hen my husband and I met in April 2006, within weeks we realized that we shared two unusual goals. First, at our wedding reception, we both wanted to dance to “Adore.” And second, we both wanted our first big trip with our spouse to be a trip to Africa. Our actual engagement came about a year later and we kicked off our wedding reception with a PG-13 slow-dance to our chosen song. Getting to Africa together was much harder.

We couldn’t do it for our honeymoon in 2008, because we didn’t have the time or money. We didn’t do it for our first anniversary in 2009 because we didn’t have the time and were obligated and honored to go to Sweden, so that I could meet his extended family.  Finally, with our second anniversary approaching in 2010, we put all else aside, scheduled three weeks off work, and brought two plane tickets to Accra, Ghana. Three weeks before the trip, I learned that I was pregnant. One week before the trip, I learned that the pregnancy was ectopic, life threatening and needed to be terminated immediately. In my grief, I held on to the idea for several more days that I could still make the trip, only capitulating 24 hours before our flight’s scheduled departure.

My husband had already been to Africa. In 1999, just before starting graduate school, he took a month off and backpacked, in Ghana, Uganda and Kenya. But I had never been to the continent and was frustrated about that, because I had been to every other inhabited content, except Australia. I wanted to go, primarily because I wanted to experience the traditional music and dance inside its full cultural context. So when my doctor declared me healed from the pregnancy, we started planning a new trip. We figured that after the trauma of losing the pregnancy, we’d go to the prettiest and most relaxing place we could think of in Africa — the east African island of Zanzibar, and spend the rest of our trip exploring Tanzania and possibly Kenya.

May 27th we landed in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania and within hours climbed onto a ferry for the 70-mile ride across the Indian ocean to Zanzibar. These are some photos we took during this restorative and healing trip of a lifetime.

01. Jambiani Beach, Zanzibar

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Our favorite place on the main island of Zanzibar was Jambiani, on the east coast of the island. The beach is stunning and the villagers were more welcoming than anywhere else on the island. Children and adults from the nearby village visit the beach a lot for their own recreation and enjoyment, making it easy to strike up conversations with them. Most spoke English and were eager to teach us Swahili phrases. We played with some of the children there, including these siblings.