Today was the day we were going to Zanzibar. Oddly enough, the one thing I was looking forward to most was unpacking; finally I wouldn’t have to live out of a suitcase. We made our way to Zanzibar, which is about a three hour ferry ride from Dar es Salaam – it was refreshing to be by the water and we even saw some dolphins along the way. After going through immigration (yes, we had to go through immigration even though Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam are both in Tanzania, because Zanzibar wants to separate itself from the Tanzanian mainland and become an independent nation), we were dropped off to our apartment. We came in and were pleasantly surprised – the place has four bedrooms for the two of us! It also has a refrigerator, a stove, cable television, and a washing machine, all of which are considered luxuries in this part of the world. My roommate is Celine, she’s one of my colleagues from Deloitte, and I am delighted to be living with her. From now on, when I say ‘we,’ I am referring to Celine and myself.
The first order of business when we got to our place was finding a place for lunch. We went to a local restaurant across our apartment, Lukmaan, with our landord’s agent, Nasser, where we chatted with him and exhausted his entire English vocabulary. We then took a stroll through the market (more on this later), and then went to our respective offices to see where we would be going on Monday morning. I met my manager Donald, who spoke English well. I later found out he had studied in Germany and spent a considerable amount of time doing professional Swahili to English translation. This meant I wasn’t going to feel isolated in the office because of the language barrier. I was thrilled. During the week, I also met with the Chair of the Board and the other members of the Board which is made up entirely of people with various disabilities to discussion their vision of the organization and plans for the immediate future and where my role fit into that. Overall, the week was successful but I realized everything moves very slowly out here, so I will have to adjust to the ‘pole pole’ (slowly) lifestyle.
After having had our fifth meal at Lukmaan’s in the span of three days, we decided it was time we started cooking. Once at Darajani market we entered a narrow doorway and almost fainted by the strong stench of seafood. Inside the market, there was a variety of different type of seafood – types of fish, octopus, squid, sting ray, and I think I even saw something that resembled a shark. As we continued the market tour, we also saw a similar area of meat and another area with live chicken. Doesn’t get much fresher than that folks! Next up were the fruits, veggies, and lots of spices (something Zanzibar is famous for).
We did the spice tour on the weekend and a myriad of spices and fruit on the spice farm, including nutmeg, cinnamon, lemongrass, passion fruit and cocoa used for a variety of different purposes including medicinal, cooking and exporting. We visited the slave caves; Zanzibar has a rich history of slave trade. This particular cave had one hundred slaves living in it at any given time that were transported to the slave market by dhow (wooden boat) based on the demand. We ended the weekend with a trip to the north coast to visit Nungwi beach and watched a Masai football (i.e. soccer) game to get us rejuvenated for another week full of adventure.
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