an additon if you will...

my post yesterday felt a bit hasty, not quite full of the detail i try to include. so to remedy that i will try with a description of our self-described harrowing journey here, which jonathan described so accurately in the comments. by the way, thanks for the comments! chris also uploaded some pictures onto the picasa web album so you can use the link on the side of the page to see them.

so to begin with chris and i were a bit nervous about taking a small african communter flight anywhere, but we were given a discount on the tickets after sitting befuddled in a office for a very long two hours. so we went, and it was not so bad, a lot shorter than the ferry and not as cold but we got a little nervous when we had been sitting on the runway for about a half an hour and the pilot apologized for the delays but there were some problems beyond their control. hmm. then someone at the back of the tiny plane said something in swahili and about four swahili-speakers promptly stood up, grabbed their luggage and left the plane. quite worrying. but then we were off and there were no problems i am happy to say. we navigated the taxi stand much more successfully than our first arrival into the country, bargaining the taxi drivers to a mere 10,000 TSH, a full 15,000Tsh less than the first time. believe me these are achievements.

a fairly unremarkable stay at the YMCA in Dar other than our passing a data cd to an investigative journalist in the canteen of the hostel, this is how things are done people. the next day we were set to take the semi-luxury bus to iringa, but our pre-arranged taxi driver didn't show so we were forced to find another. one young man was so earnestly insistant that we agreed. off we went but after the first really necessary stop (the other intersections we merely slowed down) the driver stalled, not once but over and over again. after many "tsk" sounds (a noise to convey disapproval) we got going, only to repeat the process many times. finally at a major intersection, our young driver got so nervous, he couldn't start the car at all, turned around and asked chris "unawesa?" or "can you drive?" so amidst the frantically honking horns and shaking fists, chris first attempted to climb directly into the front seat, got stuck, thought better of it and got out and ran around. thus begun chris' new career as the first mzungu taxi driver in dar. i felt bad for the poor driver, it turns out he was borrowing the car, and he seemed quite relieved when i told him the same thing happened to me when i learned to drive manual.

the bus was what i like to refer to as "the poor man's safari" because while hurtling through the scenery we managed to spot elephants, giraffes, gazelle, and some baboons. a bargain at $15 compared to the hundreds you pay for the serengeti. but as i mentioned, it was a great change of scenery, the coast is beautiful, but the beauty here is much more rugged and i somehow resent it less. because you have to think the ocean is beautiful, it's so obviously beautiful, of course you love it, but the scenery here is breathtaking and more wild. think my aversion to the band which has been referred to as the poor man's mountain goats.

anyway, upon arrival in iringa we (well chris if you want to point fingers) decided against getting a taxi to go to the chosen hostel and decided to walk. with our big backpacks and all. nothing much needs to be said other than for everyone to know that we were lost and i hadn't eaten since breakfast and the sun was setting. enough.

but that's plenty said about that adventure. we're having a lovely time fiddling around with solar panels, chris doing most of the fiddling, me translating to the employees of the solar workshop. who by the way are wonderful people, patient with our swahili, eager to tinker, and incredibly welcoming. i've never worked with people with disabilities before, and honestly i often forget that i am now, we're learning some sign language and learning a ton. one interesting tidbit about swahili if i can explain it correctly is that each noun for a person is in the m/wa class which means it either begins with m or wa ie mtu/wat (person/people). but if you want to discribe a small person, you can take it out of the m/wa class and put it into the k/vi class, to make it diminuitive. the words for people with disabilities are all in the ki/vi class already ie kiziwi (deaf person) interesting. it wouldn't fly in our p.c. world.

that's about it for today, the internet access here is really fast for some reason so hopefully i'll have the chance to post often.

love. annie

Umeme ya Jua

today is the close of our second day in iringa, in the southern highlands of tanzania after a few harrowing days of travel.

first off, iringa is beautiful, it's atop a bluff overlooking some crazy scenery of mountains/hills, hopefully we'll post some pictures. the weather here is lovely, warm sun, cool air and chilly nights, such a welcome relief from the coastal weather which is hot and getting much hotter. there are lovely blooming trees here and it's much cleaner than zanzibar. we hooked-up with this solar project here run through "neema crafts" i think you can look it up online. it promotes sustainable development and employess disabled people at a fair wage. apparently there are an inordinate amount of disabled people here and it is quite a difficult life, with limited health care and almost no chance of employment. this project is really awesome, they sell beautiful handmade crafts but are starting to get into solar panels for charging batteries, cellphones, and lights. it's an awesome project and the people building it are friendly and knowledgeable and can understand my swahili, so that's awesome.

so we're settling in here, there are some struggles with getting everything worked out, and whatnot, but overall it's nice. we have to talk to the woman who's the head of the project when she gets back next week to see if we will be working long-term or just kind of floating through and learning what we can.

the harrowing journey was quite ridiculous involving a small commuter plane from zanzibar to dar, a taxi-driver who literally didn't know how to drive, a 8-hour bus ride through the mountains and a ridiculous sun-down trek around iringa with our full bags looking for a non-existant hostel. but we're here.

i'll keep everyone updated, and you all do the same for me.

love. annie

Eid Njema!

Today is the second day of the post-Ramadan holiday of Eid. Yesterday
was an eventful and exciting day for pretty much everyone on the
island. For a couple of weeks now, people have been buying new clothes
and tons of food in preparation for the three day holiday. When we
woke-up yesterday, zayneb had a tray of sweet breads and cakes for
breakfast, (which we took a picture of, but alas! Our memory card is
kaput so I don't think we can post it). She then proclaimed my outfit
unsuitable for the occasion, in fact I believe she announced that I
couldn't wear rags on Eid. So she dressed me and slathered me in
perfume, which has become a habit of hers, much to both Chris and my
chagrin. So as is my habit, I packed a change of clothes in my bag and
went off to visit our friends Claudia and Saidi's family in the middle
of the island.

We went first to Saidi's aunt's house. They (his two aunts live there)
are both transplants from Pemba and struggle with life here in
Zanzibar. They live in a traditional mud and stick house with a
thatched roof, no running water etc. but they met us with holiday
greetings and food.

[There's a phenomenon here where people own plots of land but don't
live there. Instead they allow other people to live there and look
after the land but the people who live there cannot build permanent
structures in case the owners want to return. That means that they
can't build houses with actual walls. It's a strange system to me, but
it tends to mean that even if you can't afford land, you can still
build a home, unlike in America.]

Anyway, saidi's aunts speak a Pemban Swahili which is so similar to
singing it's incredible, I couldn't understand a fair amount, but it
sounded beautiful. They were lovely and sweet and invited us to visit
again before we returned to America.

Then we went to Saidi's brother's house, where we were also welcomed,
fed tea and sweets (so many sweets!) and treated to the tradition that
I liken to caroling. A group of young men (followed by a swarm of
young excited children) go door to door and play drums and sing for
the family in exchange for tea, sweets and/or money.

The afternoon was taken up with resting from the eating and then going
into town for the festival and celebrations. It was essentially a
county fair feeling without the rides but with the different games
(ring toss etc.) and an incredible amount of plastic crappy toys from
china. One of the traditions is that you give children money on the
first morning of Eid, so if a kid is lucky they can get enough money
to buy a ton of plastic toys that will break the next day. It was a
bit overwhelming, but i do love the atmosphere at fairs and everyone
is dressed up in their fanciest so it was fun.

A quick note on dressing fancy:
When people decide to dress up here, they do not, put on a clean
blouse and a pair of ironed pants. They wear gowns. Serious gowns that
I would never have an occasion to wear. Even in everyday life, we
Americans dress like slobs in comparison, a thing I think people don't
understand because we don't have to dress like that, we can afford
better. This has caused me some considerable amount of discomfort as
Zayneb insists on me dressing up to the point that I, as I mentioned
have taken to carrying a change of clothes and, like some mzungu
superhero, change in ATMs and cars.

We went out at night, to a club called Mercury's as in Freddy Mercury,
yes of Queen. Apparently he was born in Zanzibar and it's the club.

We've finished at the school and are going to spend this week figuring
out our next step and renting a motorcycle to tour the island! Much
love, annie

Another sound clip

Wednesday was our last day at the school, so I recorded several things. Every morning the students gather for an assembly which includes the school prayer, stretches and the Tanzanian National Song. You can listen to the students singing the song here. The lyrics are here.

The Zoom H2 recorder I'm using is really very pleasant and makes high quality recordings a synch. Much, much better than the minidisc recorder I used before and cheaper to boot! Check out O'Reilly's review.

bushbabies et all

one of the most thrilling discoveries thus far about my stay in zanzibar is the abundance of bushbabies. this may not seem like such a thrilling discovery but i’ve always been somewhat fascinated with them and to find out that that bump and screech in the night is not a chicken, spirit, or small child but indeed a primate that i always believed to be quite exotic is quite exciting. granted, if i would have read the small blurb about them in my lonely planet guide, i would not have made a “discovery” but would have already known. actually it was one of those times while travelling where the people from here think you’re out of your mind for a. asking what that sound is when it’s obviously a bush baby and b. for being excited at all that it’s a bush baby. think someone coming to the states and being elated at the site and sound of squirrels. except that at least you can see squirrels, bush babies are strictly nocturnal so you can’t actually see them. people just shake their heads thinking wazungu.

no one said this would be comfortable

so i'm a bit unsure as to blogging, i'm going to have to just pretend this is an email to all of my friends, rather than topical.

the title of this post comes from a rather ridiculous situation chris and i encountered at our friend glory's house yesterday. glory is a teacher at the school we're volunteering at, and she's really wonderful. she's from moshi, which means to some extent she's an outsider in zanzibar too. she invited chris and i to her house yesterday afternoon to meet her husband who was at work during our last visit and hang-out on a sunday afternoon. first off, i wanted to get a present for her 5month old son, kennedy. so chris and i thought we would go to the market mwanakerekwe, which is somewhat close to her house. plus we'd been there last week, with no problems and it's not full of tourists. so we walk to the dalla dalla stop and are immediately approached by a man who is obviously not quite straight in the head. recognizing this was somewhat of a big step for me because at one point during my trip here last time i had a long conversation with a man who spoke English perfectly but exactly like an action movie trailer narrator, quite disconcerting, but I found out later that he’s quite out of his mind and that that was obvious to all the Tanzanians but for some reason this didn’t register with me. Anyway…we were approached and this guy was swaying about uncomfortably when we were rescued by the nicest dalla dalla I had ever been in, lovely. Maybe it was because it was so comfortable and nice that chris and I stayed on it past the market, down the road until we were quite a distance, when our “shusha”s were finally heard. Only to board another dalla dalla to get back to the market. After a successful trip to the market, we travelled to glory’s house. Her husband is a really nice man, who took us to the store down the street to buy us sodas and snacks and chat us up. After hanging-out and snacking for a while Michael, glory’s husband, put in a dvd of multiple jean cleaude van dam movies, of which we were to choose. Reluctantly, we chose one and watched while we ate lunch. At one point there was a sex scene which resulted in the most uncomfortable 3 or 4 minutes of my life. No one was looking at the screen, we were all trying to concentrate very hard on our watermelon eating, ignoring the pornographic sounds coming from the tv. Quite uncomfortable.

Anyway, chris and I are pretty much continuing our life here in Zanzibar, making some more friends, learning to cook, etc. there are tons more involved stories that I could tell, but I don’t want to test the patience of my lovely friends and family. Love. annie