Back to Finland

Jambo!

One month has passed by too quickly in Zanzibar, and tomorrow night it's time for me to head back to Finland. All the village visits are done, but still some analysing of data is needed and report writing. My computer didn't work for a while, but now it's back to the business again, hopefully for a long time. We were supposed to have a discussion on evaluation results today, but there is another meeting at the office, so Markus will have it after I have left. Tomorrow it will be Tanzania's independence day, so no working at least for the locals.

In general after the evaluation I would say that the LIVE-project has been a good project according to the staff and most of the group members, although there have been some not so succeeded groups. 16 groups we have lost on the way from the baseline to today; this requires some attention. Maybe a little bit better planning of the number of the groups and their possibilities in the project should have been done in the beginning. The evaluation has gone quite smoothly, but the individual questionnaires we couldn't make as many as in the baseline survey, due to the lack of time. I also left out some of the questions.

Yesterday I joined Markus, Niina, Juki and Abbas for their field trip in the research project. It was interesting to see how the fieldwork is done and what kind of forests there are in the island. Mostly there are low forests, almost bushes in Finnish standards, apart from the conservation forests. The most extreme part of the field trip was going to coral rag area, which was very difficult to walk in. Especially because I was wearing sandals that didn't protect my feet at all... not a good idea. Now I have a little bit twisted ankle and some cuts in my feet. On the way back we couldn't find the path back in this difficult terrain full of bushes, and when we finally did, we were so relieved.

It feels a little bit sad to leave Zanzibar and the colleagues in here, but it's also nice to go back home to see family and friends. Maybe, some day, I will get a chance to return.

Tutaonana!

Elina

Happened in Unguja

Habari za kazi?

Hello, one more week has passed by in Unguja and we have done village visits each day. We had to reduce the visits for one village per day, since the evaluation takes time, and we have also collected some new groups for the next project at the same time. Tomorrow there is the last village to visit, Kandwi, and after that I'm planning to spend the weekend in Kendwa. It's my last weekend and I would love to enjoy sun and some swimming before getting back to cold and dark Finland.

The photos added tell the story of one village visit in Matemwe. During my interviewing and making the questionnaire for the group members, we heard a sudden collapse and some loud noise. It was the collapse of the brand new water container of the vegetable growing group, and for a minute there was a deep silence. Then, everyone started laughing - what else can you do? But for the group it was no good news, especially since it was the second time for the container to collapse. This is just an example what can happen in the field, and almost every day something unexpected happens or I learn a new thing I've never heard about. Everyday is a new adventure :)

Ofcourse field work is also hard, it's hot and one has to pay attention all the time, and try to understand what people want to tell you. Collegues at the office translate the questions and answers, but already I'm catching some most common words. Sometimes the best way is to see the things by oneself, as we did on Tuesday when we visited a family in Matemwe, to see how they use fuelwood in open fire and fuel saving stoves.

The other thing is to write clear the answers in the evenings and try to write the report. Luckily I still have one more week to do it, and even in Finland I can do some finishing. Next week we are supposed to have a seminar on the results, so I need to prepare a presentation of them, and then we can discuss with the forest department staff. So there is a lot of work but also some relaxation hopefully in the weekend :)

Tutaonana!

Elina

Village life

Hello!

Now we have visited two villages, Bambi and Tunduni, for evaluation. We have also met the village heads, shehas and intervued them. The life in the villages is fascinating, and it keeps amazing me how patient people are here. Even though the intervues take a long time, now one complains or goes home. Something I and maybe most Finnish people should learn from them. People are in general very pleased with the LIVE-project and sad that it's coming to its end. They also wonder why and I have explained to them that in Finland the development projects usually last for three years.

In the villages I've seen some genious solutions for example for the lightning during the evening (the darkness falls at around six pm). Many people are also engaged in several different livelihoods, and today I saw some beautiful colouring of clothes in the soap making group in Tunduni. Village people have many problems concerning their livelihoods, for example thieves and cows and goats grazing freely and destroying their harvests. Also disease and pests are common in agriculture. The weather conditions may also harm the livelihoods.

It has been sunnier here now and also quite hot, at least in my standards. On the weekend I stepped on a sea urcher while swimming and had to pull the sticks out of my foot all night...

Tutaonana!

Elina

Greetings from the rainy Zanzibar

Mambo!

I (Elina) arrived in Zanzibar on Friday and I've been trying to get used to the living in here. People are still very friendly and everything is pretty much the same as last year, when I visited Sansibar, but there is still some adaptation I need to do. We (me, Markus and the DCCFF project staff) visited the caves on Sunday 13th with more than 20 tourists from Keski-Suomi. The visit was successful despite the heavy raining we had. The caves are always fascinating to visit. It's been raining a lot in here, yet it's very hot.

We planned the evaluation of the LIVE project I aim to do, and tomorrow I will start going to the village visits together with Tahir and Othman. We will start from Kiwengwa. I will write more as we have visited some of the villages and the livelihood groups.

Tutaonana!

Elina

The village visits are here!

Last week went by being busy with my studies, but we managed to proceed little with the project planning. Last Thursday we had a meeting with Antje, a lady organizing women groups in Matemwe. We were mostly interested about a women group called DADA, which produces food products, like jams, pastas, dried vegetables, sauces, etc from organically grown materials to the urban markets of Zanzibar Town. She kindly promised to share their know-how in drying, packaging and processing of vegetables and provided us with a list of agricultural products that could be sold directly to DADA groups. Besides the actual support, she gave us a good example how thinks can be done sustainably. The range of usable plants and the versatility of already used plants she know was astonishing, not even mentioning her house that got all the required water from the rains and energy from the sun. Talking with her gave us some new creative ideas and made me remember that question of sustainable way of living is not only an issue that needs to be promoted in the Western world, but also elsewhere.

This week, actually today we started the village visits from Bambi and Tunduni. We visited the dairy goat group and two vegetable groups in Bambi. I was sorry to hear that although the goats were able to breed the kids died before growing up. Hopefully this is a problem we can help with the new project. We arranged a meeting in the villages to introduce our new idea, get direct comments from stakeholders, ask about the problems facing food security and list the groups interested in our new project. Luckily Othman translated to me again, but I think he skipped some of the jokes about the weird mzungu :D Majority of the groups were the same we worked in Live project, but I was happy to see there were some new ones also.

There were some obvious differences between the villages. For example in Bambi the demand was for larger projects that would cover the whole community while in Tunduni participants questioned the functionality of group farming and wanted to support individuals. But altogether the problems in food production were quite similar: poor quality of seeds, not enough fertilizers, pests, lack of training, poor tools, etc…

Weird dreams caused by the malaria medication made me little tired today, but hopefully I’m bit more energetic during the field visits tomorrow.

Mambo!

Hello to everyone from rainy Stone Town. The short rains have arrived, but I have problems understanding the word 'short' in the phrase. The rains have neither been short in length or small in amount. I'm Markus (pictures will follow somewhere in the future) and I arrived to Zanzibar last week. I'm here for two months to work with the Live-project and to collect materials for my master thesis.

The first week went by quickly in adjusting, getting things organized and participating a GIS conference. To be honest it was rather absurd situation to participate in a GIS conference in a tropical island, but I can't complain :D This, second week, I have worked with Live-project. Our project is coming to its end and I'm here to take part in the planning of a new project. On Monday I met Tamrini and the others from the Forest department working with Live. We shared some ideas about the new project and planned the fore coming schedule. The new project is dealing with issues of food security, so on Wednesday we had a meeting with the director of Food security department and talked with her about our idea. She gave some new ideas and offered her help for the future.

Yesterday we presented our idea to the Kiwengwa-Pongwe Forest Adviser Committee (or something like that), which included village leaders and other important people from the villages surrounding the forest. In the meeting there were long discussions about how to prevent illegal fuelwood collection and stop people from hunting those small antelope looking creatures. The discussions were long and it seemed like everybody had something to say about every issue, luckily Othman translated to me, otherwise it would have been just three hours of wondering and bewilderness.

Next week we are going to start the village visits, a welcomed change to flooding streets of Stone Town.

Until then,
Markus

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

Work continues..

Last week we have been working mainly with our reports. On Wednesday it was Sabasaba and we got a day off from work. Wednesday was also Elina’s last day in Zanzibar. Ever since we’ve been trying to get used to the life without her, feels odd when she’s not here!

Our reports are coming together a bit by bit, sometimes it’s difficult to continue writing when we haven’t managed to make any progress on other fields of the work. Last week we put together a summary on the trainings and study visits planned for this year and this week we’ll try to come up with some sort of schedule for them. Nora did some GIS magic and created a map of the GPS points we’d collected during the village visits. Everybody at the office seemed very pleased with the map (and everybody definitely saw the map and got their own copy since we had some "challenges" using the printer).

This week we’ll try and get a new estimation for fixing the road to the Kiwengwa caves. The estimation we have now is way beyond the project’s budget. We think for the time being it’s enough to do the minimum to make the road accessible. Later on when there is more money then the road can be fixed properly. On the things to do list for this week are also the brochures. We want to get them printed out (finally) and then discuss the hotel visits to improve the marketing of the products.

Even though last week was easy on the work, we were kept well busy with moving around Stone Town. On Wednesday we moved into a place with a unique cave-like atmosphere. Darkness, moistness, cockroachness.. Yesterday we moved out into a great place with lots of fresh air, open space, a roof terrace, a shower with hot water and a toilet that FLUSHES. We’re also very pleased with our new neighbours from South Africa, Germany, Kenya, Tanzania and Holland.

With the new home we are ready for the work this week!


Irene and Kaisa

My last day in Zanzibar

Hi all!

Sadly I'm (Elina) heading to Finland tomorrow, and my time in Zanzibar has come to an end. It has been great four weeks and there would still be a lot to be done in the project as well as exploring the beautiful nature in Zanzibar. Hopefully I will get a chance to visit Zanzibar again some day. Working in the project has been very interesting and I have learned a lot. I hope the work we've done has contributed the project, all though one month is not a very long time. Fortunately Kaisa and Irene will stay here for six more weeks and continue with the LIVE-project.

At home I will finish my report and send it to Kaisa, Irene and the staff for the final seminar. Gladly TIES will publish an article on Kiwengwa caves as an ecotourism destination. Last weekend we went to the Prison Island and it was a great experience with the giant tortoises and snorkling to see the coral. Today we are still going to have a last night's dinner and then I start preparing myself for the long journey back home. Tutaonana and stay tuned for updates from Kaisa and Irene!

Elina

Sun sun sun!

Hello!

This week we've mainly worked at the office. On Monday we visited three more villages and the rest of the week we spent working on the reports. What makes working at the office interesting are the cows and chicken trying to get into the building :P Irene was sick with a mysterious tropical disease and stayed home for a few days checking out the walls. Now the antibiotics are gone and can be replaced with something more refreshing :D

Today, we decided to go to the beach. For the whole day. Now we know this was a bad idea. We have some pictures but they aren't good for publishing. In short, we can't really be called mzungus anymore because of our new complexion.

Next week some more villages and Jozani forest reserve!


Irene, Kaisa and Elina

Working with the project

Hi!

The first week has passed by at work. It was very interesting to visit the villages, and there are still three more to visit on monday. People in the villages have been very friendly and happy about the LIVEproject. Some of them have relatively small hindrances from better production, and some have bigger ones as in Kiwengwa the road construction and getting a generator. Yesterday we went to the caves, and they were fascinating, but bats and spiders were a little bit scary.

In two days we have been accompanied by Abo Akademi student Elias, who is writing an article about biodiversity. Unfortunately we didn't see the Red Colobus monkey yesterday when at Kiwengwa. The staff in DCCFF has been great and they have been very patient in translating our questions and the answers.

In our freetime we have gone to the beach and swam in the salty but warm Indian Ocean. The tides are unpredictable for us, so sometimes when we go there, the water is far away from the beach.

To be continued...

Elina, Kasa and Irene

Mambo!

Greetings from Zanzibar! It's hot, moist and amazing. We arrived a couple of days ago and so far we've just been adjusting to the weather, culture and people. We've been walking around Stonetown and enjoyed (sometimes cursed too) the sun and the extremely hot weather. The soccer worldcup has started in SA and it shows: people are sitting and cheering in almost every corner of the labyrinth of Stonetown. Work starts tomorrow, more news will follow.

Hakuna matata!


Irene, Kaisa na Elina

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

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

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

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 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

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

Weekend greetings from Zanzibar

We found a really nice cafe with wireless internet connection so we are sitting on a pillows and drinking cold ginger beer and enjoying the opportunity by blogging of course. Yesterday we went to street market to test the limit of our tummies with a grilled banana and coconut bread. Later we went to a restaurant to hear some local taarab music. Today was officially our first day-off and we decided to spend it like real tourists. We booked a boat to Prison Island, which lies 30 minutes boat ride away from Stone Town. It was supposed to be a prison in 19th century, but due to cholera and black plague it was changed to quarantine island. Nowadays there is a hotel and it is a home to 118 really really sympathetic giant tortoises which have lived there almost hundred years. We even got to feed them some spinach. We also saw little antelopes, no higher than 35-45cm, called digi-digi and some birds. After watching animals we went to the coral reef to snorkel and for the first time in my life I put the flippers and the mask on and went to the ocean. Emilia had had one experience before, so we were both amateurs. Corals were fantastic, it felt that we were part of some Natural Geography document. Fish were really colorful and we saw also lots of spiky sea urchins. No barracudas, no sharks as our guide promised to us. Our Saturday here continues so, that we are trying to find some decent place to eat and because our very high work ethics :D, maybe some report writing too. Tomorrow we are also planning to do some work by shopping. It IS important to get to know already existing products if were trying to do some marketing here. Don't you think?

Oh, and Happy Halloween to everyone!

Virve and Emilia

Visiting villages

Hello,

It has been really hot and humid in Zanzibar. Even the locals say that it is too hot so it is not just we. Today we drank first time coconut juice in a market place and it was really good:) Yesterday and today we visited four different villages with Tamrini and other guys from DCCFF. The idea is to learn about the livelihoods and take some pictures of the products. We can use the pictures to make some brochures etc. In the villages we saw how women were doing some handcrafts like baskets and clay pots. Some of them are going to get more training to do bigger and more decorated things especially for tourists. We saw also some fields were people were growing vegetables(egg plants, onions, water melons etc) and woodlods were they grow akasia trees for building materials. Some of them are also keeping bees and having chickens. We have used to get the attention of the children when they see us especially in the villages. Once we even got hugs.



Emilia and Virve