Vacation!

This is a big post, so I suggest getting comfy or reading it in the sections I’ve written about…

The sections are the following:
1. My Mental Turnaround
2. Vacation Bliss in Dar
3. Zanzibarian Wonder
4. My Christmas Holiday in Zanzibar
5. Returning to Dar and My New Adventure Mode

1. My Mental Turnaround

I’ve undergone quite the mental turnaround since my last blog post, which by this point was written more than a month ago! Before I get into the details about my transformation, I just want to say, first of all, thank you for having the patience to believe in me and wait out that difficult time with me before I could get back on my feet again. I also want to especially thank those of you who personally reached out to me during my time of need. Without your words of wisdom and convincing arguments to persevere, I could very well be stuck at home in the middle of a very cold and snowy New England winter right now rather than being baked at 95 degrees Fahrenheit every day under the hot Tanzanian sun! (Believe me, that’s not a complaint…haha).

2. Vacation Bliss in Dar

Speaking of which, that’s precisely what I’ve been doing throughout the past month. I’ve officially been on vacation since December 1. Before I left school I marked my students’ 200+ English exams over the course of three grueling (but very productive) days as fast as my hands could mark the pages so I could get out of Morogoro as fast as possibly. Although a piece of my heart undoubtedly belongs to Morogoro, I was more than ready for a change of situation and scenery by the time I’d finished marking the exams, as evident from my last blog post.

I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy myself in a plethora of ways since I’ve taken leave from Morogoro, which has done well to revive my spirits. I’ve seen oodles of my old Tanzanian friends and met new ones along the way. I’ve had the opportunity to sit and relax in the comfort of my friend’s mom’s apartment where I’ve settled in for the time being in Dar es Salaam. I’ve been spoiled by home cooked meals, ready access to television and up-to-the-minute news broadcasts, warm showers, and air conditioning. Overall, life has been very, VERY good. It’s nice to be able to take advantage of some of these luxuries after having had to forego their pleasures and deal with all the trials of living in Morogoro (what with the lack of running water in my house, above all) for the last couple of months.

In addition to settling into the apartment, I’ve also been able to spend ample time intensifying my familiarization with Dar. I’ve become more acquainted with some of the popular ex-pat places during the last month, where I’ve found solace in some of the charms of Western living, like indulging myself with amazing gelatos, pizzas, and other Western delights. I’ve also grasped a better mastery of where the best local Tanzanian hangouts are, which boast being home to the best combinations of beans, rice (especially pilau and biriani rice), vegetables, traditional African spices, and tasty meat the world has ever seen. The simplicity in some of the most popular dishes you can find there (like kachumbali salad, which is just a bunch of finely minced cold vegetables with lime juice and salt, or chipsi mayai, which is essentially a French fry omelet) is actually what keeps my taste buds dancing with joy every time I pick up my fork…or scoop some yummy goodness into my hands and into my mouth (you eat with your hands a lot here). It suffices itself to say that I’ve been able to enjoy myself in Dar, at least in terms of the food. The company of my friends and the serenity of the Tanzanian sunsets and beachfront have also done wonders to keep my spirit rising higher and higher to where I’m now not just back to feeling content, but I’m genuinely happy and ecstatic about living here.

3. Zanzibarian Wonder

As a bit of anecdotal evidence of my happiness, let me tell you about my recent trip to the beautiful little island of Zanzibar. Although Zenji (what Zanzibar is referred as in local Tanzanian slang) is just a two hour boat ride away from the mainland of Dar es Salaam, but once you arrive you could easily mistake it for being a country a million miles away. There’s something about Zanzibar, something really special, and I felt it the moment I arrived there. The whole energy of the place is absolutely intoxicating…and what I mean by that is that if you’re not happy when you’re on your way there, you’ll feel yourself engulfed in a huge burst of bliss once you step foot on land in Stone Town (the “city” in Zenji). As soon as I arrived and began walking from the waterfront to the place where myself and the other WorldTeach volunteers were staying for our mid-service conference in Stone Town (I still can’t believe more than half of my time is up here!), I felt like I was traveling back in time to a bejeweled treasure island where all the secrets of happiness lie and where only the lucky few ever get the chance to go. As we walked through a maze of alleyways and unnamed side streets to our destination, I felt like I’d suddenly been transported into the animated set of Aladdin when Princess Jasmine wanders the streets of the town and the market for the first time, disguised as a local. Although I undoubtedly couldn’t pass off looking like a local (my Whiteness never allows me to pass like that here, or anywhere in Africa, really), I received a surprising overabundance of genuinely cheerful greetings from local Zanzibarians that made me feel like I was home. Even though some of these Zanzibarians may have been trying to find a way to my heart order to charm me into buying something from one of their many small tourist shops hidden in the alleyways, I was beautifully duked into feeling extremely welcomed. The sense of welcoming I felt in Zanzibar was greater than any magnitude at which I’ve felt welcomed before in any other place I’ve been to in the world. There’s a superb calmness of energy and relaxed sense of peace that floods the air of Zanzibar that makes you feel anything but welcomed. In fact, if this energy could amass itself as a body of water, then Zanzibar might as well consider itself flooded to the deepest depths of the ocean just like in the myth of the lost Atlantis. This extreme feeling of welcoming came as a wonderful surprise, after I’ve struggled for months to feel at home in Morogoro where I’m constantly faced with hostile greetings of “Mzungu” (White European foreigner). I didn’t even realize I needed to feel this welcome until I felt it. For months I’ve put in so much effort into feeling like I belong in my community in Morogoro, and yet it only took me arriving for this very first time in Zanzibar to feel more like a part of the community there than I ever have in Morogoro over these last months.

Perhaps my bliss in Zanzibar could be attributed to the time of year at which I visited – it having been Christmas time and all – and the fact that many White tourists from all over the world flock here around this time to celebrate the holidays. Surely if so many tourists arrive then the community must adapt by making them feel welcome enough to stay and add to the economy of the island. But you have to ask yourself, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” in this case. For, if Zanzibar weren’t a welcoming destination for tourists to come in the first place, then why would they travel all this way to come? It does seem bizarre that so many Christian tourists come to Zanzibar on vacation to celebrate the Christian Christmas holiday when over ninety percent of the island’s permanent residents at Muslim and seriously practice the Islamic faith. But this very trend just proves how much of a non-snow-globelike phenomenon the welcoming and accepting nature of Zanzibar really is for any type of people, no matter their race, religion, nationality, or reason for visiting etc. If I haven’t convinced you just how hospitable Zanzibar is, then perhaps the words I heard from an actual Zanzibarian will do well to convince you. He said that whenever he travels anywhere in the world, he never says he’s African, he always specifies that he’s Zanzibarian. He rationalizes that the pride he feels for being a Zanzibarian compels him to credit his origin as specifically as he does. He says for sure that Zanzibar is like other countries in Africa in many ways, and even indeed that it is a part of Africa, but he remains convinced that there is something special about Zanzibar and its unique acceptance of difference that exempts it from being lumped into the abstract description of just “Africa.” Even the government, alone, speaks to this fact. For the first time in all of Africa (if I remember correctly, at least…it may just be the first time in Tanzania, which is still a big deal on its own), Zanzibar boasts having a President from one political party and a Vice President (the runner up in the national election, in fact) from the opposition party. Although this is a recent change that just came about in this year’s election, Zanzibar’s willingness to even attempt a sharing of power among two different political parties is something that many other African nations cannot even begin to consider (even including the Tanzanian mainland, which has fervently been run by the CCM party since it became independent, which, as it seems at this time, is in no way willing to share power with other opposition parties). If you’re coming from America, imagine the implications if we had a Democratic President and a Republican Vice President, or vice versa! This change is that monumental, and it only happened in Zanzibar. Hence, who wouldn’t be proud to say, “I’m Zanzibarian” instead of “I’m African” when asked where he or she was from? I mean I just visited Zanzibar for only four days and already I can’t stop gloating about how wonderful it is. I mean of course it has its problems, but just from my one visit to Zanzibar, on the surface it seems like there’s something pretty special about Zanzibar that’s worth going back for, perhaps for longer, another time. Believe me, I’m already thinking about how I can get back there for longer…

4. My Christmas Holiday in Zanzibar

On a slightly less abstract and advocate-y level, let me tell you about my Christmas holiday and what I actually did in Zanzibar while I was there. On Christmas Eve the other WorldTeach volunteers and I, along with our Field Director, went to a very nice resort where we gorged ourselves on several courses of some of the most tantalizing buffet food I’ve ever had in my life. I’m not kidding. It was that good. We feasted on different kinds of seafood curries, soups, and other delicious bites. We ate octopus, lobster, prawns, several kinds of fish, each prepared both separately and together while infused with rushes of Zanzibarian spices. Each unique melodic dish came together on our plates, composing flavorful orchestral symphonies that graced our palates. In addition to eating our body weights in all the seafood (I mean we were surrounded by the ocean...how could you pass up such an opportunity?!), we devoured completely nonsensical (and of course unhealthy) portions of delectable goodies ranging from fresh raspberries and other tropical fruits drenched in chocolate fondue; chocolate cakes exploding with layers of icing, caramels, and cream fillings; and creme brulees, biscotti’s, and other delicious things I don’t even know how to describe. God it was wonderful. I haven’t eaten that much or enjoyed eating that much in a really long time. I topped my meal off with a crisp peppermint tea and then did my best to dance to the Macarena the live band was playing (in its own African style) with the other volunteers without toppling over from all the food I’d ingested. Even if I gain five pounds just from that one meal, I really don’t care (and don’t even think about commenting about the likelihood of that, haha)…it was TOTALLY worth it.

Following dinner we retired home early and got to be at a sensible hour so that we would all be refreshed on Christmas morning. On Christmas morning we all woke up at 8:00am sharp, made a big Christmas breakfast of homemade French toast, vegetable omelets, mixed fruit salad, and Christmas cookies and brownies that some of the volunteers had made at their teaching site and that we’d decorated the night before. After we cleaned up from our Christmas morning celebration, we all suited up in our bathing suits and beach gear and begun our daylong sailboat cruise along the southern coast of Zanzibar. Talk about a great Christmas holiday. Even though it was hotter than all of us could stand and the sun was shining radiantly above bright blue clear skies, staining our bodies to darker shades of white and brown and reflecting its glorious rays off the glistening ocean water below us…and therefore it didn’t feel AT ALL like my traditional Christmases have with my family in the icy cold Vermont winters, it still felt just as much like Christmas as Christmas should, at least when it wasn’t possible for me to experience my brain’s familiar version of Christmas at home. And honestly, what better gift can you get than sailing along an island paradise with your friends in amazing weather with no other obligation than to enjoy yourself on Christmas and taking a dip in the ocean whenever you want...except of course the gift of being with your family?! We did just that – enjoy ourselves and take many dips in the ocean. We even anchored near an island and trekked our way through the water onto it…without stepping on sea urchins, jelly fish, or scary pools of tiny fish which apparently will gladly stab you with stingers on the tops of their heads if you get to close to them. Haha. Our journey was well worth it because when we got on the island we discovered a small hotel resort too nice for words that lays claim to a huge fresh water pool, where we all pretended to be guests (no one noticed we weren’t, luckily) and swam around for a while. It was inexplicably refreshing and amazing. We waded back to the boat thereafter and continued the latter part of our day sailing without the motor on all the way back to the shore of Stone Town. We arrived back at the shore around dinner time, freshened up and went to dinner at a nice place in celebration not just of Christmas, but of our fellow volunteer’s twenty fifth birthday. We went out for a couple drinks after, but because the sun had sucked out most of our energy throughout the day, we retired early to bed. Overally it was an incredibly memorable, absolutely unforgettable, exceptionally wonderful and fantastic Christmas. As if I weren’t happy enough to be in Zenji in the first place, my Christmas holiday added oodles more joy to my overall experience there.

The day following Christmas we spent actually being productive WorldTeach-wise. We reflected on our teaching experiences and what we’d learned since we arrived six months ago. It was really rewarding to be able to talk so thoroughly and productively about everything we’d been through in the last half of a year and to discuss what shape we want the program to take next year for the future volunteers. It’s a nice perk, being the first batch of volunteers of a program like this, to be able to be so responsible for how the program will look in the future. Although being the guinea pigs has no doubt been hard and downright grueling at certain points (reference my previous blog post to read up on that), it ends up being more rewarding in the end. You get to make many well-informed and educated influential suggestions and decisions for the program that the home office wasn’t able to do as successfully before you started the program as one of its first volunteers. It’s a cool feeling to know that my experience here will be as meaningful to others’ future experiences as it’s been meaningful to me while I’ve been here. I like feeling like I’ve made a positive impact not only on people’s lives here, but on people whose lives will eventually end up here.

I spent one leisurely day on my own in Stone Town before I left. I met up with friends and went to my favorite café called “Stone Town Café” (very original, I know) then to a delectable Indian restaurant for lunch. I got my ticket and shipped out and now I’m back in Dar.

5. Returning to Dar and My New Adventure Mode

Frankly, it feels odd to be back in Dar all of a sudden. When I was in Zanzibar I was overwhelmed about the possibility of exploring everything there for the first time. I really did feel like Jasmine from Aladdin as I was opening my eyes up to an unbeforeseen magical place. My eyes were excited to explore the new wonders of a new place after having been between Morogoro and Dar (now both of which are familiar to me) over the past six months. Now that I’m back in Dar, I find myself back in comfortable familiarity. My brain has imprinted the layout of Dar as much as it’s been able to after each time I’ve visited here, which is probably almost a dozen times by this point. Since I’ve been to Dar so much, it almost feels like there aren’t too many new unexamined rocks that I could uncover now that I’m here again, but I know that’s not true. I just have to challenge myself to go to new places in Dar, and there are many of those. Although I’m finding that I feel a bit restless because I still want to be in my naïve Zanzibarian adventure seeking mode, it does feel good to be somewhere like Dar. I think I will choose to go on some new adventures, too.

If there’s one thing I’ve realized it’s that life always has the potential to be an adventure, you just have to be prepared to embark on the area that you’re in in an adventure mode, where you’re game to explore, mull around and discover new things about your environment and yourself. It takes a great amount of willingness to get into this porous adventure mode because being an explorer makes you quite vulnerable to discovering things about yourself, others, and where you are that you might not be ready, willing, or eager to know. But I say to hell with it. You shouldn’t be fearful to discover the new, you should just go for it and see what happens. People who have discovered it before you will hopefully be there to catch you in open arms should you slip up or need assistance. That’s what people are for…to help each other get through life. Now that I know I have a bunch of people behind me rooting for me to do great things and take advantage of life and live up to my potential (even if they haven’t been where I hope to go), I’m no longer fearful to explore. I won’t even need a map. No. I don’t even want a map. I want to be brave enough to be a heroic explorer, if for no other sake than just to explore and know for the sake of knowing new things I once didn’t know. That was a lot about knowing. Anyway, I’m excited, I’m ready, and I’m going to start exploring right now…and I’m going to try to keep on my enthusiastic adventure goggles on that I regained in Zanzibar for as long as I can while I’m still in Tanzania for the next six months. Maybe you might consider doing the same, too. If you can’t think of any other way to explore the world you’ve lived in for a while, just try to think of it in terms of smells, for example, just for one day, and be particularly attune to what you find. Then get back to me if you so choose, because I’m undoubtedly curious to know what you know. Whether or not you choose to share what you know, you can count on me telling you what I come to know as I continue my crazy teaching journey in Tanzania and share it with you through my blog posts. And with that said, I guess I better get cracking on that knowing, so I have something to tell you…haha.