The Real World

The week started off with a BANG. Literally. One afternoon at work, I heard a loud ‘boom’ and was assured that it was nothing. I believed my coworkers.  I later found out what was common for Zanzibaris  was not so common for me. As we walked by the market we saw the roads blocked off and about three or four small enclosed fires in the middle of the road. We quickly avoided that route. The ‘booms’ kept going sporadically for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. We found out that a Muslim cleric had been kidnapped and the party he was leading, Wamsho, was rioting so that he would be released. The police, in an effort to disperse crowds, were releasing tear gas grenades and firing gun shots in the air resulting in the loud ‘booms’ we kept hearing.

I was told everything would be back to normal the next day, so I went to work. Turns out nobody showed up, so I went for coffee with one of the other volunteers – bad idea. As we were walking towards my street, someone yelled ‘DANGER,’ we heard a loud boom and a crowd of people running in our direction trying to get away. We turned back immediately and went to the tourist side of town where there were no riots and took refuge at one of our friend’s hotels with a beautiful rooftop view of the city.  The ‘booms’ got more frequent but at least they were in a distance.  A few hours later, as the ‘booms’ subsided, we made our way back, with two bodyguards, to my apartment and I shut myself in vowing never to leave again as we had heard the rioting was going to get worse. The city was shut down – stores, markets, offices…everything. Thieves were taking advantage of the chaos in the city and ransacking stores.

Debris from the riots

After another day of staying in, I woke up in the middle of the night to some chanting and the nightly mosquito bites, even with mosquito nets. I had never heard the rioters chanting before, so I began to imagine the worst. Anything could happen at 2am. In the morning, however, I woke up to find out that the cleric Farid Sheikh who had disappeared was quietly dropped off on Kokoni Street (same street as my Swahili class) in an unmarked car and the ‘chanting’ I heard was actually them celebrating. What a relief. Life would be back to normal now.

On a more positive note, we went on a trip to Prison Island, which was never actually used as a prison but was later used as a quarantine island to keep diseases off other British territories in East Africa. We also started Swahili classes this week so as to better communicate with our coworkers and have conversations with people we encounter. Our teacher’s name is Mama Aunty, and she fits exactly that description. She is strict but very friendly and has been teaching foreigners for over 12 years. Maybe I’ll write my next post in Swahili …who am I kidding?!

Prison Island Tortoise Conservation Area

 On the weekend, as part of an impact assessment of my organization, UWZ, I went to the village of Kitogani on the south side of Zanzibar to visit Toti. We yelled ‘hodi hodi,’ meaning ‘May I come in?’ and were welcomed inside her hut where she put out a straw mat on the dirt living room floor for us to sit. The entire hut consisted of an undersized living room and two small rooms on either side one of which was used to cook. Toti began telling us about her life and how a number of years ago she had received training on how to make wicker baskets and started her own business. Since then she has been making bags, pouches, wallets, bangles, placemats, laptop bags and my favorite of them all – wicker guitar cases! She said she sold about 10 bags a month, 30 pouches and lots of bangles. The other items are all made to order. Her clients were hotels that sold these products to tourists.



Toti, showing off her guitar case



 She was very energetic and proud in telling us about how she went to Pemba (another Zanzibari island) to train other women to create these wicker bags and how she was able to showcase her work in Rwanda. She started this with the help of UWZ that provided her with the initial training on making these bags, and more recently to provide her with the support system to improve by assisting her to access grants, and providing marketing and bookkeeping workshops. This just goes to show that as much training as you provide someone, it takes a hardworking person to actually apply it and make something of it by using the techniques they have learnt. That was Toti, a woman with a disability that wasn’t going to stop her.

She had a number of new ideas and was constantly looking for ways to improve her products and stay competitive. She has been so successful that she has saved up enough money to buy land for a store of her own which is even bigger than her home! It was amazing and inspiring to see Toti’s success in her business and how she is willing to work hard and achieve a better life for her and her family and how UWZ has helped her with this. Toti is one of the few examples of a true success story stemming from development aid in Tanzania. Unfortunately, these success stories are not so common but they do instill hope for the agents of change.

Toti's store (a work in progress)