some of the day trips which I had been sending the guests on for months but had never been on myself. I can now safely say that all of our trips are well worth doing!
My favourite day that we spent together has to be the day we went island hopping! we were picked up from the beach here and first went to Prison Island, about 30mins by boat. We all swam and had some fruit on the beach before going to see the tortoises there. After a lunch of enormous pizzas we then got back on the boat and headed towards Bawe island, where some of us jumped out to do some snorkelling, which was absolutely fantastic. At one point I thought we weren't going to get my uncle John back on the boat, and he lost his sunglasses in the struggle to get him back aboard. I only mention this so I can then say that I managed to rescue them by diving doen and finding them amongst the coral! We then continued to a huge sand bank near to Stone Town where me and Babuu went for a run and others walked along, looking at the starfish and beautiful shells on the beach before returning on the boat accompanied by a wonderful sunset.
It made me so happy for them to come and especially for my Nan to see where I am living and the life that me Kristen and I are trying to build for ourselves, I would love for her to be able to return one day.
So you can imagine it was quite emotional for me when they left however I had little time to dwell as we had guests arriving literally minutes after they had left. That was the beginning of the madness! We were pretty much full for 3 weeks after they had left, and we had a really nice family of 22 stay for 2 nights, which was quite a squeeze! We had a great New Year's Eve here, with 14 guests as well as another 12 from outside who came for a bbq and show of drumming and dancing before some of us sat round a small fire on the beach into the early hours, I wasn't feeling so sprightly on New Year's morning for breakfast but it was definitely worth it! The picture is of the Ndowaro (Swordfish) that we had for the new years bbq, caught by one of the local fishermen, it was amazing and tasted as good as it looked as well!
So we are almost into February now and with us closing the hotel at the end of March for 2 months we are into the home straight of our first year. We will be working hard to ensure that we are a lot more prepared when we open in June than we were last year, and hopefully we won't have another power cut then as well.
But I have to admit that my thoughts are starting to turn to England. Kristen had to return to England at the beginning of November and I will not see here until I return in April and I have missed her terribly, it has been so hard at times being so far apart from each other, especially when I was working 17 hours a day and just feeling exhauusted! It will be an amzing couple of months as we will be getting married! April 24th will see me take another step towards proper adulthood! So in the 2 months I am back I will have a stag do, get married, have a honeymoon and celebrate my dad's 60th birthday and my 27th, I will need to come back to work for a rest after all that! In the meantime I have started running on the beach again after a 6 week break, I have 14 weeks to get in shape for our wedding pictures!!

Quiet before the storm

2008-11-14T10:35:00.003+03:00

As the title of this post suggests, it is fairly quiet here on Zanzibar at the moment. We are in the middle of the short rains which come every November, it normally rains for a few hours in the morning before clearing in the afternoon. we have been noticeably quieter than the previous few months but one thing that I take great heart from is that we are not empty, and we are actually busier than we were in July of this year (which is supposed to be the busiest month of the year). For me this just shows the progress we have made in our first 6 months.
We have now arranged for people to be able to take a dhow(traditional sail boat) into town and back which is a great service for our guests and also good income for the local fishermen who live next to us. Me and Kristen went a few weeks ago and loved it, we had a beautiful sunset on the way back. I went again yesterday on my own and the guys let me drive, it was great, however my arm started to hurt after a while. This was hilarious for Fay, Makame and Sale who spent several minutes laughing themselves silly when I told them my arm was tired! I tried to explain that I had been doing exercise in the morning but it didn't wash! In the new year I am going to organise a package where guests can have a sunset cruise to Imani with Dinner and cocktails on arrival and a taxi back to town for a set price to try and encourage more people to make their way out here for the restaurant, I think it's a great idea, but it's mine so of course I would!
Now it is quiet here but that doesn't mean that I'm letting everyone slack off (well, not too much!) we are working on improving the rooms, painting and re-varnishing and trying to do little bits to improve. We have also started to count stock and make a start at putting systems and proceedures into place for control, which were lacking a bit before to put mildly!
I am very excited now as I have 8 members of my family coming on the 1st of December, including my 83 year old Nan! I cannot wait for her (and the others) to see this place. I think she will be absolutely amazed at how wonderful it is here and what an amazing life I am trying to build for myself, I am so looking forward to sitting with her in the garden with the sound of the ocean in the background!
It is perfect timing for them to come as well as once they leave we will be almost full for a month, so it means me, and to some effect the staff will be able to take it a bit easier before the hard work of silly season begins.
Now to finish, just a quick word on the puppies.
They are still cute little puppies! They are learning a bit more now and know not to go in the restaurant (most of the time!) and who the staff are and they are loving the attention from the guests. With them normally having barracuda or octopus for dinner as well they are probably the 2 luckiest dogs on Zanzibar!

Puppy love!

2008-10-03T21:36:00.004+03:00

I can't believe I've been here for more than four months already! It's amazing how everything is so normal to me now but that I have to keep pinching myself to check that this is my life!!
Since Kristen arrived we have made more progress, most notably in the kitchen where we have brought in a new head chef, Hilda who was previously working at one of the most upmarket hotels on the island, her knowledge and presentation is fantastic but most importantly for me she has a perfect attitude and is a real leader, something which we were really lacking before. We have slowly started to make a few changes to the menu and will be adding the dish that she prepared for her interview, calamari with mashed potato and onion sauce. I have also finally got the new menus out on the tables which give our food and drinks lists as well as the tours we offer and a bit about the hotel as well. Our bookings for October are looking good and we are almost full between the 27th Dec and 5th Jan, which is great. I've also recieved my first enquiry as a result of this blog, so maybe if I give a shout out to Christina it will hopefully become a confirmed booking!
It is currently Eid here in Zanzibar and there is a great festival atmosphere around the place. I have never really experienced Ramadan before and it was really interesting to see how everybody was fasting and how different life was on the island for the month. At sunset there was nobody at all on the beach and especially by the end, everybody was so tired! Even the guys trying to sell you CD's on the streets of stone town didn't have the energy to give you the hard sell!
Now to the heading of this blog - we now have two 9 week old puppies which have been added to the Imani family, Lolly and Millie, who as I write are arguing over bones in the corridor outside of my room as they should be sleeping. We have had them a week now and they are such hard work!! But definitely worth it! We have been concentrating on toilet training this week but think it will be several weeks more before they completely understand! We have made them a pen in the garden but they can crawl through the gaps in the wood, so we are going to add makuti around the outside to make it a bit more puppy proof! Hopefully by the time I post my next entry they will be a bit more under control.

Alikuja!!! (She has arrived)

2008-09-02T13:05:00.004+03:00

So we are together again :o)
Kristen arrived on Sunday the 24th August and I collected her from the airport. Of all the flights I have waited for at the airport, you knew hers would be the first to be delayed!! It was worth the wait though, suddenly seeing her face beaming at me through the doors was such a great feeling.
We then came back to Imani together where all the staff were waiting for us along with the finishing touches to our garden - 2 cute little rabbits!! Kristen had no idea and went absolutely crazy!! She's been asking me for rabbits for so long, so I decided now was the time. We had only finished their hutch the day before she arrived, it was a stressful week! They had to live with me in my room before it was completed and spent many hours climbing all over and occasionaly weeing on my bed!!
We then had a bbq together with all the staff and 2 guests, Steve and Irene who had arrived in the morning for a 2 week stay. I think it was a bit overwhelming for her but it was so nice - our Imani family was now complete!

So we spent the next day playing with the rabbits and just adjusting to everything before I took Kristen away for the night on the other side of the island.
The rabbits weren't the only surprise I had in store for Kristen! When we arrived in Paje we were told that our room wasn't ready so we decided to go for a walk on the beach, at one point I looked around and couldn't see anybody else on this beautiful stretch of beach with the ocean glistening in the sunshine. The time had come! I proposed to her on the sand and she said yes! Nice one!!!!!!
It was amazing how there was nobody around, about 5 mins after there were people around and at the same time on the following day there were people everywhere. Kristen said that I must have paid everyone to not be on the beach at that time!!
We had a great day playing in the sea and on the beach but were so happy to be heading home the following day as well.
It was so nice to be home! Steve and Irene were here and then a few days later a few friends of Kristen's from Uganda came to stay for 1 night, which was great.
Today was Kristen's first day at school :o) she had started a job teaching the youngsters at the International school here in Zanzibar which will be great for her, and I know she will really enjoy it, I think it will help as well that she has something to focus on aside from the hotel, I'm sure we could get under each other's feet a bit if that wasn't the case!
So now we have a wedding to plan! Well I think it will have to wait a bit until our plan here is coming to life! We are still progressing though, polay polay, but now we are progressing together again. That sounds good to me!

Ready for Kristen?!

2008-08-21T21:56:00.004+03:00

So it's been 2 weeks since I last managed to post anything on here - it has been a bit hectic. The first of those weeks we were very full and then the last week we have been not so busy in terms of guests but we have seen progress in other areas. We have started to have more enquiries for future bookings and are already looking almost full around new year. My new menus arrived from Edu, a colleague I used to work with in London who has his own design business. They look fantastic but it will take me a week to prepare all of the inserts. We finally got our sign up today as well after endless days of varnishing, painting, re-varnishing and so on, now I just need somebody to turn up and say 'we would have just kept driving but then we saw your beautiful sign and decided to come down and see you'! and I'll be happy. I'll also be collecting 2000 flyers tomorrow to promote our thursday night of drumming/dancing and bbq and the hotel in general so we'll have to do some strategic advertising in the next few weeks to make sure they work.
Not before we have a holiday though. Well when I say holiday I mean go away for one night! Kristen arrives on Sunday, so we'll have a bbq for all the staff and guests to celebrate and then I'll let her orientate herself before taking her away for a night on Tuesday. Then from thursday it'll be all systems go again!
Amazingly we have managed to finish everything I wanted for her arrival - well we'll be putting the finishing touches in the next two days, but it WILL be ready. I can't wait to see her face when she sees all the changes we've made!

It has been very difficult being apart for so long but now we are almost together again I can look at the time I've spent here alone with fond memories, how we worked so well together in adversity and the different challenges we've overcome. From having no electricity to almost no money in the tin! But also the laughter I've shared with the staff and guests so far, and I feel really proud of myself for what I have achieved. We still have a long way to go before we can feel like the business will survive but we have made our first steps and every time we make any progress with anything it makes me feel that more confident that we can pull off what seemed the impossible when I arrived here. Whatever happens here I have learnt alot in the last three months and have had an incredible experience, and knowing that I have given myself a shot at making my dream come true is a truly wonderful feeling. One of my favourite sayings is 'in life you regret the things you didn't do rather than what you did' and I feel that so much. Even though this was an incredible gamble I now know I made the right choice.

Our first full house :o)

2008-08-08T18:06:00.005+03:00

What a week! We had our first honeymooners stay and am pleased to say that they left very happy :o) I was sad to see Daniel and Paulina leave today but they may be back in a few weeks! If they can make it after their safari on the mainland they will come for a couple of nights to meet Kristen! It makes it feel not so long till she's here if I think guests I've had will come back and meet her!
We had our first days when we were full as well, mainly because we had a nice school group come and take 9 beds, and they all enjoyed the regular Thursday performance - they all went mental when the snake came out - but they weren't quite as scared as I was when I saw the dancers come into the restaurant with big fires on their heads! I thought the whole restaurant was going to go up in flames!! Fortunately it didn't and we live to fight another day. The sign is almost ready as well and I am sure that we will have it up by monday or tuesday, and we are also doing a bit more work on the garden which I am very excited about for some reason!!
Everyone who was here last night left this morning but we had another couple come today who will be here for 6 nights and then we had another couple turn up randomly, so we have 4 tonight with another 3 arriving tomorrow, speaking of which I have to go - I'm waiter tonight!

A sign

2008-08-03T12:53:00.003+03:00

So a week or so ago our sign at the top of road was taken down after a dispute between some people (It's complicated!) which means since then anybody driving past would have had no idea we are here - great for business! To be honest I didn't really like the previous sign and it was looking a little old so it forced me into organising a new one. I wanted a nice wooden one that looked authentically zanzibarian so I went with Tito to find a man who could make us a sign! We first went to a timber yard and after the process of saying hello to everyone four or five times one of the guys started to take us down the road to where they were making some boats. It seemed we had found our man! We spent nearly an hour discussing what the sign should be like - down to fine details of size of spaces between letters, words, size of letters, style of border, size of border so on and so on. I don't know why but it was one of my most enjoyable experiences since I arrived here, we were talking and laughing about different ideas and I felt so comfortable.
At one point I looked around and thought about how here I was in Africa sat on the side of the road with these local men, chatting and laughing, people walking by were looking as they were wondering what this young mzungu was doing sitting in the dirt laughing with the boat builders! At one point one of our gaurds clement walked passed, we called out to him and he came and joined us for a while - adding his thoughts to the mix as well! I thought about how my Dad or most of my family would have no idea about what I was doing at that moment, and would not be able to really imagine even if I described it to them. I thought about how my mum could never have imagined me being in such a scenario when she passed away, and would have been so amazed and interested to hear about it.
It was special for me, I wasn't a mzungu chatting and laughing with the boat builders, we were just men, going about our lives and it didn't feel strange to be there, it was normal. It sounds strange but I had an amazing feeling come over me about how life is so amazing, how my life is so amazing and how special an adventure we have started.
The sign should be ready in a week and even though I don't really have an idea of what it will look like I'm sure it will be great, I wanted it to have a zanzibarian style and so any imperfections will be just that and add to the character!! As long as they don't mess up the phone number that is! Oh and if it brings us more guests that would be great as well!

Something's Missing

2008-07-28T12:48:00.004+03:00

So the next few days will be the start of the busy period. We are all working to make sure that we are ready for everybody and I'm confident that it will go smoothly. I have been relishing the challenge so far of being here and trying to make Imani go but have not been able to fully enjoy the small acheivements we have made so far. Something, or someone is missing!
It's 10 weeks since I said goodbye to Kristen and I have missed her terribly. Even though I have made friends here and enjoyed telling guests about our (crazy!) story, and the staff are not just staff now, I have a real friendship with some of them, but I have been so lonely at times. There are some things that I can only talk to Kristen about and not being able to have that release has been very hard at times. Even now we are close to being together again - she will arrive on the 24th August - I am still finding it hard not having her around. I think the staff must be so bored of me telling them how many hours it will be before she is here! I think they are looking forward to her arrival as well, I know that she will add a whole new dimension to Imani and make everybody smile, I know the staff will absolutely adore her, she will get on so well with them all and then if somebody needs to be pulled up on their work she can leave it to me! We have done more work on the garden this week and I think it should be looking great by the time she arrives, hopefully she won't want to change it all!
On another note I have decided to get fit - after all one reason I wanted to do something like this was so that I could run on the beach every day! So I have started running with Abass the gardener every day when he finishes at 3. He absolutely hammers me when we do sprints at the moment but I think in a month or two I'll be surprising him! We have also cleared a space at the very back of the garden which we will turn into a weights area - using trees as weights obviously! Sule the chef has also been inspired and I found him jumping over a chair in the outside the kitchen yesterday! And Tito has said he will use the Mazuezi(excercise) area as well. We will be the fittest team on the island!!!

Not enough hours in the day!

2008-07-23T11:49:00.003+03:00

So in the week since I posted the first blogs, I have been getting busier, the number of clients is staying constant but I have so much to organise to be ready for August when we have many bookings, everything needs to be perfect! I have also been busy trying to organise paperwork such as spreadsheets, profit and loss sheets ect... Coupled with the fact that one of our waiters (we have 2) has been off visiting his sick father for almost 2 weeks and our head chef will be off sick for at least a month means it has been a bit hectic. It has felt a bit like running on a treadmill this week - not really going anywhere for so much effort! But talking with Tito we were looking at how far we've come in 2 months and that we ARE making progress all the time. We will have nice menus in a few weeks and have started putting together tours for guests - boat trips to the nearby islands for snorkelling and seeing huge tortoises, and also to see the dolphins on the south coast. Abu and his pet monkey cobra is organising these trips and then I have another great guy called Babu who is running the spice tours and trips to caves nearby where the old slave chambers used to be. We have a cocktail list now as well! My favourite is the Bububu Treasure which is lime muddled with passionfruit and then stirred with vanilla syrup and Johnnie Walker Black Label - sweet! Not that I've had the opportunity to sit down and have one yet! The most important thing though is that all the guests we have had have left happy and had a great time, so as long as this can continue I hope everything else will fall in to place! Anyway I need to rush to town again.....

Pole Pole (said 'polay polay')

2008-07-16T12:59:00.002+03:00

SLOWLY SLOWLY IN SWAHILI

The morning of our opening party (3rd July) I was feeling really low, we had hardly had any guests and we were running out of cash, plus it was raining and the party was meant to be on the beach. It wasn't looking good! But like some sort of miracle the rain cleared by early afternoon and the sun was shining strongly. We had everything ready, the food, the drinks, the performers, but we were missing one thing. Customers. The show had supposed to start at 5.30, at quarter to six I turned to Tito (the manager) and said - well we'll just have to start the show and have a party for the staff! As I turned around I saw 20 english medical students, dressed up for a party breeze into a restaurant. Hi Simon!! I don't think I've ever been so happy to see customers in my whole life! Suddenly we were off, me and Tito got the show to start, John (the waiter) was running round giving everyone welcome drinks and suddenly there was an amazing buzz around the place. Suddenly the bar which had an empty quiet space was packed, people were queing 3 deep all ordering beers, wine, sodas - in my bar!! It was a strange experience, was this really happening?! It was another 10 minutes before the show started, and what a show. All the activity had on the beach had intrigued the locals and a huge circle of people stood around the perimeter of the beach, everyone mixing together. When the show started the atmosphere was fantastic, I couldn't have dreamt it better!! The sunset was amazing - it is where the blog picture is from and the show carried on after, with the help of some lights on the beach. Once the acrobats had finished the guests moved inside to the restaurant for the bbq and the drummers continued until late. When the guests all left at half eleven I was buzzing. They had all had a great time, raved about the food and entertainment, my belief came flooding back!

That was 2 weeks ago and since then we have had a steady stream of guests, people are coming from outside to the restaurant and bar and everyone so far is really enjoying it. The staff are responding really well which is even more satisfying and Kristen will be joining me in 5 weeks. I now genuinely believe that we can make this dream possible and stay here for a long time. The really hard work starts here...

The hardest goodbye

2008-07-15T17:35:00.001+03:00

So I don't think I've ever been more scared in my entire life. What the f**k had we done?! I had been saying goodbye to friends and family over the previous weeks but I wasn't ready for this. I was going to paradise crying my eyes out like a little boy!!

I was having to leave Kristen behind in London and get the hotel up and running alone. For 3 months. We had guaranteed on selling our flat to generate a chunk of the cash we needed but that wasn't happening, the housing market picked the perfect time to crash to leave us in the sh*t! We hadn't been able to make all of our deposit payment and didn't even know if we had enough money to get the place up and running or even open. I had left behind a well paid job to risk everything that could turn to dust in a couple of months - we were absolutely stark raving mad!

But we were commited now. I had to get on that plane and I did. And when I arrived at Imani I had to focus on getting the place open and building the relationships with the staff, so I did.

Day by day we slowly started getting the place ready - repairing the restaurant floor, adding paths from the kitchen to restaurant, changing the garden to make it look nicer. Even the power cut - which happened on my second night here (welcome to zanzibar!) and lasted for a month - didn't stop us. By the time the power came back we were almost ready to look after guests (properly!)

Just the beginning indeed!

2008-07-15T17:13:00.000+03:00

So what was the beginning? I suppose it was the night I came home from work and Kristen showed me the advert. She had waited a few days before showing me because she knew what would happen if she did. So she showed it me and that's why I'm sat in my office on the paradise island of Zanzibar starting my attempt at making Imani Beach Villa one of the best places to stay. Anywhere.
The advert was on businesses4sale.com and was advertising a small boutique hotel with garden, private beach and 8 rooms.
We had already talked about leaving London. We bought a flat last year and had it completely refurbished - we were told it would be 3/4 weeks. 4 months later we moved back in! We had a nice place but realised we wanted something more in life, we were fed up of our boring routine and working like mad to pay our bills. We had talked about going abroad, me running a business and Kristen doing anthroplogy. The advert was like a sign.
After a bit of excitment and discussion we decided to reply to the ad. We thought that maybe we wouldn't hear anything for weeks, if at all, maybe it had already been sold. The next day I recieved a reply. One of the previous co-owners lived in Venice and gave me his number in the e-mail so I called him straight away.
We were in Venice a week later. After meeting Bruce there we decided we had to go and see the place. 5 weeks later we did. In rainy season Zanzibar doesn't look like the postcards you see, it just looks like rain. Imani obviously needed some love as well - cars parking out the front where there was supposed to be a beach, but was just mud and rocks instead, and many small improvements that needed to be made. But we lost our minds and agreed to take it over! Looking back it was absolutely crazy, we had done hardly any research and seen a lot of the island and the business was obviously struggling and if we had used any common sense we would not have gone through with it. But powered on by a dream and hope in our hearts we decided - f**k it let's do it!! We returned to London with all the papers signed and 6 weeks later I was on a plane back to Zanzibar!!

Just the beginning

2008-07-14T20:05:00.000+03:00

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