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

Previously on Emilia's and Virve's trip...

Since the last update we have seen monkeys and peacocks in Dar es Salaam's urban jungle, took a three hour ferry ride to Zanzibar and saw some dolphins from the deck. We also got sunburnt during that ferry ride, despite of the +40 sun lotion and the fact that we were sitting in the shadow. Lesson? Don't ever underestimate the power of the sun near the equator. We have also witnessed a few tropical rainshowers here, but we have manage to stay quite dry.
Today we saw Tamrini, the DCCFF project coordinator and all the other staff there. We made some plans for the next three weeks and tomorrow we start visiting villages, Bambi and Tunduni first.We are really looking forward to get to know the villages and start to cooperate with them. We have also started to prepare our presentation about baseline survey, which Noora and Eve made last time here. Our presentation should be on 6th of November.
Stone Town is a place where people with no sense of directions can easily get lost. Yes, that's us. Hopefully we manage to move around more easily after spending little more time here. We try to load some pictures here, but because the net connections are what they are, it may not happen...

In Dar es Salaam 26.10.2009

Hello everybody,

We are finally in Dar es Salaam after very exhausting flights. We even got our backbags:) The weather is here very hot and humid but we hope we will get used to it. Today we visited the national museum and we saw the scull of Australopithecus. We recocgnised our ancestor. We have also bought the tickets to Zanzibar for tomorrow. People have been very nice for us (wazungu) and we have already used our kiswahili skills:)But now we go to eat something! We will get back to you later! Kwa herini tutaonana!

Emilia and Virve

Emilia and Virve heading to Tanzania today

Hello readers,
Only few hours and I'll take a bus to airport. There I shall meet Emilia and due to this marvelous time-switch we have great opportunity to spend there one extra hour. Jei! Neither one of us has been in Africa before, so we are quite anxious to see how it is over there. Our plane leaves at 6.30 am, from Helsinki-Vantaa we are flying first to Amsterdam then Nairobi and from there to Dar Es Salaam where we have planned to stay couple of nights. Then we will take boat to Zanzibar where we can really start to work with the project.

Ok, do I have everything under control? Let's see...
Backpack? Packed. Passport? checked (at least three times).Camera? Checked. Big bag of medicine? Packed. Salmiakki? Yes, it's packed too:)Me? Well, I think I'm ready to go!

Virve

One week left

Hello all!

Only a bit over one week left of this trip.
We have finished the village visits. Now we have started to go through all the interviews we made. This should take a few days, as there is quite a lot of people we have interviewed.

On Tuesday we had an exciting day. We had left from the last village and were driving along this small road near the forest reserve. There we met some guys with a big load of wood which was apparently illegally cut from the forest. It took some time to talk with the guys and move the wood from their wagon to our car. Then it took some more time to report about them at the police station. Apparently they will get a big fine which can be something like 300 000 TSH (one years income for many people).

Tomorrow we head to the Jozani forest to see a bit of the southern part of the island. Maybe we'll also see some more monkeys there.

News from Z'bar

Hello!

During this week we have been visiting some of the villages around the KPFR. We have visited Bambi, Tunduni, Mchangani, Kilombero, Pangeni. Also we have seen some of their schools and some of their livelihoods (like beehives). All has gone well, people have been really nice and it has been nice to see life outside Stone Town. Next week we'll continue with the visits.



Today we went to see the caves from the last project (KIWA). Building for tourist reception and toilets seem to be in good condition, water tank/pump isn't working yet but should be ready for the in july when the caves should be opened to public.



We also went for a little walk in the forest around the caves and we were lucky and saw the red colobus monkeys. There seemed to be quite many of them and we even saw one with a baby. There was also a lot of butterflies around (and bats in the caves). We also went to see another cave from which water is pumped to the nearby hotels.






Now we are off to try the Zanzibarian banana-chocolate pizza. Byebye!

-Eve and Noora

Our first greetings from Zanzibar

We survived the weekend in Dar and now looking forward for the first weekend in Zanzibar. We have mainly tried to get used to the climate and culture and also tried to find our way around Stone Town's narrow streets.
We also have visited our local coordinator and project personnel in DCCFF.
We have been planning the baseline survey with Tamrini and other staff and we have made some progress also. Next week we will start survey in the villages, starting from Bambi village. We are supposed to get the survey done during the next two weeks. At the same time we probably will visit the caves from the Kiwa- project also.
In the weekend we were planning to get to know the northern coast so hoping for a good weather!

We had a nice picture to put here but this computer doesn't accept our memory stick so sorry for that. We'll try again next time!