Low tide

PAJE, Zanzibar - Every morning the rea retreats hundreds of meters from the beachside hotels here, leaving tourists in fresh sunscreen sulking at what used to be the waters edge, looking glumly at a kilometer of glassy tidepools and clumps of seaweed between them and the shorebreak.

Moored motorboats and one-sailed dhows look like shipwrecks askew in the damp sand, shore birds swoop in to pick through the unfortunate creatures who missed their ride out to sea, and anyone who wades out a bit, where yesterday afternoon's overhead water is now knee deep, will witness a bizarre scene.

Local women in sarongs wade chest-deep to roughhewn traps of wooden sticks and metal wire to harvest seaweed they then sell to makers of beauty products, while in the background, Western tourists cut through the water (or flop down to it, depending on skill level) in what has become a kite-surfing mecca. The sun and humidity cling and it's hard work for the women that must be done quickly, before the sea returns.

I'm not lamenting the dichotomy, it just is, and it just is strange.

Women harvesting seaweed for pennies, their men in dugout canoes and dhows paddling far out to sea to fish, and dudes in oakleys and complicated harnesses holding on to big parachutes attached to them. Also, some weirdo with a camera, floppy hat, and freckles, waist-deep in the water chatting with the seaweed ladies.