Voyage of the Peace Corps: Zanzibar, a Capitalist Story

The sun of Zanzibar dawns bright and hot, and we breakfasted and went to explore Stone Town.  Also shop.  We found we could begin right outside our hotel, at the childhood home of Freddie Mercury.  It must be difficult to be a homophobic society whose only famous person is Freddie Mercury, but if it sells merchandise to the tourists it can be dealt with.  And this is why capitalism will always triumph over bigotry.   The place is really just a hotel now with the occasional picture of Freddie but the shop next door sells t-shirts and postcards, which is the important thing.

That is really what most doors in Stone
Town look like.

Stone Town is a very cool city, being made of tall buildings with twisty windy streets wherein it is easy to get lost.  There are also stray cats everywhere, but at least people don't seem inclined to kick or throw stones at them and most of them look decently fed.

My goal in shopping was to buy a baibui, a long black gown with lots of beading and embroidery that some Muslim ladies wear here.   Baibui is a very difficult word for me, because it is close to buibui [spider], so it is possible that while asking directions for a shop that sold them (it's hard to find places that sell things people actually wear for all the shops that sell things that the tourists wear) I may have told people I wanted to buy and wear an arachnid.   I found one (the dress, not the arachnid), it was somewhat expensive, but I'm paying for the hand beading and the little crystals.

The thing doesn't fit right now because you buy them in very large sizes and then are supposed to take them to your own dressmaker to have them tailored to you and I haven't done that yet.  This custom makes me happy because it means that the younger and more fabulous ladies who wear them extremely tight (and sometimes with nothing under them and so tight that you can tell) are doing that very deliberately.  Take that modesty!  I also got a pin for it because Muslim ladies get fancy pins to hold their headwraps in place here.  At the shop I just showed the proprietor my baibui and she told me which pin would go well with it.

On my way home I stopped at the fancy hotel in Morogoro with the best cocktails and pedicures in country and was showing off my purchases to my old sitemates.  While they were exclaiming about how pretty it was, some annoying Americans at the next table demanded to know, in incredulous tones, why I had bought that. To which I replied "because it is pretty."  It will also work for a belly dance caftan or possibly just outfit, but I don't feel a need to tell disapproving strangers such things.  I was told by the Americans then that it would be fashionable for Iran, and when I explained that that was not true, since in Iran the chaddor is worn, and that is different, I was told that I could wear this for Halloween.  No actually, I don't think so.  Going as a Muslim for Halloween in America would be at best in poor taste.  Americans.  They have the right to wear just about whatever they want, but they get so judgmental about clothes and all end up in drab jeans and uninteresting t-shirts most of the time anyway.  But can I get stridently idealistic to them?  Well, no, because they have a car and since it was raining I fully intended (and managed) to beg a ride to my sitemate's house where I was staying so I wouldn't have to walk.  Poverty and idealism do not mix well.  At least I got my nails painted alternating Easter egg pink and blue.

Whatever, we also discovered that beside our hotel on Zanzibar is a coffee place that sells cakes and pastries, including key lime pie and passionfruit tarts, and some evenings a musical duo with a violin and guitar are there playing the occasional traditional music interspersed with Abba.  I love this country.

Next: We get stuck on a tropical beach with too much money.  However will we survive?!

Voyage of the Peace Corps: Zanzibar, or, the Unbearable Whiteness of Being

After the cliffhanger suspense of the last blog post a while back, I should perhaps say I'm fine, except for the travel diarrhea and that I'm now at home with a massive to-do list that makes me want to just sit on Facebook all day to lol with my friends about how much I heart things.

Dar-es-Salaam, office and home of the Peace Corps overlords and their hired goons, is to be avoided as much as possible, and so, after disembarking from the train late at night, we slumbered quickly at the hotel where most volunteers stay, greeted the volunteers who were there for medical reasons, of whom there are always a handful, and hied us hence to the docks and the ferry to bear us across the Indian Ocean where many a sultan has gone all the way to Zanzibar.  Zanzibar!  Based on the name alone, it must be one of the most fabulous places on earth.  But wait!  Before fabulosity, 2 hours on a choppy ferry in the sun!

One of the smaller islands in the Zanzibar archipelago that the ferry passed.

Closeup of the tower thingie.

On the ferry, we met a wonderful Kazakh-German med and PhD student named Jaro, who does strange things to mice in the name of curing diabetes (an excellent name to do things to mice in), and who asks good questions about living in Tanzania.  Not the perennial "what is is like" but "what have you learned from this culture?" kind of good.  We ended up adopting her because as it turned out, she had been robbed in Dar, and while glory to her courage for continuing to travel alone to Zanzibar, she was happy to join a group of people who know more or less how Tanzania works and speak the good Kiswahili.  We were happy to have her join us because she is awesome.

Katie the Barbaric, who always does creative things to her hair, braids Jaro's hair
in a traditional Tanzanian female bonding ritual.

Now: Zanzibar!  Specifically, Stone Town on Unguja.  Unguja is the largest and most populated island of the archipelago and Stone Town is the traditional capital and former home of the sultans.  It is, as the name suggests, largely a town with stone houses, multistory, with ornately carved wooden doors.   There is a ridiculous number of white people, because it is winter in Europe and Italy has a direct flight to Zanzibar because the Italians know where to spend their winters.  For someone who has lived on the mainland for a while the number of white people is weird.  They show their knees and men and women hold hands!  I felt that I ought to be scandalized.   Being white ourselves in a very touristy area is weird.  People are in our faces all the time waving touristy stuff to buy and keep saying "hakuna matata" to us.  This is very strange.  There are about 20 different ways to say 'no problem' or 'no worries' in Kiswahili, but hakuna matata is not one of them unless you are a Kenyan or a Disney character.  And since one of the things I love about Tanzanians is that they are complete language snobs (they have a saying that Kiswahili was born in Tanzania, got sick in Kenya, and died in Uganda), it hurts to see them prostituting their grammatical superiority to amuse tourists who will therefore never learn to say hamna shida (which is what I usually say), haina shida, hakuna shida, haina tabu, hamna tatizo, hamna matatizo, bila shaka, usijali, usiwasiwasi, hamna noma, or any of the other ways of expressing that there is currently nothing to worry about and relaxation should happen.

Whatever, Stone Town has cannons by the port.  Cannons are good.

I think the cannon are Portuguese but I couldn't swear to that. 

Besides which, Stone Town has a park area in which may be purchased cappuccinos and ice cream.  In the evening, the young men of Zanzibar practice acrobatic dives over the park wall and on the small beach nearby they practice tumbling.   It's entertaining and also sad that this is clearly a male-only sport because the young women of Zanzibar are too purdah'ed to jump into the water for fun.  So I did.  Because I can.  I'm just one more white person in a touristy area, local gender roles don't necessarily apply to me.

I had to take this picture.  For great meta-ness.  

Young men frolicking in the sunset.

Tumbling passes don't always work so well.

Coming soon: we buy things and take pictures!

Voyage of the Peace Corps: Going off the Rails on the Crazy Train

My traveling companions are fighting violent food poisoning, which is what they deserve for losing at street food roulette.  Seriously, sticking with the Zanzibar pizzas (a bunch of things--and in Zanzibar proper the things include cheese and mayonnaise!--and an egg rolled up in dough and deep-fried) means the only thing to fear is the grease, but no, they had to attempt the tempting piles of seafood.  I will leave my own fondness for street octopus unmentioned.  While I wait on them recovering, which I will do for a space before abandoning them for the beach, I have their computer with which to spin harrowing tales of adventure.

February has been a long and weary month for certain members of the Peace Corps, because our overlords cried unto us to stop drinking for a month.  I ignored the directive and declared my house a speakeasy which may only be entered with a password and a fedora.  Fleeing the prohibitive clutches of our overlords, two volunteers from Njombe, Rambunctious Ron and Katie the Barbaric, arrived at my house for a night of bucket wine and 20's films, followed by escape across the country at dawn, to eventually seek safety in the neighboring and kinda sorta but not really separate nation of Zanzibar.  Of course, being the train of Tanzania, the train was 13 hours late.  Fortunately, the Peace Corps goons failed to apprehend us despite the opportunity and we made good our escape across picturesque landscape in a first-class compartment, which meant a room with sleepable couches all to ourselves.  

Apparently, the railway was laid by the Chinese.

Upon our long journey we encountered many people with whom we brushed our teeth in the corridors, spitting out the windows, because in developing countries tooth-brushing is surprisingly communal.  We were also offered libations by our neighbor who claimed that his wine was chai, which had we joined him in the drinking of might have helped with repose, since sleeping on the sleepable couches proved difficult given the tendency of the trains cars to run into each other with bone-jarring thuds whenever the train hit its brakes.  Faith in the train was heightened when we drove through the Selous national park in bright moonlight, regarding with curiosity the wrecked remains of former trains intermingled with elephant bones.  Sleep was nigh impossible, but after the first night, the staff took away our blankets anyway.  I remember customer service.  This is a lie; I actually don't.  

Into Dar es Salaam!  Showers!  Will we survive the ferry to the island kingdom of Zanzibar?  Will Zanzibar survive our depredations?  Will the Peace Corps goons apprehend us and throw us to the lions?  Stay tuned.

Non-Capacity Building Self-Indulgence

After an overworked week of grading 99 exams in 3 days while simultaneously hammering out details and writing official letters to make the Linux seminar happen (which eventually only got completed because the secretary decided I am completely incompetent and wrote the official letters for me), I am done.  I'm now on vacation.  It begins with a party, wends its way through the beaches of Zanzibar and Tanga, and ends watching anime and eating spaghetti with the good people of Moshi.  Later, darlings.

Further Evidence Supporting my Hypothesis that I will Die in an Electrical Fire in this Country

I finally got the college to send someone to check my wiring.  Apparently the problems I was having were because the electric company electricians just didn't bother reattaching all the ground wires when they installed a meter.  I dislike sentences of the form "I am not a(n) ____ but ____."  Nevertheless, I am not an electrician, but grounding is important!  Important in a not-burning-things-down sort of way.   It's times like this I kind of hate this country.

Primer on the Good Kiswahili: The Best Words Which can be Said

Note that in Kiswahili, all vowels are pronounced as in a romance language, and in these examples, all consonants are pronounced without any surprises and as an English speaker would expect.   In all but one example, which will be noted, the accent falls on the second to last syllable.   Words should be said aloud in order to appreciate them.

• Shagalabagala--The most wonderful Kiswahili word.  The accent is on the sha and the ba.  This is slang, so you really shouldn't say it, but it's just so much fun to say!  It means things are hopelessly chaotic with possibly some swearing about the chaos, which is exactly what this sort of word should mean.

• Pili pili ho ho.  The second most wonderful Kiswahili word.  I feel it is somewhat wasted on the humble bell pepper that it names.

• Wasiwasi.  Anxiety, worry.  It's really more fun to say "don't worry," which is usiwasiwasi.  

• Hii ni nini?  A question meaning "what is this?"  The fact that such a phrase is a valid sentence in this language or any language makes me happy. 

• Sawa.  Labda.  Bado.  Sawa is general agreement, labda is maybe, and bado indicates not yet but sometime in the unspecified future and labda never.  These three words, used judiciously with some smiling and nodding, can be used to successfully navigate most conversations without actually understanding them.

A Puppy and his Goat

Gratuitous cute animal photos!  The internet doesn't have enough. The puppy I'm babysitting for the weekend, Mutwari (meaning chief in whatever language is spoken in Rwanda) now has goats to play with.  Seriously, the goats were purchased specifically to keep the puppy entertained.  I adore expats.