Mahonda youth at Ushujaa

We had the Mahonda youth come up with a drama to perform at Ushujaa last Saturday. For the volunteers, that was our last Ushujaa and we thought it would be great to end it off by inviting the Mahonda youth to come out to Mwanakwerekwe. The drama that the youth put together was based on the themes of substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, and stigma. Juma a.k.a. J. Doss (his music artist name) sang a song about how we should not stigmatize those who are infected with HIV/AIDS. As I've mentioned before, the Mahonda youth are very interested in HIV/AIDS peer educating. Unfortunately, the youth in Mwanakwerekwe were not very receptive to this drama. Because the drama was all in Swahili, we couldn't really tell if the comments or the calls from people in the crowd were in support of the drama or not. But then Carlos told me that it was going really bad and that they crowd "does not have good behavior". Juma didn't understand why the crowd was making fun of them and the rest of the group looked really discouraged. Catherine and I told them that for the group to perform a drama on HIV/AIDS infront of their peers in a society where HIV/AIDS is so stigmatized takes a lot of courage. We also explained that not everyone will agree or be receptive to your message either because they don't understand or it's an uncomfortable issue for them. However, the only way to try and change that is for each individual and the group to continue to be vocal about these issues to increase awareness about substance abuse and HIV/AIDS.

Working with the members at ZAPHA+ has been so much fun. For the 5 weeks we were with the group, we focused on English speaking and dialogue related to business-english. Most of the members that we work with are involved with the income generation activites at ZAPHA+. Catherine and I thought about the types of words and sentences structures that should we help the class with which would be beneficial for them in a business setting. We started out with greetings which we did with them every morning as they would come into class. Then we moved on to asking questions, personal pronouns, and prepositions. We also taught them new vocabulary related to business and marketing, such as capital, credit, bankruptcy, etc. The activity that worked really well with the group was having them do short skits with each other. In pairs, we would have them play out a scenario related to a certain occupation. In these skits, the individuals would practice using greetings, asking questions, incorporating pronouns and prepositions, and using the vocabulary they learned. The group knows more English than they think they do, so it has been very encouraging to see them develop more confidence in trying to speak as much English as they can. They work really well together as a group and they try really hard to learn as much as they can.

Safari Blue

The Morogoro and Tanzi crew did a snorkeling tour this past weekend. It was one of the best days of my life!

In the morning, we had a bit of a rough start. We were supposed to be in Fumba by 9:30 am, so we hired a private taxi that was arranged through Shemsa. Fumba is a villages outh of Stonetown. We were supposed to get picked up at 8:00, but not surprisingly we waited for over 20 minutes when we finally had to wake up Shemsa to get her to call the taxi driver. By the time he arrived at our apartment it was 8:45. Then, instead of heading to Fumba right away, he had to find a place to fill up the gas and to put more air into the tire. We drove around to a couple places before we found someone who could help us. At this point, it was after 9:00 and we had to be at our destination in 30 minutes! To top it off, he pulled over again to the side of the road because something was wrong with the engine. He had Quinten get out of the passenger side and lifted up the seat to check what was wrong. He puts the seat down and tells us that there’s something wrong with the vehicle and it would be too dangerous for him to drive. His solution was to call for another vehicle. It was 9:15 and we’re all standing on the side of the road contemplating what to do. We spot another private taxi driver, so Lonny and Tally go over to bargain a good price; however, our driver goes over and starts yelling at the other taxi driver telling him that we’re his passengers. He did the same thing when we tried to get a couple taxi’s to stop for us. Eventually we finally get on the private taxi that we tried to bargain with first. Even after all this mess, we arrived at Fumba only 15 minutes late.

Fumba is a village found on the southwest portion of Zanzibar. It is on the Fumba peninsula near Menai Bay. Since 1997, Menai Bay has been protected as a conservation area and contains coral, dolphins, tropical fish, mangrove forests, and sea-turtles.

When we arrived at Fumba, we met our tour guide Simba who loaded us up on a hand-built outrigger canoe called a “ngalawa”. We saw dolphins swimming near the ngalawa’s and then stopped at this tiny sand bank where we picked up our snorkeling gear. It was my first time snorkeling and it was fantastic! We saw fish that looked like Dora from the movie “Finding Nemo”. There were tons of zebra fish that would swim right up to you and big schools of fish that were iridescent. The trumpet fish and angel fish would swim closer to the bottom of the Indian Ocean so they were harder to see. It would be easier for you to visualize these sea creatures if I knew their official names rather than trying to describe them all by color and shape and with Nemo references! We snorkeled for about an hour before heading back to the sandbank where we had pineapple, coconut juice, and a sweet treat called "kashata" which can be compared to peanut brittle.

We sailed on to a lagoon which was surrounded by mangrove trees. Nine species of mangroves are found in Zanzibar and these plants are unique because they only grow in salt water. We swam around for a little bit but then Katie’s necklace fell off and the key and ring that were on the chain fell to the bottom of the lagoon. Luckily she found the key, but the ring was from her boyfriend and unfortunately we never ended up finding it. After this ordeal, we sailed over to another island where we were served a seafood lunch. They told us to take two plates because there was a lot of food! We had rice, tomato sauce with tamarind, tomato sauce with coconut milk, tuna fish, fried ugali, calamari, another local white fish that I can’t remember the name of, and slippery lobster. At this point, your belly is so full to the max, but there was still more to come. We did a fruit-tasting which was the second best thing on the trip after snorkeling. We ate jackfruit (fenesi), passionfruit (pesheni), mangoes (embe), mandarin oranges (chungwa), pineapple (nanasi), bananas (ndizi), and sugarcane. To finish off the meal, they served coffee (kahawa) with amrula and a sweet jelly desert called "hlua". The rest of the trip was spent lounging on the beach, swimming in the Indian Ocean, or climbing the baobab tree.

At the end of the trip, we sailed on a handcrafted dhow which is an ancient Arabic sailing vessel that has large, billowing sails. They structures are beautiful and I love how they look against the bright blue water. I've also noticed that Zanzibar has incredible blue skies and turns fiery orange and red as the sun goes down.

The trip went over and beyond what I expected, especially when the whole tour cost $50US per person!. They provided unlimited drinks on the boat as well as on the island where they fed us way too much food! What makes this tour company even more unique is its promotion of sustainable ecotourism.

Eleanor Griplas, the owner of Safari Blue, started up this company over 10 years ago. A majority of the hired staff is from the village of Fumba, most of whom were subsistence fishermen, as opposed to only hiring people from the mainland. Many restaurants, tour operators, and hotels in Zanzibar hire people for Dareslaam which leaves fewer jobs for the people in Zanzibar. All of the Safari Blue staff is from Zanzibar, except for Eleanor who from her accent sounds like she’s from England. Safari Blue also contributes to donating funds towards helping the people in Fumba village such as building a nursery school. What’s even cooler is that Safari blue is also involved with building a mosque on Kwale Island which is where we stopped for lunch. I also noticed that the women on staff still wear headscarves, but they are specially made headscarves with the Safari Blue colors and logo. This goes to show that Eleanor respects the importance of the Muslim culture in Zanzibar and puts in the effort to develop great relationships with the staff and local people. If anyone decides to go to Zanzibar in the near future, I suggest that you do Safari Blue!

Chakula Tayari!

The Morogoro volunteers came over to the island this weekend for a visit. It had been pouring rain all week in Stonetown, but we lucked out for the weekend and hot, sunny weather! On Saturday we took them to Paje beach and then Shemsa cooked up a big feast for all the volunteers and the program officer’s that night. In order to cram 15 people into her living room for dinner, we took away the couches and set up a big mat on the floor. This was the similar to our very first dinner in Zanzibar. Because of Eid, Shemsa had a big dinner with her family and friends to celebrate the ending of Ramadan. We all sat together on this big mat and ate our meal on the floor. It was like an indoor picnic!

For dinner, Shemsa made pilau, sugar-cane flavored noodles, fried mashed potatoes, mkate wa fute, and a cabbage, tomato dish. For dessert we had dates, pineapples, candy coated baobab seeds, and chocolate chip, banana cookies which Catherine and I made from scratch! In general, the meals we have in Zanzibar are usually high-carb with lots of rice, noodles, potatoes, cassava, buns, or other bready foods. Not good for digestion! Then she usually makes a vegetarian side-dish as a few of the girls are vegetarian. I am a carnivore, so the only meat I get is at restaurants and street vendors. She also really loves to make cassava. It has a similar taste to potatoes and can also be used to make “potato” chips. Cassava chips are excellent! I’m not a fan of when she uses the leaves of cassava. It tastes like flavored grass and has this grainy texture like I’m eating a mouthful of sand. Everything is either flavored with sugarcane, ginger, or cardamom. We had what we call “sugar beans” and “sugar noodles” once. Sugarcane should never be put with beans or noodles. The first time (and the only time) we had these dishes I took a heaping amount because I expected a dish with beans or with noodles to be salty. I had to force the food down because I would have felt bad leaving a heaping mound on my plate. We ate very little of both dishes which Shemsa must have picked up on because they were never made again, that is until the Morogoro volunteers came over for dinner. Personally, sugarcane is great of chewing only!

I absolutely love it when Shemsa makes mkate wa fute. It looks like flat bread but puffier. This type of bread is made with coconut, flour, and sesame seeds. You can buy them at any street vendor, but the home-made stuff is the best! I also really like chapatti. It’s a nice little snack on the go. There’s only one street vendor where I always buy my chapatti from because they serve them hot and it has just the right amount of flakiness around the edges and softness inside. Delish!

Among many other things in Zanzibar that I will miss, I will definitely miss the convenience of stopping at the street vendors for food which can be found at every street corner or along a strip of duka’s. They all serve the same things: chapatti, chips (a.k.a. fries), samosas, shredded cabbage salad, sandwiches, things that look like sugared donuts, and meat kabobs. As long as you try to ignore the fact that there may be a few flies flying around in the glass case that holds the food, the food is pretty tasty.

Putting my life into the hands of a dala dala

Everyday that I take the dala dala, I fear for my life...ok well maybe that's an exaggeration BUT these dala dala driver's are kind of crazy!

They bust down the road, sometimes poorly paved, as fast as they can and then jerk to a halt when they have to let someone off or on. I don't think there's a speed limit and I don't think they ever look at their speedometers. In fact, the speedometers on some of the dala dala's don't even work. I noticed that yesterday when I was sitting in the front seat. I laughed out loud.

Then you have the money collectors on the dala dala. I don't really know what to call them, so I refer to them as the dala dala conductor. They hang off the back of the dala and yell out the name of the bus to get the attention of people on the street. Sometimes when we're waiting for the dala dala to fill up, the conductor will yell and hit the side of the dala dala several times in order to make even more noise to attract potential customers. The driver often leaves the vehicle running and will also add to the noise by revving the engine. What a waste of gas! plus my poor lungs have to inhale all the fumes. They also like to try and rip us off when we pay our fare because we're mzungus therefore they charge us "mzungu price". I don't let them get away with it. I demand for my change (in swahili I might add!) or else I just give him exact change of what I would normally pay every other time I take the dala dala.

The dala dala conductors have to make a certain amount of money a day which they pay to the driver. Whatever money is leftover they get to keep for themselves. So it's beneficial for them to cram in as many people as they can into the vehicle. The comfort of the passengers is not a priority. Even when there's absolutely NO room, the conductor will still take people on and point out a tiny crack of space as being "lots" of room. That doesn't quite work if a bigger lady or man gets on the bus so we all end up pretty much sitting on each other in the end. All the kids sit on their mom or dad's lap. Otherwise they get passed down to other random people. Poor Tally had some guy's armpit in her face one ride. People also bring their big bags of potatoes or baskets of food into the dala dala which adds to more squishy-ness. If there's no room for their goods inside the vehicle, then it gets strapped down on top of the dala dala. During one ride, some guy needed to bring a desk home, so the conductor scampered up to the top of the dala dala and hoisted the desk up with the 10 bags of potatoes and piles of wood planks already on top. Even before the conductor has a chance to come down, the dala dala is already driving down the road! I'm just waiting for the day when the conductor will be thrown off the back of the bus.

ZAPHA+

Next Saturday (November 15), Catherine and I will be helping the members at ZAPHA+ (Zanzibar Association of People living with HIV/AIDS) to run an openhouse to help promote the organization as well as their income generation program.

One of the programs offered through ZAPHA+ is income generation. ZAPHA+ really focuses on trying to improve and increase a positive living standarad among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Through income generation, PLWHA's are given the opportunity to learn new skills and tools to help them develop their own businesses in the future in order to increase their personal income. The most developed products are their hand-made scented soaps. They sell to local tourist shops, hotels, and resturants in Stonetown and in a few weeks, they will be attending the International Trade Fair taking place in Rwanda. They haven't had much training in marketing and advertising, but want to be able to expand their market internationally one day. In the past, members of ZAPHA+ involved with soap-making have held exhibitions or events in Stonetown setting up booths in the market to help promote their products. However, recently, there has been little work put into marketing their products.

The feeling I get from the group is a lack of motivation, direction, and initiative. Some members expressed the frustration of only seeing little payback from selling their products, so they don't see how it is beneficial for them to put in so much effort into an event to promote their products. Our hope is that by organizing this openhouse and creating a portolio on how to run an event, this will become something that they will continue to use once we leave. We feel that there is great potential for their products if only they could take more initiative.

This week Catherine and I will be putting together brochures and posters to advertise for our openhouse. Already it has been a challenge just to get information from the group about their soaps, finding out if we can get a permit for the location of our event, as well as what the budget will be to have the culinary group at ZAPHA+ cater the event. There seems to be no sense of urgency to have things organized well in advance and a lack of accountability. This is one thing that can be challenging when working with the people here and trying to make progress on a project. Things are just done on its own time.

Scary looking mzungus

Most of the kids in Zanzibar think we're amusing; however, we've had a couple incidents coming back from Mahonda where the children were absolutely petrified of us to the point where they broke into tears!

Catherine and I were taking the dala dala back from Mahonda and a mother with her son (about 2-3 years old) came and sat down beside us. The mother put her son on the seat beside Catherine when all of a sudden he starts wailing! He refused to sit down let alone even look at her, so he sat on the either side of his mom closer to me. Luckily he was barricaded from my presence by another women was sitting in between us. He would peek over at me or Catherine every so often, but he would get so scared that he would only stare ahead and refused to look over to the right or left. Then when they were getting off the dala dala, he was too scared to walk past Catherine. The locals on the dala dala were very amused.

The other day that we were coming back from Mahonda, I sat down beside another little boy who stared up at me with wide, fearful eyes. In my mind I was picturing the last scenario. This boy didn't cry, but he was clearly uncomfortable sitting beside me. Whenever the bus would make a sudden stop and sway, the little kid would grab onto his dad's leg for dear life so that he wouldn't bump into me. His dad kept asking him what was wrong and eventually the boy had to be moved on the other side of his dad to be further away from me. I wonder what we look like to these kids...big fangs, bulging eyes, huge foreheads, long pointy nose...I would be scared too!

Shikamoo!

My favorite program is working with the youth at Mahonda. Mahonda is about 30 minutes north of Stonetown and lies out in the countryside where it's green, lush, and quiet (for once!). The ages of the youth range from 14-24. The always greet myself and Catherine when we arrive with "Shikamoo!", which is usually how you would greet your elders.

There seems to be a strong sense of community among the group and they are very curious, especially Carlos (He is the guy with the red pants in the photo). He always has a question and wonders about the most random things, like mean population data and how to use Microsoft Word with just a keyboard and no mouse. Many of them are HIV/AIDS peer educators already and others are hoping to becoming peer educators in the future. The seem to have pretty extensive knowledge on HIV/AIDS and STI's. The only thing that they lack information about are the use of contraceptives. Promoting the use of contraceptives in Zanzibar is still quite taboo. There's a lot of stigma and myths associated with the use of contraceptives. Being that over 90% of the population in Zanzibar is Muslim poses a big challenge to increasing awareness of contraceptives because of their beliefs regarding sex. For example, I read in an online article that some Muslim scholars believe that advocating the use of condoms will promote illegal sex.

We work at Mahonda on Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday is usually designated as our English session and Thursday is usually computer theory. It's a bit frustrating trying to start our classes on time with this group. We are supposed to start at 4pm, but we can never start till 4:30 because people are at prayer, or they just come as they please. As opposed to how things are done in Canada, there's a very fluid sense of time here and no one is really in any rush to be on time or to do anything in a hurry!

UMATI

During our first day at the Umati youth centre (October 14, 2008), Nikki and I did a personal reflection activity with the youth that were there. We asked them 4 questions: What is your name, Where are you from, Where do you see your place in the world, How do you see yourself as a leader. They were only allowed to answer the questions with pictures and drawings but no words.

Some of the pictures that came out of the exercise were disheartening. In response to “Where do you see your place in the world?” one guy drew himself in a prison. He explained that he feels trapped on this island of Zanzibar because he feels that there are no opportunities for him to go anywhere else due to his lack of education and money. From another picture, the individual explained that he has applied for several jobs but has failed to get any of them. Now he’s not sure what to do or which direction he should go with his life. We were told by our program officers that there are not a lot of good job opportunities for the youth here. From my observations, most youth resort to selling cheap gifts and souvenirs to the tourists on the island, running shops in the market, or selling food on the streets in their canteens. Otherwise, they just seem to sit around on the curb all day long.

There were also common themes in how the youth saw themselves as leaders. Many of them expressed that they want to be leaders and to help improve people’s lives, but don’t know how to be effective because they lack resources and the information of the needs of their community. One individual drew a picture of himself with a thinking bubble which had a drawing of money and a big house. My immediate thought was that he was being selfish to be thinking about wanting personal wealth, but my depiction was totally off. He drew the picture to represent the need for him to be able to get his life in order first before he can be an effective leader, whether its his finances, education, personal struggles, or any other life issues. Without sorting out some of his own problems first, it will only be more of a burden to try and help others.

The youth call us "teachers" and hold us with such high regard. It has been very humbling and also has made me appreciate the education that I have. The youth here thirst for more knowledge, but they don't always have the opportunity to do so.

Monkeys, monkeys, monkeys!!

Despite coming down with a fever early in the morning, I was determined to head out with the rest of the group to see the monkeys at Jozani Forest! The Zanzibar red colobus monkeys are an endangered species found on this island. 1/3 of them live in Jozani Forest. The black or blue monkeys also live in the forest with the red colobus monkeys which is possible because they don't compete over the same food. Red colobus monkeys eat young leaves and fruit where as black or blue monkeys eat ripe leaves and fruit. Our guide was telling us that bushbabies are also found in the area, but they are nocturnal animals. It was incredible how close we were to the monkeys. The red colobus would jump overhead of us while others sat on branches munching away at leaves. They seemed very curious to see cameras and would peer at us from above or else stare into the lens as if they were posing for us. The baby monkeys were harder to take a picture of because they were always jumping or climbing from one branch to another or tackling each other until one fell on the ground! I would love to have the life of a monkey. All you do is eat, sleep, eat some more, play, and hang out on your branch until you've run out of good leaves!

YAD DAY

Every friday, Nikki and I help with the art class held for the youth in Mwanakwerekwe. This event attracts many of the younger children that live in the area from ages 4-12. Kaiza is the art teacher from Zanzibar who volunteers her time to work with the children. It's always the same akward process of initially trying to round about enough kids for the art session. We hangout around the table that's set up outside to attract the kids attention. Then we beckon the few random kids that walk by the table to come join the session. There's two reactions. Either they run away from us or they sit down but look very scared. However, once they start drawing and we help them out, then we're not so intimidating to them anymore! This week we did perspective drawing and coloring with pencil crayons. Kaiza was away this week, so her friend Kiloko was running the class. He worked primarily with the older boys while I was trying to help the younger group of boys. A few of the kids in the younger group had no idea how to draw the object that was sitting on the table infront of them. I tried to help a 4 year old boy named Salu by drawing the object for him. He decided to erase it as soon as I finished!

The art class also coincides when many of the children in the community are finished school. The last two sessions, we were bombarded by about an extra 40-50 boys and girls. By that time, there's only 30 minutes left in the art class. So we end up giving the rest of the kids blank pieces of paper to draw whatever they want. Usually everyone draws the same thing: fruits, houses, cars, and people. We managed not to have all our pencils and pencil crayons taken by the children. Even though it seemed like utter chaos with the children demanding paper and pencils from us, calling us mzungus in order to get our attention, most of them were very good in returning the art supplies they were using. Trying to monitor all these children is a bit of an overload, especially when you don't know how to speak Swahili to them, but the great thing that comes out of it is that we get a large turnout of girls to these art classes. In Zanzibar, as well as many other countries in Africa, it's a fairly male dominant society which is more visible as opposed to in Canada where there's better gender equity. For many of our programs, a large focus is on increasing female participation. We want to be able to give them more tools that they can apply in order to encourage female empowerment.

We're finally working!

Each volunteer on this project is assigned to facilitate different programs in Mahonda and Mwanakwerekwe. The programs that I am working with primarily focus on ESL while integrating discussions or lessons on other issues or topics such as substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, and STD's . Twice a week I work with an organization called ZAPHA+ (Zanzibar Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS) which is located in Stonetown. This organization advocates for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and offers programs and support groups for their members, the majority being women who have been abandoned by their families or husbands once they were tested positive for HIV. I also work with the youth centre twice a week in Mahonda which is about 30 minutes north of Stonetown (that is if the dala dala is speeding at what feels like over 120 km/h on a poorly paved road!). The last program is Youth Activity Day which is held in Mwanakwerekwe at the Zangoc youth centre. One day is sports, the other day is art. Then we hold a computer session on the weekend with youth from both Mahonda and Mwanakwerekwe. We are also involved with "Ushujaa kwa uhai" or "Courage for life" campaign. When the campaign was first started in 2006, the purpose was to decrease negative stigma attached to HIV testing and increase awareness about the transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Ushujaa promotes courage through educating onself about HIV/AIDS, making healthy lifestyle choices, and being part of the solution in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Every Saturday at Ushujaa, the DJ sets up the sound system on the basketball court at the Zangoc youth centre and starts blasting hip hop music. Youth from the community gather around and are given the opportunity to use various methods to display their courage through music, dance, rap, drama, and art. It's like a talent show with the purpose of increasing awareness and decreasing stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. However, for this phase, so far it seems like the purpose of Ushujaa has been lost a bit. It feels like more of a youth hang out time with loud music and a few people willing to rap and dance. I guess the positive thing to come out of it is that it gives the youth something to do on a Saturday evening. Because of the month long Ramadan in September, there were no programs being run which I think has contributed to the small turnouts for Ushujaa.

It's hard to believe that we only have a month left in Zanzibar! This week flew by because we were so busy with planning and working on our programs. It's only going to go by faster as the weeks go by which makes me sad! I feel like I've finally settled into the groove of things with adjusting to the new environment and running our projects. I wish I could stay for an extra month!

Welcome to Oklahoma

The section of the apartment that we live in is the"Oklahoma Family". We always have people coming over to visit our homestay “mama” Shemsa so it can get pretty crowded in her apartment sometimes. The children that live on the same level also like to come over either because they can watch cartoons on her TV or because they want to see what we, the mzungus, are all about. To me, it seems like the only interest they have in us is to get money, candy, or toys, but they primarily ask for money. They have the idea that because we're "white" so we must be "rich", there is the expectation that we can easily give them what they want. This mentality is frustrating because how will giving handouts to people in developing countries help them be sustainable in the long run? We don't give the children anything for that reason as it would be an irresponsible gesture, even though we really do feel sympathetic towards the children. So we read books to them and play with the balls we brought instead!

In comparison to where the volunteers working in Morogoro are living, I have to say that we are pretty spoiled here in Zanzibar! With a bit of fixing up in the kitchen and bathroom, the apartment that we live in would be fairly comparable to some apartments you could find in Vancouver.
Bedrooms in Zanzibar (above) and Morogoro (below)






Bathroom in Zanzibar and Morogoro

Courtyard in Morogoro and living room in Zanzibar

Not everyone in Zanzibar lives in an apartment, especially one as nice as this. In the communities where we work and run our programs, the houses are made of mud or cement walls with tin or straw roofs, typical of what people might expect when coming to Africa.

Banana chocolate pizza

Once the sun starts going down, the Forodhani Market opens in Stonetown. The locals have vendors selling chocolate bars, coffee, sodas, sugarcane juice and food. I have an obsession with these crepe-like, Chinese pancake-type pizzas there, my favorite being chocolate banana. There are multiple vendors who cook up the same pizzas, but I only ever go to this one vendor for my chocolate banana pizzas because he uses Cadbury chocolate. He has little balls of dough that he flattens and adds bananas and chocolate on top. Then he adds another flattened piece of dough on top cooks it up on a griddle until it puffs up. To finish it off he slathers on condensed milk and drizzles on chocolate syrup. It tastes AMAZING and its cheap compared to a lot of other cafes and restaurants in the area (1500 Tsh per “pizza” or about $1.50 US). Other vendors have seafood or meat skewers which they grill up for you on the spot as well as samosas, chapati, and chips (fries). This night market not only attracts tourists, but there are also many locals who know the vendors that come with their families and friends to hang out and eat together.

Paje Beach

Zanzibar is known for its glorious beaches. From my pictures it would seem that I was on vacation in the Caribbean. The white sand feels like flour and the ocean is bright blue and warm! Paje Beach is about an hour dala dala ride from where we live. We live on the West Coast of the island and Paje is on the East Coast. There are a few resorts but there are very few tourists on this side compared to the other beaches in Zanzibar. It's nice to get out of the city for a few hours and chillax by the water. Now if only I had enough room to pack a skimboard and a boogie board.......

Mikumi National Park

Tally, Nikki, and I went on a little safari at the Mikumi National Park about an hour west of Morogoro!

We left at 5 am in this little old suzuki with a driver who speaks no English. Every so often he would smack my arm to get my attention if there were animals to see. Even before we entered the park, we saw elephants and impalas crossing the road infront of us. The most beautiful creatures in the park were the giraffes, or "twega" in Swahili. I was surprised to see so many of them and they would often give us this bored stare. We stopped by at this hippo pool where the crocodiles also live. Our safari guide let us walk around this hippo pool which was cool but at the same time it was kind of scary!I was imagining one of these crocodiles jumping out of the water and eating one of us, not to mention that hippos are known to be one of the most dangerous and violent animals! Good thing they didn't pick a fight with us; instead, they were fighting with each other. I have an obsession with monkeys so when we saw some black-faced vervets and baboons, I went crazy! I'm hoping to go to the Jorzani Forest in Zanzibar to see the red-colobous monkeys. We saw one lion and his lioness lounging in the grass. There were a group of zebras close by so I was hoping the lion would get up and we'd get to see a full on attack. According to our guide, apparently this lion was on his "honeymoon" with his lady lion so he was tired and was going to make a move on these zebras. Tally thinks I should be a large animal doctor instead of a human doctor. After seeing these beautiful animals, it could be a possibility!

Free trip to Morogoro

Vipi!



I had to delete my old blog page because of some spam issues so I've started another one and hopefully there will be no problems!


I've actually been in Morogoro for the last 3 days. When we arrived in Tanzania, we could only get a tourist visa which means that technically its illegal for us to do any work while we're here. We were told that we had to go to Morogoro to get our business visa in order for us to start doing our programs. We went on to Zanzibar anyways and thought that we might be okay with just a tourist visa. By the end of the week, we finally got our placements for the 2 months. I will be running 3 programs: Youth activity days, teaching classes in Mahonda, and working with ZAPHA+ which is an income generating program for people living with hiv/aids . During youth activity days, we will be running sport activities and art classes. In Mahonda, which is a rural community that is a 20 minute dala dala ride from Stonetown, we will be teaching english, computer skills, and running debates. This week we were supposed to start our programs; however, we wanted to make sure that everything was legit so that in case one day we were stopped by immigration officers on the street, we wouldn't be arrested or something! So instead of starting programs this week, on Tuesday we travelled all the way to Morogoro in order to get these working visas. It's a bonus for us because we're getting our trip paid for!


Morogoro is in the southern highlands of Tanzania west of Dar es Salaam. It sits at the base of the Uluguru mtns and is quite a contrast to Zanzibar. I would say that Morogoro feels like Abbotsford while Zanzibar feels like Vancouver. Mountains surround the area of Morogoro and its a smaller town so it's less busy and there are more open grass areas. Morogoro is also a mix of different religions (hindu, christian, catholic, and muslim) as opposed to Zanzibar which is over 90% Muslim. The atmosphere in Morogoro is also more relaxed and I'm not constantly being bombarded by people trying to sell me things like in Zanzibar. I still get called "MZUNGU!", which means "foreigner" according to my phrasebook (my interpretation is "hey you white person!") but it's not as frequent. I noticed that the gender differences are more obvious in Zanzibar than in Morogoro. In Zanzibar, it often feels like everything is more male dominant. The men are usually the ones working, selling goods at the market, or else just hanging around on the street. The women tend to be more conservative and stay at home either taking care of the home or the children, but in Morogoro, it seemed like there were more women out and about.

We spent the next couple days hanging around town and meeting with the 5 volunteers who are working in Morogoro right now. We had been together for orientation week in Toronto for pre-departure, but then split once we arrived in Dar last week. They also just started programming this week because they had to get their visas figured out, but it was good for the Zanzi crew because we had a chance to sit in on some of their classes and meet the youth in Morogoro. Seeing the Morogor volunteers at work is making me antsy to start doing something productive with my time here.