Siku ya Kuzaliwa

During the week we went on a farm visit as part of a field day to visit the USAID TAPP project which stands for Tanzania Agriculture Productivity Plan and is part of a global ‘Feed the Future’ initiative.  We got to see what a successful project looks like. We first visited a passion fruit farmer and saw how his fruits were being farmed using the techniques and training provided by the project. TAPP is currently working with about 380 farms across Zanzibar. Next we went to a pineapple farm where the farmer showed us two different pieces of land – before and after. One farm used the farmer’s original farming techniques with 4,000 pineapples; the land next to it used the farming technology and techniques taught by the development project and had a whopping 17,000 pineapples in it. That’s over four times the output!

Pineapples at the pineapple farm

  

The farmers and us at the pineapple farm

A number of times I have heard of loans and inputs provided to smallholder farmers that are not making the best use of thm. They are not hardworking and do not spend time on their farms, in turn requesting more supplies and assistance. However, farmers that use the technology provided to them and maintain their farms are rewarded with more produce. This project did just that. It didn’t just provide farmers with aid, but educated them on best practices. In addition, they monitored these farmers to ensure they were willing to do the work to improve their land and productivity. Once this had been established, they were given better technology, such as drip irrigation systems for the land and additional resources for supplies.

With the production manager Omar, after the speeches

 The biggest challenge now faced by this particular pineapple farmer was theft. People continued to steal his produce and there was nothing he could do about it. There are no proper measures taken from the government to protect farmers from thieves even if the culprits are caught. Another challenge on the horizon is that once they produce the fruit and vegetables, the farmers need a viable market for the produce. There needs to be enough demand from consumers for the produce being grown by the farmers. So, it is a matter of linking the tourist industry with the farmers in order to sell locally grown produce.

The farmer, explaining his successes and challenges

On the weekend, I celebrated my siku ya kuzaliwa (i.e. birthday) with a few volunteers in Zanzibar.  We started the evening with henna at the old fort. Henna is quite common in Zanzibar, especially for brides, so we thought we would give it a try. We sat on straw mats in the middle of the old fort, giddy with excitement for henna hands. After that we proceeded to lazuli restaurant where we enjoyed some milkshakes alongside our dinner. In Stone town, the power goes out every day from 6:30pm to 7pm – it’s some sort of maintenance thing. Anyway, it turns out that this restaurant didn’t have a generator which is surprising because almost every restaurant (even the local ones) have generators. So, we sat there for about 25 minutes chatting over candles, it was a five star experience. When the power came back, our meals were prepared and we had a feast. After dinner, we proceeded to the Serena Hotel where we listened to live Taarab music which is the local music of Africa after which the waiters threw on a little party of their own which included cake for all of us. It was very entertaining and definitely unexpected, but a treat nonetheless.

  

 

Dinner time!

Surprise! It's a party!

 The next morning we went to a tour called Safari Blue. As the name suggests, this is 'Blue Trip', which means, we were on the Ocean all day! We started off on a dhow (a wooden boat) with the name Lindi with a captain named Simba. We traveled to Kwale Island where we picked up our snorkeling equipment and then proceeded to two gorgeous areas in the ocean where we went snorkeling and saw all kinds of bright colorful fish and coral. After swimming with schools of fish, we decided why not have some for lunch? So we feasted on a buffet of seafood where I ate my weight in lobster, octopus, calamari, and of course fish. Who said I’m not a seafood person?! Tropical fruit tasting was next with a never ending assortment of local Zanzibari fruit – from dates to passion fruit and everything in between.

After that we went swimming in the mangrove lagoons and went sailing in a boat made out of just one trunk of a mango tree – so it was basically an open tree trunk floating in the water. It was amazing how fast we were going solely on wind power, it felt like we were going to tip over, but there were bars at each end keeping the balance. We then climbed an ancient baobab tree that had fallen but was still growing as its roots were still in the ground. On our way back, we spotted some humpback dolphins swimming in the bay (that was the highlight of our day), had coconut juice and headed home. Our ride home was the staff truck with all the supplies in the back and us sitting on top of the supplies. Way better than a taxi, don’t you think? We ended the night with sundowner at the maru maru rooftop overlooking stone town and then dinner at forodhani gardens where I enjoyed some local urojo. Exhausted from a packed and adventurous day, we called it a night. I will always remember by 25^th birthday!

TGII! (Thank God it’s Ijuma)

Ijuma in Swahili means Friday. The week revolves around Friday and each day after is related to Friday. For example: Friday one is Saturday, Friday two is Sunday, Friday three is Monday and so on (i.e. Jumamosa, jumapili, jumatatu…), except Thursday which is alhamisi. During the week, I went to Bambi district for a field visit accompanied by Raya and Mwantatu from UWZ, Abdul and Amina from Mnazi Moja Hospital’s Physiotherapy Unit, Saidi from the Zanzibar Mental hospital, an eye specialist and a volunteer physiotherapist. For the first time, I got to ride in UWZ’s own private dala dala (how fancy!). We got to a village in Bambi and went into a large, unfurnished hall with concrete floors. There were a number of people inside the hall, mostly children with their parents. They had been informed that we were coming, so they were waiting for us in the hall. The goal for the day was to screen disabled children, diagnose their disability, and recommend what action was needed in order to improve their lives. This could be in the form of hospital visits, equipment recommendation, or exercises they could do themselves.

Patient check-up in Bambi



Waiting patiently in line

  Raya introduced herself to the group and explained the purpose of the outreach field visit. UWZ conducts such visits about four times a year, so I was excited to be a part of it.  In turn, we all introduced ourselves to the group after which the children were split up into smaller groups based on type of disability: physical, visual and mental. I joined the physical disability group and throughout the day we saw a number of patients, learned about the history of their disabilities and gave recommendations as to what should be done next. Given I have no medical background; I wasn’t much help when it came to recommendations for the patients. We saw children with one leg shorter than the other, restricted mobility, protruding bones, among others. Most children were given follow up appointments at the hospital in town – this is a positive sign given that the younger the child, the more effective physiotherapy treatment will be, and in some cases, the patient is completely treatable. Some abnormalities are even avoidable given the right child birth methodologies. Needless to say, some of these abnormalities are not even seen in North America because they are immediately identified and treated at birth. 

The local newspaper says that “over 30% of all children under five in sub-Saharan Africa are suffering from stunted growth due to chronic malnutrition.” I was under the impression that my neighbour, Masoud, was seven years old, when in fact he was nine. Children are too short for their age due to long term insufficient nutrient intake and frequent infections. “This impedes physical growth and leads to irreversible cognitive damage, hampering the children’s learning abilities. Stunted girls will then have small and low birth weight babies.” Further, more than one million children under five die every year with malnutrition being the direct or indirect cause. This is the harsh reality of the children of Africa. So the goal shouldn’t only be to reduce child mortality, but to aid in the nutrition of the babies that do survive as this is the future of Africa.

On another note, we spent a relaxing day in Stone town, shopping in the narrow alleys and discovering nooks and crannies we’d never seen before. We even got caught in the rain. This time of year is short rain season in Zanzibar. It will rain like cats and dogs for about 10-15 minutes, and then all of a sudden it will stop and the sun will come out as if nothing ever happened. This happens about two or three times a day. The only problem is that because there is no drainage system the streets get really flooded. When some of the water dries up, the streets get muddy. It doesn’t help that we have a make shift skylight in our living room, in the form of a large hole in our ceiling. I can’t even imagine what it will be like during rainy season when it has known to rain for two or three months, sometimes two days at a time without stopping. Good thing we’ll be gone by then.

Hole in our ceiling, i.e. skylight

Children playing in the flooded street

Early in the morning one day, we went shopping for meat and chicken – for the very first time. We were feeling adventurous and we’d heard the meat is freshest in the morning. So we made a trip to the market. The cows were hanging from hooks in the stands and the butcher was cutting little pieces for customers – it was not a pretty sight. We found the first meat guy we saw and bought ourselves some meat. It was a proud moment. Celine took it a step further and bought some octopus from the fish market which she cooked in our very own kitchen. Way to go!

Picking out the best meat

Octopus...ready to cook!

Donge donge donge...

10 reasons why the Zanzibar dala dala is better than the TTC subway:

1.     You can flag down a dala dala on any main street and it will drop you off anywhere. There is a main dala dala station in each town but no stops along the way, so you can get off and on literally on any main road.

2.    The dala dala charges based on the distance you are traveling. 300 shillings if its within one town, 1500 shillings for the next town over and 2000 shillings to the other side of the island. Not TTC’s fixed fare of $3.00 if you're traveling one stop or to the other side of Toronto.

3.     It is colorful and breezy – not red and white and hot. It’s pretty much a truck transformed into a bus. Sometimes, if you get lucky, some routes even have large buses imported from Hong Kong used as dala dalas.

4.     It shows up. You might wait 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes, but you know its coming.

5.     It is used to transport not just people, but lots of cargo and items that are just thrown on the top of the truck, i.e. rice, flour, juice, a door. How resourceful – no 18 wheelers occupying the roads.

6.     It always waits for you. The dala dala doesn’t budge until it is full, so they are always waiting for more passengers to get on.

7.     There’s always room for 1 (or 3) more to squeeze in and the ticket collector just hangs from the doorway.

8.     During stops, there are people selling snacks outside the windows – sugar canes, peanuts, corn on the cob. Sometimes, the driver might even buy you a treat :)

9.     You can never tell how fast its going because the speedometer pin is always at zero. This one isn’t necessarily an advantage.

10.  You have to share the load – lots of moms and kids on the dala dala; you just might have to carry someone’s baby.

So come on board, yall!

Mume Wangu

Imagine the park near your house, the one where you go for walks or picnics. Now imagine it with plastic bottles, wrappers, containers, and all sorts of litter strewn all over it. That was Mnazi Moja Stadium. It was the result of three days of eid fairs and celebrations. When the vendors took their stalls down, they neglected to clean up the area they were in. When the families came to celebrate and buy food and toys, they threw the trash on the field. And finally, the government failed to have trash cans in public places such as soccer fields and stadiums.

This is a common theme I have noticed in Zanzibar. While shopping one afternoon and drinking a can of Shani, I asked the storekeeper where I could throw it out thinking there was a trash can in his store. He took the can from my hand and tossed it on the ground outside his store while saying: “In Zanzibar, Hakuna Matata.” I was appalled. It is the collective responsibility of the government, the society and the people that live in it to ensure they are doing their part in keeping the places they frequent free from litter. This will prevent an even greater effort required to clean up after the fact. We saw about five or six people picking up the litter for the next couple of days, piece by piece and then putting it all in small piles and burning the trash. It took almost a week for all the trash to be cleared from the field.  Keep in mind; some steps have been taken to mitigate this issue in the form of plastic bags being banned which means everyone uses brown paper bags for shopping. That’s one thing Zanzibar got right before Toronto.

The island of Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim with 99% of the population practicing Islam. About 1400 years ago, when majority of the men in the city were at war and there was no one to look after and protect the women, men in Islam were allowed to have more than one wife – up to four at any given time. This is still in practice in Zanzibar. Gentlemen, don’t even think about moving here. This raises some interesting conversations with the women that are part of these marriages, as first, second, third or even fourth wives. One of our friends interviewed a few young educated girls to ask if they would be willing to be part of multiple marriages and the answers varied for each of the girls. One of the girls commented that she wouldn’t mind being a second wife because it meant that she wouldn’t be attached to her husband who would be splitting his time between multiple wives and she could focus on her education. Smart girl! When all the women are living under one roof and they get along, they live like they are sisters, sharing responsibilities and forming a sense of unity between them. It doesn’t always work out this way though. Nonetheless, there are some interesting things to discover in a culture where it is common to have more than one wife.

During the weekend, we decided to visit the second largest island on the Zanzibar archipelago – PEMBA. Pemba is about 50km north of Unguja (the island we live on) and is accessible by boat or plane. We chose the latter as it was the safer option, but once we got on the plane, I wasn’t so sure. Check-in didn’t open until thirty minutes before the flight was to depart. We got on the plane at 7:56, the pilot said ‘Karibu’ and took off at 8 – at least it was on time. There were 12 passengers on the entire plane and we sat directly behind the pilot. No such thing as flight attendants. It was absolutely amazing to see the pilot flying the plane and we were able to see the many islands below us that make up the Zanzibar archipelago as we flew over the Indian Ocean. When we landed, I stopped praying for safety, and found our tour guide, Ali, who showed us around for the day.

 

He told us that Pemba has five names: Green – for its lush greenery, Magic – for the large number of people that practice witchcraft, Emerald – for the emerald waters and marine life, Sister – for being the second largest island after Unguja, and of course Pemba. Ali took us to the Essential Oil Distillery where they extract oil from the numerous plants that are farmed on the island such as clove bud, clove stem, eucalyptus, and lemongrass. These oils are mainly used for exporting to other countries (as much as one ton is exported each year) but are also sold in Pemba due to the number of health benefits associated with them. We then continued our tour at the flying fox conservation area – these creatures are indigenous to Pemba and are basically really hairy bats, not cute at all. There were hundreds of them and it was fantastic to see them hanging upside down from the trees. It was hard to imagine that before the conservation project, these were hunted and eaten by the locals…barbecued fox?! No, thank you. While the foxes were hanging peacefully having a good day’s sleep, a few local children noticed we had come to see them and began clapping to wake them up. The foxes began flying between the different trees and we quickly snapped pictures.  

We had seen enough hairy bats for the day so we proceeded to Ngezi forest where we went for a hike around the conserved forest area. We saw lots of different trees (both dead and alive), monkeys, and millipedes. We then proceeded on to Vilumbwani beach where we cut open some jackfruit, among other fruit Ali had brought and had a picnic at the beach. On our way home we visited an old lighthouse built by the Germans witnessing some spectacular views of Pemba Island and were able to see both the south end of the island and the north end – not a very large island, might I add. In the distance, we even saw the coast of Mombasa, Kenya.



Flying fox



Driving through the island, I noticed that Pemba’s landscape is very different from that of Unguja, in that it is hillier and greener with lots of trees and forests. Pemba’s economy is worse than that of Unguja along with an even higher population density. The real eye opener was to see the other volunteers’ places - cement floors, no running water, no hot water, no fridge, a crouching toilet, and no sink. There were no real restaurants in any of the major towns (Chake Chake or Wete), besides street food stalls where we had barbecued octopus (yum!). We met Dave and Jack, Peace Corp volunteers that are teaching in Pemba, had some chipsi mayai (local dish with fries and eggs) and called it a night.

Double rainbow off the north tip of Pemba

 The next morning we journeyed on the dala dala to Chake chake town and then to the port of Wesha to catch our boat to Misali Island, a marine conservation island where we went snorkeling for the day. We were lucky we got low tide so we were able to see the beautiful corals and colorful fish quite clearly in the water alongside the sea urchins. We headed back in rough waters, the waves splashing onto us the entire 45 minute ride. Needless to say I was enjoying every second of it, getting soaked and hanging on for dear life. That night, we went over to Dave’s place for dinner where we all cooked a delicious meal straight from the Peace Corps cook book. We spent all of Sunday, hanging out, playing cards, drinking Rwandan coffee, listening to Dave sing to us (and the local kids hanging out on the porch) until it was time for our flight back to Unguja. This time on the plane, I sat next to the pilot – an unforgettable experience and an extraordinary end to the weekend.