Kwa Herini Zanzibar!

                I can’t believe I’m already on my way home; the past three and a half months went by too fast.  The last month of Independent Study, something that I had been dreading since my arrival, was actually one of the fun and challenging experiences of my college career.   I actually felt really independent and empowered by creating and executing a study project almost entirely by myself.  I was assigned an advisor who helped a bit during the end; but due to his travelling schedule, he was unavailable to help in the planning stages of my project.   Upon my arrival in Uzi, I expected to have someone tell me what exactly they wanted to be done with regards to tourism on the island.  So after a little tour of the island on my first day, I created a plan to survey the locals’ attitudes regarding tourism and then make a plan to sustainably develop tourism for the future.  While I ran into a little bit of a time crunch, I think it was actually pretty successful!  I ended up surveying 100 people in Swahili (with some help from my translator) and was able to make some (hopefully helpful) recommendations based on the people’s responses.  In the end, I finished my thirty-five page paper and twenty-five minute presentation; now I just have to keep my fingers crossed until I get my grades back.

                In the last few days after Independent Study was over we were able to hit the beach and just relax.  I’m not complaining about the work load this semester by any means; but this was the first time all semester that we were able to sit at the beach and not have to do research.  And because the Zanzibar archipelago is most commonly known as the “spice islands,” no trip would be complete without a spice tour.  We were able to see the farming, harvesting, and drying process of many different spices like cinnamon, vanilla, and the largest export: cloves. 

                Now I sit in Dubai, waiting to board my third of four flights on my two-day trip home.  In less than 24 hours I will back on my home turf.  Look out America, here I come!

Dar Es Salaam and Mikumi National Park

Happy Easter!
Since my last blog post I have been very busy and without access to internet so I have a lot of catching up to do! After we returned from Pemba, we had a week-long independent study period.  One of my four courses is my independent study (which begins tomorrow), so we were given a week to prepare our plans for our independent study and begin our research.  I stayed in our home base in Stone Town and interviewed hotels about their waste management practices.  Waste is a huge issue around all of Zanzibar, but especially in Stone Town where there are a lot of locals and tourists in a small area.  For my month-long independent study, I am going to Uzi island to study the effects of tourism on the island.  It's a little bit different than what I did during my mini independent study but the Uzi tourism commission actually requested that the study be completed by an SIT student! I'm really excited, but Uzi is rural so I'm going to be without internet access for the next three weeks.

That's enough of the boring stuff.  Now I need to tell you about the fun thing's I've done since my last blog post. We spent ten days at the university of Dar Es Salaam and two nights at Mikumi National Park.  We were lucky enough to stay in the dorms, but we stayed in the spare post-graduate house so we were secluded from the rest of the students.  We had separate lectures as a group taught by professors from the university.  Some of the topics included nature conservation, alternative energy sources, and environmental policy in Tanzania.  Sadly, my favorite part of Dar was the grocery store! I hadn't been to a grocery store since January and I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of food.  I had to buy a can of pringles just to get a little taste of America.

None of the excitement in the big city of Dar Es Salaam can compare to the awesome two days we spent on safari at Mikumi!  We saw elephants, lions, zebras, monkeys, giraffes, impalas, water buffalo, wildebeests, warthogs, and more.  The coolest thing was when I stood ten feet away from an elephant at our campsite.  While these pictures may not do it justice, here's a little flavor of what I experienced on safari.

Welcome to Mikumi
Watch out for Wild Animals!

My group on our safari van

We saw lions, but no tigers or bears. Oh my!

Lots of baby elephants

I never realized how weird giraffes look...

Hippos cooling off in the hot sun

Impala near our campsite

Sassy zebras

Here's the elephant that spent an hour eating the grass off of the lawn in front of our cabin! 

More pictures of the university to come, but here's a peek into one of the dining halls. 

Pemba!

Our trip to Pemba was jam-packed every day with different excursions.  Rather than talking in detail about only a few things, I'm going to give a brief description of each of the trips we took.

Day 1: On our flight from Stone Town to Pemba there were only 12 seats.  With 13 students, that mean one of us had to be co-pilot.  I sat shotgun on one of the most beautiful flights ever!

Day 2: We visited an organic farm run by the head of the Zanzibar department of agriculture.  Looking back at my pictures, I found that I took more than 100 of chickens and bananas alone so I thought those would be appropriate to share.  He talked to us about the many uses of chicken and cow poop but I was to distracted looking at baby animals.

 

 




Day 3: We went to a rubber tree farm!  Rubber literally pours out of the tree like sap out of a maple tree, but there are many steps to the process.  They combine the liquid from the tree with an acid solution and then hang it out side to dry for a week (the drying rubber smells absolutely horrid). Next it goes to a smoke house to kill all the bacteria.  The final step is to stretch all the pieces together to make these massive rubber balls.  Unfortunately, they don't bounce like you might think; each one weighs about 75 pounds.

Day 4: We went to a sea salt production facility.  The process is very simple: they pump water from the ocean into large open rectangles and wait for the water to evaporate and leave only the salt. Because they don't treat the final product, it is illegal to export and only used in Zanzibar.

Day 5: The Pemba flying fox is a species of bat only found on the island of Pemba.  They have tried introducing the animal elsewhere, but for unknown reasons they have been unsuccessful.  We were walking through the forest unsure exactly where we would find the bats. Our guide told us to look up and there were hundreds of the bats just hanging around in the trees.

The cuties from my homestay in Pemba loved my hair!  The older two were a little rough but the littlest one was my favorite because she didn't try to rip my hair out.  And she didn't talk a million miles per hour so I could actually understand when she spoke to me.

Day 6: We went to Misali Island, a smaller island off the coast of Pemba.  There are three caves connected to the ocean that locals swim in (we weren't allowed to).  The intertidal area is filled with clams.  It doesn't look as cool in pictures but the clams in person are so beautiful.  When we went snorkeling, I saw an octopus!  I have to steal pictures later because I don't have an underwater camera.

Day 7: Before tourism was popular in Zanzibar, the major source of income was clove production. The bags are filled with dried cloves and the metal tins are filled with clove oil both of which are exported around the world.  We got a tour of the production facility where they also harvest eucalyptus and cinnamon oil.  However, during this time of the year the primary focus is on the production of cloves.

While we stayed with our homestay families, our academic director stayed in a hotel. This is the view from the top of his hotel over the surrounding village.


Places we visited but not pictured:
-the public health laboratory where they research diseases of concern in Zanzibar
-Charcoal production
-House construction
-The Ngezi Forest

Jozani

After Mangapwani we had one night in Stone Town to pack up before we headed to Jozani-Chwaka Bay National park.  All 13 of us stayed in one big room in a house in the middle of the forest.  It was a little bit crazy, but tons of fun.  Jozani is known for its mangrove forests and the endangered Red Colobus Monkey. On the first day we were having lunch outside of our house and a pack of 20 monkeys came and swung in the trees while we ate. The monkeys don’t  really interact with humans, but they just walk and sit right by you as if you aren't even there.  We spent most of the time hiking in the woods in search of monkeys, but even when we didn't find them the trees were beautiful as well. 

On the last day we did a survey of the mangrove forest, or should I say mangrove swamp.  Mangroves are saltwater-tolerant trees.  So when the tide is high, the forest is flooded. We went into the forest at low tide, when it is muddy and smelly.  Needless to say, I fell in the mud three times and almost lost my shoes twice.  It was a big, sloppy mess, but once I stopped trying to be clean it started being fun.  When we weren't making a mess we measured the height and diameter of the trees so there was some work involved. 

We had lots of free time to explore Jozani because most of the research was done early in the morning.  We saw tons of monkeys, crazy trees, and one part of the forest that recently suffered from fire.  For each of the 8 nights, we huddled around a computer to watch each of the Harry Potter movies. Lots of time for group bonding, but in the end it may have been a little bit too much bonding time.

Everybody was so happy to be all together in the forest!

My small group in the forest

Trees, trees, trees

Monkey on our Clothes Line

The Forest

Mangapwani: Fishing Village

Sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while!!  Since we finished Swahili class we have been travelling to a new place every week (usually without internet access).

The day following our Swahili final we went to Mangapwani, a fishing village 40 minutes north of Stone Town.  We went to practice our interviewing skills, but because the village was very rural we had to conduct all of our interviews in Swahili.   We had a translator, but our interview subjects still liked to laugh at our poor Swahili.  In my group of four, we went around asking people about trash in the village because it is a huge here.  We prepared interview questions, but once we got to the beach where the entire process takes place, we were floored.  Two weeks out of the month, fishermen go out at night to catch three-inch long sardines.  They catch the fish by shining a light on the surface of the water and all the fish come to the surface.  It only happens for the two weeks when the moon is darkest.  When we arrived at the beach around 7 am, all the fishermen were returning from their late-night haul.  They sell the fish which are then salted and boiled by women right on the beach.  After cooking, the fish are laid out to dry in the sun.  A small portion of the fish remain in the village to be eaten but most of the millions and millions of fish they catch are exported to the Congo. 

We went into the village three mornings in a row and then went to the most beautiful beach ever in the afternoons.  It was only a 1 km walk from the house where we stayed, so I obviously went every day.  Not only was the beach beautiful but the water was actually cold and refreshing.  Not many white people visit Mangapwani because there are no hotels in the area.  So every day we walked to the beach it felt like a parade when we walked by groups of people sitting outside their houses.  It was a little awkward, but totally worth it because the beach was amazing!

Walking to the Beach

The Beach!

The Beach!

Swahili: Complete!

 It’s crazy that we crammed a semester’s worth of knowledge into three weeks, but by living in the country I think I will retain more of the language than of the three years I spent learning French in high school. Tomorrow we are going to a fishing village north of Stone Town for a few nights where we will be cooking for ourselves.  I’m really excited, but some people in the group have never cooked before so it should be interesting.  The school gives us money every week to go out and buy food for lunch.  Rather than spending a lot of money ($5 is a steep price for anything), a few of us have been pulling our money together to buy fruits and veggies from the market. Then we buy chapatti (Zanzibari version of a crepe/ tortilla) and make wraps. I haven’t found a combination of foods that doesn’t taste good wrapped in a chapatti. 

This past weekend we went to a Zanzibar park and to a donkey sanctuary.  Donkeys and cattle are often over worked in Tanzania from pulling heavy carts.  The sanctuary houses the animals until they are healthy enough to work again.  Zanzibar park is similar to a small zoo that you would find in America.  We saw many of the animals you typically think of when you think Africa: monkeys, exotic birds, alligators.  I have to say my favorite was the hyena, thought.  Not because it is cute (because that is one ugly animal), but I liked it because it make a sound like you would not believe. Definitely not the laughing animals from the Lion King; its groan sounded like Chewbacca, Godzilla, and Morgan Freeman combined into one creature. 

Babboon at Zanzibar Park

We saw this pelican swallow a whole fish!

Crane at Zanzibar park

Crazy Hyena

Swahili Time

It’s scary to think that I’ve been here for less than three weeks because I already feel like I’ve been here for months.  What is even scarier is that we have out final Swahili exam in five days.  So with 20 hours of Swahili class each week, we will cram a semester’s worth knowledge into 21 days.  If you include our homestay and daily life in Zanzibar, we are constantly exposed to the language.  Because I should be studying for my final right now, I just wanted to write a quick post about “Swahili Time.” People in Zanzibar definitely live by their own time because it isn’t uncommon for our lectures to start up to 30 minutes later than scheduled. To make it even more confusing, people living in East Africa function using Swahili time.  Our teachers described it to us as subtracting 6 hours from the clock in the AM and adding 6 hours in the PM.  Therefore, 6 AM (English time) is considered to be hour zero, but is referred to as 12. Noon is considered hour 6 and six PM is called 12. HOWEVER, all the clocks are set to English time on the normal AM/PM time scale.  Not only do I have to do math in my head, I have to do math in my head in another language. It doesn’t help that all Swahili numbers 1-10 sound exactly the same.  We mzungus are still baffled by the time difference.  I guess it’s because they want the working hours between 6 AM and 6 PM to correspond with the amount of time they have been awake. What confuses me most is that they don’t switch their watches to display the time they speak.  I don’t try to comprehend why they do it, I just need to learn my numbers better so I can do mental Swahili math a little bit faster.  

Google Image Search "Swahili Time" and this is the first result.

Yes, it's a cruel joke