RIDING OUT THE FEAR WITH STRANGERS IN ZANZIBAR

"What have we done?" my husband, Michael, moaned. We had arrived penniless, hungry and late on a hot Sunday evening in Zanzibar, a Third World island 30 miles off the coast of East Africa. Rushed, we hadn't eaten or cashed traveler's checks before we left Arusha in Tanzania that morning, credit cards were useless in Zanzibar, banks wouldn't open until morning, and the clerk in our crumbling hotel in Stone Town was no help.

We again searched wallets, money pouches, clothing pockets and all suitcase niches in which coins or a cookie might have hidden. Our booty: two Tanzanian 20-shilling notes, worth about 20 cents U.S. And no crumbs.

Stewing fruitlessly in the room was nonproductive. "Let's go out," I said.

We opened our hotel room door. Cumin, coriander, cardamom and cloves perfumed the air. On the floor four young Arab men dressed in tan short-sleeve shirts, cotton trousers and sandals sat on a yellow-and-red African-print blanket covered with bowls of green olives, saffron rice, flatbread, golden fried fish and more.

"Come!" shouted one of the men. "Join us!" We sat down, and they pushed food our way.

"Try this," said another man as he opened a foil pouch and pulled out a brown glob of . . . something. He mashed the dark goo in his fingers, maybe mixing in something (drugs?) and demanded, "Eat this."

I picked up the soft blob. I tasted the tiniest amount. Soft. Sweet. Chewy. Dates. I ate more.

"We're a band from Oman, and we've come to play a charity concert tonight," said one of the men. Zanzibar has long been a crossroads. For 13 centuries Omani Arabs sailed on monsoon winds and traded ivory, spices and slaves. They became rich, holding most of the land and wealth in Zanzibar until 1964 when revolution drove Arabs and Indians out of the country.

These Omanis had returned to perform Tarabu or Tarab music, a local African-Islamic pop. Like Zanzibar itself, Tarab combines traditional Arabic elements with sounds from African, Indian, Egyptian, Persian and other cultures. Even the president of Zanzibar would attend the big musical shindig that night, they said. (The president? Yeah, sure.)

"Come with us to the concert!" one man said. "Ride with us in our van."

Michael and I followed them to the back of the hotel. A small white van with no side windows idled in the dark, empty alley. The driver opened the sliding door. The band members got in - but they had no instruments.

I realized that no one knew where we were.

"Get in," one of them said.

My heart skipped a beat.

I hesitated. The man again said, "Get in."

Michael hopped inside. I climbed in. With the six of us on the floor of the otherwise-empty van, the driver took off. We careened around narrow lanes of old Stone Town. Ten minutes later we stopped. I was the first one out.

With relief I realized we had arrived at an outdoor concert area with a stage. Black men in colorful African robes entered the grounds. So did plump women in chadors and dark-brown-skinned boisterous women decked out in makeup and lacy party dresses. Deeply tanned men wearing white skullcaps and pale women in crimson-and-orange Chinese skirts and blouses entered. Slender black women with perfect hair and stylish short skirts joined the audience.

We exchanged "Hellos" in bits of English, Swahili and French with three beautiful women to my left. One of them tied a red, blue, green and white beaded African bracelet on my wrist.

A man with a small entourage entered, and everyone applauded. Our new friends told us he was the president of Zanzibar.

Then "our" band came onstage. One by one the singers belted out Tarab pop tunes, flirting and imploring people to dance up to the stage and toss cash into large buckets.

Late in the evening our female friends wove some bills between their fingers and slowly danced up to the stage, arms outstretched and gracefully waving. They dropped the money into buckets and danced back to our bench.

Then they prodded us to do the same.

We had only the two 20-shilling notes. We each laced a bill between our fingers and, with all the verve we could summon, waved our arms from side to side and slowly danced to the stage. We flirtatiously tossed our donations into the buckets and danced back to our seats.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers we weren't, but our female friends either appreciated our gumption or had taken hits of laughing gas.

Later, when the last notes of Tarab music and the cross section of Zanzibar's society drifted away and Michael and I held hands while sauntering along moonlit cobblestone streets back to the hotel, I thought, "Sometimes you just have to get into the van."

April Orcutt last wrote for the Chronicle about chasing total solar eclipses. E-mail comments to travel@sfchronicle.com.

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