Stephanie Hanes - Correspondent

It is easy to get lost in Stone Town. The narrow streets twist into dead ends and curl into Arabian courtyards; darkened alleyways open onto chaotic, pungent markets.

It is almost impossible, as a visitor, to know where you are at any given moment. You can see only forward and back. Peripheral vision, and any sense of direction, is blocked by the whitewashed 19th century buildings that rise escarpment-like from the streets.

But that's OK. It is part of the fun to go adrift in this old section of Zanzibar Town, the capital of Zanzibar, a cluster of islands off the Tanzanian coast.

As I wandered on a recent visit, women floated by in their colorful head scarves while men on scooters honked through pedestrians. Children ran past me – not the sad, begging children of some African capitals, but children at play, pushing tires with sticks or catching each other in tag.

I'd turn onto any labyrinthine street, and would find stalls of spices and cloth, or darkened shops filled with traditional Zanzibar chests, or a particularly spectacular wooden door, intricately carved with flowers and vines and dotted with brass studs from India.

Or I'd find a pile of rubble.

Stone Town was once the center of East Africa's spice and slave trade, a place where Indian merchants and Swahili kings and Omani sultans all lived, prospered, and fought. But much of the physical history that gives the city its magic – the lacy Indian balconies and hefty Arabian doors, the hidden interior courtyards and built-in stone benches – is in danger of falling apart.

Without constant upkeep, the limestone plaster over the coral-rock walls turns black and crumbles. The walls themselves are weak, and ceilings held up by rotting mangrove beams are sagging. Every now and then, a house will simply collapse, leaving a lot-sized pile of rubble to bake under the brutal sun. 

After the 1964 revolution, which overthrew the last of the sultans and combined Zanzibar with mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania, the socialist government gave many of Stone Town's houses to groups of impoverished families. Many of these residents have not been able to afford upkeep – others have not bothered.

One day, my husband and I took a tour of sorts from Mahmud Shivji, who runs a Zanzibar preservation project for the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili branch of Islam. The Aga Khan has long supported Islamic cultural preservation around the world.

Walking through the heat of midday, Mr. Shivji pointed out a once-majestic building that had collapsed next to a mosque, and another he said was failing. He seemed weary. His organization has renovated some houses, he said, as well as the building that now houses the posh Serena Inn, but there are always more crumbling.

The manager of our hotel, a renovated fairy-tale palace, was also glum about his city's prospects. He later told my husband he feared that in 50 years, a quarter of Stone Town's buildings could be gone.

That night, as the sun set over the Indian Ocean, the warm, pastel light hid the wounds on the 150-year-old buildings. Children's chanting from a Hindu temple mixed with the Muslim calls to prayer. A blessedly cool breeze blew from the harbor where boat lights were starting to twinkle, and through the darkening maze of streets.

The city seemed too vibrant to be threatened, I thought, too much a product of its past to let its history disappear.

I hoped Shivji and the hotel manager were wrong. As the final orange glow turned into darkness, I hoped the men on motorbikes and the women under their veils cared about moving Stone Town into the future without letting its past crumble away.

Some people assume there's not much business activity in Africa – given the number of wars, famines, and other crises. But I've met loads of spirited entrepreneurs across the continent. There was the former prostitute in the slums of Uganda's capital who was trying to start a hair salon to replace the income she lost when she pledged to give up turning tricks.

There's the former bank messenger who has created a thriving company that gives tours of Soweto, the black urban areas of Johannesburg, South Africa.

There are even the middle-schoolers who love learning about the basics of business.

My wife is getting her MBA here in South Africa, and one of her professors recently offered a business-oriented tour of the township. I asked if I could tag along. Clambering into one of the ubiquitous Toyota vans that serve as taxis, mostly for black commuters, we set off.

Here are a couple of the places we visited:

* A day-care center that uses income from its customers to fund, on a shoestring, an orphanage for babies with AIDS. The director is worried the electricity company is going to turn off their power. My wife's classmates pledged to try to help.

* A BMW repair shop where the owner takes smashed-up BMWs, repairs them, and sells them to aspiring township residents for half the dealer price.

It may be harder to start a business in Africa – given all the obstacles – but for many people it's the only way they can make a living. So they're working hard to create and sustain businesses. Maybe even Donald Trump would be impressed.