Life gets in the way

I had all these good intentions of coming back to the internet cafe and just writing about the rest of my time in Zanzibar. I had thought up all these eloquent sounding sentences I would use to describe my scuba diving experiences and I had thought of the perfect adjectives to describe the labyrinth that is Stone Town, but then Life got in the way. I've been back in Tanga for almost 2 weeks now and I'm caught up in my work, my new friends, the peace and quiet of every evening and the daily life I've created for myself. That, and the internet is so painfully slow here that when I do come to check my mail, it takes an hour or so just to get through a handful of messages and reply.

So. To summarize: After my birthday in Nungwi on Zanzibar, I spent a day diving on the north coast and then went back to Stone town for a few days. Scuba Diving in Zanzibar was lovely - not as incredible of some places I saw in Thailand, but I did see a shark and I swam around with about 10 huge Hawksbill turtles and some big game fish on the northen part of Zanzibar Island at Mnemba Atoll. Closer to Stone town I saw some really incredible corals and smaller fish, some of which were extremely rare and endemic to the area (or so they tell me). Regardless of what I saw, I find that diving is like a form of meditation for me - all I have to listen to is the sound of my own breathing and the crackling of fish feeding on the reef. I become weightless and can move up or down simply by changing my breathing. And then there is the scenery - a million shades of blue everywhere and light streaming down from above, colorful fish and mountains of intricate coral providing shelter to a wealth of life. If only I could head back to Zanzibar for a couple days before I head to London...

I absolutely loved my 3 days in Stone town on my own. I spent my time wandering through the alleyways and finding these amazing little shops. My favorite was a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop where they were roasting the beans (grown in the Southern highlands of Tanzania) right in the restaurant. They packaged the coffee right there and served fantastic french-pressed coffee in their grungy cafe. I have learned a lot about myself through this trip, but never before did I realize the severity of my coffee addiction. After all the "Africafe" instant coffee I was thrilled to frequent this new place and invest in a pound of beans for my hostel. Zanzibar had a lot of textiles I wanted to take home and so I ended up buying a bunch of kikoi, kanga and scarves that are much cooler to wear than the pants and whatnot that I brought from home. Seeing as I was alone in Zanzi, I didn't go out much in the evenings but rather spent my time writing and reading a novel I found in a random shop - Dark Star Safari, but Paul Theroux.

I won't get into the details of this book too much, even though I was totally engrossed in it all week and have about a million things to say about it. BUT, If you can get your hands on a copy; read it. Basically it is about a guy who travels overland from Cairo, Egypt all the way to Cape Town in South Africa and all of his crazy adventures along the way. As someone who has worked in Africa as a teacher, Theroux describes so many scenes that are all-too-familiar for me and sheds light on many of the issues that come up in the volunteer sector. I've been faced with a lot of hard questions now about the success of Foreign Aid in Africa and whether or not my volunteer work is actually helping these people or creating further dependency on the First World and aid organizations. Big questions. Like I said, worth a read if you're interested.

Since I've been back in Tanga I've had some experiences that are too touching for words and too personal to publish on the world wide web. I went to the Stehmann House orphanage over this past weekend and met one of the little girls who Midoli was taking care of when she was here, and she is truly a beautiful soul. I saw the orphanage and met some of the people who run it, including the German expat who founded the whole thing. They have a really great program going and I've offered to help there in the afternoons when I'm finished teaching at the kindergarten, so I think I'll be very busy during my last few weeks here as I get involved with another worthy cause. You can check out the website for the orphanage at www.pamoja-orphanages.org to find out more about the project.