Well folks, I am officially planning another trip – this time to Europe with my best friend, and our partners. So, that means I need to clear the backlog of blogging before making new memories that will then need to be memorialized in blog form.
It has been over 5 years since I traveled to Zanzibar for the second semester of graduate school. In that time I have started 2 new jobs, moved once (soon to be twice), and have grown about 20 inches of hair I am very seriously considering chopping off this summer. And I fell in love. Not necessarily in that order chronologically or by importance. So it’s time to report back on the beautiful Eastern portion of the African continent that was my home for nearly 3 months during the Covid pandemic.
Similarly to Iceland, we were required to quarantine upon arrival to Zanzibar. I remember little of this week other than the fact that I got sick off leftover seafood pizza and was convinced I had Covid. It was a bacterial infection. Apparently I’d forgotten what that was like in year I’d been back from Peace Corps. Silly!
According to my journal, I was very over the quarantine by day 3. We also had no internet at our place for the first week or so. Speaking of our place…
I shared a house with Fra, Blake, and Dani. We got close with our landlords, they were a really cool family. Stone Town was a very cool place in general – but the hottest place I have ever lived. Heat in a city is way different than heat in the countryside.
Stone Town is known for its wooden doors, a really cool blend of African, Arabic, and Indian influences, which makes sense when you consider the history of the city as a trading hub. One of my favorite souvenirs from here is a tea tray made of an old door. I also got my parents a really unique mixed media piece of art representing a Stone Town door.
And lest you think we only were there to sightsee, some educational highlights:
These are just a few highlights of educational excursions during our time in Zanzibar. As an island nation, a lot of their economy revolves around things that can be produced in and around the sea, and one of the best honeys I have tried was one that was specifically from bees that harvested from the coral forest! I have included a few pictures from our trip to Mwani, a beauty products company that employs “Mwani Zanzibar Mamas” as seaweed farmers and artisans. Their stuff smells divine, I still think of that body oil.
We tended to have class in the morning, due to the aforementioned heat, but had plenty of free time to explore and work on our endless papers. I do recall writing a LOT of papers.
One of the educational highlights was the Zanzibar Marine Hatchery we visited in mid February.
Here are the aforementioned wooden door art pieces, alongside some of the scrap wood used to make them:
We planned on going on a boat excursion at some point, Zanzibar is famous for the beautiful boats known as Dhows, and then found out the school was planning one already! It was amazing. We explored the Menai Bay Conservation Area, stopping to walk around some sandy islets, and to hike to some stunning old trees on the island where we ate our meal.
The very next day we went to a sea turtle release, which was a tough thing for me to see, it was done very differently than how I was trained to release turtles by the SC DNR.
A few more Dhow rides, and a visit to Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park, the only national park in Zanzibar…
We explored Chumbe Island, a private island known for its coral reefs where you can stay in eco-bungalows. We did a coral survey here.
We went scuba diving, to a Tortoise Sanctuary on Changuu, I discovered cardamom gum (still love cardamom to this day), and I celebrated a birthday with Indian food. On my birthday itself it was decided that we would have to evacuate (the president of Tanzania was about to die, he did die a few days after we departed) as the country was feared to be unstable. We got negative Covid tests, went dancing to celebrate my birthday, and flew to Kenya to finish out the semester.
Of course, when we landed in Kilifi, Kenya (where I would later find out my boss at Rural Action served as a Peace Corps volunteer – small world!) we had to quarantine again, of course.
This quarantine was a bit better than the last one – in that I didn’t get sick and we had monkeys and I had my hammock.
When we eventually got out of quarantine about a week later, Fra and Dani and I moved into one big room together at the Distant Relatives Ecolodge. Those were some fun times. The ecolodge food was mint, and I got to try miraa for the first time. We went snorkeling a lot, met amazing people, and got to travel around a bit.
Another educational visit to a fishery, and a trip to the Arabuko Sokoke Forest:
A trip to Malindi:
And too soon we found out we were going to be evacuated. Again. Our new friends came with us to a seafood cookout, and we had a party at a lodge all night until our taxi came to get us. Covid rules required that we couldn’t spend the night in Nairobi, so I actually never saw the city, we drove straight there in the middle of the night, slept at a hotel for a couple hours, and left.
I certainly hope to go back to both Tanzania and Kenya. Both countries have breathtaking landscapes, and the ocean there is unreal. Our time was cut short in both locations, but the memories of those spaces we inhabited still linger with me. The sights, the smells, the textures, and most especially the friends. I am forever grateful for those few months in East Africa!
I have one more blog post until I am all caught up – this last one is a more recent trip, 2024, to visit Fra, my friend from this program! That trip to Italy was amazing, and I cannot wait to go through the photos and revisit those memories here sooner rather than later! My next trip is in June, so I don’t have much time to spare!
Until next time.
All Abroad! 