Veen'around

MS TCDC, near Arusha

Hello all,

I look forward to hearing from you even if you don’t have the time to read these, BTW!

Here’s the promised update. After this, you’ll have a (welcome?!) respite for a while, as I will return to Dar and work, plus, either I’ll be settling down in a flat that I may or may not have… or then looking for one.

I wanted to talk about Kiswahili while I am still learning the language at this idyllic retreat. I better understand the pull of the scholastic/ monastic life of routine and study, order and quiet achievement, amid a beautiful, green, natural, setting, now. For one thing, here, someone else cooks and cleans for you and in fact you don’t have to do anything save study. (Tho. in my case I’m also hustling for that coveted flat in Dar but at least it’s a bit removed.)

OK lemme give you a little lesson. I know you’re simply dying for one. Greetings – Habari is news so you can do Habari gani – News? How are you? But you can also launch into a rapid fire rat a tat tat – Habari za kozi (news of the course) habarai za asuhubi (news of the morning) habari za watoto (news of children?) and so on and so forth. There’s also the saying karibu (welcome) every so often as well as asante sana (thank you very much). These endless greetings can certainly help you buy time, and you can employ part of your brain to formulate a halfway decent sentensi.

There are other redeeming features and one of them is that they have these cho chweet words like sentensi for sentence, pinki or pink, ofisi (yes office), etc. There are also other cute words like zungunza for conversation. To say you’re in/at some place you do this ni business again like soko – market – becomes sokoni, darasa, classroom becomes darasini.

I do have some help from Hindi and even Marathi. With that link from Hindi and possibly other North and North Western Indian languages to Urdu, spilling out over the Indian ocean and touching Arabian shores, we arrive in a many hued dhow, which has been picking up words and sounds all along, to East Africa. Our teachers are telling us insistently that this is essentially a Bantu language (and that itself is a family of languages) which has imbibed multiple influences. I can tell the Bantu and Arabic derived words apart almost 100 per cent of the time.

It’s Kiswahili (ki is a prefix for language so Eng. is Kiingereza) BTW not Swahili, which literally means of the coast. I recall reading somewhere that it dates back to the 6th century. To give some examples of the Indian influence (or vice versa too?!) embe is mango in Kiswahili (amba in Marathi, aam in Hindi) gari is car and its gadi in both those languages, swali is question in Ki, its sawaal in Hindi/Urdu, Kubali is to agree in Kiswahili and Ka-bool is the same in Hindi/Urdu.

There have been some interesting gaffes, and in our class of 4 (the 13 basic students are further split into smaller units) an Aussie guy called Steve tends to stumble across these words where a slight misspelling can get you ejected from polite company in no time at all! Poor Steve has so far led us to a word for “an insult to the mother “ ( as the dictionary coyly put it), a verb for washing the behind and genitals (man, how specific can ya get?!) and of course inevitably the F word.

Still you definitely need at least some light relief to keep going. We were absolutely hysterical the other day in the dinning room recounting our f—ups with Ki, particularly enjoying Maria’s plight. This is a Swedish woman, wife of an NGO type with 4 children. She had a maid with whom she attempted to communicate with in Ki. Now in Ki time day starts at 7 am so 7 am Eng. time is 1 (asubuhi, morning) Ki time and so on. So Maria was translating from Eng. to Ki time when she asked her maid to come at a particular time the next day but the maid was helpfully translating as well in the opp. direction! In fact they went around like this for a while switching back and forth till they thought they had reached an understanding and then the maid turned up at the wrong time (acc. to Maria anyhow!)

Our teachers here are splendid and called mwalimu singular walimu plural. This is a front end kinda language and not only are singular and plural manipulated this way but also verbs. The nouns are worse than the verbs as they are in 8-9 classes (living creatures, non-living objects, nouns which remain the same in sing. and plu., nouns for abstractions, nouns for place, etc) and each class has its own agreement rules for adjectives, pronouns, etc.

For e.g. if I want to say You (Wewe) are working hard today its Unafanya kazi leo. Leo is today but to deconstruct Unafunya kazi (no grammer after this I promise!) U stands for wewe so you can dispense with wewe, na is as they call it the tense market for the present tense and funya is the verb root of to do, and kazi is the noun for work. Got it? We now know 4 tenses – past, present, future and perfect.

To my mind this perfect tense should be gotten rid off from Kiingereza as well. Three tenses are plenty! After learning these people should get out and chill, drink bia baridi (beer cold) or something. The feature that could actually drive one to drink is something called the object prefix which they introduced today. (It was anticipated and it rolled in preceded by thunder and lightening!)

So in Kiingereza you’d say I will give this book to you, right? In Ki you say Nitakupa kitabi.huyu (the last two words are simply this book) but in the Ni (I) ta (future) pa (give) one has to cut and paste the subject infix – ku which stands for you.

But I can say that overall I have learnt a lot, and enjoyably. As for putting it into practice, I am taking baby steps. Let’s see how it unfolds in the future.

Let’s go on a safari now! Yeh!!

We visited Arusha National Park two weekends ago, and even though this is not one of the bigger parks, it was an absolutely fantastic experience.”You’ll see all the usual animals there,” said L, a Swedish course participant who lives in the bush. By that he meant three types of monkeys – including blue and colobus – warthogs, a deer species, giraffes, zebras, elephants, buffalo, lovely butterflies and birds, including a massive flock of pretty in pink flamingoes by a salt lake (Momela).

It’s the sheer abundance and easy accessibility of wildlife here which astounds and delights. “How many are there, how many?” this Spanish classmate D, who had come as well, kept exclaiming. Soon after entering the park in a four wheel drive (the roads are rough) whose top raised up, so we could stand up and look around, we came to a large plain where we saw giraffe (gifies), warthogs and zeberas (zebies). The warthog for those who know it, think of a bearded pig with a longer than usual snout!

I had found them really ugly when I had seen their pix in the guidebook, but they looked much better in the natural setting, specially with gifies in a sitting position planted among them, like so many lamp posts! The giraffes have these sweet traingular faces and walk quite gracefully. (Their brains are small compared to their bodies and the way their heart and some vital organs are placed in their necks they can’t bend down so they’re fine catching 15 minutes of sleep each day on their feet.

We saw the giraffes and zebras quite close up, like a few feet away at some point in our travels and there was usually one animal who would pose and preen for the camera! The zebras are a designer’s delight, their stripes are just so lovely (no two have exactly the same pattern they saw) and I kept thinking of them as horses who had pulled on tights! As for the giraffes, Val, a really fun black American gal from Atlanta Georgia speculated that they were perhaps related to llamas… (Probably not a scientific observation but I liked the idea.)

We were passing through the beautiful, tangled green forest (the tress themsleves leave you gasping so old and beautiful are many of them), having seen a crater basin with a swamp from a lokout point, and I was getting into a dreamy daze when someone shouted “tembo” and there was a herd of elephants crossing our path! The big tusker turned towards us in typical “threat display” warning us off his comrades, specially the young, and then they walked on.

Right away we realised that there were more elephants trying to cross so we backed a little and 6-8 baby elephants (tres cute of course) walked by flapping their ears. A tusker led them and a female completed the parade. Huge though they were they disappeared fast into the bush with loud thrashing sounds and we fell back into out seats gasping. My heart was racing as if I had been running uphill a long distance!

The colobus monkeys are very attractive too, with white tails and black faces fringed with black trim and swing from tree to tree in packs. The blue monkeys (bluish –grey) were more reticent, but we did see quite a few of these as well.

We drove around the picturesque Momela lakes (we picnicked on their shores) where we saw salt on the foamy waves and on the shore as well. The salt is what attracts the flamingoes in droves. It was really wonderful to watch them through binocks and see them flying in a formation of four, in perfect symmetry. I have been wondering about salt lakes since then – how common are they? How do they form, etc? If anyone has this info., please send!

We saw the buffaloes on a plain, from a high point (the terrain was hilly) and they were still there when we descended. There were a large number and they did not look that different from their domesticated Indian cousins. Their skulls are quite spectacular with their big horns and are commonly displayed at hotels here.

We also had a chance to see the elusive Mount Meru summit, as well as the even more elusive, Mt. Kilimanjaro (Kili). Meru is a more sloping mountain and I for one really like its shape. There it stood, serenely wreathed in wisps of cloud, its summit bare. It had been playing hide and seek from around the training centre for 2 weeks. As for Kili I did not spot it at first as I was looking far to the right and not high enough! Duh! Above the clouds rose the peak with a bit of snow on it. Somehow poor Kili reminded me of a balding old man! He is losing his snow fast (global warming) spelling disaster for the coffee and other plantation in its foothills.

MS TCDC, near Arusha (Pictures)

Hiya all you folks out there… hope you’re still having a blast…!

This is a follow-up to my post Zanzibar, honeymoon story. As things usually go, I fell from paradise to earth, and even seemed to be tumbling to lesser depths, for a few days back there. But hold on, for this story has a happy ending!

Woe Number One had to do with being forced to acquire a cell-phone. I typically bought the cheapest cell phone on the market (a Nokia no. something or the other for 70 American bucks) which someone later told me was probably not even the real thing i.e. a pirated version (it certainly looks cheap!)

There was no user manual for it (they had run out) but my guardian angel in Dar, Elisabeth – the Swiss cooperant colleague at HakiElimu I have mentioned before) had one.

These cell phones here have to be fed vouchers that they munch up gleefully in no time at all. So mine for e.g. seems to use up 5 bucks for 3 short local phone calls! Also, there’s the matter of feeding these junkies electricity every so often, even daily if you have them on all day.. (Yes, yes I realize this is all old hat to many of you out there in the real world, but still a shock to a cell phone virgin like me – and here I have to confess that another pal has provided that catchy coinage – cell phone virgin!)

At first I had no adapter for the local sockets. After I acquired one, I discovered that the switch was unreachable, tucked as it was behind my very heavy hotel bed. I instructed the reception to move my bed, but not too much, as this would have rammed it against the opposite wall and I’d have to leapfrog over the bed all the time, and you know what? I am too old for that! Finally, I was able to plug the adapter into the socket, and also the cell into the adapter, but not a peep out of my F+&^%$#@! phone. Meanwhile it was signaling me that it really, really needed an electric fix and FAST!

Next day my cell savvy colleague (and everyone and their dog and dog’s uncle is cell savvy here) told me I’d probably got a dud adapter from China. (I notice this guy has great contempt for Chinese products.) He advised me to junk the 500 Tsh (Tanzanian shillings) adapter, for a German or British 1500 Tsh gizmo. Anyhow, he managed to plug my phone directly into the socket and I discovered that this could actually be done if you took a ball point pen and kinda twisted it into the top hole of the socket which kinda opened up the lower two holes for the F*****ing plug to enter! Otherwise there was just no way of forcing the thing in. Why they make such impenetrable switches here, I know not, save perhaps to send us some sort of a message about reconsidering our neurotic dependence on all this STUFF??

It set me wondering if this fiddling with a ball point pen around a switch could perhaps, just maybe, lead to electrocution and trying to reminder what substances are good and bad conductors of electric current!

The parallel story to all this unfolds thus: did I mention already that my hotel was in a very lively part of town? That meant loud music practically every night. One night I got into bed at 10.45 thinking, oh, its soooo quiet today and I swear the music started up the next second! It’s good dance music – I will credit these folks with taste – but not really conducive to getting up the next day at 6.30 am (yes a night bird like me actually managed that for 2 weeks – oh what we will do for our so-called careers!). After the music dies down the mullahs start up, around 4.30 am, with their calls to prayer. All this had me seriously reconsider the freedom of expression, which I have defended now for decades!

My nerves were positively shaky with insufficient sleep, when Woe 3 stepped into the picture. This is the housing situation in Dar. It’s an unregulated market run by unscrupulous house agents- known as dalalis – and greedy house owners. At first Haki was trying to find a house for me through these dalalis. But having seen only one house in a far-flung suburb in the first week I decided to grab the bull by its horns. I marched to the Haki Media department and started scanning the English newspapers there for apartment ads. I wanted to live in a flat, not a house, as a house involves a night and day guard and a maid, which amounts to something like 250 US a month – the kinda moolah I don’t have. Coz it seems you have not only to pay this royal retinue, but also feed them, and pay for their medicine! This last bit really freaked me out, for in my mind’s by now paranoid eye, I saw this ailing, would-be guard doing me out of my small CUSO allowance!

Of course what the locals and the expats pay these folks varies widely and wildly and I was getting these “Oh, but how can you exploit these folks” and “But oh how can you spoil these folks” vibes from the two camps. I decided that I wanted to avoid these folks altogether – at least the guards – by getting a flat that has a common watchman, paid by the owner (tho. of course you chip in for him.)

I stepped into the brave new world of house hunting by calling the cell numbers in the ads which promised 3-bedroom budget downtown apartments. A dalali operates typically like this: He calls frantically on the cell, fails to identify himself and says: Can you meet me at Shoppers Plaza in 10 minutes? One of the things he omits to tell you is whether he means Shoppers Plaza downtown or in Micocheni. (An up-market suburb which could be reached from my office in 10 mins. only with a private helicopter.)

When you meet the guy at the aforementioned Shoppers Plaza, he walks you 10 mins. to an apartment building and then begins an endless wait for the key to the apt. he wants to show you. The guy with the key, who’s in a nearby shop, has disappeared, without telling anyone where he’s going or when he’ll be back. Interestingly, the guy cannot be contacted by cell ph. either!

If the key is available, you could be shown an aging apartment with rusty water pipes in the loo and no water in them, or a flat in an empty building, which is large, but unfinished, with wires dangling here and there, and sacks of concrete and junk piled up at the bottom of the stairs. You are told “The owner will finish the apartment fast if you want it. To which you want to say, “Hey bud, you got it backwards – YOU finish the apartment first and then I may want it.” But you say nothing, at least not at first. For all this, you pay for the cab rides between apartments and US 10 dalali fees.

By Day 2 I was already much older and wiser in the game, laughing when people told me they had a flat for US 500 in Kariakoo, telling them it was far too expensive and Karikoo was much too noisy anyway. I also asked them to identify themselves when they called. “No I could not meet them at Shoppers Plaza in 10 mins. I have work to do. Perhaps tomorrow?”

I did find a good dalali in all this (he came recommended, save that my boss had got his name as John when his name was actually Sam) who would come and pick me up in a nice car driven by a pal, while another pal took a ride downtown in it, and who showed me one nice apartment which we are trying to secure right now. Sam was respectfully yes and no mamming me by day 2 with perhaps just a hint of sarcasm in this voice!

I was thrilled therefore to make my escape to the MS Training Centre near Arusha in northern Tanzania for my 3-week Kiswahili course. I drove up with Eric, Swiss NGO type, in a Ford pick-up. The landscape was varied and lovely. At first we passed through small towns and shambas (farms) large and small – growing corn, bananas, palm trees, sunflowers, fruits. It was wonderfully green and lush, the soil red and the road beautifully paved and straight.

Post lunch the landscape changed to more open grassy, bushy, land with the cutest of baobab trees here and there (these are much smaller than the giants we saw in West Africa) The land turned hilly as we entered the Usambara mountain area (we skirted the ranges) and the villages thinned out even more as we entered the Kilimanjaro district, when we started see some acacias and anthills, amid a hint to savannah. We passed mountains at times rocky, at times green, and always with was a fine, misty line of mountains, on the horizon. The landscape glowed in various shades of green, brown and yellow, under a sky full of chubby grey-white clouds.

Now we encountered an interesting phenomenon. The villages we passed through bore names, but these did not appear on our road map, and the names of the places marked on the map did not appear on the land! So we tried another map from the glove compartment, but it was the same. Yet the road was going in the right direction and there was only one, so we continued, but with some misgiving, as we had no idea how far we had gone. Finally I begged Eric to pull up and ask where we were (coz we know some men – but not the ones who are getting this e-mail of course – will drive to the North Pole rather than seek help!)

The folks by the road, who were nicely dressed and waiting for the bus, told us we were on the right track and about an hour from Moshi (east of Arusha, a large town we’d have to pass) and asked us for a ride. Our back seat was full of stuff and the back of the Ford was covered with stretched plastic to stop kids in Dar from jumping on and off. That is, the pick-up was such in name only. So we drove on – our middle-class priviledge unshared. I asked Eric if he would consider giving people a lift. We discussed it and decided that after some time in Tanzania, yes. But having recently arrived, we were feeling somewhat vulnerable.

The MS training center is a revelation. It was started by the Danes to train their development workers in Swahili and NGO topics, but has since expanded to welcome the world. The basic and intermediate Swahili classes have people from Britain, Spain, Germany, South Africa, Northern Europe, the USA, and a woman from Mauritius. The NGO courses – short and long – in organizational development, development studies, etc – are filled with a pan African crowd – Ugandans, Kenyans, Tanzanians of course, Angolans, folks from Mozambique, Somaliland, Sudan, Rwanda, etc. There’s also a Nepalese woman from a MS Centre in Nepal.

There’s an incredibly rich tapestry of accents, voices, ideas and backgrounds. It’s really quite exhilarating. The atmosphere is very friendly and welcoming. We are well fed (buffets featuring great veggies and desserts and even mango pickle (!), well taught and well housed, though at first they had overbooked the participants, leading to a lot of confusion. After two nights with a mother and baby in the next room, as well as a roommate (I had asked for a roomie to keep the costs down) I asked for a transfer (along with many others) to a swanky, ethnic-style lodge nearby, with a 100 US per person per night rate! Which came for free of course…

This is a beautiful, German-Tanzanian run place, with extensive grounds, complete with a swimming pool (tho. the weather’s like a Canadian spring, well maybe a tad less cold) a stream and mini waterfalls and a fountain, a variety of bright flowering plants and succulents, a small banana tree grove, a grassy, marsh where weaver birds nest and a pond with duckies. They also have guinea fowl, marabou storks and cranes roaming around. The story of the fowl is that a village woman brought three fowl eggs to sell to the hotel. These were incubated in the hotel kitchen, and voila, they now have 45 birds!

The male weaver bird, it seems, builds a nest which the female inspects. If she likes it she moves in. If not, she dashes it to the ground and the hapless guy has to start all over again!

Another fascinating thing was seeing these deadly red ants which really bite hard and who climb on top of each other to build a kind of a gauzy tunnel under which the worker ants scurry to and fro carrying food. The whole set-up has an efficient production line look about it, though it looks prettier (I think) than a typical factory floor.

The MS Centre itself is green and beautiful, with citrus fruit hanging from some of the trees, and vervet monkeys gamboling about. We have our mid morning and afternoon chai and Kahava (coffee) each day under a thatched roof. We had local drumming and dancing, and a bonfire last Friday, and then social dancing, to African music. I had unfortunately to retire at 10.30 pm as this male student was ferrying the ladies gallantly back to the hotel in his car and insisted that I go as well! (We have since relocated to the campus in small, but practical, student-style quarters.) Tanzanian music is rather mellow and not the easiest to dance to (unlike music from neighbouring DRC, etc which is more vigorous and seems very popular here)

In fact, given the unassuming nature of the Tanzanians, and the ever changing weather (this is because we are in the foothills of the Northern mountains here) I have a sense of familiarity…

I had a visit last weekend from the great CUSO officer in Tanzania, who lives in Arusha. He came with his two daughters who, after chasing the monkeys, zoomed in on the children’s playground here, and did not want to go home! Coz this place is tres child-friendly with children ranging from 3-month old babies to 13 year olds, accompanying wanafunzi wazizi (student parents, in Swahili tho. I won’t swear by the spelling of the last word as I don’t have my vitabu (books) here.

Ciao then and tune in next week for: Swimming in a sea of Swahili and wild life…

Hi to all of you… hope you’re well and full `o’ beans. I am now ‘Zanzibar returned’ and a much happier person for it…

The famous spice island (Unguja for the locals) lives up to its myth… even when all I caught was a glimpse of its capital, Stone Town, infamous in history as slave trade centre. I, however, was all a swoon over the graceful, beach front buildings – white-washed, spacious, mostly wood, with arches and latticed windows and high ceilings – more curves than straight lines, and distinctly, elegantly Arabic influenced.

And in front of them was the blue, blue sea, well stocked with fishing boats and small motorboats with rounded, orange covers for the wazungus (white tourists) and a cruiser or two, pointing to the fact that I need to increase my marine crafts vocabulary double quick…! Once I spied a dhow – its triangular sail a thing of beauty and simplicity – crawl ever so sloooowly across the bay and decided that romantic though this boat looks, I’d rather view one than travel in it!

The Zanzibari’s are graceful too, particularly the women, usually in flimsy black hijabs, with their faces uncovered, and wearing, often over their head a gay red tightly drawn scarf, also made of flimsy cloth. One teenager displayed her naval under her hijab, as she was wearing under it the low slung jeans and short t-shirt, popular with all teens everywhere these days! I may invest in one of these rather seductive garments myself..! (May also be useful to gain entry into mosques which are otherwise out of bounds…) The mixing of all that Arab, black African and Asian (Indian) blood has sure produced pleasing results, making me advocate for mixed-race unions yet again and just for that reason alone!

As for the males, the really striking creatures are the tall, slim, graceful Massai men, here on the mainland or in Zanzibar, with red and sometimes purple shawl-like garments draped around them, leaving one shoulder bare, carrying a staff or spear, with the loveliest beaded jewellery on their wrists, ankles, necks and ears. Sometimes they wear headpieces too. It goes to show (yet again) that men in general would be far more attractive if they wore more interesting clothing as well as sported some jewellery… (Hope you guys are keeping an open mind…) I don’t think they could compete with the Massai exactly but still…!

We stayed in a cheapish hotel (US12 per night) which was a nice building of the kind mentioned before with these gorgeous painted and tasseled wooden beds with blue mosquito nets producing an effect not unlike the hijabs on the ladies. In short: Everywhere the eye turns it encounters beauty. (To quote a pal who was perhaps quoting someone else!) Of course there’s garbage flung around in parts and a leaking sewer or two but who cares?

We also walked through the narrow alleys flanked by pealing house fronts and shops – touristy and everyday – that form the labyrinthine Arabic quarters. In the touristy parts we were hustled, though gently. But left alone in the others. It’s customary here (as on the mainland) anyhow to greet people with Karibu (welcome) or Jambo (hello) and the vibe is generally relaxed and friendly. A no is taken quite well, often with a smile.

We had gone there (Elisabeth, a Swiss cooperant working at Haki and local colleagues L and A) to partake in the Zanzibar International Film Festival, which besides movies, showcases music, art, literary readings, from the “Dhow countries or countries of the Indian ocean – and there was also local theatre and craft particularly at the Women’s panorama. What was nice was that there were quite a few free events for the locals, and even the paid events, save for the opening, were TSH (Tanzanian shilling) 500 which is about 50 cents US. In fact, they even tour the villages on the island with the movies and movie equipment.

The opening night was a joyous celebration held in the stone amphitheatre of the Old Fort which is a sturdy and well preserved building right on the waterfront, and featured a Zimbabwe woman singer (Stella Chiweshe) a qawali group from India, spirited speeches from the chair people, dancers from Tanzania’s Iringa region (they wore cowbells!) and CDR (Congo) director’s musical, political satire in French and a local language, called in English, “The Governors New Clothes.”

Saw a few movies (some documentary) about slavery and a rediscovery of roots, two young Dutch painters staking out in Masaai territory drawing with pigments made from local materials (really a zany flick called White canvas, black hyena), among others. We also ate street food – fish and meat kababs, the local version of falafels, etc at the Fordhani garden which is a nice, waterfront hangout area much frequented by the locals with kids and various generations of family, camped on the grass, relaxing, chatting and eating.

The food reminds me that I have been tucking into asli (authentic) Indian food of the sort I really like which comes from South India and Gujarat and even Maharashtra (my state) at the Kisutu street in Dar. I also stocked up on garlic pickle, sweets and snacks. After one such dinner, I felt religious enough to visit one of the many temples there… There was the usual assortment of Gods – Shiva, Parvati, Durga, Ganesh, a banyan tree which was also being worshipped, women sitting in the large courtyard chatting, while kids played. I must say these temples are much nicer in terms of both construction and ambience than anything I have seen in dear Canada – they seem much more organic while the Canadian’s ones seem transplanted by force, somehow.

I prayed for a house (it’s been tough finding one though. everyone’s trying…) Ironically, the very next day after I’d sought protection and good luck I had computer problems all day and other screw-ups ending finally with my sandal strap breaking (though luckily very near my hotel)!

My hotel, pretty basic but middling in these parts I’m told, is in the bustling African neighbourhood of Kariakoo with a veggie market right next door and all kinds of goods and services available around. There’s always layers of sound here from human voices, cars, construction, carts, Muslim calls to prayer (really soulful and haunting though. Somehow not at 4.30 am!) and music – mostly African and at times Indian. Generally it’s very musical here and one comes across people humming or singing as they work at times. They seem to have a different, deeper, relationship to music than in Asia or the West from what I gather. I enjoy all the sounds but insistent disco music kept me up late last weekend… enjoyed the relative quiet of the Zanzibar hotel.

I was advised not to walk around alone and at first I was rather freaked on the security issue (having heard stories and given warnings) but I have now divested myself of my credit cards, camera and my fears and walk to and from work. It’s about a 20 min. walk. I have been taken for Caribbean and Goan but not Indian alas coz I lack the long boring type of hair and clothes that Indian woman seen in that neighbourhood wear! My hair in fact almost borders on an Afro now!

Dar itself is a pleasing, spacious seeming city, not that hectic for chaotic (well compared to Indian cities) and with distinctive neighbouthoods, African, Indian, expat. up market, etc. Have eaten in many garden restaurants by now and dipped my feet in the Indian ocean at Coco beach.

That’s all for now. But I must mention a Roman excess type of situation that I inadvertently found myself in – you know how they used to over indulge and then throw up. My pleasure trip to Unguja was followed by a nightmare ferry ride back, with the boat heaving and rolling like a creature possessed. Barf bags were passed around at the beginning of this 2 and half hour journey and about 80 per cent of the passengers threw up, including yours truly. I could not even contemplate the blandest of foods which is ugali (cornmeal) last evening, but have bounced back overnight. It seems the thing to do is to avoid this 4 pm ferry. Ferries at other times are Ok as was the one we took to Unguja at 10.30 am.

Opps I forgot to mention work! It’s all positive and you’ll hear more about it later….
Ta for now,
Veena