Not the best day in Africa.

Today was not a day that would make me exclaim, "I love Africa!"

Today was thoroughly and utterly gross.

Let's start with my morning visit to the kitchen. There, I found evidence that something else had visited the kitchen since I had washed the dishes the night before, but it had confused my drying rack with the bathroom. Guests can be so awkward sometimes. After swallowing down my stomach's response to the discovery, I washed away the evidence and went about my morning routine of eating fruit while cooking my dinner so I'd have something ready right after work (today: beans).

*knock knock thump scratch thump* Oh, my. My visitor was still in a drawer in the kitchen. A more considerate host would have opened the door – I mean, drawer – but I was, perhaps, less forgiving of my guest's (or guests') behavior than my quick return to routine had indicated. I did not want to have to look them in the eyes or, worse, shake hands to make up. I was quite happy to let them figure their own way out of the house, which they finally did via unseen means. Indeed, my reputation as a hostess can only be further tarnished by the fact that the welcome mat I put out for them afterward was no more than a piece of cardboard torn from a Wheetabix box and covered with a sticky glue that promises not to let any guests go away empty handed (or handed at all). I didn't let one mat suffice. While decking my kitchen with a second mat at another potential entrance, a Jurassic throwback of a roach came hurling out of the covered trashcan just by my face. The roach was so big that I thought it quite possible that it could have left the rat-sized turds and made the rat-sized noises in the kitchen that had been haunting me all morning.

Sigh. I figured that I would at least treat myself to a bowl of the Wheetabix I had opened for the occasion and drown it in some nice, cold milk – something that felt very much like a treat from home. I bet you are expecting to find out that the milk was lumpy yogurt or flavored with a hint of melamine. I would have made such a guess myself with that set-up. But I never got to the milk. Rather, I was greeted with more visitors. Or, considering that at least one whole generation of beetles had been raised in that box of cereal, I guess I was the unwelcome visitor. I apologized for my intrusion, put their whole housing duplex into a large resealable plastic bag, and returned them to their rightful home. The grocery store from which I had purchased their bustling abode apparently had a whole neighborhood of their friends on the shelf whom I am sure they missed since they were probably all related. The neighborhood was promptly bussed to the what I think counts as the inner-city for bugs. Despite the crowded high rises they will encounter there, I am sure they will find consolation in their proximity to innumerable close and distant relatives. As with every other hostessing taboo I had broken within the first hour of waking, I considered causing their eviction – from what was surely, at this point in their history, their ancient homeland – amongst the most venial of the sins I have committed in life.

All of that made the tiny ants that crawl up my legs and arms daily nothing but the most minor of nuisances since I am getting better at sensing them before they bite me. Not that they are any more welcome for it.

That bit of my morning routine not only took longer than usual, but notably fouled my mood. In the flurry of unexpected greetings and farewells, I forgot to fill the water tanks that supply my showers, so I had no water pressure when I tried to wash away the happenings of the morning. Since I needed to take an extra few minutes trying to rinse the shampoo out of my hair and soap off my body (which was not a complete success despite the extra time dedicated to it), I had less time to get ready and ended up running out to the car that would take me to work with unbrushed, undried – i.e., completely untamed – hair. I figured, "Hey, everyone wears scarves here. Why not try that out for size? Then no one will notice that I didn't do my hair." I was in a hurry. The "scarf" I grabbed wasn't a scarf. It was a new kanga. A new kanga is about 10x2 feet of stiff, smooth-as-silk fabric (old kangas are the same size but are not stiff anymore). For anyone who has tried to wrap a wet head in fabric, you know that 10 feet of unyielding satiny cloth is about as useful as that much paper wrapped around your head. I was less than thrilled, and had no time to make up for my mistake.

I tried to get some sympathy from Masoud, my driver, by telling him my bug story on the way to work. He laughed. "This is Africa, Chase. Africa." That is Masoud's answer to everything. And then he said, "You know, you should not try to wear kanga on your head. You should get a scarf. Only 2,000 shiringi." A note to Jess: Thank you for teaching me the value of cultivating an Evil Eye. It overcomes all potential language barriers.

My day at work was less than notable. So that is as much of a note as I will make on it.

What came after did, however, seem like an apt continuation of my morning saga. I am having friends over this week. First, my friend Sarah will come to sleepover so that she can easily take her son, Juma, to his school nearby while his dad uses their Vespa for work. Then, this weekend, a bunch of fellow SBIers (SBI = Social & Behavioral Interventions program at Hopkins) will join us, and finally (though temporarily) my house will be occupied by a more reasonable number of human beings, much improving the human-to-bug-eyed-intruder ratio. That explains why I had to go on a shopping binge today. This means purchasing vast amounts of pumpkins, bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, coffee, coconut cream, flour, and toilet paper. Unlike in China, where one could choose to be protected from the thrilling/intimidating sights and sounds of the open-air marketplace by paying quadruple the price at an air-conditioned, Muzak'd supermarket, Zanzibar does not have enough demand to support an all-out supermarket. Not even one. One must either venture into the cacophony of the market, or pay someone else to do it on one's behalf.

So, off to the open-air market I went. I did, indeed, buy quite a few pumpkins (Masoud was impressed with my haggling skillz, considering I did not have the benefit of Swahili or the pretense of not having enough money to pay higher prices). But, in the midst of my fruit and veggie perusing, I was subject to other sights and smells, too. Do remember waaaaay back when, in China, I was blown away by markets full of live chickens, ducks, fish, eels, crabs, ... and the first picture I took was of a cow's heart sitting out in the open on a chopping block? And how I couldn't believe that vendors would take make a makeshift bed out of such chopping blocks by simply laying a big piece or two of cardboard over them and then taking naps there in the middle of the day? Well, people don't take naps at the market in the afternoon, so no repeats of that story. But they do carry nearly whole cow skeletons (with trace amounts of meat hanging off of them) with their bare hands directly on their backs from the butchers' market, through the crowded streets, to dump said carcass into the public dumpster. Old women trudge the same path with large wheelbarrows full of cow horns and skins (with similar bits of raw beef still clinging to them), and the smells that waft from the meat quarter to the produce stands tell me that those cows walked themselves to the market this morning after a very filling and gas-inducing meal the night before. Masoud had parked his van near those dumpsters – though, in my excitement to shop, I had not noticed their contents or our propinquity before. As we left, having seen the deliveries being made to the dumpster from the meat market, I took a closer look at what the crows were getting so excited about. Blegh! Worse, I had skipped lunch and came to the market hoping with childishly exuberant anxiety to find a corn-on-the-cob vendor before heading home. And there he was, parked just under the shade of the dumpster, sharing far too many of the flies and much of the air with the dumpster for me to handle the sight without making another universally comprehensible look. I think it translates into English roughly as, "There is currently a surge of vomit being emitted into my mouth. If it were not for a profound fear of opening my mouth anywhere in this vicinity, you would have more tangible proof of that fact than just this look. And, no, thank you, I do not want any corn."

Lots of fun

I am losing track of what I have posted about and what I haven't, so perhaps my good readers can help me by requesting specific information in my posts.

As for Swahili of the day...

"Subiri rafiki yangu. Atakuja hapa badai."

This is what my friend Masoud has told me means, "I am waiting for my friend. S/he is coming here (to meet me)."

That one takes a bit of extra effort to learn, but is oh-so-useful when you have to stand around and be subject to at least a dozen offers for help, tours, etcetera... "Asante, lakini mimi subiri rafiki yangu. Atakuja badai." I am not sure if this is really standard Swahili, but people nod and continue on their way, or make friendly instead of economically-motivated conversation after I say it.

As for what I have been up to...

I have been trying to keep writing posts in Word to post when I got online, so I have a few days' worth pasted below. If I am truly successful, there will be pictures to make it a bit more fun and easy to read, too. If not, my apologies for the little trilogy below.

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June 25^th

The tourists have begun pouring in, and the weekends are especially busy as Tanzanian mainlanders take quick vacations to the islands. I live quite a ways out of town, and so I only noticed the change last night (Friday) when I got off work at 2pm and had the afternoon to walk around before an informal 6pm meeting with some other students with whom I'll work on a side project. White people with both official and unofficial guides were everywhere, as were independent wanderers and residents. "Beach boys" – guys offering aid and tours in a very unofficial capacity and in the sketchiest of ways – are perhaps the greatest annoyance on the island. However, one thing I can credit them is this: if you say "no" just once or twice, they leave you alone saying, "Asante, hakuna matata" (Thank you, no worries). It makes their series of annoying offers to take me on spice tours or show me the best food at Forodhani Gardens much less threatening than the same offers made without a foreseeable end.

Every once in a while, I will find myself walking alongside the touristy tourists (I am more like a residential tourist) and am identified with them by locals. Specifically, I heard some Zanzibari guy yelling, "Miss! Miss! Your family!" as I veered one direction (after having walked down an alley alongside some tall blonde familial unit) while the blondes continued in another. Once I got to the shore, I went to take pictures of a boat out in the water when a bunch of boys who had been diving into the water started proposing, "Hey! Hey! Pic-cha! Pic-cha!" and showing off to me their various jumps. I would point the camera, count, "1, 2, 3, go!" and they would spring into the water while I snapped a shot. The boys would then come running to see themselves in the camera's viewer, and run to the stairs from which they were jumping to do it again.

About a dozen pictures and three videos later, we were saying our goodbyes, and, moments after that, I ran into the guy who had called out to me twenty minutes before. "Hey! There you are! I tried to tell you earlier that you lost your family, but now I think that was not your family." This is one of the many reminders I have gotten that, on this island, you see the same people over and over and over again, even when you do not have a routine.

We ended up talking for about half an hour while I waited for the others I was meeting (two girls who have volunteered to work on an extra project with me, and a brother of one of them), and I found out that my new acquaintance, Abdullah, has one of the best jobs in the world: he is a "boat man" – one of the guys who takes people from island to island or out to see the dolphins, or other touristy fun things like that. Whereas, in China, large boats parked in the sea would be reached by rowing small canoe-ish boats out to the large ones, boat men here swim to their boats. It sounds like a less-than-fun endeavor in, say, a storm, but otherwise I can believe it is as consistently invigorating as Abdullah says it is. He claims that he cannot imagine spending more than a day away from the ocean. (Which reminds me that if I were to sum up the things I have found people to be most fond of in Zanzibar, it would be the sea, children, and rice.) He gets to swim every day, interact with new people from around the world, play with sea creatures, and eat the fantastic street food Zanzibar has to offer between jobs. (I have, by the way, delved into some depth with several Zanzibaris about whether the local food – which I enjoy thoroughly but view as a bit... umm... limited – gets boring. This question causes confusion, and, through much discussion, each of my informants ends up clarifying that "all Zanzibar people love rice," which is intended to explain everything regarding the Zanzibari diet and any feelings about it.)

I was whisked away from that conversation to have a thoroughly refreshing and exceedingly filling dinner of "fruit salad" – a $.50 mug filled to the brim with freshly cut fruit (note: cucumber is often sold and served alongside fruits, and was a surprise inclusion in my cup), and topped with a yet-to-be-determined mix of juices and spices that surely comprised at least coconut milk and cinnamon. That may be the only meal I buy in town for a while. It definitely beats Zanzibari pizza in satiety, nutritional, and bang-for-the-buck value. Not to dis' Zanzibari pizza; it is not pizza at all, but more like spanikopita suped up with meat, eggs, and mayo. I only tried it because it seemed like something every good little tourist should do, but I've now had two, so I guess I must have liked it after all.

June 26^th

Today, I felt as though I had slept in (having woken at 7am rather then 3, 4, or 5am), and took my time making and eating a pumpkin porridge breakfast, reading older kid books (I now highly recommend Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), and generally basking in the glory of a Zanzibar winter with the help of a few ceiling fans.

When I finally felt like getting out to do some much-needed fruit shopping, I paid for a taxi to come get me from my house in the country, not yet knowing how to use the dala-dala system (described later). In town, I walked through the market, looking at available fruits and veggies, asking prices, getting a sense of the ranges of quality and honest pricing I could expect. During this time, I received many greetings from vendors ("Sister! Come here and see my spices!" "Hello, friend. Come, come." "What you want? I have, I have.") and from others (my favorite: "Give me yourself," from an old guy who obviously was tired of the whole arranged marriage scene and was ready to get to the heart of the matter at first sight. Before coming to Africa, I was told to respond with, "Thirty cows," to indicate that I was out of the price range of most of the guys who would make on-the-spot offers, but I think all I managed was, "What the f-*cough*!?" His knowing nod indicated that my response needed no conversion into bovine units.)

After my shopping, I headed to the dala-dala corral. A dala-dala is a pick-up truck with low padded benches along the edge of the bed, wooden sides built up like a ranch fence to a low tin roof. These modified trucks line up in front of the biggest market in town (a pretty tiny market by the standards semi-urban China set for me) and callers stand behind them belching out popular locations people may want to go to. In my case, one caller asked, "You want to go to airport, yes?" (I mean, I am a white girl walking around a market in Stone Town with two bags full of produce. Where else would I want to go but the airport?). I said I wanted to go to Mbweni Ruins. He said, "Ok, here here," and kicked three guys out of one of the dala-dalas, prompting me to get inside. I fumbled in with my bulging backpack and auxiliary grocery bag, all filled with tropical fruits for my snacks and breakfasts and my not-so-tropical butterscotch & chocolate flavorings for my dessertesque coffees. (The not-yet-filled inside of a dala-dala pictured below.)

I was not alone for long; a bunch of women soon followed, making me think that perhaps dala-dalas were segregated by gender – but then a couple of guys climbed in (none of the original occupants), abruptly uprooting my segregation hypothesis. When we had been packed like sardines (not like the ones that lie flat, but like the ones that come as rolled-up balls which only stay rolled-up because they have no other option), the caller invited in a few more passengers, including one woman whose hips were at least three times the width of the man whom she ultimately managed to intimidate further into the lap of the woman on his other side. The poor woman who was losing space to the larger one was almost completely lost from view despite the fact that I was sitting directly across from her. All I can figure is that each person on either side of her ended up sitting at least partially on her lap, because the only evidence that she was still in the dala-dala was that the top half of her head poked out from between the arms of the man who had been effortlessly bullied on top of her and of another large woman. Although I was in constant contact with the guys on either side of me, we were definitely not over-lapping, as it were. I am pretty sure, in fact, that I was given more space than anyone else in the truck.

Anyway, I really liked taking the bus in China, so I was excited to try out the dala-dalas here. I was not disappointed. These are even better than normal buses because you can stop anywhere and get picked up anywhere, all for less than a quarter. (For a price comparison, my one-way taxi ride to town had been $5, and the girl I met in town was surprised that I had gotten such a good deal at that price.) The ride feels better than riding a bus in China because the built-up sides to the dala-dala are sturdy but minimal, so you get a great breeze (which was not often a feature of buses in China), and the seats are padded... from three sides =) That said, I did not recognize the point at which I should have exited because I was looking in the wrong direction. Soon, I started to get the feeling that I had passed my stop, so I asked in perfectly enunciated Midwestern American English for all to hear, "Mbweni Ruins??" in hopes that a fluently English voice of any accent would say, "What? Did you miss your stop? Here, let me tell the driver to turn around for you," or something like that. While I did not get the exact reply that I had hoped for, the previously bored, quiet crowd was instantaneously transformed into an animated mob ready to drown me in an onslaught of incomprehensible questions before someone repeated after me with a knowing tone, "Mbweni Ruins" --- but with the thick Swahili accent I have got to learn to use when saying things in English. A few passengers toned down their anxious pitch with an agreeing "ahhhh," but a few simply redirected the onslaught at the guy who hangs off the back of the truck and raps on the sides loudly when the driver should stop to drop off or pick up a passenger. The dala-dala rapper ducked into the passenger area and confirmed with me, "Mbweni Ruins?" and then leaned way out the back of the truck to stop a van in the other direction. A few exchanged words and firm hands signals sent me off the dala-dala, into the van (similarly sardined with passengers), and riding back down the road a few blocks. This time, I was looking out the correct side of the vehicle, and was not surprised when I got motioned off the van. I was surprised that they did not even ask me to pay.

Editors note: After telling some friends here about my first dala-dala experience, they informed me that a rule has been put into place that is strictly enforced of allowing only as many as 20 passengers per dala-dala. That is 20 people in the back of a non-supersized truck. Why would a law set such a high limit? Because dala-dalas used to carry 40+ people regularly, letting the late-comers hang off the back and sides of the truck (and for which they paid the same fare).

I was enjoying myself so much that, after I got dropped off, I did not want to go straight home, so I stopped at a little convenience store on the way to purchase milk. The milk purchase was insignificant, but altered my travel time just enough to line up with another woman walking home. She clearly wanted to practice her English, and thought carefully before each sentence:

Woman: "Hello how are you."

Me: *huge smile spreads across my face since relatively few women talk to me here, especially in English* "I am very well! How are you?"

Woman: "Very good."...

Me: *still smiling* "Good, good."

Woman: "What is your name."

Me: "Chase. What is yours?"

Woman: "Efa."

Me: "Efa?"

Woman: "N. Efa."

Me: "It is nice to meet you, Efa."

Woman: ...

Me:...

Woman: "I am from ^%$@"

Me: "Wuh?"

Woman: "Village. It is a village."

Me: "Oh. Is that where you are going?"

Woman: ...

Me:*still smiling*

Woman: "Where you live."

Me: "Here. Somewhere. I don't really know."

Woman: *smile* "Ok, I go." *Points forward and walks faster*

Something about how the woman stated every one of her questions, and spoke loudly and assuredly, made me like her very much and I hated to see her go. I was realizing at that point, though, that I really didn't know exactly how to get home, so I just kept walking in hopes that if familiar sights became uncommon and unfamiliar sights became the norm, I would know to turn around and try taking a road that did look familiar again. I came to my street soon enough, though, but not before passing the confident woman. Something had gotten on her foot and she had stopped to try to flick it off. As I passed, she said something about water and maybe blood, but I saw no blood and had no water, so I didn't think I could be of any help even if I had understood, and she did not look as though she was asking for help (though clearly she had a history with me of asking questions that didn't sound like questions...). I turned down a street saying, "this is where I live," to her, then reemerged on the main road a minute later when I realized it was not my street after all. I had turned one block too soon, but I was not worried since I could see my house from between the trees.

When I got home, these were some of the fruits that I unpacked:

The eggplant is obvious. The yellow things are mangoes with very mean, spiky pits that require one to pull rather than cut apart the mango for safe and spike-free eating. The round green fruit is a plain old mango, and the spiky green fruit behind it may be a mini jackfruit or a close relative. Whatever it is, it is soft and sweet and oh-so-delicious!

June 28^th

Yesterday was my first beach day, taken with Sarah (a fellow Hopkins student) and her family. A nearby hotel has an informal but increasingly enforced policy: foreign residents may use their beach space and pool alongside hotel guests as long as said residents buy a drink. When Coke Light was determined to be a non-option, I opted for passion fruit juice, gulped it down, and spent the rest of my time there either in the water or playing with my footprints in the sand (I wanted to see if there were indicators of whether a person had walked backward or forward in the sand. You never know when that kind of knowledge can be suddenly useful.). Apparently, my sunblock (SPF 30) was not quite strong enough, because Masoud (the guy who drives me all over Stone Town and will eventually take me on some tours of local hotspots for cool flora and fauna) said that I have become brown over the weekend. Definitely not red. I don't even see the brown except for on my feet, where there is a brilliant white "Y" on each foot hiding underneath its respective sandal strap.

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No, it's not an old picture of Chevy. This is the smaller of my guard dogs. Cute little sucker, and scary as hell when he spits out menacing growls at someone even approaching my drive. One time, he saw me walking around in the middle of the night and came racing to me to play, and ran straight into the iron screened door that separates me from the great outdoors. Not bred for smarts, I guess. But he is a pleaser. It took about two minutes to train him to sit in response to just a voice command.

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The corn here is not sweet corn, but something more like popcorn. In fact, when you cook it on the grill, it can even pop, as seen above. Here, instead of lathering corn-on-the-cob in butter, you rub it down with seasoned salt and lime. Unbelievably good.