Yess Divers on a stunt-filled mission, pushing Zanzibar’s tourism allure

As the evening began to crawl to life, a crowd started gathering at Forodhani Park in Stonetown, a spot right next to the Zanzibar Port. The ocean turned orange, a reflection of the sun as it started to set.

Next to the spectators were chefs and businessmen preparing their cooking spread before nightfall. The moment the clock struck 5:30pm, the Forodhani divers began to put on a show before dusk masked the park.

One diver after the other began to jump off into the water rather fashionably and in different styles before rushing to get out of the water so that they could jump again.

The crowd cheered after every glorious dive and in a way, this motivated the divers to jump even more flauntingly. Phones were held carefully by the audience, keen to capture the diving.

While the evening grew darker, the crowd had surrounded the divers and left them with a stage like space to make their run before diving into the ocean.

The sunset made the diving such a surreal and beautiful moment despite the surroundings; making a statement through the spectacular scenery made of the ancient buildings, palm trees alongside the road as well as the docked boats and yachts that were dancing on the waves of the ocean.

Reliving the history of how their journey began, Jamal Abdallah, founder of Yess Divers aka Forodhani divers says that diving is one of Zanzibar cultures that has been passed down from generation to generation.

Through this culture, he was able to find individuals with similar interest in it and he established the Yess Divers crew. “Diving is in our blood and it’s a culture that has been adopted by our great grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers from ages ago. It’s a part of us. However that is not how Yess Divers started. I have always had a passion for content creation and anything to do with creativity because before becoming a full time content creator, I used to be a dancer and an acrobat. I used to record different moments until one day a diving video came into play,” he narrates.

Jamal says he prefers researching things, so when it came to posting on TikTok, it took a while to get the audience’s attention glued to his videos.

“Before Yess Divers was born, the idea of creating diving content had not crossed my mind. I used to post different things and I would only get 15 to 150 views. One of my friends called Masoud Masoud used to get over a thousand views on one post and this made me curious on how he did that. I decided to stop sharing anything until I understood how TikTok works,” he details.

Jamal further says “Three months later, I recall my friend and I were preparing to dance for a South African artist who had a show in Zanzibar and we passed by Forodhani, since we had not prepared ourselves yet, he decided to jump and I recorded him. I posted that video and in about a day, it had over 16,000 views and the comments showed that people liked it as some were asking the whereabouts of Forodhani. It was a moment of realisation that I had finally found my niche in content creation.”

Going through his phone archives, Jamal found another diving video that had not seen the light of day. He decided to use Harmonize’s song on the video and within a few hours, it collected about 32,000 views.

A short while later he recorded a video which went viral and gained him over 200,000 followers from 2000 within two days.

“Seeing people’s responses to my previous videos, I came up with an idea to create a diving video where the diver sways right before they jump as if they have been shot by a gun. That video is what introduced me to the world. It got over 56 million views, over 4 million likes and about 100,000 shares. This response had my phone buzzing to the point I was afraid that my notification button would break. In a week, my followers increased to about 400,000. TikTok also posted it as a video of the month globally. It is after that video that I officially turned my wheels to content creation, specifically in diving content,” Jamal shares.

He also began sharing his content on Instagram and earned the same attention as in TikTok. People were not only awed by the ability of the divers to flawlessly jump into the ocean but they complimented the Forodhani environment and how it was such a unique touch to Jamal’s videos.

“In the beginning, I chose 11 of my friends with whom I have worked with in the past as a dancer and an acrobatic, and together we formed Yess Divers. While I turned to content creation fulltime, some of my team members are still working part time in hotels and others are students,” Jamal explains.

Diving content creation gave Jamal exposure that he has used to communicate with the world different messages and sometimes simply sharing laughs through creative comedy videos.

Some of the videos that have made him even more popular across the world include a 23 second video which he posted on March 12, this year during the Ukraine and Russia war.

In that video, Jamal and his team held several white boards with the message “This is a message for the world, stop wars, stop racism, make peace, spread love”. The video currently has over 9 million views and 1.3 million likes.

Another video that caught the global attention was posted on May 1, this year during the celebrations of Eid Mubarak whereas the divers creatively jumped into the ocean wearing Islamic clothing. The divers also held white boards with messages written on them.

The board said “To Muslims around the world, with love from Zanzibar, we wish you all Happy Eid Mubarak”. The video also displayed how Jamal and his friends feasted and danced the Eid celebrations away on the mats that were spread near their diving spot.

As his career got more exciting, he one day created a video that threatened to end his content creation at Forodhani. In this video, one of his crew members jumped into shallow water and this led people to believe that diving at Forodhani is dangerous.

“The morning after that video was uploaded we received a lot of messages and most of them were afraid that it would be the end of us. The government told us to put a stop to the diving until a fellow content creator named Ally Jape created a video about Forodhani as well as our work. This opened the eyes of the government on how important our diving content is, especially to the tourism sector,” he says.

One of the challenges Jamal and his team have faced is when a certain wealthy person wanted to take the reins of the crew after it started to get a spotlight in different parts of the world.

“After I politely declined his offer, I woke up to our Instagram account deactivated and since it is one of the major platforms for our content, I had to reach out to Instagram to get it back. After a month and two weeks, it was activated and started running to date,” he explains.

Addressing their achievements, Jamal says that his crew is currently working with the Nigerian music producer, Michael Ajereh aka Don Jazzy where they get to use some of the songs produced by Mavin Records in which Don Jazzy serves as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

“With my videos purely dependent on music, I’m currently working with musicians and producers to promote their songs. Under Don Jazzy, I have been able to get connected to other musicians such as Rema. I have also recently worked with Nigeria’s Mr Eazy to promote his latest song in my video celebrating Uganda’s independence,” says Jamal.

His content is currently embedded with art as he uses painted maps of different countries as well as portraits of influential people in the world and invites them to Zanzibar.

“It took me a while to understand that content creation is also art, this is the very reason I call myself an artist because I do not just do diving as a passed-on culture; I have added different skills that get people intrigued and interested in it as well as the place where I do it,” explains Jamal.

Through this, he has been able to generate money for the crew through the song promotions and this has helped some of the members to enrol into schools as well to afford rent and food.

“Yess Divers is still growing and as of now, through such videos, we have exposed both our country and ourselves to the world and we hope that it rewards us in the future. Through the recent blend of art into the videos, I have also been able to give a spotlight to a local artist based in Stonetown named Nasri whose work is amazing.”

“My goal is to develop a foundation that will be able to assist people in need as well as give a glimpse of local talents such as artists, dancers, singers, acrobats as well as divers,” he says.

In mid-August, the divers began to welcome different influencers and nations across the world to visit Zanzibar using Nasri’s works of art such as influencers’ portraits and maps of different countries.

One of their portraits that received feedback was that of actress Lupita Nyong’o on September 16, this year.

On her arrival in Zanzibar, Lupita joined Jamal’s team and dived into the ocean with them.

Yess Divers have so far used artworks of celebrities including Burna Boy, The Rock, John Cena and Khaby Lame in their videos and have also welcomed nations such as Mexico, Tunisia, Oman, Malawi and South Africa.