Friday, November 20, 2009

Going home tomorrow...

Hi all,
Yes, this is my last whole day in Zanzibar. Tomorrow I'm taking a ferry to Dar es Salaam and I'll be back in Finland on Sunday morning. So the forest fire spoiled our plans to go to Kandwi but instead I managed to take part of the fire fighting operation in Bambi where the forest fire was still going on. I know, it appears more glamorous than it was and I don't think that I was helping much, but it was quite interesting experience. Although I haven't ever heard word "mzungu" (which means white person) so often than that time in forest. I guess everybody were wondering what on earth I was doing there and to be honest, sometimes I wondered it myself too... I guess it was so odd, that woman from Dar Es Salaam media was filming me. So maybe I'm celebrity now, who knows :D At that evening my friend Maria, who is studying now in University of Dar es Salaam, came here and it was really nice to have company. On Thursday we went to the office to gather some information and after that we went to shopping with Miza, who works in DCCFF. It was really nice experience to go shopping with local person, she knew all the best places and we had really nice time.

So this is my last greetings from Zanzibar. I hope that someone has red the blog and maybe even enjoied doing it. Zanzibar has been an experience I will remember very long but home is home and I will return to Finland gladly with great experiences and memories of sun :D

Virve

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Greetings again from Zanzibar

Hello all,
I just got back to Stone Town from beautiful Kendwa, where it is very easy to forget that anything bad exists in the world. Reality stroke back when I arrived in Stone Town and called to Tamrini who was at that moment fighting against a forest fire. Again! This time it was in Bambi village which we had visited earlier. Tomorrow I was supposed to take part of training a group in Kandwi but due to the forest fire it seems unlikely now. But I do have lots of other things to do here, finishing the brochures and the report for example.

This time I will write only briefly because the clock is ticking and my internet time is about to end soon. Just want to say greetings to all my friends, I'll be seeing you soon. And Emilia, I miss your company :)

Virve

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Jambo!

Another week in Zanzibar is at the end. After the last update we have burned ourselves in the sun, rode bicycles at coral stone road and also noticed that there can be quite big spiders in dala-dala. Ok, so we made some brochures at the beginning of this week at the DCCFF office. We have also wrote our report on our spare time, so we have had a busy week. One day we decided to took day-off and headed to the beach but once again we noticed that the sun cannot be underestimated here: result of our beach day was pink skin. Yesterday we visited the Jozani forest. Tamrini was kind enough to arrange a transportation there. Unfortunately there was a forest fire in Jozani so he went to see the situation with lots of watering cans. We didn't get to put out the forest fire maybe it would have been too dangerous so we just stayed in the safer side of Jozani. There we saw quite a few red colobus monkeys in the forest. One of them was so curious that it touched my shoe and put it's little face very close to my camera objective. We had also chance to improve our biking skills with some kinds of bicycles. We rode about 1,5 kilometers to see the mangrove forest. It was quite amazing experience and the forest was really nice too. After walking in forest and playing with monkeys we took a dala-dala back to Stone Town. I must say that it's always kind of an adventure to travel with dalas. This time fire woods were piled on the roof of the bus and we had to stop once in a while to collect the woods from the road. Lucky for us the male passengers did that. Besides little delays there was a huge spider running on the floor. Yeah, some things I won't be missing...

So next we are heading to north. I'm going to spend couple of days in beaches of Kendwa and Emilia is heading far more north all the way to Finland. So next week it's just me, but I try to update the greetings from here every now and then.

Virve and Emilia

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Working and visiting the Zanzibar park


Last Saturday we decided to go to local Zanzibar park to see some animals. The park is really new and it was opened only a few weeks ago. Therefore some parts were still under construction. We saw there e.g. zebras, hyenas, baboons, python, baby crocodiles and different kind of birds like lovebirds and vultures. We also fed again some tortoises (giant and small ones) and rode with camel. It was really exciting to ride and we were both quite relieved when it was over. The highlight of our visit was when we were aloud to hold hyena babies. They were really cute and it is so strange how something so cute can turn to something not so cute when it is older.

On Sunday we tried to go to the beach for the first time. There was suppose to be a beach quite near of Stone town. Well there was a beach but not a beach where you could swim. There were only some local men fishing and because of the tide the water was very far from the shore. So our beach day was not so successful but maybe next time we will find a better beach.

Yesterday and today we have been making flyers and brochures of the products that people are selling in their villages. The idea is to advertise the local products to hotels and tourists and increase the income of the villagers.


Emilia and Virve

P.S Yesterday we were called albinos. Seems that it is really time for us to head to beach!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Friday greetings from warm Zanzibar


Were just sitting on the terrace of Livingstone beach restaurant and watching a rat running up and down on a coconut tree :)Yes, but let's get to the point. So this week has been very busy and we have had opportunity to see and done lots of things. On Wednesday was our last official village visit to Kilombero. We got chance to see how the honey is collected from the beehives among other things. On Thursday we were suppose to have day-off, but when we got chance to see how women of Mchangani were trained to dye palm leafs for making baskets, we seized the opportunity and went to see training in action. We also got to take part by splitting the palm leafs before they were dyed.

Today we had an exciting day. First we took the dala-dala (local minibus) very first time to the DCCFF office and then we had our presentation to DCCFF staff about the baseline survey, which Noora and Eve made last time here. People had very good and constructive comments and the whole occasion succeeded quite well. On the way home we celebrated by buying some fresh tomatoes from Darajani market and some chapatis near our hotel. So, it is weekend and we are planning to go tomorrow to the Zanzibar Park. Maybe we even get some time to hop on dala-dala and go some beach to swim a bit.

By the way, we are so familiar sights here in Livingstone restaurant with our laptop that the staff has started to greet us like friends :) I must say, that this has been a very good opportunity to recall what we learned in swahili course in Turku. But now it's time to have something to eat. Baadaye! (see you later)

Virve and Emilia

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

More villages and the caves


On Sunday we went to the national museum of Zanzibar which was really interesting and there was also a bit cooler than outside. We also did some shopping in the local shops. So now we have some souvenirs. On Monday the visits to the villages continued and we saw more some vegetable fields, chickens and some quite ugly ducks. We went also to the beach in Matemwe were local fishermen sold their fish on the sand and kids were cleaning them. All the kids here know how to say hello in Italian because there are so much Italian tourists. So every time they see us they say Ciao. This is the first country when someone has thought we are Italians:) By the way we have also heard to be sisters and once even twins. Maybe we have spent too much time together;)Today we went to see how people where growing some seaweed in Kiwengwa beach. They were very colorful: blue, green, red and purple. The last stop today was in the cave in Kiwengwa. The cave has been made to be a tourist attraction by support of the earlier project (Kiwa) of Turku Geographical Society. Everything there seemed to be almost ready just tourists were missing. The caves are really beautiful and very big. It is dark inside the cave and we had flashlights to see our steps. We saw lots of bats, big spiders, ants, and one very very big millipede. Very exciting and we recommend it for everyone but remember to wear long trousers and decent shoes because ants in your pants is not a nice experience;) Trust me!



Emilia and Virve