Last Entry: Re-Entry

heading off to the Zanzibar airport

I’d intended to finish up the blog right after we got back to the US, but it’s not until now—on a snowy day five months later—that I’m finally getting around to it. 

We flew from Zanzibar on July 8, stopped for 4 days at our stopover in Amsterdam (where we visited the Anne Frank house and watched the final World Cup match on TV with other families at a neighborhood pub), and we arrived home to Tacoma on July 13.  On July 19, Brady and I left the boys with Brady's parents to go to a conference on academic writing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, stopping for a week in France, and getting home for good on August 2.  Before school started, we enjoyed the tail end of a gorgeous Pacific Northwest summer--arising to cool, sunny mornings; picking blueberries in our favorite places; running with friends in the woods of Point Defiance Park.  Having seen much more of the world now, we know (not that there was any real doubt) that our home is among the loveliest places in the world. 

home sweet home

People have asked us what it’s like to be back home.  And that’s a tough question to answer.  When we were packing up to leave Zanzibar, I wrote twelve "top priority" blog entries in quick succession about things I wanted to capture before they faded from our consciousness.  In contrast, being at home feels like nothing to write home about.

Plus, we’ve been so busy. And I think that’s really the biggest day-to-day difference that we've all noticed.  In Zanzibar, we were teaching and going to school and exercising and doing things with friends, just like we do at home, but the predominant feeling we had was of having time (even perhaps too much time).  Back home, we’re busy; there’s more of everything—more scheduled activities, more homework, more house to clean and maintain, more choices to make at the grocery store, more new technology to learn to use.  And all of these things—wonderful though they are—take time. 

Now on the brink of the new year, we’re taking stock.

family dressed in Netherlands orange

In Zanzibar, we saw how much we have in the US and how little we really need. In Amsterdam, we saw how efficiently people can use bicycles as everyday transportation.  In France, Brady and I shared evening meals with people who took the time at the end of a busy day to enjoy a slow meal together.  In Tel Aviv, Brady and I saw hundreds of people outdoors, enjoying public outdoor exercise facilities and walking paths.

at a cafe in Normandy

In 2011, we want to take some of the best from what we’ve seen and exper-
ienced over the past year.  Thanks for reading our blog and supporting us while we were gone, especially during the holidays.  We hope to see you in the coming year!

Top Priority: Mitumba

When sorting through the various posses-
sions it is so easy to accumulate in America, I often have a hard time deciding what to do with two categories of things: the things that I just don’t like (old event t-shirts, clothes that aren’t very worn but are out of date or just never feel right).  Equally hard are the things that are pretty well worn out, but that still might have some life left in them (would anyone really want them or are they better off consigned to the trash?).  Generally, I give up, drop everything  off at the Goodwill or another charitable organization, feel simultaneously guilty and self-congratulatory for a bit, and then move on with my life, acquiring more things I don’t really need and will eventually be in a quandary about.

This year, I’ve seen what happens on the other side of that quandary.  Many, many things that no one wants in the US eventually make their way to Zanzibar and are sold as “mitumba.”  After almost a year, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing Zanzibari people walking around with shirts from various events that it’s very unlikely they attended and announcing identities they don’t appear to have (say, a middle-aged man wearing a “Jorgensen family reunion 2008—Duluth, MN” shirt, or an elderly man in a “Class of 2006 Roosevelt High Go Tigers!” shirt, or a teenage boy wearing a pink shirt that says “Hockey Mom”).  Women don’t tend to wear the t-shirts, but at a wedding I recently attended, I saw many women wearing slinky, sparkly used prom dresses, under which they wore coordinating long-sleeved t-shirts for modesty’s sake.

These various unwanted  American things are bundled up and shipped over to Africa, sold in lots at auctions to middlemen, and then transformed again to wanted things when purchased again by customers.  The resale price is relatively expensive for some things—I guess not surprisingly, given the distance these things have traveled and the number of hands they’ve passed through.   A used t-shirt in bad condition might be around 500 Tsh (around $.35), while a nicer t-shirt might run up to 2000 Tsh.  Shoes are really pricey and often cost more than new local shoes.

We shop from time to time at thrift stores in America, but I never thought we’d be buying American castoffs in Africa.  Certainly, when I was looking last fall for something that would protect my feet from sea urchins at the beach, I rejected outright a pair of well-used Tevas at the price of 15,000 Tsh (around $12) and instead spent 8,000 on a pair of new Tanzanian “Tuvas” which subsequently gave me blisters.  But, this spring when Oscar had outgrown all the shoes we’d brought with us from America and had worn two new pairs of Tanzanian shoes to the threads in a matter of weeks, we set out for the used market.  We hit the jackpot with a pair of used Keens that are like ones we had bought a few sizes ago in America.  The price?  Well, Brady bartered: a gently used pair of kids’ Addidas indoor soccer shoes, a practically demolished pair of sandals, an uncomfortable pair of dress shoes, plus 10,000 tsh.  A bargain!  Two months later, and those are the shoes Oscar’s wearing home.  

Top Priority: Flowers

One pleasure of this year has been seeing the very different flower species of Zanzibar, as well as places in the mainland and in South Africa.  Here are a couple of pictures, as well as a link to a gallery of more.

Top Priority: Balungi and avocado salad

It’s balungi season in Zanzibar, and we’ve been eating our fill of balungi and avocado salad.  Balungi are huge pink grapefruits with irregularly shaped segments, and they are among the many fruits here in Zanzibar that we will miss.  Balungi taste perfect paired with the nutty creaminess of avocados, accented by sliced red onion, salt, pepper, and a dash of vinegar.  

Top Priority: Telecommunications

In some ways, this year has catapulted our family into the 21^st century.  In the U.S., we have resisted buying a cell phone because we have a perfectly good landline and haven’t felt like the expense of a cell phone was worth it.

In Zanzibar (and in most of Africa), there are very few landlines, but there are many cell phones, and these have a burgeoning variety of uses:

• For phone calls (obviously)
• For texting  (which everyone calls SMSing)
• For Internet surfing
• For banking (it’s possible to transfer money from one person to another via banking services that accept money in one place and give it out to a person in another—think Western Union.
• For bill paying (for people who don’t have checking accounts or credit cards, the ability to pay electrical and other bills via cell phone is a huge advantage).
• For subscription (for a fee, it’s possible to subscribe to news updates, horoscopes, soccer match scores, Qur-an or Bible verses, ring tones, and more)
• For education (in Niger, though not in Zanzibar, there’s an adult basic literacy program that sends lessons to learners through cell phone, and it’s likely that there will be more of these kinds of ventures)

Cell phone plans are unheard of.  What most if not all people do is buy a cell phone, buy a SIM card for the phone, and “top up” the cell phone with vouchers in various monetary increments, which are available in dukas almost everywhere.  (The new SIM card owner also might register the SIM card.  The government has been pushing this year to get everyone to register their SIM cards, but it’s not been very successful, because of resistance and low literacy, among other things.)  There are several competing companies that provide proprietary SIM cards/vouchers, and these companies are advertised by the standardized sign paint at dukas that sell the company’s vouchers.

We’ve been most impressed by the high-speed Internet available.  These blogs—as well as e-mail, Internet searches, and Skype conversations—have been made possible by this little modem that plugs into our computer.  It has its own SIM card and can be topped up with the same vouchers as we use to top up Brady’s and my phones.  Internet time costs 2-3 times what comparable service in the U.S. does, but it has been well worth it, as it has been our main link with home and with the world at large.

Top Priority: Christ Church Cathedral

One thing we’ll miss when we leave Zanzibar is Christ Church Cathedral.  The cathedral is a powerful symbol of international attempts to right the wrongs of slavery and to create an integrated modern society. The cathedral was built on the grounds of Zanzibar’s slave market and was part of British missionaries’ attempt to reclaim that land.  The altar of the sanctuary is built on the site of the whipping post, and the cramped slave quarters in the basement are open to visitors, in an ongoing attempt to educate people about this dark time in Zanzibar’s not-so-distant past (slavery wasn’t abolished until 1897). 

We attended services in the small chapel that is attached to the cathedral.  While not as large or grand as the cathedral, the chapel provided a welcome small community for us.  Sunday services in the chapel are the only Protestant services in English in Stone Town, so there is a regular stream of foreign visitors passing through.  On any given Sunday, the congregation is among the most racially and nationally diverse places in Zanzibar, but the liturgy is basically the same as in any Anglican church around the world.  Services are led by either a retired priest from the mainland or by a Zanzibari priest, and the congregation typically includes us, a couple of lay members of the church, a handful of other Zanzibaris who know English well and/or want to practice, a Swedish woman who lives in town, a family from Indonesia who live in town, a tourist or two from Europe, a tourist or two from America, and a tourist or two from somewhere in East Africa.  We will miss Christ Church.

Top Priority: Animals of Zanzibar

As the boys will attest, we have been missing our dog Lexi this year.  It helps to know that she’s being well taken care of by the president of the Greyhound Rescue Society but, still, we miss her. 

That is not for want of seeing animals. There are animals everywhere in Zanzibar.  In our neighborhood, we have I don’t know how many roosters (at 5 AM it seems like roughly a million), lots of cats (again, rather loud when amorous or fighting), and the occasional goat that’s bought for a special celebration and lives in the neighborhood for a poignant day or so of bleating.  In areas with a bit more grass, there are also cows.  And then there are the work animals—donkeys and oxen that pull carts.  

There are almost no dogs (in part because Muslims consider dogs unclean, and in part, I’m told, because many dogs were killed a few years back during a rabies epidemic).  We ourselves have had a few sets of pet hermit crabs, but we stopped that practice when one too many had escaped (amazingly, all were eventually found, though one spent what must have been a terrifying night under the couch).  Most animals except cats are owned by people, but most roam around pretty freely. Few can be said to be pets in the traditional sense are birds, which many people around town have.  (Unless you count this man on a bicycle's literal "monkey on his back" as a pet in the traditional sense.)

Top priority: Beaches

Beaches are everywhere in this long, narrow island.  Over the course of the year, we’ve become beach aficionados (which is different than becoming beach bums).  We each have our favorite beaches, from the rocky caves of Mangapwani Beach; to the fantastic swimming and sometimes crashing waves at Nungwi (near Juli McGruder’s welcoming B&B); to the exquisite birdwatching at the long, flat, and often seaweed-covered beaches of the east coast; to the magical disappearing beach of sandbanks (little islands that only appear at low tide and that are best appreciated in the evening, when it doesn’t matter that there are no trees for sun protection).  We’ve seen seasonal changes in the sea (more dramatic, actually, than the seasonal temperature differences on land), and we’ve grown to appreciate the mercurial effect of the tides on beaches.  I’d never considered myself a beach person, but this year is making me reconsider. Here are a couple of pictures, as well as a link to a gallery of more.

Top Priority: Fabric

There are several different varieties of traditional fabrics in Zanzibar, including the kikoi (a long piece of fabric with tassles on the end, used as a sort of skirt for men and worn around the house like a bathrobe or sometimes in public, especially by elderly men), the kitenga (fabric in the sense that I’m used to seeing fabric in the US, long colorful pieces designed to be cut and sewn into other things—especially the fitted dresses or skirt-top combinations worn with matching head pieces by Christian women in Zanzibar and on the mainland), and a fabric whose name I don’t know but that is silky and often embellished and is made into long fancy dresses that get worn a lot more here in Zanzibar than comparable dresses are in the US.  Fashion is important in Zanzibar.

But, undoubtably, the queen of fabrics is the khanga.  “Khanga” is the Kiswahili word for guinea hens, which are common on the mainland. (I don’t see the resemblance, but apparently, the busy appearance of khangas reminded some influential person of guinea hens).

In any case, khangas are pieces of fabric with a patterned border and a coordinating patterned field, with a message written in Kiswahili.  Khangas are sold in long pieces of two panels, and, after purchase, are cut in two and hemmed to be worn as a skirt and head covering, usually over other clothing. I don’t see many women in Stone Town wearing khangas, but my friend Umayra assures me that every Swahili woman owns many of them, either at home or (in rural areas) for everyday wear.  There are hundreds of khangas currently for sale in Zanzibar, and new khangas come out all the time. During the course of this year, we’ve seen a few prominent khangas go in and out of fashion.

Tourist shops feature khangas with the words removed and the colorful patterns cut up and sewn into more structured garments.  But in Swahili culture, the saying on the khanga is very important.  The saying can communicate a subtly (or not so subtly) critical message when given as a gift (say, a khanga with a message about marital fidelity, given to a woman suspected of being unfaithful), or when worn in the presence of other people (say, a khanga worn in the presence of a known gossip that says, “silence is golden”).  Because of the distinctiveness of  khanga borders and fields, even people who can’t read can “read” a khanga.

Top Priority: Doors of Zanzibar

Zanzibar is famous for its intricately carved doors.  Even before we got to Zanzibar and were at Fulbright Orientation in Washington, D.C., Brady and I saw our first Zanzibar door at the Smithsonian, as an indication of Zanzibari culture.

Doors, both now and historically, are signifiers of wealth: the more intricately carved the door, the wealthier (or more status-conscious) the owner.  Doors also are signifiers of the values and constitution of the household.  For people who know the iconography of doors, it is possible to look at a door’s rosettes, anchors, fishes, crosses and more and know how many people were in the family at the time of the building’s construction, what religion the members of the household are, and what profession they practice.

One odd feature of some doors in Zanzibar is the “elephant spike.”  Although I’ve heard no credible evidence of there ever having been elephants in Zanzibar, the doors reportedly have spikes to deter elephants from breaking down the door and terrorizing the inhabitants. (I have heard a fairly credible theory that emigrants from a place that does have elephants popularized the style of doors from their home.)

Top Priority: Bicycles

Bicycles here are a major form of trans-
portation—for all kinds of things.  They sometimes carry entire families, and they often carry commercial goods.

 

The most common kinds of bicycles are one-speeds.  Many bicycle seats have little tassles on the back.

My rough estimate would be that 90% of bicycle riders are men, but I have seen women and (more often) girls riding bicycles.  It’s very common to see two grown men riding a bicycle together.  And it’s very common to see men riding “girl” bikes with the sloped bar—even, sometimes, pink ones.

Top Priority: Rooftop views

Many hotels in Zanzibar have rooftop terraces and restaurants and though we’ve never stayed in a hotel in Stone Town, there have been various occasions when we’ve eaten at rooftop restaurants or have been invited to go see the rooftop views.  One of many memorable experiences of the year was attending yoga class on the rooftop of a hotel under construction.  Here are a couple of pictures, as well as a link to a gallery of more.

Top Priority: Grocery shopping

We were struck in South Africa by the experience of grocery shopping in supermarkets, and I’ll explain why.

Grocery shopping in Zanzibar is no one-stop affair.  To buy fruits and vegetables, you go to the fruit and vegetable market; to buy meat or fish, you go to the nearby meat and fish market; to buy bread, you go to a bakery or to one of the guys selling bread from a basket on the back of a bicycle; to buy baking powder, you go to the local duka (bodega); to buy rice or dried beans, you go to a duka near the market, where it is sold by weight out of big open bags; to buy tomato paste, you buy a packet from one of the guys at the market that walk around with the packets, and shouting “mia tano mia tano mia tano” (500 Tshillings).  There are a few small stands in Stone Town neighborhoods that have a very small assortment of fruits and vegetables, but unless you’re really in a rush, it’s best to go to the big market, which is—after all—only about a 5-minute walk away.

For real convenience shopping, you can simply stay at home and keep an ear out for various peddlers who announce their wares by calling out from the street.  In our neighborhood, the main peddlers are the dafu guy (who sells green coconuts from the basket on the back of his bicycle, cutting the top off of for a cool drink of coconut juice and then cutting a spoon out of the husk for you to eat the gelatinous green coconut flesh), the dagaa guy (who sells hundreds of anchovies from a basket on the back of his bicycle), and the milk guy (who sells milk out of a big container on the back of his bicycle or motor scooter).  In other parts of town, there is also a housewares guy (who sells various household tools made from wood and scrap metal, and usually travels on foot rather than on bicycle) and an ice cream guy (one of the many Azam company venders who sell ice cream treats from a standardized Azamcooler box attached to a bicycle).

In Zanzibar, there are only a few grocery stores, and these are more like specialty shops, selling high-priced luxury goods bought in small shipments.  One week, you might find tahini and a South African brand of pudding; another week you might find Thai chili paste and 3 sets of Ikea measuring cups; yet another week you might find tamaraind juice from Myanmar or Orbit gum from Syria.  If you approach grocery shopping as an opportunity for serendipity, it’s lots of fun; if you approach grocery shopping as an opportunity to check off items from a list, you’ll be disappointed.

Brady is (unusually for Zanzibar) the main cook in our household.  He is also definitely the expert grocery shopper in our family (not unusually, because men and women here share grocery responsibilities about equally—depending largely on how close to town the family lives).  Oscar and Calvin (unusually for us in the United States) can help a bit with grocery shopping and have enjoyed being able to walk down the street by themselves to buy little things like soap or soda.

Top priority

NB:  I wrote this and all the entries before we left Zanzibar, but—how’s this for an excuse—pirates kept me from posting the entries.  It hasn’t been possible to lay redundant Internet cables to East Africa because of the ongoing problem with Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Just before we left, the cable providing Internet service to Zanzibar was damaged and was out indefinitely. So be on the lookout for a backlog of blogs.

Already, we’re leaving!  And for weeks (months even), I’ve had blog topics I’ve wanted to write about, but blog writing hasn’t been the top priority. 

Since we’ve gotten back from South Africa, we’ve been packing, souvenir shopping, and saying goodbyes to both people and places.  Calvin celebrated his birthday, and—like Oscar’s birthday on safari—Calvin’s was a memorable day.  It was his first birthday ever on a school day (July not being a normal school month in the US), and he got to share a cake made by our good friend and landlady Muna.  For dinner, we celebrated by going to Sambusa Two Tables, the fanciest Swahili restaurant in town, which is a prix fixe meal at a person’s home; there are only two tables, and you have to make reservations and be hungry!

But mainly I’ve been working.  Since we got back from South Africa, I’ve graded all of the four questions I wrote for my team-taught communication skills class of 294 students (more than a full day’s work), I’ve taught myself how to do complex statistical analyses in Excel, and I’ve written the hour-long talk that I gave on my research yesterday to a diverse audience at the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam.  I’ve been busy.

But now blogging is my top priority, and before we go home and get engrossed in our lives there, I wanted to write the blog entries that have been percolating for a while.  I know it’s not very blog-like to unload all these entries at once, but it’s the way it had to be.

DCMA

One of my favorite things about Zanzibar is the Dhow Countries Music Academy (DCMA).  It’s on the beach right around the corner from our apartment (or, rather, a short zigzag through the narrow streets).  

It’s in a gorgeous old building—the former home/

mansion of a young married couple from the early 1900s, and it’s designed in the old Zanzibar style, with walls made of coral cemented together with lime.  Like most of the old buildings here, it’s painted mostly in white, with painted floors in bold colors.  It has little nooks and crannies that were probably used to display prized possessions during the mansion’s heyday.  Best of all, it’s breezy and cool, even on hot days, because it’s designed with a large courtyard and with windows that open to cross-ventilate with the cool sea breezes.

The mission of DCMA is to make music—and especially traditional Zanzibari music—accessible to the people of Zanzibar.  Musicians from the DCMA do outreach performances for schoolkids, offer affordable music lessons to people of all ages, and present monthly concerts to the public on various themes. 

We’ve spent quite a bit of time at DCMA since March, when Oscar and Calvin started taking traditional drum lessons there.  People in our neighborhood are now used to seeing us traipse through the streets with drums under our arms.  The boys love their lessons, and Brady and I both look forward to going twice a week and watching and relaxing in the beautiful setting.  Their drum teacher, Kheri, is relentlessly positive and has taught the boys several traditional songs over the course of the past few months, gradually working from one to two and now to five drums apiece.  There is no printed music, no metronomes, no explicit teaching philosophy (anything as complex as a teaching philosophy would be difficult to convey, given that Kheri’s English is about as good as our Kiswahili—which is to say, fine for getting a basic point across, but not so useful for the fine points).  On a few occasions, Kheri has had Oscar and Calvin practice with dancers—dance being part of the normal ensemble with traditional drums. 

The building is always full of music and musicians of all ages, and the monthly concerts now feel like cozy salon evenings with a mixture of friends and people we know by face and instrument if not by name.  Oscar and Calvin are going to be taking home a drum apiece but, somehow, it’s not going to be the same.

Lesotho and Swaziland

(This post was written by Calvin.) Swaziland and Lesotho are both countries next to South Africa that are not part of South Africa because they fought off the Zulu tribes and stayed independent.  You have to go through immigration and customs to visit them because Swaziland and Lesotho are both their own countries even though they are much smaller and are nearly surrounded by South Africa.

In Lesotho, there are pretty much only villages, snow, sheep, and good bread.  We got there by going up a very steep road called Sani Pass. If you go to the top of Sani Pass and you’re cold or thirsty, you can get hot chocolate and tea. You should bring a coat in wintertime as it 30 degrees F. We were going to hike up a peak called Hodgson’s Peak, but it was way too cold and was too snowy to see, so we just went to Sani Top, visited a hut, and came back down.

Swaziland is much more interesting than Lesotho and it has rock art from San bushmen and a waterfall hiking trail.  Oscar and I liked climbing around on rocks on the trail, but people who mind getting hurt should be careful. I got a scratch on my face when I hiked there but I don’t think other people would get hurt unless they try to polevault on the rocks with a big stick like I did! There are lots of antelope there that are called blesbok, and we also saw a wildebeest and zebra. If you’re a birdwatcher, you can see a bird called a mousebird.  It’s called a mousebird because it’s a primitive bird that has very soft, thick feathers and it looks kind of like a mouse with a long tail. They’re not very good at flying.

Snapshots of South Africa: Vuvuzelas

The unofficial symbol of this year’s Cup is the “vuvuzela.”  Whether you can say its name or not, you will recognize its sound if you have watched any of this year’s World Cup matches on TV.  That humming, buzzing sound in the background is the sound of thousands of vuvuzelas resonating with the crowd’s excitement. 

Vuvuzelas are long, plastic trumpet-like tubes that became popular in South African soccer.  They are loud, they are large, and they are sacrosanct at these games.  Although we heard murmurings in South Africa about the possibility of a vuvuzela ban, FIFA’s long official “Stadium Code of Conduct” for this year explicitly states in its fine print, “Unbranded vuvuzelas are not considered Prohibited Items.” (I know because I checked before we packed Oscar and Calvin’s vuvuzelas—and four sets of earplugs!)  The annoyance of occasional buzzing in your ears—manageable.  Being part of the creation of new tradition in a country that’s trying to start anew—priceless.