Bagamoyo Adventures

Well that was quite the action-packed weekend. Early Saturday morning we left the dorms and headed to Bagamoyo via dala-dala. We arrived at the beach resort around 10 am to drop off our bags, and then we headed out to our first destination. We drove to an archaeological site that is now used for salt mining, but there are ancient shards of pottery lying everywhere. Unfortunately almost all of us got pretty sunburned during this expedition and we walked about 2 miles in the really humid air, so we were pretty sweaty as well. We had lunch at this tiny café located downtown that served traditional Tanzanian food. There also happened to be a chicken butchery next-door, as evidenced by the flies and the smell. In the afternoon we went on a really long walking tour and got to see most of the downtown area. We were led by a tour-guide who told us a lot about Bagamoyo’s history as an intermediary slave port on the way to Zanzibar, which was really interesting. We probably walked about five miles total, so by the end of the day we were really tired, hungry and sunburned. Before it got dark we had some time to frolic on the beach right next to the resort, which was refreshing after a long day in the sun. We all went out to dinner, and with 23 of us it is always quite the affair. Three hours later, we finally headed back and crashed. Some of us were lucky enough to stay in these little bungalow structures with beds, and the rest of us slept in tents provided by ACM. I slept in my dinky 50-degree sleeping bag, but I was so exhausted that my discomfort and the chanting from the mosque barely deterred me.

Yesterday we had an early morning and went to see another archaeological site. This site had ruins and some old graves, and was absolutely beautiful. There was also a gorgeous baobob tree that we had fun climbing until the guards told us to get down. On the way to the site we saw something really disturbing. I only caught a glimpse, but we saw a crew of village children dragging a live cat from a rope and beating it with a broom. Our tour guide told us that when cats steal food from the villages that is a common punishment; it was really horrible to watch. The rest of the day we had time to play on the beach, and then we left in the afternoon around 2 or 3.

This week we have 7 hours of class every day, but starting next week we will go down to around 5. That’s really all I have to say for now… Bagamoyo is a cool place and made for an interesting weekend.