Nightswimming in Zanzibar

Inspired by Katy's nightswimming meditation I remembered something beautiful. In august 2001 I stayed at a small hostel on the southern east coast of Zanzibar Island, trying to relax after two exciting, mind-altering and frustrating months in Tanzania.
Zanzibar had been a myth and wonder of my childhood years. There was a German popular song about it and I had starred at its shape and name on a map of my father's comprehensive atlas of the world.
Now I was in Zanzibar, but it wasn't what I had wanted. I couldn't stay on the beach, as I couldn't bear the begging children asking me for a pen for school (their parents probably send them to generate income). I couldn't stand the tourists (of which I was one), for their lack of courtesy towards the locals. And I couldn't get to know any Zanzibaris, due to the insurmountable cultural wall between us (human interaction stripped to its bone of survival and dissipation). So I decided to bugger off back to Dar and my beloved YWCA, where I had spend two weeks talking, chatting and mingling with all sorts of people - students, development workers, tanzanian politicians and two tanzanians who became my close acquaintances.
On one of my last nights on Zanzibar something beautiful happened. We, i.e. me plus three fellow aberdonian Students whom I had been on a workcamp with and again met in Zanzibar, listened to "Nightswimming" by REM. The song had never really been that important to me before, but that night it was suddenly clear - let's go nightswimming! While the others found the idea rather awkward and went to bed, I jumped out of bed to dress bathing gear.
It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen: The sea on Zanzibar's east coast is so shallow, that you can see kelp and white sand shimmering through from below the waterline for half a mile into the sea. The sea was calm and the moon nearly full. When I stepped onto the beach I was an only soul with a vast and surreal watery patchwork carpet of white and black right before me. The moon was bright enough to see fish swimming, as if the carpet was alive. It was low tide and I waded through lukewarm water for some time, standing in the watery carpet which was all around me. I wanted to swim and kept walking into the sea, but the carpet was endless.
When I got tired I turned around. I knew something special had happened and the image stayed with me, keeping a shred of the Zanzibar wonder of my childhood years alive. I happily went back and crawled into my bed, my companions already sleeping save and sound.