Zanzibar

So I haven’t blogged much about Zanzibar yet. This is largely because it was SO nice and SO lovely that you wouldn’t believe me if I told you: think Bounty advert without the annoying and not-very-nice-tasting coconut chocolate.

I ate my bodyweight in seafood (fooling myself somewhat that fish and fruit and veg is incredibly healthy – yes I know this is the diet of supermodels but they probably don’t have a seafood platter which is made up of a whole crab, a whole lobster, a whole something else that looked a bit like a lobster, some octopus and tiger prawns!)

Also Zanzibar people (Zanzibarbarians possibly?) do not shout “mzungu” at every passing white person (it would take up most of the day given the number of tourists) which is refreshing. It was very odd being a tourist though. Can’t really put my finger on why, I suppose it’s because I’ve been away but not a tourist for quite a long time now.

Anyway, top tips for Zanzibar:

if you can try to take all luggage out of Zanzibar as hand luggae (it means sacrificing the remnants of your sunscreen but saves you no end of hassle).

lots of tourist shops in Stone Town means low prices – so do your shopping here.

don’t too many of you go at once as it will get all over run with tourists (including towel wielding Germans – I kid you not).

Moving

I’ve moved to the volunteer house for a week because my nice friends invited me – aaah! Our numbers have dwindled to the point that there’s three of them rattling round a house which can accommodate over 20 people so they invited me to come round.

The good points of this are:

I get a pretty nice dinner every night

I don’t have to spend a fortune on taxis after dark

I have nice company for chats and general hanging out-ness

The bad points are:

The shower is a cold dribble

The mattress is made of very old unsupportive foam

The curtains don’t fit the windows

However it is really nice to have some company and we’ve all said “good bye” to so many people we can be sad and lonely together – it’ll be dreadful when they go on Saturday because although the new people are perfectly nice we just don’t have the same connection.

Rather excitingly the four of us are going to be painting a school later this week. The  school has been built using money that one of the girls fundraised and has gone up in less than four weeks which is pretty impressive – it’ll be so cool to get it finished.

Konyagi- handle with care

Actually that should be handle your head with are afer drinking Konyagi. This is a local brew which costs about 80p for a quarter litre bottle. It’s like vodka except that your knees don’t work if you drink it!

Tuesday in Tanzania

Well it’s stopped raining which is a good thing from the point of view of getting around, have I mentioned that Moshi has about three tarmac-ed roads? And from the point of view of keeping my clothes relatively clean. Having said that I’ll be whingeing about the dust in a few days I’m sure! From the local’s point of view it’s good as well as some people I spoke to were genuinely concerned that it’s inexplicably raining during the dry season.

Managed to remember the way to work this morning which is a major achievement as I have to remember which dirt track leads onto which, at what point I turn left (at the rubbish dump – it really smells BAD) etc. Anyway, managed it without any mistakes so I’m really happy. Also you tend to feel a bit like a filmstar here (well I like to think it’s a filmstar and not just the local oddity) because so many people say “hello” to you and small children literally do come running after you – it’s really cute. On the whole people just want to be friendly but I was being hustled today by two guys selling African artwork stuff. Probably just because I’m a new face, hopefully they’ll realise I will be around for a while and so this won’t be a daily routine – otherwise I’ll have to renegotiate my route!

So the lesson went well today. It’s tricky to know how to teach in a respectful way (ie not aimed at kids) when my ladies’ English is really so undeveloped. Still today was only day one and seemed to go okay – we were all exhausted by the end and I was suitably sick of the sound of my own voice.

Had the foresight to take my Swahili phrasebook with me which was handy because Catherine (or Mama Mmassy as she’s known) offered me a banana today – eek! Luckily I managed to explain and had mango instead. It was really delicious, quite under ripe so not sweet like mango at home. It’s Mama Mmassy’s house where the co-operative is based and she’s turned a back room into a classroom. As it’s her house I have to do a really complicated handshaking, hugging greeting thing. I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet but I just kind of let my hand go floppy and let her put it where it should be! Her grandson, Junior, is about four and is so cute, he came running up to me today and wanted to carry my bag.

By the way I am called either Teacher, Miss Teacher, Mama or Dada. I think I’m preferring Dada (sister) but there’s no getting away from the fact that round here I’m a Mama (no matter how much I want to pretend I’m down with the kids!).

I’m going to try to find the supermarket today as I’d like some tonic to go with my bottle of duty free vodka which has yet to be opened. Also I want to get some snacky things as there is a danger I’ll come back the size of a house as eating out is so cheap. Last night we went to the most expensive hotel in town (about 35 quid a night) and had a huge piece of fish and two vodka and tonics and it cost about 4 pounds 60 (this is a US keyboard so no pound sign just in case you’re wondering). This is considered extortionately expensive! An average meal with a drink is about two pounds.

Mind you with at least a 45 minute walk to school every day and then 45 minutes back plus some general wandering around Moshi, I should be keeping fit.

By the way, forgot to mention the earthquake! I hear you ask how can you forget an earthquake? Hmmm…well I slept through it! In fairness it wasn’t a major earthquake but was enough to wake up everyone else I know who is staying here, mind you I slept through the 1987 hurricaine as well!