Zanzibar

Well, here I am; hot and sweaty. Very sweaty. 

It seems that I have hit the start of the rainy season, and the air is a billion percent humid (am I perhaps exaggerating somewhat? well my washing is struggling to dry, and I have a distinctly moist look about me). Nevertheless, this is a break and I feel very good for the rest.

So it's good bye clinic toilets, where I have to squat over a hole, flapping my hands and hopping about avoiding mosquitoes whilst rummaging through my bag for toilet paper.

And it's hello holiday toilets where I can sit whilst flapping my hands, then struggle with the power shower they offer instead of loo roll. Now call me old fashioned, but I think I prefer the Asian big urn of water with a plastic bowl floating in it that you pour on your hands and wash with. OK, so there is a bit of splashing about but not the massive jet of cold water which, in my hands, is completely uncontrollable and merely results in water everywhere. [Perhaps I mentioned that nothing dries in this humidity? yes, I thought so]

But look, the sand here is white, the sea is blue, and I went for my first ever snorkel yesterday where I saw all kinds of fish and spiky sea-urchins. It was wonderful.

We are staying in a place on the beach, whilst just behind is the village. Interestingly enough it is almost exactly the same as the villages we have been working in. That is; very young children playing at the road sides, school children milling about, very small shops with just a few items for sale, abandoned houses, houses that are almost shacks and so on. The only difference is that here it is white sand, and there it was orange dust, that gets everywhere.

I love the ingenuity of the place. Before, I saw a tiny child sitting in a 5 litre plastic oil container that had been cut lengthways. A piece of old cloth had been tied around the handle so that they could be dragged along. It looked like they loved it! Here I have seen a child with a long stick pushing a flat piece of wood along the ground, or another running along with an old bicycle tyre. The kids all say hello (jambo, here) and seem very happy. 

The people are also very nice. It is now low season for tourists, so perhaps we get more attention, but the more Swahili I use the more they seem to want to teach me. The man in the post office (and please, this is a post office in name only, just a concrete room, with some washing items, some vegetables & fruit, perhaps biscuits and a fridge with home-made yoghurt in it - yum!) spent a good while this morning teaching me how to say how many yoghurts I wanted and if I wanted them cold. 

Also, a young Massai lad on the beach - selling beads -was teaching me how to say I come from England (everyone seems to want to know where you come from) before telling me about his plans for the future. Like all Massai, he is saving to buy a big herd of cows, and he told me that they only cost a few thousand TZ shillings. I think I must have got my translation wrong there, that's under a fiver...