We just got back from Pemba Island! Zanzibar is technically an archipelago consisting of two islands - Unguja (also called Zanzibar) and Pemba Island to the north. We just came back to Stone Town after a 10-day excursion to Pemba. While there, we did a second homestay (only 7 days this time) and had several class sessions in the field (this was the field studies component of the program) covering all kinds of topics from salt farming to house building to fruit bats. We were in the city of Wete for two days, and then in Chake-Chake (the main city on Pemba) for seven days, living with a different homestay family. I lived with a woman named Mariam and her husband, Hassan. They don't have any children, but the neighborhood they live in has about 20 children between the four or five families in the area (called Sompia - downhill in Swahili). There's much less outside influence in Pemba, and it has retained its Omani roots. All the names are much harder to pronouce - names like Zawahir and Nashfat (girls), and Fahmi and Hafadhali (boys). And the children are beautiful - round faces and big wide eyes. But there's only 60 tourists per year in Pemba, and we were 12 of them, so we got lots of shocked stares. Our first two nights, when we were in Wete, we went to the siku kuu festival in town, and you would've thought there was a herd of giraffes walking through the crowd, the reaction would've been similar. It was like something out of a movie - the girls walks through the crowd and everyone stops what they're doing and turns and stares as she walks by. Now multiply that by 12 students and add an entire village of people staring. A little awkward, to say the least. It was a very interesting experience. That shock-factor followed us throughout the entire stay on Pemba - whenever we drove through a town or village, we would be followed by screams of "WAZUNGU WAZUNGU!" (white people, white people!) In the public schools here, the children are taught basic English, including words and phrases like "Hello", "How are you", "I am fine", and "Good morning!" so that's all we heard from the children the entire time. In my neighborhood, the kids played the game "How Close Can You Get to the Mzungu Without Touching It", which involved sneaking closer and closer to me and then running away screaming as soon as I put my hand out or said something to them. I couldn't shake the astonishment from the children in my neighborhood until the last day or two. The hardest part of living in Pemba was adjusting to the living conditions there, which are much more basic than those in Stone Town. There's hardly any electricity (usually only from sunset to about 2 or 3 in the morning) and the people are much poorer than those on Zanzibar (Unguja). But once I got used to the changes, I felt much more comfortable there. Also, since hardly anyone spoke English, I was able to improve my Swahili skills considerably, and by the end of the homestay week, I was able to communicate with and even joke with the family and neighbors that came to visit all the time! While in Pemba, we traveled around every day and learned about charcoal production, different styles of house building, the endangered and endemic Pemba Flying Fox (a type of fruit bat), rubber production at a rubber tree plantation, and ecotourism on Pemba. We also got to visit Misali Island, which is a small island off the west coast of Pemba surrounded by coral reefs - its beautiful! We got to go snorkeling, and I've never wished for my underwater camera to work more (it died about two weeks ago - apparently Canon's underwater camera isn't very waterproof) because the underwater scenery was breathtaking. Oh and we were in Wete for my 20th birthday! It was the first night of our homestays, so we had a welcoming party, and at the end, Helen (our academic coordinator) brought out two cakes for everyone. Apparently, in Zanzibar, a tradition for birthdays is to feed the birthday boy/girl cake (like at American weddings), so I was fed cake by Helen, and then I fed cake to a little boy who wandered up to me and opened his mouth (there are pictures of both events on someone's camera, and when I find them online, I'll post them here). And that was after seeing the Pemba Flying Fox fruit bats that day. You could say I had a pretty fantastic birthday, not like one I've ever had or will ever have agian, which made it really special. And (of course) I'm the youngest one on the program, so we're all either 20 or 21 now.
Tomorrow really early in the morning, we're going to Jozani Forest! Technically, its called Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park, and there's monkeys! SAM, I get to see MONKEYS!! I'll take pictures for you. I'm really excited because this is where I want to do my ISP (Independent Study Project - a huge part of the SIT program) and my Portfolio (a sort of mini-ISP), which is next week. I want to look at the ecotourism potential of the forest/bay area and use GPS and GIS to make a map of the nature trail in the forest, maybe do some vegetation identification, all for the development of ecotourism in the forest. (Emily - I'm basing my study off of Ali Garel and Lindsey Sarquilla's study on Misali last semester)
Time to go, I'll put pictures up soon!
Big shout out to Che RUSSEL GONG
