Beach Bums.

TUESDAY

The day started off smelling great; our neighbour Valentine lost power in her kitchen so she was using ours to make chapattis and she made each of us one as well. It was her last day and she didn’t want her stuff to go to waste so she used it up and it was delicious. With yummy food in hand, we left for work.

It was Tuesday, so it was busy. The first boy I was treatment was so aggressive! When I was holding him was clawing at my arms, my face, my chest with so much force. At one point he managed to pull my glasses from my face. It was like his nails were pincers, they definitely needed to be cut. Another little girl I had with down syndrome had very weak trunk muscles so she preferred to flop her torso towards the ground and have her face on the floor, but she would lick everything. When she was on the mat, she licked the mat. When she had a toy, she licked the toy. When I was holding her, she licked my arm and at one point attempted to be breastfeed off of me! Another girl had on a floofy princess dress, but it was all this hold glitter on it that was continuously falling off. Her dad was covered in it when he brought her to me and by the end of that session I was like a walking disco ball. But on the plus side, I only had one crying baby this day, and oh did he scream his head off, but only one.

After lunch today, Chels and I wanted some sort of pastry or dessert. It was the first time since we’ve been here that we’ve gone out for dessert of some sort. We decided to go to Zanzibar Coffee House cause last time Mylene and I went they had a large menu. Chels got a humongous piece of chocolate cake, Mylene got a chocolate tart, and I got a cappuccino tart. It was really good, mmm sweets.

Chels' ginormous piece of chocolate cake

My cappuccino tart.

For dinner, we chose to stay in and make pasta and a salad. It was the same as the one Rod made for us last time, but this time we were on our own. Mylene and I want to start by cutting onions and peeling the vegetables, so she takes out the brown bag with the eggplant in it. Then she turns to me, showing me the bottom of the bag and says, “Is that a worm??”. I look at it very closely and then it freaking starts to move! And then another one comes out, and another one. At this point I am flipping out, they were so nasty. Mylene runs to get a garbage bag to put it in and we hope they didn’t get into the eggplant. I cut open the one that has holes on the outside, half freaking out and of course, there were like 5 worms squirming around inside our eggplant. Another couple seconds of freaking out and Mylene bravely chucks away the worm infested eggplant. Our first homecooked dinner was not off to a good start. After that though everything went smoothly; all the vegetables got cut, sauce got made, pasta got cooked, and salad got put together. It reminded me of undergrad and having roommates again, talking and cooking and just spending nights in together. I miss all that; living alone really isn’t my cup of tea. The meal turned out almost exactly how Rod made it, so we were successful and got to eat loads of healthy vegetables!

WEDNESDAY

Once again, we had the day off from work since there was no community outreach plan and we were supposed to work on our presentation for Friday. But instead we worked on it Tuesday afternoon so we could go to the beach today. We wanted to go to a nicer beach than Fuji, and Preston told us that the second closest nice beach would be Paje, which we went to only at night for a beach party. Paje is around a 45 minute drive from Stonetown, but we would be taking the dala dala so we estimated over an hour for sure. The night before I looked up which bus we would need to take and Tuesday around 1:30pm we left to head towards the central dala dala station by the market. It was no different from the first time, still as crazy and hectic. We couldn’t see any dala dalas in the 300s (we needed the 309) so we asked a man who pointed us in the right direction. As we were looking at the front of the cars for the numbers a man asks where were going, we tell him Paje, and he tells us to follow him and get onto the bus. The front of the sign didn’t say 309 so we were hesitant and stood outside, but he was very persistent. We asked the driver if he would pass through Paje and he said yes so we sat. We were the only ones on the bus; it was the van like one again and not the truck with converted seats. We had to pay 3500TSH for one way, which we later found out was the “mzungu” (meaning white person in Swahili) price and locals typically pay around 2000TSH. We thought we would have to wait forever cause we were told before that the dala dalas won’t leave until they’re full. But after another man got on the car left the station. I was asking Chels the other day if they have a fire department here cause we hadn't seen any firetrucks but as we were pulling out we saw one so I took a picture of it. Then the bus attendant says he wants a picture with him and Mylene...haha she was so awkward about it.

 Zanzibari Firetruck.

Hahah oh Mylene.

It got progressively more and more packed, especially because people were bringing with them huge sacks of what I think were potatoes and other random things. So we get to one stop and they throw these cargos next to me on the dala dala, which I’m fine with. We’re pulled over for about 10 minutes when I start to notice the bag right next to my left slightly shake. I can see the bag moving up and down rhythmically and I lean over to Chels and tell her that whatever in that bag next to me is alive cause I can see it moving. We kind of peek inside and there are live chickens in the bag! Slightly thrown off, but okay with it, I continue to sit. Then the chickens start going crazy, they start jumping out of the bag and one of the almost pecks at me! Needless to say I start screaming, so the bus attendant grabs the bag and moves it. Everyone on the dala dala is now laughing at me, but it really was just a hilarious situation and Chels and I can’t stop laughing either. But then this one guy keeps saying “kuku” (chicken in Swahili) and laughing and re-enacting my reaction for the next 20 minutes until he gets off; at the point it got annoying.

On our way to Paje, we pass through Jozani forest and we actually saw the red colobus monkeys sitting on the side of the road eating! It was so cool, they were chilling like it was nothing. No one else seemed intrigued, but the three of us being super touristy got really excited. A little further down a black and white colobus monkey runs across the road out of nowhere, we almost hit it! The dala dalas don’t seem to have a capacity, if someone wants to get on, they will be allowed regardless of how much cargo they have with them. It was sweet though, because there is a really big sense of community here. Other people on the dala dala will help carry the loads on the, reshifting already existing stuff so everything will fit. One woman came on with her son and they made a seat for the boy at the front and the man next to him made sure he was safe since he was sitting on a bucket haha. Everyone is super friendly (besides the man making fun of me) and chats as they travel to different destination points.

After 1.5 hours, we finally get to Paje. We’re at a roundabout and are told to get off, but as we come off there is nothing close to us. We see a bunch of signs for resorts pointing in one direction so we walk towards there, knowing that we would be able to walk through any resort and onto the beach. We walk about 10 minutes before we hit the resorts, but the walk was so quiet. It was so different from Stonetown where there are constantly people yelling at you to come into their stores, trying to sell you stuff, bikes and motorcycles honking at you to move out of the way. We didn’t know until we got to the beach that it would be low tide. The water so really far out and there were long patches of sand out into the ocean. We walked towards the part where the water was closest to the shore and set up shop. Mylene and I went into the water first, it was gorgeous there. Paje is known to have the finest sand on the island. The water was completely transparent, you could see everything at the bottom and it was clean and turquoise, unlike Fuji. The first 10 minutes the water was only up to our thighs, we went out maybe 20 minutes before the water was up to shoulders. The water was extremely calm, there were no waves, it was barely moving. It was so relaxing just floating and swimming there! At one point I look at Mylene and I tell her that I can’t believe we’re doing our placement right now, it feels like paradise. The beach barely had locals harassing you to buy stuff, only a few so we actually got to enjoy our time just laying on the beach. But there may be a random cow that walks by, or maybe 10. There were some tourists there as well, which made us feel a lot more comfortable in bikinis. Preston joined us a little later and we sat around and watched the tide rise, which happened very quickly. I was really shocked, but amazed, at how quickly it rose! Even the 30 minutes Mylene and I were in the water, by the time we came back in, the water had risen like 40-50cm.

 The seaweed is normally where the shore meets the water, but the tide was super low.

Mylene and I soaking in a little bit of paradise.

Herd of cow taking a stroll on the beach.

Initial shoreline. 

Tide when we left, 2.5-3 hours later.

Orange coconuts. 

We came back into town for dinner. All three of us were craving burgers, real burgers like ones at home, because a lot of the burgers here are not made from ground beef but it’s more like a piece of stake inside. Mylene had a burger at the Old Fort restaurant before so we went there. It was a decent burger, although I would take a Wendy’s junior bacon cheeseburger over it hands down. When we were walking home Chels and I bought ice cream from one of the vendors attached to a bike. First Zanzibar ice cream! Although it wasn’t really authentic since it was package. I’m waiting to go to Amore Mio for gelato and to see the sunset. It was such a nice, relaxing day. The picture perfect beauty of the beach still blows me away, it looks like a postcard.

THURSDAY

Last night Chels and I slept with the AC off in our room, but around 1:30am we both woke up cause it was so hot and stuff. Our room was at 30 degrees…it was gross. Today was our early day (start at 7:30am) because we have to go to the presentation before OT treatments. The presentation today was on appendicitis; I was exhausted from the beach and was pretty much dozing off through the presentation. I think I might stop going to them, they aren’t relevant to OT and our supervisor doesn’t even go. Work wasn’t too crazy today, we finished around 11am. Amina told us that we don’t have to present tomorrow though because one of the Norwegian PTs were presenting and we could present next week. No interesting stories from work today.

We went to eat at Green Garden restaurant for lunch. Chels and I ordered pastas and Mylene ordered a calzone; everything was delicious and we had leftovers for dinner. Afterwards, we went to the market because we wanted to buy more fruits and we needed bread, peanut butter, nutella, toilet paper and napkins. I’m getting pretty used to the hectic-ness of the market, it doesn’t phase me anymore. It’s also rained a bit yesterday and today so the temperature has cooled down slightly, today was the first time we got to work and weren’t sweating! It’s a lot more exciting than it sounds haha.

Mylene and Chels bought a Zanzibar board game yesterday, but the guy didn’t have instructions for it so they had to go back today and get it. The plan was to go there and go to a store with handmade clothes and accessories. But along the way we stopped at souvenir stores and sporadically we all ended up buying more souvenirs. I don’t think this souvenir shopping will ever end, we’re always surrounded by it! Chels wanted to buy banana leaf placemats and the guy told her at first 18,000TSH for one and she ended up buying 4 placemats for 15,000TSH!

I got my four mosquito bites from sitting outside for dinner yesterday. I think I need to start carrying around bugspray with me cause I never know where I’ll end up. I don’t think I’ll be bug bite free until I get back home…that s a pretty depressing thought. Lots of bug bite and tiger balm for the next month and a half! Not too exciting of a day today, we’re all pretty tired. It’s probably gonna be an early night. Tomorrow we’re going in for the PT presentation and then we’re going to one of the kid’s schools to do interventions there with the teacher, so that should be interesting!