Spices of Zanzibar

So there is a lot to catch up on, but I will start off with the weekend. Wow. Zanzibar was incredible. Things have been a little bit stressful with writing our research proposals, wrapping up our classes, and figuring out plans for break, but going to Zanzibar was just what we needed. Logistically, the timing was not ideal, but I think my blood pressure dropped significantly as soon as the ferry pulled into the Zanzibar port.

Friday morning we left the dorms at 5:30 am and ate chapattis made by Mama Jane on the dala-dala ride to the ferry station. The ferry ride was about 90 minutes and most of us slept the whole way. As soon as we arrived, we dropped off our bags at the Karibu Inn and embarked on our walking tour of Stone Town. We saw some of the main attractions, including a slave traders’ house and the House of Wonder, where the sultan lived. After lunch we went on the Zanzibar spice tour, which was located about an hour away from Stone Town. We saw a lot of cool plants on the tour, including saffron, jack fruit, star fruit, cloves, and many others that I cannot recall the names of. All of the plant nerds in our group were having a field day. At the end we got to sample the fruits, my favorite of which was a creamy white fruit called custard apple. We also treated to some fresh coconuts that were cut down by a man who climbed up to the top only using a piece of cloth wrapped around his feet. That evening we had some time to shop around and for dinner we went to the night market in Stone Town. The night market is essentially a bunch of stalls wrapping around the town square that sell various types of foods. There were a lot of “pizza” stalls, which are chapatti-like squares of dough that have toppings inside of them. My personal favorites were the vegetable pizza and the nutella and mango pizza. Yum.

On Saturday we woke up fairly early and took a bus all the way to the shore, which was on the other side of the island. Then we loaded into two boats and began our “swim with the dolphins tour”. I put that last part in quotations because in reality it was more of a “chase after the dolphins tour”. Basically what happened was that as soon as our boat-driver would spot some dolphins, he would bring us over to them and start yelling “GET OUT OF THE BOAT NOW! GO GO GO!” and we would jump out as quickly as we could in all of our snorkel gear and chase after them. Dolphins are slightly faster swimmers than we are, so they would swim past us for a couple seconds before the driver would yell “OKAY NOW BACK IN THE BOAT! QUICKLY!” and then we would repeat the same series of events. There were a few more boats around doing the same thing, so the water was really choppy and a couple of our group members sick off of the side of the boat. Also my snorkel gear was broken so in the heat of the moment I inhaled massive quantities of water. The whole thing was really comical and definitely worth the few seconds that we got to swim with the dolphins.

After lunch we drove to one of Zanzibar’s forests and got to see mangroves and a couple troops of Red Colobus monkeys. The monkeys were completely unfazed by our presence and brought their babies out to model for us. For dinner we accidentally went to this fancy beachside restaurant and blew most of our communal meal fund. The food definitely did not live up to its prices, but the atmosphere was very romantic.

Sunday we went to Prison Island to see the giant land tortoises and then snorkeled off of the side of the island. The tortoises were definitely the highlight. Some of them are incredibly old (I saw one that was 155), and they look like prehistoric dinosaurs. Their model of evolution seems extremely impractical, but I think it has served them well over the years. I observed that tortoises like having their necks scratched, and that is pretty much the only time they seem to notice you. In the afternoon we packed up, ate lunch, and took the ferry back to Dar.

This week thus far has been pretty stressful. We moved into our home-stays Monday night and on Friday our research proposal is due, we have our Kiswahili final, and we begin our week-long break. Moving in with a Tanzanian family has been so awesome thus far, but I wish I had more time to spend with them in the house. I am paired up with another girl in my group, Laura, and we live with Mama and Baba Maro, about twenty minutes walking distance from the dorms.

Both of our host parents are teachers, and they are from the town of Kilimanjaro. They have two twin sons and a daughter, but none of them currently live at home. Margaret their niece and their house girl Filomena live in the house and Laura and I have our own room. We were super excited to discover that they have a house cat, “paka” (which means cat in Swahili), and a dog who lives in the backyard. We eat breakfast and dinner at our home-stay, and so far the food has been FANTASTIC. There is so much to discuss about the host-family, I’m not really sure where to begin. It has been very interesting living with a Tanzanian family; issues like gender-roles, religion and education have come up over dinner conversations, and at times I have felt pretty uncomfortable. Our family is very avidly Christian and our host Baba has asked Laura and I to say grace before dinner. When I told him that I don’t know how to say grace he was very shocked. Last night I did a pilot study using my tape-recorder doing an interview with my Baba and it was very cool to hear about his life and background. I will try to write more about the home-stays at some point next week, because a lot needs to happen in the next 24-hours so I can’t linger on this too long. Hope all is well with everybody!