We are in Paje, on Zanzibar and it's absolute paradise. Just beautiful!!!
It's a very quiet section of the island, not a lot of tourists. 90% of the people here are Muslim so now we wake up to the 5:oo9am call to prayer, along with 3 roosters that live at our beach hut. There is running water (HOW GLORIOUS!!) but no electricity. We're pretty sure that the entire staff thinks we're a couple, since we lather eachother in sunscreen, sleep in the hammock together, and take photos of eacther. Despite all the sunscreen, Ainsley got burnt today so she might be spending tomorrow in the shade.
We are here for 2 more nights, then will make our way to Dar es Salaam and get ready to fly.
I can't believe it's almost over!
xoxo
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Volunteering? Check. Safari? Check. Beach time?!
Ahhhh so much has happened I don't even know where to begin!! So Ains and I got moved to the standard 1 class, which had almost twice as many kids as the other classes and guess what! They don't speak a WORD of English! That, coupled with the fact that Ains and I know maybe 20 words in Swahili equalled a giant disaster and we were busy racking our brains with how to keep them occupied/ hopefully teach them a thing or two. It started with the fact that their classroom was an absolute disaster. The walls were dirty and covered in bugs, the chalkboard was barely useable, and overall it was a pretty disgusting learning space. We took it upon ourselves to revamp the room, and basically go 'Trading Spaces' with our bright ideas. We made the long and horrible trek to the city, bought all the supplies and then brought them back to the school.
The headmaster liked what we were doing, so he put the standard 6 class in charge of washing all the walls for us. Our day began with both good news and bad news. The good news was the walls were getting washed the very next morning! The bad news was, we now had to take ALL the kids outside to teach. It was boiling hot, and when we got to school, there were all the desks lined up with a mini chalkboard (like individual sized) placed in front of them, and that's all we had. Awesome. Needless to say, I will never ever sing "If you're happy and you know it", again.
We're really pleased with the way the room worked out. Painting it turned out to be a lot harder than we had anticipated. The supplies were in pretty rough shape, and they only have oil based paint (which is just fantastic for the environment) so the coats took longer to dry than we had wanted. Also, we had no rules, no projector, no stencils that were big enough, etc so it was long and tedious work. On top of that, once the sun went down we had to leave so we could only paint for about 5 hours in the day. We put some phonics stuff, colours, days of the week, months of the year, etc and in the end everyone was really pumped. With the left over paint, we repainted standards 1-7's chalkboards as well, since we didn't have enough money/ time to do their whole rooms. I only hope that it lasts for a long time, and hopefully we've inspired some of the other teachers to do the same to their rooms. Oh yeah. And one of the rooms was infested with wasps, and Ainsley somehow convinced me to be the bait. Thanks Ains.
Randomly, Ains, myself, Scott, and Jack (fellow volunteer from across the city) got invited to a Tanzanian wedding for a couple that lived in the village. It was by far the craziest, (and longest) wedding we had ever been to. We knew that there would be tons of ppl, as basically the entire village got invited, but they failed to mention that we were the 'guests of honour' at the wedding. I'm pretty sure the bride hated us as we took all the attention away from her! It was especially weird when the videographer would pan left to capture the 4 mazungus in the audience. They had soooo many dancers perform at the wedding, and instead of dancing to the bride and groom, they would dance at us! They even planned for us to sit up at the head table and we (polietely) declined. Unlike western weddings, the agenda at the reception was for people to go up and present their gifts, in order to get a ticket for a meal. Because there was 500 plus ppl there, this took FOREVER. Overall, it was a pretty neat experience, and only the pictures will do it justice.
Unfortunately, during our last few days at Lukobe, my body decided to turn on me. It started in the morning when my digestive tract no longer accepted the usual rice and beans that we eat 2/3 times in a day. Then, I think I got some paint thinner in my contact lens or something because when I put one in my eye, it felt like acid and I had to give it to Ainsley to wash off. I trusted that her hands were cleaner than mine, so she rinsed, and when I put it back into my eye, it felt like death again. 3 hours later I developed a serious case of pink left eye, that moments later spread to my right. This made for excellant picture taking, and I will forever blame Ainsley for giving me pink eye. Later that day, I got graced with a wonderful headache. We were out for dinner at this beautiful 5 star resort as a 'good bye' dinner for Jack, and I could barely make conversation because my head was pounding so hard. We ended up staying later than expected, and had to overpay some piki drivers to take us home. Of course, while my head feels like it's going to explode, my eyes are dry like toast from the wind, and it's pitch black outside, my piki driver decides to crash into a giant hole in the road, and we eat shit on the sand. Luckily, he saw the crash coming so was able to brace himself and I just used him as an airbag and in the end we were fine. Somewhere from the hotel back to the house, my sunglasses flew off my head so now there is an African walking around with a sweet pair of arnettes. By the end of the day, I was completely miserable and even Ainsley couldn't cheer me up as she howled with laughter at my misery, and put my eyedrops in for me. (ps- eyedrops are THE MOST un-natural feeling EVER!). In hindsight I can't really blame Ainsley, as I was in pretty pathetic shape!
The past 2 days have been busy as well. We left Lukobe, and Mwanza (thank god) and packed our stuff for Safari. Saying bye to the kids was sad, as we didn't have as much time with them as previous volunteers. If anyone is seriously interested in going and doing something similar, please contact me for Dawn's contact information. There are so many different projects on the go and there is always a shortage of help. Dawn (being the wonderful host that she is) set us up with safari and we left Lukobe for a bus to Lamade. The bus doesn't leave at any specific time so after waiting on the side of the road for some time, we got picked up and were probably around the 60th person to get on the 25 seater, so of course, we had to stand. Lamade was nicknamed by Ains to be the asshole of Africa, and thank goodness Dawn was there because this is not the kind of place you want to be for a very long time. We found a place to sleep and got woken up at 5am by a phonecall from our driver, saying that there's a 'slight' problem with our safari car. Turns out he had gotten into an accident somewhere in the serengeti on his way to come get us, and we would no longer be using that car. Just when we thought that our 900.00 USD had gone down the toilet, Dawn pulled through for us an in the next 3 hours, had a new car, new driver, and new guide all ready to go.
Driving through the Serengeti is exactly how you would imagine it. Let's just say Disney got it BANG ON with absolutely everything!! It was by far one of the coolest things I have done!!! The giraffes, the zebras, the elephants, the wildabest, all the different kids of deer, the warthogs, the heyenas- all SO AMAZING!!! We drove for a handful of hours (we stopped counting those weeks ago) and camped in the middle of nowhere with about 30 other tents. It's crazy to think of all the wildlife that was probably circling around the grounds, waiting for some one to go to the bathroom or something. Today, we got up super early and started our game drive. We were SUPER lucky as in the first hour, we saw a LEOPARD hanging out in a tree, full from a recent kill (and the carcus was hanging in the tree to prove it). Apparently people usually have to drive for hours to see one of these guys, and we saw him right in the morning- it was awesome!!
Then, we saw a lioness far off in the distance, and Ains and I absolutely freaked out!! That right there was worth the price of the safari and we were ready to go home happy. Turns out we had an amazing driver (thank you Rashidi!) and he found us not one, but TWO male lions that were approx. 5 feet away from our car- seriously!!! They were in a deep, mid afternoon nap and it was absolutely mind blowing to see just how huge they actually are!! The pictures and videos we took almost don't do it justice. It was so unbelievable!! By the end of the day, we had seen 11 lions in total, and it was worth every penny. All we needed was some Elton John and the rest of the Lion King soundtrack, and Ains and I would have been holding eachother, bawling!
Okay, times running out. We are in Arusha for the night, and are flying to Zanzibar for our last 3 nights. Cant wait to come home and share, and can't believe that it's almost over!!
xoxox
The headmaster liked what we were doing, so he put the standard 6 class in charge of washing all the walls for us. Our day began with both good news and bad news. The good news was the walls were getting washed the very next morning! The bad news was, we now had to take ALL the kids outside to teach. It was boiling hot, and when we got to school, there were all the desks lined up with a mini chalkboard (like individual sized) placed in front of them, and that's all we had. Awesome. Needless to say, I will never ever sing "If you're happy and you know it", again.
We're really pleased with the way the room worked out. Painting it turned out to be a lot harder than we had anticipated. The supplies were in pretty rough shape, and they only have oil based paint (which is just fantastic for the environment) so the coats took longer to dry than we had wanted. Also, we had no rules, no projector, no stencils that were big enough, etc so it was long and tedious work. On top of that, once the sun went down we had to leave so we could only paint for about 5 hours in the day. We put some phonics stuff, colours, days of the week, months of the year, etc and in the end everyone was really pumped. With the left over paint, we repainted standards 1-7's chalkboards as well, since we didn't have enough money/ time to do their whole rooms. I only hope that it lasts for a long time, and hopefully we've inspired some of the other teachers to do the same to their rooms. Oh yeah. And one of the rooms was infested with wasps, and Ainsley somehow convinced me to be the bait. Thanks Ains.
Randomly, Ains, myself, Scott, and Jack (fellow volunteer from across the city) got invited to a Tanzanian wedding for a couple that lived in the village. It was by far the craziest, (and longest) wedding we had ever been to. We knew that there would be tons of ppl, as basically the entire village got invited, but they failed to mention that we were the 'guests of honour' at the wedding. I'm pretty sure the bride hated us as we took all the attention away from her! It was especially weird when the videographer would pan left to capture the 4 mazungus in the audience. They had soooo many dancers perform at the wedding, and instead of dancing to the bride and groom, they would dance at us! They even planned for us to sit up at the head table and we (polietely) declined. Unlike western weddings, the agenda at the reception was for people to go up and present their gifts, in order to get a ticket for a meal. Because there was 500 plus ppl there, this took FOREVER. Overall, it was a pretty neat experience, and only the pictures will do it justice.
Unfortunately, during our last few days at Lukobe, my body decided to turn on me. It started in the morning when my digestive tract no longer accepted the usual rice and beans that we eat 2/3 times in a day. Then, I think I got some paint thinner in my contact lens or something because when I put one in my eye, it felt like acid and I had to give it to Ainsley to wash off. I trusted that her hands were cleaner than mine, so she rinsed, and when I put it back into my eye, it felt like death again. 3 hours later I developed a serious case of pink left eye, that moments later spread to my right. This made for excellant picture taking, and I will forever blame Ainsley for giving me pink eye. Later that day, I got graced with a wonderful headache. We were out for dinner at this beautiful 5 star resort as a 'good bye' dinner for Jack, and I could barely make conversation because my head was pounding so hard. We ended up staying later than expected, and had to overpay some piki drivers to take us home. Of course, while my head feels like it's going to explode, my eyes are dry like toast from the wind, and it's pitch black outside, my piki driver decides to crash into a giant hole in the road, and we eat shit on the sand. Luckily, he saw the crash coming so was able to brace himself and I just used him as an airbag and in the end we were fine. Somewhere from the hotel back to the house, my sunglasses flew off my head so now there is an African walking around with a sweet pair of arnettes. By the end of the day, I was completely miserable and even Ainsley couldn't cheer me up as she howled with laughter at my misery, and put my eyedrops in for me. (ps- eyedrops are THE MOST un-natural feeling EVER!). In hindsight I can't really blame Ainsley, as I was in pretty pathetic shape!
The past 2 days have been busy as well. We left Lukobe, and Mwanza (thank god) and packed our stuff for Safari. Saying bye to the kids was sad, as we didn't have as much time with them as previous volunteers. If anyone is seriously interested in going and doing something similar, please contact me for Dawn's contact information. There are so many different projects on the go and there is always a shortage of help. Dawn (being the wonderful host that she is) set us up with safari and we left Lukobe for a bus to Lamade. The bus doesn't leave at any specific time so after waiting on the side of the road for some time, we got picked up and were probably around the 60th person to get on the 25 seater, so of course, we had to stand. Lamade was nicknamed by Ains to be the asshole of Africa, and thank goodness Dawn was there because this is not the kind of place you want to be for a very long time. We found a place to sleep and got woken up at 5am by a phonecall from our driver, saying that there's a 'slight' problem with our safari car. Turns out he had gotten into an accident somewhere in the serengeti on his way to come get us, and we would no longer be using that car. Just when we thought that our 900.00 USD had gone down the toilet, Dawn pulled through for us an in the next 3 hours, had a new car, new driver, and new guide all ready to go.
Driving through the Serengeti is exactly how you would imagine it. Let's just say Disney got it BANG ON with absolutely everything!! It was by far one of the coolest things I have done!!! The giraffes, the zebras, the elephants, the wildabest, all the different kids of deer, the warthogs, the heyenas- all SO AMAZING!!! We drove for a handful of hours (we stopped counting those weeks ago) and camped in the middle of nowhere with about 30 other tents. It's crazy to think of all the wildlife that was probably circling around the grounds, waiting for some one to go to the bathroom or something. Today, we got up super early and started our game drive. We were SUPER lucky as in the first hour, we saw a LEOPARD hanging out in a tree, full from a recent kill (and the carcus was hanging in the tree to prove it). Apparently people usually have to drive for hours to see one of these guys, and we saw him right in the morning- it was awesome!!
Then, we saw a lioness far off in the distance, and Ains and I absolutely freaked out!! That right there was worth the price of the safari and we were ready to go home happy. Turns out we had an amazing driver (thank you Rashidi!) and he found us not one, but TWO male lions that were approx. 5 feet away from our car- seriously!!! They were in a deep, mid afternoon nap and it was absolutely mind blowing to see just how huge they actually are!! The pictures and videos we took almost don't do it justice. It was so unbelievable!! By the end of the day, we had seen 11 lions in total, and it was worth every penny. All we needed was some Elton John and the rest of the Lion King soundtrack, and Ains and I would have been holding eachother, bawling!
Okay, times running out. We are in Arusha for the night, and are flying to Zanzibar for our last 3 nights. Cant wait to come home and share, and can't believe that it's almost over!!
xoxox
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
