Back to Bwejuu

Almost immediately after posting my last blog post, I was struck down...with a fever that is.  I had decided to take a "mental health" weekend.  So completely American of me.  I know.  I booked a hotel room with air conditioning, got a manicure and pedicure and planned to spend my entire weekend working on research and ironing out my plans for the next 6 months.  Nothing went as planned.  I guess I shouldn't even be surprised at that by now.  I ended up getting strep throat which, for the first few days, only presented as fever, chills, body aches and nausea.  As horrible as I felt - and trust me, it was pretty bad - I am extremely thankful I had found myself a nice little air conditioned room with A/C, a toilet and a shower to spend my weekend in.  I pretty much stayed in bed, curled up in the fetal position, for 48 hours. By Sunday morning I caved.  I couldn't get my fever to break and all signs pointed to malaria.  Thankfully, by Monday morning I figured out it was strep throat - very uncommon here, but relatively common for me.  I received lots of prayers, emails, messages and texts.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  All of my friends and I have been sick a few times now and we always talk about how great it is to get messages from friends and family.  Laying in a hot room for days on end gets a bit boring while you are trying to recuperate and in the fever-filled haze we inevitably check our cell-phones and emails every 30 minutes or so for some hint of what is going on outside.

I'm fully recovered now and am realizing how quickly this portion of my program is coming to an end.  This past weekend Jenn, Ashley, Roger and I went back to Bwejuu (our favorite hide-away) for Jenn's birthday weekend.  Keavy, our fifth amigo, got a bacterial infection and was house-ridden for the weekend.  We missed having her around, but have decided it's a great excuse to repeat the seafood feast we had on our final weekend here in Zanzibar in early December.

Ally, Iddi and the gang at Pakacha Bungalows threw quite the birthday shindig for Jenn.  The ocean perch you see in the picture above was, without a doubt, some of the best fish I have ever had in my entire life.  And, as usual, everything was caught fresh for us that day.  We also went on a dhow boat trip this weekend, had bonfires and played plenty of card games.  All in all, another great weekend.

I'm sure some of you are thinking all I ever do is go to the beach!  Sometimes I even feel like that.  In many ways I'm anxious to be back on the mainland and back to "work".  Our time here in Zanzibar is really specifically for language learning and most of us have put our research and volunteer interests on hold while working on getting a handle on the language.  As for me, my original plan was to move to Dar es Salaam for the spring semester so that I could take some courses in Tanzanian foreign policy and local government systems.  I've done some more research and connected with other U.S. students who have taken courses in Dar and the university appears to be a bit lax and unorganized.  After a lot of thought and research, I've decided to pursue my own research interests independently next semester.  One of the advantages of this is that I will be able to begin work immediately after Christmas.  University wasn't scheduled to start until late February.  My new plan allows me to use my time more wisely here.  I'm hoping to partner with more schools and orphanages over here in Tanzania and explore some new programming possibilities.  For those of you who remember Mama Jane and her orphanage in Arusha, I've reconnected with her and hope to see her over my Thanksgiving break to explore helping her further.  I can't wait to see her again!!  What an amazing woman.

I've got a few other things up my sleeve that I can't wait to share with you, but until I get final approval I'll need to keep my mouth shut.  In the meantime, I'll try to stay out of trouble and stay healthy.  Love you all!
 

The Change-up

It is Sunday morning here in Zanzibar and I'm enjoying the opportunity I have to just chill out.  My friends and I - apparently known as the traveling crew - left Friday after our language tutorial for Jambiani.  We've spent quite a few of our weekends in Bwejuu and figured it was time to venture out and try something new.  Both Jambiani and Bwejuu are small beach towns on the east side of the island, but word was that they had completely different vibes.  Bwejuu is pretty secluded, so we decided to head for Jambiani to enjoy a livelier weekend with the locals.

We arrived in Jambiani after a long and detoured daladala ride.  For those of you picturing the daladala picture I posted back in January, here is a picture of what they look like in Zanzibar:

They are open-air and packed with at least as many people as you see in the first picture.  Our daladala on Friday was also carrying bags of cement piled on top as high as the sticks you see in the second picture.  We took several deep breaths (every time the roof above us sank a bit and the poles on the sides began to buckle), looked at Roger (our resident expert in all things) for reassurance that we would survive the trip, and began our 1 1/2 hour journey to Jambiani.  After a few extra detours to deliver goods and pick up more people, we made it to Jambiani in what turned out to be almost 2 1/2 hours.  Thank goodness for iPods.  A local hotel owner took us down the beach to the area of bungalow hotels that were more in our price range and we settled in to our rooms for the weekend.

Here's the great thing about our group:  We usually just take things as they come and are willing to try anything once.  Well, we tried Jambiani.  And now I am waking up in my familiar room in Bwejuu, after a great night of playing cards and watching the meteor shower from the beach.  Our friends here at Pakacha Bungalows sent a taxi to come get us in Jambiani and bring us "home."  Ally took our dinner orders late afternoon and sent a runner to get Kingfish, crab, and octopus from the local fisherman for our dinner.  We ate a feast!  I had freshly-caught crab cooked in coconut curry sauce, with steamed rice, spiced vegetables, salad and home-made chips (ie: big french fries).  I was stuffed.  Life at our little island getaway is pretty good!

This week we have mid-terms at school.  There will be a LOT of studying happening in the next 4 days.  Classes have been going great and I'm really excited about all that I have learned.  Some days it feels like I have so much more to learn or I am so far behind some of the other advanced speakers, but when I look back on what I knew when I arrived and compare it to what I know now it's pretty incredible.  It really is amazing what I am learning even when I don't realize I'm learning!

The next few weeks will be pretty busy with mid-terms, a few weekend trips, another trip or two up north to Arusha/Moshi and planning for the next phase of my fellowship.  We also have two upcoming papers and presentations due for our Swahili classes.  Everything is in full swing now.  It's hard to believe that we only have 7 more weeks left in Zanzibar.  I'm making some changes to the second half of my program here in Tanzania and I'll update you all on the new plans soon.  Until then...

Keeping busy...

I'm sitting on my bed in the middle of the afternoon savoring a small piece of my Hershey's Symphony bar and wondering if it will really be 9 more months before I taste solid chocolate again.  I figured I better stop lamenting over melted chocolate and catch up on my blog.

Where to begin?  Some things haven't changed - or have changed and then changed back again.  For example, within 24 hours of my last blog post I was informed we finally had running water; only to lose it again the next day.  The day we lost water again also happened to be the day I returned from a beautiful trip to Prison Island just off the coast of Stonetown.  We took a small dhow boat to the island, spent the day in the sun, ate lunch on the beach, got to pet the giant turtles...and then took the dhow back to town.  I spent pretty much the entire trip back trying to keep down my lunch.  Outcome = unsuccessful.  For the next 3 days I was sick in bed.  No food, very little water.  I couldn't keep much of anything down.  Being sick is bad enough, but being sick in a 3rd world country where clean bathrooms do not exist and laying on a cold bathroom floor is definitely NOT recommended is terrible.  Almost all of us on this adventure have been sick in one way or another.  We're all just hoping we are through the worst.

Aside from physical exhaustion, we are pretty much all mentally exhausted, too.  This portion of my fellowship is a pilot program and, well let's just say, if we were keeping score there have been more losses than wins.  Fortunately, while we all seem to lose our sanity from time to time, my friends and I have managed to try to find the humor in everything and we are surviving.  Classes are inconsistent and often not as beneficial as we would like.  Time is always a-wastin'.  The food is hard to adjust to.  Transportation is unreliable.  Homestays are not always easy to deal with.  And we seem to be lost more often than not.  Just finding a place where we can all crowd around a laptop and watch a football game is a challenge.  Personal space is a concept that is hardly understood and finding someone who will wash your underwear is pretty much unheard of.

Thankfully, last weekend I got to travel back up to Moshi to visit my friends up there.  I can't clearly convey how great it was to be back - and it wasn't just because the weather is so much better there!  I found myself taking time during the weekend just to enjoy the moment I was in.  On Friday I stood in the kitchen just staring out the window to the backyard.  In that moment of quiet I was reminded how much I do love Tanzania.  I think I'm just still in the process of learning to love all of it!  We didn't have running water in Moshi, our car broke down on the way from the airport in Arusha, and some other surprising problems came to light during my time there.  Despite everything, I loved every minute of my time in Moshi.  We went to the market, watched movies, played pool, went back to some of my old haunts, ate good food and slept in.  Plus, Saturday night I got to make dinner.  I taught Fatuma how to make the filling for chicken pot pie and then we dumped it over mashed potatoes.  It was just what I needed - a little comfort food (with a bottle of riesling)!

I told myself from the very beginning not to forget that the first 30 days are always the hardest.  Sometimes I still seem to forget.  The good news is that I'm almost to the 30 day mark and I've survived...maybe only by a shoestring, but I've survived.  It will only get better from here!

Dhow boats we took to Prison Island

Turtles on Prison/Changuu Island

Learning to Live with Gratitude, Not Attitude

I haven't written a blog post for a week - and for good reason.  I wasn't sure how I would manage to write a post without complaining.  Classes are hard.  My schedule is packed full of requirements: language partners, field trips, 4 hours of class in the morning, grammar lessons in the evenings.  Not to mention I no longer have running water which means bucket "showers", sweaty nights and cranky mornings.  Having a toilet to pee in is a luxury that is never guaranteed.  The food is sub-par.  Upset stomachs are abundant.  Getting lost is becoming the norm and timeliness is not a concept that is understood here.  Even when we go away on the weekends to chill out and gather our wits we encounter one obstacle after another before we are able to finally find a place to unwind.

This weekend my friends and I went to Bwejuu, a small town on the east coast of Zanzibar for the weekend.  Somehow, in the middle of paradise, it is easier to slip back into complaining about life in Stone Town rather than enjoy the beauty of where we are at.  This morning when I awoke I found that I was already in a less than ideal mood.  I had just woken up and I was already dreading returning back to life in the "projects" (the nickname we've given our humble little neighbor'hood').  On the one hour daladala ride back to town this afternoon, I put on my headphones, turned on my favorite playlist and took some time to just chill out.  I've decide to commit to focusing on the things that I am thankful for here.  I am living my dream.  Receiving a Boren Fellowship is a huge honor - one that was given to me.  Looking at the people around me, the villages we passed and the landscape I am privileged to see, gave me a little perspective.

I want to share with all of you some of the things that I am thankful for so far:

First and foremost, I have an amazing family and strong group of friends back home who I can always count on.  You have supported me, encouraged me to follow my dreams, prayed for me and cheered me on.  And you haven't forgotten about me now that I am halfway around the world.  I don't know what I would do without you!

Second, only to my friends and family back home, are the new friends I have made here.  To the gang I went to Nungwi with our first weekend in Zanzibar:  Judging by our first weekend together, we have a pretty incredible 3 months ahead of us.  We are so lucky to have plenty of crazy stories, DQ moments, good meals, cheap rooms, and even cheaper drinks to look forward to.  Here's to Ashley learning how to brush her teeth, Jenn chatting up the locals, Keavy avoiding any future run-ins with sea urchins, Roger remembering to pay for his meals, Kate avoiding any future food poisoning, Rusty finishing his Thank You's, and Stacey finding a better role model than her new big sis'.  Can't wait for the Full Moon Party, guys!  Thanks for joining me in the insanity.

Scaling a private wall in search of a place to crash in Page...

First afternoon out with the girls.

My sista from the 'hood

Keavy and Jenn - back from a run

Teaching the gang how to play Hold 'Em

Jenn getting a sea urchin removed with local "medicines"

I have plenty more to be thankful for.  Although living conditions are less than ideal, I have a house mom who loves having me.  She cares about where I'm going and what I'm doing.  My teacher at the university here is, in my opinion, the best teacher at SUZA and my class couldn't be better.  I have a huge room with plenty of closet space to hold all of the little luxuries I was fortunate enough to bring from home:  granola bars, Off Botanicals bug spray, plenty of summer outfits, a year's worth of Caudalie skin care products, magazines and candy bars from my girl (who just sent me a picture of herself with my Grandma!), photographs from home, beef jerky, room spray, extra laptop batteries, sound proof headphones, Starbucks Vias and 14 pair of shoes.  I have my pillow pet to sleep with every night and a necklace I wear every day to keep my sis' close to me.

On top of all of that, I am living the life I had always hoped I could live.  How amazing is that?  I get to live in Tanzania for a year and build new friendships that I already know will last a lifetime.  I have been given the chance to see parts of the world many will only ever dream about seeing.  I have the opportunity to explore issues that I am most passionate about.  I get to travel and better understand how people here live; to learn what their needs are and to hopefully discover what I can do to help.  And at the end of it all, this fellowship provides me with priority hiring status and a leg up into the federal government.

I am humbled and blessed.  I am reminded that life really is what you make of it.  By choosing to focus on what I am grateful for, rather than what isn't quite what I expected, I already feel better.  Thanks for listening...and if you're feeling the same way I was earlier today, give it a try.  Make a list.  We have been given so much more than we realize.