It's our last day in Zanzibar, very strange and sad seeing as I finally feel like I am getting to know the place. Tonight, our homestay mom is taking us to go get our hands henna -ed ! Yay! Last nigt we had the most amazing dinner with them (the family that speaks english, not the grandma's whose house we sleep at who speaks none) and it was some of the most amazing food I have ever had - everything was homemade, even the mango chile and the bread. My homestay father decided my Zanzibari name is Mariam because Nadine is too difficult to say.

For independent research day, a couple of us went up to Nungwi, one of the biggest tourist areas. The hotels were absolutely mind blowing - so many, so fancy, and expensive! There is a large wall in between the village and the hotels - mzungu's (white people) on one side and swahili on the other. The villagers have to walk 20 minutes for water cause the hotels have run all the wells dry, and one hotel had an outdoor shower for each bungalow. We felt like we fit in more with the local people than the tourists - or like we really didnt fit in anywhere. The people in the village were so nice and wonderful - I think they loved us cause we actually try to speak swahili and wear kangas instead of bikini's. On the tourist side, there is lobster for $29 dollars, and on the swahili side, chapati and ugale for 300 shilling, 29 cents. We took the most intense dalla dalla ride to get there - a small truck had 23 adults, two toddlers, many chickens, eggs, and sugar cane on the roof. The drive was completely beautiful - villages, people, trees, farms.

Now we are off to the north to see coffee, sisal, "wild wild africa", mt kiliminjaro, and the masaai.

Zanzibar, Part 2

For the past 2 days I have been at Urua and Pete - two villages on the East Coast of Zanzibar, where most tourists go and where the beautiful coral reefs and beaches are. In Pete, we got to see the last Red Colobus Monkeys in the world at the Jozani National Forest, learned about traditional healing methods, and I got to farm cassava with my homestay father. Pretty cool attempt at trying to get conservation to help the local people, if not entirely effective.

In Uroa, we saw hotels taking away land from the local people , women seaweed farmers being exploited by multinational corperations, fishermen building amazing handmade boats called dhows, the most amazingly beautiful multicolored starfish and blowfish, a fresh fish market, and mangroves (amazing!) that are being killed by the rising tides that are a side effect of global warming. The people are so beautiful and intelligent - very very friendly and polite (even the small children), intelligent (most speak 3 languages, sail, fish, build amazing things by hand, and farm) and so so wealthy in natural resources - yet all of the benefits of these things so to outisiders - who are clearly continuing on the legacy of colonial exploitation in my opinion. Just because they are nice, our guides took us out swimming at a sand bar - so so beautiful. We also all got to sleep on the beach in front of the B & B we stayed at and ate fish fresh from the fish auction.

Stone Town, Zanzibar

Stone Town. Tiny winding streets that get you lost every two minutes. Street food. Beautifully carved wooden doors. Ferrel calico cats with fleas. People asking you to buy things. Trash. Three children one on bike. Smiling little boys. Motorbikes beeping at you. Mangos and passionfruit and lychee. Amazing green blue water. Dolphins swimming next to supertankers and oil slicks. Quite a crazy place.

I am staying with Elena in this house with an old lady and her daughter. They speak no English and feed us lots of bread and chai, but they are very nice. Very very hospitable - they gave up their bedrooms and a bathroom for us and always check our room and hang up our laundry. On television last night we saw bollywood movies, ellen degeneres, and muslim services from Oman - very strange.

In the next three days, we are going to coral reefs, mangroves, community preserved forest, and women seaweed farmers. It should be quite fabulous.

Jambo for Dar Es Salaam

So I am sitting in this internet cafe listening to rap/slipknot/ bango flava. We've been getting around by Dalla Dalla - indepedently owned mini busses that are brightly colored and act as public transportation. The city is loud, smells of food, and is very multicultural. But everything just works and makes sense in a way it doesn't in America. Isn't it obvious that we should all use glass coke bottles and send them back to the factory to get refilled when you are through? Isn't it obvious that seats should fold down in the aisles of busses? But I guess thats just my hippie environmentalist self talking. We are staying right next to the indian part of town and got to go to the 9 day hindi stick dancing festival every night - tre cool.

All of our classroom experiences have been mind blowing - we get to go to the greatest places and meet the most amazing intellectuals and social activists. Yesterday we went to this debate on the issues of food and fuel - whether biofuel is a good idea for tanzania and the world - at the dar es salaam university. The students get to vote for the president of the college every year and riot whenever something doesn't go their way - quite a refresher after American College student apathy. The day before that we went to the Tanzania women's media organization - a hub of modern feminism in Tanzania. They put pressure on the government through media, make their own positive representation of women in the media, and started a domestic violense crisis center to help when the government won't. Dar has been a very interesting and wonderful place, its a little sad that we have to head out in a couple of hours for Zanzibar.