Thursday, June 6th we spent in Stone Town, as well. And it was definitely my favorite day on the island so far! In the morning, we headed down to the harbor and hopped on a couple of boats to go snorkeling! We had a fairly long boat ride out to the coral reefs where we stopped for awhile and swam around. The reefs were so beautiful! I loved seeing the incredible diversity present, both in fishes and coral. I hadn't been snorkeling in something like 9 years, so I was very happy to get to swim with the little fish again. There were definitely little clear jellyfish present, so they weren't quite as fun to have around, but we still had a fantastic time swimming around!
After finishing up with our snorkeling, we all got back onto the boats and rode over to a nearby island. It's called Prison Island because its original purpose was, surprise, to be a prison, but now it is just home to a tortoise sanctuary and a hotel that is currently undergoing renovations and is not even open to guests. We hopped onto the island and over to the tortoise area, and basically just played around with them for an hour or so. We were allowed to walk up to them, feed them lettuce leaves, and even massage their necks! It was so fantastic. The tortoises were really impressive as well; they were all huge and many of them were incredibly old. The biggest one there weighs over 100 kilos and the oldest grandpa was 189 years old!! Imagine all of the things he's witnessed...probably a lot of leaves of lettuce. I absolutely loved playing around with them. After we had our fill of tortoise feeding, we went down to the beach and walked around for a little bit before getting back on the boat to head back to the main island.
Side note: the motor cover on our boat was a Clemson one...what?! This was the second time I had seen something with Clemson on it since being in Africa. I also happened to actually be wearing my Clemson t-shirt that day. Small world, or something.
That night, we went out to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. I had never had Ethiopian food before, so it was neat getting to try out some new cuisine! Ethiopian meals are done communally, so our table ordered several dishes, and then they were shared between all of us. We got some lamb, pumpkin, chicken, cabbage, and more...and every single bit of it was delicious! Ethiopian cuisine gets a 10/10 in my book!
On Friday morning, we went on a really cool spice tour on a local plantation. This entailed waking around the plantation and looking at, smelling, and tasting all kinds of different herbs and spices. We tried everything from cinnamon bark to ginger root to coconut water and meat. The process of obtaining the coconuts was especially interesting, as a man who was nicknamed Butterfly demonstrated his coconut tree climbing abilities, going all the way up the tallest tree around and SINGING AND DANCING THE ENTIRE TIME. I kid you not, he was over 100 feet up in the air, just singing at the top of his lungs and swinging from side to side. It was simultaneously fascinating and terrifying. Obviously he was very skilled at his task, but it was still pretty nerve wracking to watch! We called him "crazy coconut man" from there on out.
At the end of the tour, we were given the opportunity to purchase spices straight from the plantation, and then we sat down for a fruit tasting. We tried many different fruits, such as star fruit, passion fruit, and custard apple. It was neat getting to sample varieties that we don't typically have in the states (especially not fresh picked on location like these were). Before we left, the workers presented us with crowns and baskets sewn out of some type of grass. We were quite a sight with all of them on, for sure. The spice tour was overall a really great experience!
After leaving the plantation, we went to another women's cooperative. This one was in a village called Kidoto, and the 20 women there make soaps to supply to tourists and local hotels. The specific name of the cooperative is Tusifemoyo, a Swahili phrase that means don't lay down your heart. It was a more exclusive operation than many of the co-ops we've seen up to this point. The women who work there are the original 20 women who started the operation, and any woman who wants to join has to pay a fee that is well beyond any reasonable amount for a typical Tanzanian woman, especially one who would be looking to get into co-op work. It was an informative experience, though, and it was especially funny because a ton of children from the village saw our whole group arrive and peered through the windows of the co-op building to see us. The reactions of most children here are pretty funny--they're obviously intrigued by this huge group of white people (wazungu), but they're too shy to actually talk to us. We just get a lot of stares from up close and waves from a distance.
After leaving the co-op, we made a stop at Jozani Forest to look at red colobus monkeys, which are very rare/endangered and are only found on Zanzibar. We also walked through a mangrove swamp in the forest. It was a beautiful pit stop!
After this, we finally made it to Paje Beach as the sun was setting behind the trees. We were able to get dinner at our hotel, Paradise Beach Bungalows, before heading off to sleep. The next day, Saturday, was designated beach bum day. We did basically nothing except lay on the beach all day long. Once I got out there after a sunrise jog along the beach and then breakfast at the hotel, I only left the beach twice--once to eat lunch and once to get a massage up at the main hotel area. It was glorious. The water was beautiful and at a perfect temperature. The tide was interesting and quite extreme. In the morning, it started fairly close to our beach and then receded to close to a mile away. At this point, local women come out and collect seaweed from the now-dry seafloor to make soap and other things for their businesses out of. There were tons of people just walking around the huge empty space collecting seaweed or whatever else was left behind that they could use to their advantage. The tide started coming back in around noon, and it just kept coming until it was right up at the entrance to our hotel area. There was literally no beach left for us to sit on. Several of us stayed out and played in the waves and on a small boat that a fisherman had anchored there that morning until we were finally satisfied. We sat around and talked and read for awhile before dinner, which was a wonderful Zanzibari-style meal that the hotel staff prepared for us. There was octopus, kingfish, fresh fruit, and more. All in all, it was a pretty perfect R&R kind of day that I think we all needed.
Sunday morning, we were all sad to leave the beach to head back to Dar. We had a 10 am flight out of the Zanzibar airport, so we said goodbye to Paje/Paradise Beach at about 7 am. After making it back to Dar, we went to the Tanzania National Museum for a little while to learn some more about the vast history of the country. After that, we headed to lunch and then to the hotel that we had stayed at for our first couple of nights in Dar at the beginning of the week to stay the night before our marathon 12 hour drive back to Arusha all day Monday.
We had an interesting experience on our drive back. Much of the police force here (like many government officials) is corrupt and searches for ways to obtain bribes from citizens. Today, our bus got pulled over by a traffic cop who said we were speeding (we weren't). The cop didn't have a speed reader or any other way to actually prove his point, and our TCDC mama, Yusta, started laying into them. We all wished that we knew Swahili so that we could have understood exactly how she was handing it to them. At one point, Yusta told us to pull our cameras out and act like we were taking pictures of the cop, because this had happened before in another instance of crooked cops trying to obtain money in illegal ways, and those pictures had ended up in the news and all the cops involved had lost their jobs. These cops obviously didn't want this to happen, so they started freaking out and telling us to delete the pictures, all while Mama Yusta was still yelling who knows what at him in Swahili. A few minutes later, we drove off without having to pay a thing, as the cop pulled out his camera to take pictures of us in retaliation. We weren't as opposed to them as he had been and just smiled and waved as we drove away. So that was our excitement for the day, but we won't be taking those methods back to the states with us if we run into a traffic cop back there.
So to conclude, this week on Zanzibar was just beyond wonderful. Stone Town was a great place to explore for a few days, and Paje Beach was seriously paradise. I can't speak for all of our group, but I think that most of us are pretty sad that our "vacation week" is at a close. Starting this morning, we'll be back to our regular class/excursion schedule for our remaining week at TCDC.
Friends and family: I miss you all so much, and I can't wait to see you in just about a week from now. Until then!
No comments:
Post a Comment