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.