Rain and Ramadan

Sorry for the lack of updates on the blog, this past month has not treated us well. We've been busy taking antibiotics and anti-ameba medication.. A little bit of work too but much of the energy has gone into getting well again. Now we have one more week left in Zanzibar, hopefully we'll stay well!

Although we've been sick, we've also managed to make a bit of progress. The brochures are ready and printed now, next week we'll take one day to go visit some hotels if we have time. We've visited travel agencies and left them with cave brochures, hopefully some tourists take interest and go visit the caves. We've got an estimation after estimation for fixing the road and finally we have something reasonable. We'll try and get things started there next week before we leave. We've also planned and bought materials for new signs at the caves. On Monday we'll go to Kiwengwa, paint the signs and put them in their places. We've also attended some study visits and trainings organised for the livelihood groups. We have the intention of making sure the rest of the study visits and trainings will have set dates before we leave. Also the guides at the caves will get some training: we've been planning on sending them to Jozani for a week to get trained by the guides there. There has been progress on the online promotion as well: TIES published an article on the Mchekeni coral caves that Elina wrote.

Next week is our last one at work and it seems that it's going to be a busy week. Visits to the caves and hopefully some hotels, some work at the office, training on book keeping and business management and then finally a seminar on our and Elina's reports before we leave.

The past few days it has been raining and raining. Ramadan started yesterday and we're trying to get used to the changes it brings along: most of the shops and restaurants aren't open during the day and people aren't supposed to be eating in public. We're interested in seeing what else Ramadan is going to change.

Irene and Kaisa