One of
my avid readers suggested I complement my introspective posts with a quick
update in conversational Grace tone about all the spectacular things I have
gotten to do in Zanzibar thus far. I thought that idea seemed reasonable
enough, so here it goes! (sidenote: if you are friends with me on facebook,
chances are you have already seen most of these pictures, but now you can read
the descriptions that go with them!)
The following is a rooftop view from the guest house the entire group stayed the first four or five nights after arriving in Zanzibar, it is called Garden Lodge. Through out or trip, we will be spending nights at Garden Lodge here and there periodically. There are many times we are scheduled to travel out of Stonetown for a week or so, return for a night or two, then depart again! For each night we stayed there we got to enjoy a lovely rooftop breakfast around 7 am in the morning, so these photos were taken about an hour after the sun rose. Having the entire group together for the first week and a half was a great bonding experience. Prior to arriving, I thought we would go straight into our homestays. Now, I have lived in my homestay for a week and I can retrospectively say how thankful I am that we all got to go experience the initial culture shock together, orient ourselves to our new African lifestyle as a group and get to feel each other out a bit before our academics became super involved.
These pictures are from a town on the East Coast called Paje, and its surrounding villages. To bring our orientation week to an end we headed to Paje. The goal of this was to expand our understanding of Zanzibar as a whole and to explore the various effects of tourism and visit a couple conservation areas. Zala Park, also known as Snake Park, is a zoo, for strong lack of a better word, that was started by an environmental education teacher to educate school children and townsfolk about their natural environment. Although it is an area dedicated to both plants and animals, I found the animals much more fascinating. Most of the enclosures he’d built housed animals that were at risk of becoming endangered, mostly due to superstition and folklore deeming them negative. The animal that stuck out to me most were land crabs, for 2 reasons. The first being how much of a nuisance people consider them to be in the Keys. I don’t know if they are considered to be over populated there, but there certainly is not a deficit. The 2nd is the reason behind their endangerment. The townspeople believe that if you find one in your house you will soon become divorced, and if you are the spouse that finds it, it represents your being the one to cause the marriage ending chaos.
The day we left Paje, we woke up at 4:45 to go to a town called Kizimkazi, specifically to Menai Bay to go to a "live" fish auction (i say live like that because all the fish were dead, clearly) and dolphin watching. Boy was dolphin watching something else. I was extremely curious about how it would actually go down, after they described what we'd be doing; which was looking for the pods then jumping out of the boats when we got close to them. Having previous experience with dolphin behavior I did not think this plan would be as good as it sounded and sure enough it was not. Our teachers clearly knew this and were in part, trying to demonstrate to us the way the tourism industry in the area functions. Above are pictures of the fish auction!
On our drive home we stopped by the Zanzibar Butterfly Center. It was basically like an aviary for butterflies and was purposed to help conserve butterflies in the surrounding area. With over 200 new butterflies hatching each week, I deemed them to be doing a phenomenal job at that! While the netted area was not that big, it contained an astounding amount of beauty. I was lucky enough to have a monarch land on my hand, as you can see below!
After Paje, we stayed in Garden Lodge for two additional nights preparing to be born into our new Zanzibari families!!! (aka moving into a homestay) Now we all have a Swahili birthday of February 7th, those of you who know me know I have loving reasons to celebrate so I was over joyed about this! My family is formed by Mama Talha, her husband Issa, and my two little brothers named Nasso and Muhammad, and now me :] The house part of our home is located on the third floor of our building. The first floor houses the shop that my Dads half of the family owns, they sell jewelry and fancy furniture, such as gold plated chests. My Dad (with help, I believe) makes the products while his sisters are the face of the shop. The second floor is a workshop where said things are made! The home is beautiful, but does not resemble an American home whatsoever. It is not fully enclosed, there is a big open sitting room that funnels into the kitchen, but other than that every room is concealed with big, beautiful, double wooden doors. There also is not a table, we eat every meal on the floor using our hands! This took some getting used to at first, especially when consuming foods that were soupy, but now it feels really odd to use utensils. (We use spoons to eat ice cream.) I have my own room which is super nice and sometimes makes me feel like an island princess. (hehe) You can see it pictured below! I do not have any photos with any of my family members yet, but once I do I will definitely upload them! They are a beautiful family. 
Living in a homestay has been a complete 180 of what I imagined, but it has been very rewarding and a remarkable experience that I wouldn't trade for the world, nonetheless. I must admit, the first night and following day, were very hard for me and shifted my mindset to a somewhat odd and unfamiliar state. The following were the influencing factors: To begin with, the entire time we have been here there has been a list posted on the main bulletin board in the SIT Office with each students name, their Zanzibar phone number, the address of their homestay, and the name of their host mom. In Swahili, the word Bi is similar to madam and can denote age, as well as status in some cases. 5/6 of us had moms whose names began with Bi, mine did not. This fact, in combination with hearing the stories of my cousin Jordan's SIT homestay mom, and all the other students speculating about what my Mom would be like led me to believe that my mom would be some young single woman who was ready to take the town with me! We were also oriented to our homestay life would with the knowledge that some Moms would speak perfect English while some Moms would not speak any. I was second to last to be picked up from our headquarters but every woman that had come in to claim a child before I left had spoken perfect, or very close to perfect English. My mom barely speaks any English. So after my first day completely misaligning with my expectations, I was definitely offset a bit.
I have now lived here for a week and I can not imagine leaving! Last night, my Mom told me I was her best friend. She has proven to me that even though language can, at times, be a barrier to connection, there are a multitude of ways to build bonds and form relationships with people. Everyday I come home and tell her about my day using as much Swahili as I can muster, filling the gaps with actions and English when necessary; pictures from the day, old pictures of friends from home with stories behind them, and my favorite American music have also been go-to's for helping us get to know each other. We also spend a considerable amount of time teaching each other our respective languages, and she uses the index cards I made to study Swahili, to study English. My brothers are 2 and 6, so as long as I'm willing to play with them all night long, they don't really mind that I can't fully understand what they're saying. Right now, Muhammad, the youngest one is very sick with the flu, but Mama Talha lets me help take care of him and there is no better feeling than making him smile when all he's been doing for the past hour is crying. I genuinely look forward to coming home after class and spending time with them each day, and although my homestay is not what I expected nor is it always the easiest, it has been a priceless experience thus far. 
Above are all the biggest updates, but each day here is truly an adventure and I learn hand-fulls of new things by the hour. I can not reiterate enough how grateful I am for the opportunity to be on this once in a lifetime trip. Below are some underwater pictures from an unprotected reef off the coast of Stonetown called Bawe. Although having class everyday of the week can be quite strenuous, doing things like this makes it totally worth it! I hope you enjoyed my update, but get ready for another thought provoking post, cuz' I've got one a brewin'! 
~Until Next Time, My Friends~
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