Last blog of Zanzibar

Just next to one of the beaches we went to.
Walking through an emptry street in Stone Town

These kids constantly asked us to take pictures of them, so for the final picture we joined in too.

Tyler and I with our beach boy hats

Shaib and his son Acarum. This was the first time he had ever seen a boat.

It's Saturday, and everything is done. Graduation was on Thursday, and our 40-some graduates received their certificates. I'm proud of each and every one of them, to attend so many classes and put the effort forward to get the certificates was a lot of work. I'm sad that this is the end of the project for me, but for the graudates it is only the beginning of new opportunities if they choose to use the certificates to their full potential.


Yesterday we spent the whole day with the staff in the YCI office doing our final weekly meeting, then we went to the same Italian restaurant we went to what seems like forever ago on Thanksgiving. Shaib brought his adorable 2 and a half year old son to the meal, and the amazed look in his eyes when he saw the ferries go by on the water was hilarious. "He has never seen boats before," explained Shaib. "He must think they are giant cars on water." There we discussed what we had learned during our time in Zanzibar, and suggestions for future volunteers.


Here are some things I will miss about my time here:

Stephanie and Tyler
my family
the students
Shaib, Kaiza, and Micah, the YCI staff
chai
the weather
the cheap prices
Sunshine Internet Cafe
sugar cane juice
zanzibar pizzas
fresh seafood
the people i meet by walking down the street
island atmosphere
no sense of time
Amore Mio's Restaurant
Tyler's ADD attacks
snowpo the cat
Forodhani
Stone Town
the beach
friendly greetings
saying hello to someone 3 different ways in swahili each time you see them
teaching
roaming animals
leaves on the trees
fresh tropical fruit
sugar cane juice
mosques
call to prayer
Tyler and Stephanie beating each other
buying 3 pops and getting one free
the market

Things I won't miss:

beach boys
getting jacked up prices due to skin colour
getting confused in different languages
daladalas
hip hop and R&B music
ugali
slow internet
having to pay for internet service
Indian or Swahili TV/advertisements
the garbage
people honking their horns
people being everywhere (i grew up in a small town)
swarms of flies wherever food is present
cold showers
my toilet being a hole in the ground
mosquitoes
mosquitoe nets
roosters
ugly cats

Things I'm looking forward to in Canada (nothing too crazy, just the simple stuff):

seeing my family and friends
speaking English to anyone
driving a car
listening to my music
hot showers
my bed
toilets
toasters
skiing and skating
soda being called pop

This will be my last blog before coming home to Canada for Christmas. See you all soon!

Last week of classes

Tyler teaching his computer class in Mahonda about the Internet. This is what the inside of the building looks like.

Tyler's awesome drawings.

Once again, Stephanie and I were locked out of the building in Mahonda so we were forced to
hold our class outside. Here we were teaching them how to give directions in English.

Tyler, Stephanie, and Mwinyi acting out our HIV/AIDS Outreach through Arts drama

Finished the last week of classes on Friday. Practically all of our spare time was consumed with working on the Final Activity Reports for Monday morning. It seems like I have 3 homes in my life right now. 1) My home in Canada 2) My home in Zanzibar 3) Sunshine Secretarial Internet Cafe, where I am right now. I know the owner by name, and we joke around and laugh whenever we see each other, which is every day.

The fact that classes are over is sad, but at least now my schedule is going to be more free. The only things I have left is a volunteer/staff meeting and an English Club on Monday, an English post test Tuesday and Wednesday, graduation Thursday afternoon, and a final meeting with staff on Friday. We then have all next weekend off (I think we're going to the beach) and then we leave Zanzibar early Monday morning, have debriefing with the Morogoro volunteers in Dar, then everyone except Dave and I leave for Canada. The next day Dave goes to Zanzibar and I explore Dar es Salaam by myself. That night I hop on the airplane and fly home to Canada.

Today I took part in a movie that is being filmed by UMATI, a partner organization of YCI. The aim of the film is to increase HIV/AIDS awareness in High Schools across Zanzibar. My scene was walking into the doctor's office, handing him a report, improvising the lines, "Here are the test results from this week, and the next page is last week." The doctor then asks me, "Here, (points to a random spot on the page) how is this patient's hemoglobin?" I responded, "It's very low, but it needs to go up." I then walk out of the room. OSCARS HERE I COME!

Also in today's news I bought a HUGE painting. It'll be interesting where they go since I bought another 2 paintings a month ago and our wall space is limited. I'm also thinking of ideas of how to get everything home, since I bought so many things here. If anyone has any clever ideas of getting everything home that does not include me carrying everything in 10 bags, please feel free to post it in the comment box.

One of our family members, Naila, had malaria all last week, but now she is fully recovered and is getting into pillow fights with Tyler again. However, as soon as she got better, Yehyea the second youngest brother got pneumonia. I'm very concerned for him since he is only 10 years old and I'm not sure how well he will be able to cope with it, although apparently this is not the first time he's had it...

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone as soon as I get home!

All these pics are pretty self-explanatory except for this one. Michael was trying to take a short cut in Morogoro Town to a restaurant he knew and we ended up walking on these tracks somewhere, it was pretty fun.

Safari

On Friday I was riding into Stone Town with my Mahonda English students when they asked me my age. I told them I was 18. Everyone gave me a look of disbelief and started laughing hysterically, and then speaking to me in Swahili. Carlos translated for me, "they thought you were 30!" They also thought Tyler, who is 20, was 40 years old. Even though the class and I have been getting along extremely well, it made them realize that I was the same age, if not a year younger, as many of the participants. I consider them my friends, not people I teach, and I never go by the name of "teacher." When I'm referred to as "Mr. Evan," I respond "Mr. Evan is my father. Just call me Evan." This really helped break the ice at the beginning of these classes, and now that we're at the end the students are extremely comfortable around us. In contrast, when we first appeared there were many who were very shy being around white people and did not want to speak or in some cases look us directly in the eyes.

As for the safari, we left home after classes ended on Friday at 7:00. We ate dinner fast in Stone Town and then headed towards the night ferry. Even though the ferry ride only takes 4 hours on this slow boat, we were on the ocean for 8 hours. The is because Tanzanian laws state that no ships are allowed to leave the harbour past a certain time (I believe it's 10), so the ferry must leave before this in order to comply with the law. However, ships also cannot dock in any harbour (Dar es Salaam) until 6:00 in the morning, so essentially the ferry moves a small distance away from Stone Town and bob around on the water for a few hours before leaving for Dar. People sleep wherever they can find room, so the floors of the ferry were covered with motionless bodies. It felt like I was walking through a minefield when I was trying to go outside, only to find more people sleeping there too.

We stepped on land in Dar at 6:00 in the morning. We had slept on matresses on the ground, and weer very tired when we got off. Immediately we were swarmed by people asking us if we needed a taxi. We did, so we bargained with a few until we found the cheapest price to take us to the bus station, where we departed for Morogoro Town (the place where the safari is, as well as the location of the other Tanzanian YCI volunteers). 4 hours later we arrived. The town itself was surrounded by huge mountains that I was very tempted to climb. However, we met 2 of the volunteers (Melissa and Nicole) at the bus station and went immediately to lunch, and then jumped in the back of a safari jeep for the drive to the park. On the way there we had a few worries since at a police checkpoint the driver, Henry, had misplaced some important papers, and also shortly after that smoke started coming out of the air conditioning vents. Henry got his forms cleared and also fixed the jeep, but when we were nearing the park it started to pour rain and lightning. I thought, "great, Melissa and Nicole said they hadn't had rain in 2 weeks and now the moment we're here it arrives." It only lasted for half an hour and soon it was sunny again. On the side of the highway we drove past babboons, giraffes and antelope, and each time we stopped the car and stared. Once we actually reached the park, these didn't seem to matter. Minutes after entering we opened up the top of the jeep and began seeing everything. Herds of antelope, wilderbeest, buffaloes, zebras, as well as groups of elephants and giraffes. I thought they would be hard to find, but they seemed to be everywhere. We were on a flat savannah so we could see many things in the distance, but also there were some cases where the animals were extremely close to the vehicle. There was one instance where 2 full grown male elephants were right next to the road, maybe 6 or 7 metres from our jeep. Then each one walked towards our vehicle, and then in the middle of the road stopped, looked at us, stomped its feet (there was one moment I thought it was going to charge) and continued on its way. Also we went to a hippo pool, where we saw, you guessed it, hippoes and crocodiles.

After this 4 hour safari we were exhausted and went to check into our hotel, which was a short distance away. For some reason it had a Swiss theme, so many of the walls were painted with sights from Switzerland. It was a strange combo.... After eating dinner we went to bed so that we could be awake for safari tomorrow at 8.

At 8:30 the next morning we left for the park again. It was raining, and I asked Henry, "do you think there is any chance of us seeing lions today?" He replied, "I think probably not because of the weather." Our spirits dampened a bit, but within 5 minutes of him saying this on the side of the road were 3 lions. We couldn't believe it, and we stopped the car and took a million pictures of 2 males and a female. We were so captivated by the animals that we stayed there for 40 minutes just staring at them. No one wanted to leave, but eventually we had to continue our safari. That morning was much the same as the day before except we saw a hundred babboons and 5 elephants, one a baby, who got even closer to the jeep than the 2 from the other day did. After this much shorter safari we went to the main office for lunch, and we sat down with a view of the savannah in front of us, as well as 2 water holes. Not long after we arrived, an entire herd of buffaloes came to the water holes and began to cool themselves down. 10 minutes later 5 or 6 elephants joined in too and took a mud bath. It was a great way to end the trip.

We returned to Morogoro Town and checked into our hotel there, then went to the YCI volunteer's homes. Their homes are much poorer than ours and in a worse neighbourhood, I felt very spoiled when I saw where they lived and compared it to our own home. We picked up Michael, the other volunteer (he had decided to climb the mountain instead of coming on safari) and we went on a walk around the town. There I noticed that many of the kids like to come up and bump your hand in greeting, and we weren't heckled as much by taxi drivers or people trying to sell us stuff. Also there were far less people honking their horns. In Zanzibar, it seems like everyone uses their steering wheel as a punching bag because all I can hear is noise from the car horns. There were also far less women walking around with hajibs on covering their heads since the vast majority of the town is Christian, not Muslim like Zanzibar. We ate out for dinner at a place owned by a Canadian, and she had 4 dogs that I swear were the cutest things I have seen in 2 months. Made my day. We went back the hotel to play some pool and say goodbye to the volunteers for another 2 weeks until we all meet again in Dar es Salaam before departure.

We woke up at quarter to 5 the next morning to catch our bus to Dar so that we could possibly get the early ferry to Zanzibar. We ended up missing that so we didn't reach home until 4:00 in the afternoon, when we had a shower (we all looked and felt like crap) and then came to the cafe. As I am writing this the whole time I've been helping the man next to me fill out a university application to America.

Final Activity Reports are due in a week and each one should take a few hours, so there is no time to blog until after this. This is my last week of classes, and the following week is graduation. Have a good week everyone!

What I've been up to

Stephanie beating up Tyler. This happens at least once a day.

Me with a 185 eyar-old tortoise.

Our Mahonda Class. For some reason they didn't seem to smile in this picture, but when you talk to them they are really nice and cool people.

There are 6 monkeys in this picture. Can you find them all?

The dolphins, there were about 20 or so, even though you can only see 3 or 4.

Our time here is winding down; my plane for Canada leaves in 3 weeks. Here's what has happened since I last blogged.

After Ushujaa we met Nicole and Melissa from the Morogoro volunteers who decided to visit Zanzibar for the weekend. It was great to see them again, and interesting to hear what their programs were like and the differences between where they live and here. With them we woke up early on Sunday morning to travel to the south of the island to swim with wild dolphins. After the short drive there we chose our snorkeling gear from a rack and stepped onto a small boat. There were 7 of us: the 5 volunteers and 2 guides. For 2 hours we searched the ocean with other boats carrying tourists doing the same thing as us, and at last we found them. We all jumped into the water and were immediately surrounded by these huge creatures. It was very hard to keep up with them. While they were leisurely swimming along I was sprinting with all of my energy just to stay with them. Once they got too far ahead we got into the boat and caught up with them again. The dolphins themselves did not seem afraid of us, and a few even came up to me and swam around me before heading back to the bottom. After half an hour of this we were all exhausted so we were brought back to land.

The next event on our list for the day was seeing monkeys in the Jozani Forest. I thought "It took us 2 hours to find the dolphins, it'll probably take us just as long to find the monkeys." A 30 second walk across a road and the first tree on the right proved otherwise. There were a dozen or so of them, each climbing all around the tree and eating leaves from the branches. We could get really close to them, they seemed used to humans after tourists coming to visit them so often. After taking a million pictures of these guys we went for a short stroll through a mango tree grove and a mahogany forest.

The week then started, and we continued our classes as usual. Every week seems to keep getting better and better, the students are much more eager to participate each session, and even with the language barrier they seem to understand the materiel we teach them. There are a few participants who we have become friends with, and after each class they come up to us and ask us questions about the class, or just to talk about anything. My favourite part of my week was when the Mahonda Computer Class climbed into the back of a rented daladala with us and made the trip to Stone Town for a practical. All the way they were asking us questions about ourselves, singing songs, and all in all having a great time. It was like a field trip for them, and I can't wait until next week's session so we can do it again.

This weekend started, and we went to Forodhani (the seafood night market) as usual on Friday night to end our week of classes. On Saturday we woke up early to go to Prison Island, which was half an hour away by boat. The prison itself had long ago been converted into a quarantine station for an outbreak of bubonic plague that occured a hundred years ago. Now it is used only for tourism. The most exciting part of this island however is not the prison, but the giant tortoises that inhabit it. When I say giant I mean gigantic. There were a few who came to my knees, and mid-thigh if they stretched their necks. There were dozens of them, all in one area, and you could feed them spinach by hand and pet their necks, which apparently they love. Just seeing one was incredible, to actually be interacting with many was an experience of a lifetime. There was one that was 185 years old, and still looked like he had another hundred years to go.

Coincidentally enough, one of Stephanie's friends from Newfoundland is volunteering in Arusha, Tanzania the same time that we are here in Zanzibar. She and 5 of her colleagues came and we met them in Stone Town. Each one of them were great people and really fun to be around, I'm glad we got to share a day together here.

I'm now getting ready for next week's classes. There are only 2 more weeks of actual classes to go before graduation week occurs, and I'm trying to squeeze in as much information as possible into such a short time period. I hope that everyone had a great Halloween, and that everyone actually wore a costume instead of going as themselves (not that I've done that in the past or anything...). We bought Masai robes here and a bit of their jewelry so tonight we will celebrate Halloween with our family a day late. Hope everyone is having a good school year!

rte