IT WAS A SWEATY NIGHT in Stone Town when I sat, sun-stroked and hungry, outside my bedroom door. Squished on a wooden bench with my friends Justin and Riley, we looked out over the ancient city’s crooked rooftops. From our perch in that open-air hallway, we watched the sparkling sky as chatter and the squawks from a devastatingly tone-deaf rooster trickled up from the streets below. But our minds had left the bustling East African island to a different one we all knew much better. We were three Montrealers in Zanzibar, thousands of kilometres from Boulevard Saint-Laurent, and laid in front of us were three glorious bowls of steaming poutine.

I MOVED TO ZANZIBAR FOR WORK nearly a year earlier. My new routine involved seaside sun salutations on the sand instead of attending classes in the Plateau. I’d swapped my favourite run up Côte-Sainte-Catherine for a hill on ...