On to Zanzibar

After a long two days that involved: a bus ride to Dar, a short debrief session, saying goodbye to a large number of people at the airport in two different trips, a walk around town looking for books, and a ferry ride, I have finally arrived at the first stop in my 30 day journey. I am staying in Stone Town in Zanzibar. Stone town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (one of several I am visiting on my trip) and is basically a very old town with unique architecture and maze-like streets.

In the coming day or two I will try to come back and get some more Internet time so that I can explain more and put up nicer pictures.

I don't have much time left at the Internet Cafe, so I am just trying to upload some pictures from today. 1) The view of Dar from the ferry dock. 2) The view of Dar as the ferry pulled away. 3) Some boats docked off of Stone Town. 4) and 5) Some buildings in Stone Town. 6) The view from the restaurant where I ate dinner tonight (Amore Mio). 7) A dhow sailing behind children jumping off boats into the water during sunset. 8) A typical Stone Town street.

Goodbye Morogoro

In less than twenty-four hours I will be getting on a bus headed away from Morogoro for good. With that, it’s time to say my goodbyes. My eight weeks here have been interesting to say the least. The best way to describe it is the answer I gave to a question on one of the many forms I’ve recently had to fill out. The question was: Describe in a few words, your experiences here. My answer: Challenging, frustrating and full of learning opportunities. At first glance my answer seems a bit negative, but only if you don’t think about it.

When I came here, I knew it would be hard. In fact, I wanted it to be hard. What would have been the point if this experience had been easy on me? I did get what I wanted, though at the time, I was not always happy about it. Now that the end is very near, I realize that this has made me a lot tougher. Difficult things at home will seem a lot easier and when bad things happen, they probably won’t seem as bad.

I’ve also made a few good friends here and have become used to a way of life. That all changes tomorrow. I am a bit sad to leave, but I feel that I am ready to go. I’ve done what I came to do and now it’s time to move on. It’s definitely something that will remain in my thoughts in the years to come. Here are some of the things I will think about:

Things I’ll Miss

• The friendliness of everyone
• The mountains that can be seen from town
• The friends I’ve made
• Seeing the effects (however small) of my work
• Trying to learn Swahili and actually being a little successful (though not as much as I would have liked)
• Bucket Baths (surprisingly, I kind of like these)
• Being sweaty and that being a normal thing

Things I won’t miss

• Ugali
• Oppressive heat in the middle of the day, every day
• The dust
• Getting punched by little kids who want to give me five but also hurt me

So what happens now? If you’ve been reading for a long time, you would have read all about my travel plans. On Monday, the bus will take us to Dar where we will have a short debrief session during the day. At night most of the other volunteers take off for Canada. The next day the last volunteer leaves (Evan and I get to spend a night in Dar together) and I will find my way to Zanzibar where I will begin my vacation. From there it is on to Arusha and a Safari, then to Kigali, Kampala, Jinja, Nairobi, Paris and after 30 days of traveling, back to Ontario.

Though this is the end of something, it’s also the beginning of something else. I’m excited, scared, nervous, anxious, worried but also ready for the coming weeks. Look back to this space to see how my travels are going and to hopefully see some pictures of the animals I get to see!

But for now, I say my goodbyes to Morogoro. So long and (no) thanks for all the ugali!

Food. Part II

I already wrote about the foods that I have been eating here, so this post will discuss where the food comes from and how it is cooked.

Local Foods (Market)

The majority of the foods that are eaten here are grown locally and sold locally. There are not many large grocery stores (there aren’t many small ones either), so most food is bought in open air markets or in small dukas (shops). Tropical fruits are very cheap here (even with the inflated mzungu price I often get) and I’m really going to miss them (well, I won’t miss bananas, we get decent bananas back home). Generally, this reliance on local foods seems like a very good idea to me, though I’m sure here it’s done out of necessity rather than choice. Still, I think the food I eat is much healthier (i.e. it has more nutrients) than food from back home.

Imported Foods

Despite an abundance of local produce, there are still many places where you can buy imported and processed food. The majority of the imported food seems to come from South Africa or the Middle East (Oman has been seen on several labels). There are very few brands that North Americans would recognize (Coke, Pepsi, Snickers, etc.). My homestay family does not seem to eat a lot of process and/or imported foods.

Food Preparation

Cooking food in Tanzania is a very different process than in either Canada or Korea. There are no stoves or ovens here (at least none that I have seen). Usually, a family makes a fire with charcoal (in a special container whose name I’ve forgotten or was never told). The food is cooked in pots on top of the burning coals. Like many other things here this often takes a long time. Once, we made pancakes for one of the family’s here and we spent over 2 hours and only made about 25-30 very thin and small pancakes (but boy were they good).

Swahili Update

When I came here I had big plans of being semi-fluent in Swahili or at least to be able to hold a decent conversation. I didn’t (and still don’t) think it was a stretch to say I could have been as good in Swahili as I was in Korean (Korean being a much harder language with more and greater differences from English). Due to several factors, that has not been the case.

With the loss of my computer, I lost both byki and Rosetta Stone so I no longer had a virtual way of learning. Those two methods were both extremely helpful in teaching me vocabulary and I was able to use the new words in everyday discussion. Without that though, I didn’t get the words with which to practice the language. I borrowed a book from the YCI office, but that was very dry and moved quickly and was all over the place.

Time was also not easy to find to practice the Swahili I did know. Often we were busy during the day (or not in the mood to study) and then at night it got to be bedtime very quickly – since dinner is so late here.

That being said, I feel like I have picked up a bit and I have been able to ask simple questions of the children living in my homestay. I am confident with numbers and have a bit of a grasp when it comes to directions. I’ve been able to figure out what some people are saying – though, as Godfrey pointed out the other day, I only needed to understand one word to know what they were talking about.

Swahili is a language which seems to be spreading (Makho told me many people want it to be used in other countries nearby since pretty much all of East Africa uses it now) and perhaps it will be something I can spend some time on. Living in Canada I need to work on my French, since it is pretty bad. I also want to keep up the Korean I had learned since I was starting to become very comfortable with it. When I tried working on three languages at one time it proved very difficult. I might just take them one at a time. We’ll see where life takes me and how much free time (i.e. will I get a job?) in the near future.

Local Wildlife

When people think of animals in Africa, they generally think of lions, elephants, giraffes and other big game. Though I’ve been here more than seven weeks, I have yet to see any of those animals. The truth is that in the villages and towns, there is a different set of animals that you will see on a frequent basis. Here is a short rundown of the animals I see pretty much every day.

Farm Animals

Food production and sale is a major source of income for many people here, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that there is livestock almost everywhere. The most numerous animals are chickens. On pretty much every street we walk down, we see chickens, many with a large troupe of chicks following behind. We’ve even seen one set of chicks painted purple (my guess is to prove who owns them). It is also not uncommon to see goats tied up somewhere and grazing on grass. Cows are seen occasionally on the side of the road eating the grass, though sometimes we’ve seen them being driven down the road. Ducks are less common, but we do see them occasionally. They look different from the ducks I’ve seen in Canada. They are a bit bigger and mostly black with some red.

Critters

Life wouldn’t be complete with critters. There are many insects that I see every day. The most obvious (and annoying) are the mosquitoes. There are at least two different kinds here (black ones and brown ones) that I have killed. Beyond mosquitoes there are also thousands of ants. Often they mass in large groups when there is food somewhere. I keep my snacks locked up in plastic bags.

There are also the usual spiders (some very big ones) and other flying insects. There definitely seems to be a large variety here – moreso than back home. The common housefly is, not unsurprisingly, very common here and can be very annoying when they keep landing on me (especially when I do my laundry).

The least friendly critters, however, are the cockroaches. Usually I don’t see them unless the power goes out and even then I only see them outside (except for the one I saw in my room a few days ago and tried to scare away but had to kill when it kept coming at me). They are pretty big - my estimate would be about 5-6cm. They like the dark and most of them do scatter away when I shine my headlamp at them.

The picture is actually of a very tiny praying mantis that we saw on the office screen door yesterday. You might be able to tell, but it is a bit small.

Lizards

Most people would not like the fact that there are many lizards here, but I think they’re pretty cool. There are a large number of types of lizards here, some more common than others. I’ve had four now in my room: two of them were really tiny (and one was on the inside of my mosquito net). They come in a variety of sizes and colours. I’ve already included some pictures previously so I will not add any in the future unless I find some nice looking ones.

Flying Animals

There are a variety of birds around here. Most common are the tiny brown, white and black birds I’ve seen almost everywhere I go (sparrows?) and black crow-like birds. Also, if you pay close attention at night, you can see bats flying around.

Pets

I don’t think many people actually own pets here, but I have seen a few dogs and several stray cats. The cats look a little more like the wild cats of Africa (other people disagree with me, but I stand by my views). Generally the dogs are all similar, though we saw some tiny white yappy dogs at a restaurant owned by a Canadian.

Obviously there are more animals here, but this is just a snippet. In a few weeks I will post some pictures of your more sought-after African animals

Garbage and Waste

Unlike in Canada and Korea, there does not appear to be any government run garbage collect here in Morogoro (and from what I’ve heard from our friends there, not in Zanzibar either). In my house, we put our garbage in bags outside near the front of the house. I’m not sure exactly what happens to them afterwards, but it is not uncommon to see garbage burning as I walk down the street. There are piles of ashes everywhere to show these spots long after the fires are out.

The garbage that does not get burned up, just finds it’s way to the side of the road. There is a huge litter problem here and there are some places where there are just mounds and mounds of garbage. Also, I frequently see people just dropping their garbage on the ground. To be fair, it’s probably no different from back home, except we just put the garbage somewhere where we can’t see it. Here it’s on display.

For the most part, there doesn’t seem to be recycling either. The only thing that I’ve seen is that the pop bottles (called soda bottles here) are collected when they are empty. In some places you can return a small number of them (I think it’s 3) to get a new pop. Plastic bottles are reused by many families to store bath water, oil and other food items as well – and I’ve also seen children make toy cars out of the small bottles.

Another thing I have not seen here (though I have been told in some places it is done) is composting. I am actually pretty surprised that a lot of the food waste gets burned along with the rest of the trash. It seems like a potential money maker and a good way to help increase soil productivity (which is what I was told about – that some people collect the food waste and sell the dirt afterwards). My only thought would be that a compost pile here would attract a lot of pests (though for a compost pile, that’s not necessarily a bad thing). Perhaps that is something to consider (maybe I should talk to my family about that…) for here.

What to do in Morogoro if you’re bored…

I will be very honest: Morogoro is not Seoul. There is not nearly the same number of things to do here that there are to do there, and this has caused me a lot of time thinking about what I can do. I have, however, found a lot of things to help fill the time.

Books/Movies

This can be tough if you didn’t bring your own books (or had them stolen) or computer. Lucky for us, the YCI office has a small collection of books (even some I had been wanting to read) which we borrowed and spent some time reading. As for movies, there are a few options. If you have a laptop you can buy DVD’s at stores that have many English movies. The quality is low, but they’re passable and easy to watch. There are also places you can go to that will play VHS or DVD movies for a small price. I haven’t been to them, but you can see them everywhere. Some people also have VCR’s on their TV’s here and can watch movies whenever they like (well, if the power is on).

Though it’s not the same, you can also watch European Soccer Games on television here or in bars for a price. I haven’t done this, but it is a very common thing here.

Playing Pool

This is something I’ve seen around a lot, but hadn’t tried until a few weeks ago. The price for a game of pool near my house is 200 shillings which is roughly 20 cents. Not bad. The quality of the tables is not always great (but not bad) and I think the balls are smaller. There are a lot of people here who are good, so usually I play one game, lose, and that’s it. It is something that is fun to do though, and I plan to go back a few more times before I leave Morogoro.

Swim in a Pool

There are a couple of hotels in Morogoro (Oasis Hotel and the Morogoro Hotel) that offer swimming in their pools for a small fee (3 or 4 thousand shillings). We have gone once (many weeks ago) to the Morogoro Hotel. It was a nice afternoon, but not nearly as cheap as the other things on this list (plus we had lunch there and that was much more expensive than the food in town).

Disco/Live Music

There are different types of places to go out to at night if you want to hear music or dance. I’ve been to a few of both. There are some places where you can sit down and get a drink (alcohol, pop, etc.) and listen to people playing live music and others dancing to it. There are also some places where they play a lot of dance/hip-hop, etc. music where you can go and dance. We went to a disco on Saturday night. It was fun, but I was surprised at how empty the place was. Generally you have to pay for the discos, but you can go and watch the music for free (or the cost of the pop).

Climb a Mountain

Also, since there is a huge mountain right next to the town, you can obviously climb that or go for a hike there. I’ve already talked about that here and here, so I won’t mention it again.

There are things to do here, but obviously not as many things as you would find in a bigger city. At times I have been bored, but I have also had a lot to do at other times. It takes some getting used to, but if you look hard enough, there are several options to fill your less active moments.