Pushing the limits.

Consciously trying to make an effort to keep the posts more up-to-date. Sunday was a lazy day at home so I’ll start with…

MONDAY

Last week we set up with Amina that today would be our mid-term evaluation date. We hadn’t realized how fast it was coming and that we were now halfway through our placement. Yesterday we all worked on our objectives and made sure everything was completed and brought one of our laptops with us to do the evaluation with her. After doing clinical work, it was time. The evaluations were on Chels’ laptop so she went first. Mylene and I sat in the room while they were outside, but we overheard some of the conversation and Amina clearly had no idea what she was supposed to do. It was a little surprising considering she had two sets of students come from McGill in the last two years, so she should have seen the evaluation twice each time there were students. Half an hour later, Chels comes back in with the verdict that we would have to print out our evaluations so she could physically write in her comments. So off to the hospital library we go to print off our 18 page evaluation for each of us. Except the computers in the library won’t open our documents from our emails and we have to ask the librarian for aUSB stick, who tells us to wait because she has to finish eating whatever it is she was eating. And then we try to print double sided so we save some paper and the printers just not having it. We have to ask the  librarian for paper twice, and each time she only gives us like 10 sheets even though we told her we had three evaluations to print that were 18 pages each. The third time we ask she tells us there is no paper left…so I came back to the OT department to look for paper. As we walk out finally printing all of our evals, a nurse goes to the counter and gets a whole stack of paper...

After work, Mylene goes home to have lunch with Rod and Chels and I go to Lazuli again; we tried to go Sunday but it was closed. We made a detour into Memories, a very large and touristy souvenir shop, but the strongest ac to cool off before heading to lunch. This time I ordered the chicken tandoori chapatti wrap and a mango, coconut, pineapple smoothie. It was so good, tasted like a mango pina colada. The chapatti wrap was delicious too; we want to try everything on the menu before we leave! We head home only to realize that we didn’t have keys to the apartment because both Mylene and Rod had a set, nor did we have a cell phone to call Rod. Mylene had told me her plan for the day was to go shopping with Rod to finish souvenirs, which meant they would have been out for hours. Chels had her iphone, so we thought we could try to email them cause if they had realized we didn’t have either they would have stayed home and would get the email. But of course, the internet is down (which happens every other day at least). Luckily though Chels had our landlords number on her phone and we asked someone at the hotel across our apartment to call him for us and he came within 10 minutes, thank God. Mylene and Rod didn’t end up coming home til 3 hours later…

We went out to dinner with Abdi, who was a friend that was passed on to us from the girls who came last year; they got his contact from the first set of people who came from McGill. We’ve been meaning to contact him to meet up for a long time, but things got busy and we kept forgetting. We went to Archipelago, anticipating an awkward dinner. It ended up being not too awkward, only slightly in the beginning, but extremely at the end when we didn’t know if we were supposed to pay for his meal or not. We knew that if he brought us around (he’s a tour guide) and showed us stuff we would pay for his costs of stuff, but this was our first time meeting him. We ended up paying for his meal after a whispered conversation in French. In times when we don’t want someone else to know about what we’re saying (mostly when we’re bargaining and when we’re deciding how much to tip guides) we turn to French since Mylene, Rod and Chels are all fluent. I am the only outcast, but for the most part I have a general understanding of what they’re saying and in very broken French give my input. There are two situational phrases that we have come to depend upon: on marche meaning we walk (for when we don’t like the price being given when bargaining) and malaise meaning awkward (we used this A LOT, there are way more awkward moments here than at home). I guess along with a Zanzibari adventure I’m also learning French and Swahili on the side. For dinner, I ordered a salad…with lettuce. We were told very strictly from our travel doctors at home not to eat lettuce because they’re washed with tap water and usually not washed very thoroughly. But we were at a very touristy restaurant and I’ve had other vegetables raw, plus I wasn’t that hungry and there wasn’t anything else I wanted on the menu. So I went for hoping, against Chels’ opinion, that I won’t be sitting on the toilet for the rest of the night. I ended up being fine, which opens up many more doors for vegetables…never thought you’d hear me be so exciting about vegetables, eh? Me neither. But lazuli had some salads that sound really good, we’ll try it there and at places that we trust. We also made planes for tomorrow to go to the Mangapwani  Coral Cave and beach with Abdi.

TUESDAY

The day started off with numerous crying children. No, not even crying, more like screaming at the top of their lungs and wailing at pitches so high it shouldn’t be allowed. But we got through it and the kids at the end were more tame. I’ve been working with one girl with handwriting, but she hasn’t come in the last two weeks, and when I was working with her today I realized that she was having a lot of difficulties (there are many other reasons for her need for therapy)writing certain numbers because she wasn’t able to cross midline, thank you Summit School! After figuring that out, I worked on activities other than handwriting that would help improve her midline crossing which will carry over to many skills she will need like reading and writing.

We were meeting Abdi at 1:30 so we would have to have a fairly fast lunch; most restaurants here take over an hour before you get your meal so we needed somewhere that would be quicker. So of course we went to our trusty Lukmaan. They finally had samosas!! There were 7 left and we cleared the shelf. I also bought a piece of chocolate cake and a pineapple fanta. Then we went to the tiny stand next to Lukmaan to get 3 more samosas cause there were 4 of us eating. Samosa binge…it continues.

mmmm, so many samosas.

My chocolate cake; it tasted more fruity than chocolate though.

Abdi had his taxi driver friend pick us up to drive us to the coral cave, which is a government preserved historic site. It’s located ~20km away from Stonetown and the roundtrip would cost us 50,000TSH (~$30USD) split between four of us. When we got there, we had a guide come with us because he knows the cave and the area better than Abdi. The tour starts with the descend into the cave through a fairly steep set of stairs that have a rusty handrail which is broken at the end of the staircase. Once we reached the bottom the first thing was saw was a dead centipede. Yupp a real centipede, the size of my palm and probably ¾ of an inch wide; but it was dead and ants were eating it. The guide tells us the history of the cave: it was allegedly used to keep slaves in when slavery was still legal, but even after it was illegal, but no one knew about the whereabouts of the cave, so the owner was able to continue holding slaves there. When the slaves arrived by sea, they would be crammed into the cave at night; ~100 slaves would be forced into the darkness, being lowered down by a rope because the staircase we went down hadn’t been built yet. During the day the slaves would be allowed out to work the fields and cattle. Inside the cave, the terrain is extremely rocky, with some areas very slippery because of the coral and other areas piles of smaller rockers. There is also a small pond of fresh water, which locals still use currently, and also a pond of sea water. There are two paths that lead to the outside in the cave, one that leads to the sea and many slaves drowned when trying to escape and one leading to the outside land. When slavery was legal, the cave was used as a holding center, before the slaves got sent to the slave market for selling. Apparently they were fed well because they wanted to sell them the slaves for a good price.

Stairs leading down to the cave.

Dead centipede.

Inside the cave.

 It's a long way down...

 Path that we're walking through.

 Making our way through the cave.

 Black dot in the center of picture = bat.

 giant spider...................

 Needing a helping hand.

 We've reach the end! Mylene and Rod look like minions with their headlamps haha.

 Climbing up and out of the cave.

 I survived to tell the tale.

 Good thing you can't see that clearly how sweaty we were.

It was quite an experience going through the caves. We were told in advance to wear sneakers and not flip flops, which was greatly appreciated because I barely got through it in sneakers. There were several areas where it was pretty steep and slippery and we had to walk slowly to make sure we didn’t fall. While other areas were very rocky and tight and required us to crouch and climb the rocks. It’s pitch black in the cave so we have to carry lanterns and flashlights and because of the lack of air it’s really stuffy. Along our way towards the exit of the cave, we encountered a couple bats a couple feet above our heads and a giant spider…like size of my entire hand include it’s legs big. Good thing Chels was ahead and saw it first, because if it was me I would most definitely have freaked out and probably fallen. To get out of the cave, we basically have to rock climb maybe two meters, pulling ourselves up by holding onto the sides of the cave. It was more of a workout than I thought it would be. It was pretty cool being in a place with so much history and thinking about what went on in the same cave I was in so many years back and the horrid conditions the slaves must have endured. But Stonetown in itself is full of history and there’s so much to learn and see!

Post cave, we went down to the beach through another set of stairs that were steep and slippery. When we first got there Abdi was saying we could change into our bathing suits in one of the holes between the rocks as he uses a piece of rock to cover something with sand. I asked what he was doing and he said he was covering poop, awesome. I didn’t think much of it since there are so many animals roaming…well everywhere. Chels needs to change so I go with her to hold up a towel for her in one of the holes, but it wasn’t until after she started changing that we realized we were standing close to another pile of poop, and it smelt awful. We started noticing that there were a lot of poo everywhere and we didn’t know if it was animal poo anymore…later we asked Abdi what keeps pooping everywhere, in half discreet places and he said it was people. Oh my…that was a shock. He explained that in this area there were a lot of fishermen and other people who don’t have washrooms wherever they live so they poop all around this beach. It really was everywhere…makes the beach a lot less pleasant to visit.

 Stairs leading down to the beach.

 Beach.

 Water was pretty.

 Tiny lizard.

 Another centipede on the rocks.

Climbing the stairs back up to our taxi.

Tomorrow Mylene and Rod are going to Matemwe beach again, Chels and I haven’t decided if we’re going to go yet, but another visit to that resort would be lovely. Thursday Abdi is going to do a Stonetown tour with us since we have walked around enough but don’t know the history of a lot of the buildings. Rod also wants to buy a fresh fish from a fishermen and cook it, so we’re going to go to the beach or a sandbank, have a bonfire and barbeque for dinner! Saturday will be Safari Blue, which I’m super excited for; day of sun, sand, dolphins, snorkelling and fresh barbequed seafood. Its rounding up to be a pretty busy week with lots of new and fun things to do!