Zanzibared.

This past weekend we had the opportunity to go to Zanzibar. I was very excited, mainly for the opportunity to use "Zanzibar" and variations of it in a sentence ie: "Let's go drink some Zanzibeers at the Zanzibar." Needless to say the group was pretty sick of me after roughly 27 minutes. I guess you could say I was Zanzibarred from making anymore hilarious play on words.
The flight from Dar to Zanzibar was only 15 minutes. You might think this is such a short flight that Jennifer wouldn't even have time to be scared. Wrong. We had been flying for all of 7 minutes when the plane seemed to lose all power. Or so we thought. Little did we know we were actually starting our descent after barely reaching our cruising altitude of 5,000 feet. Jennifer was feeling sick before we left for the airport. A sick Jennifer combined with a flying Jennifer does not make for a very fun flight. Luckily Jennifer is tougher (and a little less dramatic) than I am so she was able to put on a brave face and make the most of our time in Zanzibar. I was worried that I was going to get sick from her so I took a lot of the pills that we got from the travel clinic, so I had a REALLY good time.
We stayed in a hostel in the middle of Stone Town. The town is very rich in history (mostly bad history) and the buildings all have so much character. The beaches are also very beautiful. For some reason I was expecting that it would be a very clean, tropical paradise but was quickly reminded that although it is a tropical island, Zanzibar is still part of Tanzania. There was still lots of garbage and people asking for money and selling stuff everywhere we went. The people are extremely persistent and will walk for 15 or 20 minutes beside you just trying to sell something. I felt bad for most of these people as this is how they make a living and a lot of how they are is the result of westerners. The first evening we were there the group went for a tour of Stone Town but Jennifer was not up for it so we just went for a little dinner at Freddie Mercury's bar and then to bed at 7:00pm. The view from the bar was amazing as it was right on the beach. Kids were playing soccer and swimming in the water all along the beach which was fun to watch. After logging close to 12 hours of sleep we were ready for a big day on Saturday. We woke up early and went with the group to Prison Island. We fed the giant (and very old) tortoises and were even lucky enough to see and hear two tortoises acting out the circle of life. Even with those huge shells love still found a way. We went snorkeling after that and saw lots of fish and a school of baby squid. After the boat ride back to the main island we went on a spice tour. The tour was very interesting and we saw what life was like in the country side of Zanzibar. Each time we came across a kind of plant, tree or bush that was a type of spice we were asked to guess what we thought it was based on the smell. Now I like to fancy myself as a bit of a spice connoisseur but it was tough! After a while I just started guessing pepper every time. I was never right.
We saw a lot of amazing sights and it was nice to feel like we had a bit of a "holiday" after everything we have been up to for the past month.

Today I officially started my internship at Ardhi, though I have been working on it for some time outside of the university already. I will be working with a couple of PhD students. The big project we are working on is trying to map out the informal settlements (slums) that are in the most vulnerable areas. Vulnerability in our case is vulnerability to flooding. Today it rained again for about 15 minutes. In those 15 minutes most of the roads were flooded so you can imagine what it does to poorly constructed homes that are built in flood prone areas. The poorest people get pushed to these flood prone areas where they build homes out of clay, mud and wood. By finding which areas are the most prone to flooding we will hopefully be able to see the effects that climate change (which will bring more tropical storms here) will have on informal settlements. This will allow us, or others who come later on, to try find the most sustainable, durable and affordable building material that can be used to construct these informal homes. Today me and Kihila (PhD student I am working with) were supposed to go downtown to the visit the water, sewage and sanitation company. We were backing out of the parking lot so I asked Kihila where the company was located. He turned to me and told me we had to go to the city centre. Just as he finished saying this we hit a truck. Oops. Kihila said something in Swahili (some things never get lost in translation) then got out of his car and had a yelling match with the other driver. We had to post pone our visit down town as his bumper was about to fall off. I went back to the office and got started on some computer mapping. Kihila came to check up on me a little while later and told me his "car technologist" told him it would be $300 USD to fix his car. He said he could not afford this and I felt so bad. We thought that it would be best to go to the outdoor cafeteria and just eat some goat. That seemed to lift Kihelas spirits and we got back to work. Having never ate goat before I needed a bathroom break after finishing the last bit of meat. The bathrooms are in very poor condition and is just a hole in the ground... with no toilet paper. After coming back to the office Kihila explained that, "You were gone for some time. We only use that bathroom for short calls." It turns out that there is one bathroom that the professors and PhD students have access to that is in a little better condition, and also has toilet paper. By that time it was too late for me. Doing all our laundry by hand is really gonna come back to bite me next week.

Jennifer is at rehearsal for the big musical which is this weekend and I am just surfing the web while we have power. This week the electricity supplier here is doing 16 hour a day power cuts to the region to save some money. Hopefully the power stays on until bed time as trying to sleep with out the fan makes me grumpy/sweaty. Time to go read the Canucks and Sharks game sheet from last night and imagine how the goals may have looked as trying to watch highlights takes hours to load.