Hamjambo Marafiki! (Hello all my friends)
The first half of my research is over, and now we are staying at a beach resort on Matemwe beach called Panga Chumvi. Our group visited during the May experience, and loved it, so of course we had to come back. I must say, after leaving the village homestays, a beach resort is a very welcome sight. Overall, my time in the village was a little rough, but overall an amazing and life changing experience, and I was only there for a few weeks. I can only imagine how my advisor Dr. Farris felt when she stayed for several months in hers.
We started by dropping off Kylie and Heather at their homestay in Fumba. We rode in a cab to the homestays, which was scary enough as it is. In Zanzibar, for one they drive on the left, which is fine, however they choose to drive on the left...drive as fast as possible...without anti-lock breaking systems. This, scares the crap out of me everytime I am in a car. As we fly around in this bat out of hell cab, instead of breaking, the driver would honk, and swerve around the slower people, narrowly missing the other bat out of hell vehicles coming from the other side of the road, straight towards us. Eventually, we do make it to our first destination, homestay number one, Fumba.
As we pulled into the dirt road, steadily making our way to their home, both Heather and Kylies eyes grew wider and wider with fear as well as anticipation. We enter the home, and are greeted with about ten children, all huddled on the floor watching some random action movie on a tv resting on a stool in the main room. Their homestay mother, Sophia is a small woman who greets us all with a smile and a friendly hamjambo (hello for multiple people). We reply Shikamo, which is a respectful greeting you use to greet someone older than yourself. Despite her size, she has quite the presence, as her voice is loud, and demands attention. As we walk around their home, they become speachless as their eyes grow larger, almost as if they were thinking "what have we done....what have we gotten ourselves into". After saying goodbye to the girls, we laughed about their expressions the entire way back. We quickly learned though, that our expressions were just about the same as we
arrived to our homestay in Kizimkazi Dimbani.
We were fortunate though, as we got the opportunity to pick our homestay from two of the three homes owned by a man named Ali. The first home was simple, with 2 main rooms, and 3 others. One for cooking, and two for people to sleep. There was however, no roof. Instead, there was a sort of sheet metal type covering the top. The second home, proved to be more welcoming as it had a roof. Outside of the home, there were about 20-25 animals, comprised of ducks, chickens, roosters, etc. at any given time. In order to prevent this clucking, hissing, and crazy hoard of animals from charging into the home, they had a large piece of wood that would be proppd against the door. This was to prevent the freely swinging metal front door from flying open when the wind was strong. This piece of wood at times also carried a secondary purpose....of locking me into the home when I wanted to leave....as it would sometimes get jammed against some of the coral rock rampant outside of our homestay and throughout the village. Inside the home, there was an open area lined with long strings that allowed the sun to come in and dry the clothes. On the right side, there were three areas. One for an enclosed bathroom...which was perpetually wet and contained a shower that did not work, a bucket and a ladel, (which turned out to be our true shower even though Ali turned on the shower when the professors were visiting...we think he just turned off the water to save money once they left impressed), and a toilet flat on the floor. The other two areas were open. One for the kitchen, and the other to store shoes, flower, sugar, etc. A street cat that frequently came to the house, which we named Simba (Swahili for Lion), also had a small plate in the storage room next to the garbage for food scraps. Simba frequently meowed until the last part of my daily fish was given up.
The first night, John-Micheal and I stayed in the same room. Although they promised to bring in a second bed...we had to share one that first night. We have named this night, "Hell Night". For our one bed, we tried to set up both of our bug nets, because neither net quite fit the entire bed. These nets that were created to protect us, turned into light-weight prisons during the night, as they made the temperature even hotter and kept us each enclosed in a tiny space. The nets really did not work at that point in time because they were brushing up against us, which doesnt really work to prevent mosquitoes from landing on you. Furthermore, I was too big for the bed, so I had to curl up inside of the net so that my feet would not hang outside of it. Throughout the night, as we were both so close to one another in our mesh prisons, it got hotter...and hotter...and hotter...and hotter. We did have a fan in the room, but they failed to mention when the professors were with us touring the home that it did not work...I woke up the next morning feeling as if I was incredibly hungover because I was so dehydrated from sweating the entire night. The first thing I did was ask when the promised second bed would arrive. Ali informed me it should get there on Tuesday....It was only Friday...I quickly requested to see if I could switch homes and be in the one without the roof, simply to sleep in two separate beds because I was NOT about to go through another hell night. After making it clear I wanted to move homes, (which now I think wold have caused Ali a little more work), it didnt take long for him to bring in the second bed that afternoon...the same one that apparently would have taken another 3 days to get there...The following nights we were still incredibly hot as per the no fan in Zanzibar thing, but much better than before.
The meals in our homestay were...simple...yet also fairly good. The first Dinner and breakfast from the evening we arrived to the morning after hell night turned out to be the same thing, which worried us. We had fish, bread, and tea for both meals. For the next few weeks, we continued to have this variatioin for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I like fish and bread ok, but once I return to the United States, I plan on avoiding it as much as humanly possible...Lunches turned out to be special, as we sometimes got squid/octopus with coconut sauce and rice. I actually enjoyed these meals quite alot. Other interesting foods we tried include Bobwe, a sort of playdoh like block made of flour and coconut. One of my contacts in the Village and in Stone Town, Hamissi, would love to tell us with heaps of laughter that if we ate the bobwe at one meal, we would be full for THE ENTIRE day. There was also Ugali, which is a type of flour dish you use to mold together with your hands to make a sort of spoon to scoop up your food...I hate this stuff...I do not want to come back hungry...and have to play with my burning hot food trying to mold it into a spoon...which is impossible by the way...the stuff crumbles and sticks in awkward ways to itself so you have to spend 5 hours actually making the spoon...
Kizimkazi itself is simple, but also very beautiful. The village itself is small with about one restaurant, and a few tourist resorts scattered near the beach. Every evening, we went to the local soccer field, and would watch the soccer games. John-michael actually ended up playing in one and scoring! He became quite popular with the younger villagers after that. There are several types of tropical trees there such as Banana, Pappaya, Mango, and of course, Coconut. It was strange seeing these types of trees scattered about the village instead of the hundreds of pine trees I am used to in the United States. It made the village look at the more beautiful, especially during sunset. To see the different shades of orange, red, yellow, etc. paint the sky and then fade, all behind a set of coconut trees is truly a beautiful site. The villagers themselves are all very friendly and accomodating. It was a strange dynamic though, as there really has been little to no research done in that village, so to see Wazungu (outsiders/white people) living with them inside the village and eating the food they eat took them by surprise. Whenever they see people like me, they wonder which resort I am staying at. We were later told, that periodically during our time there, villagers were actually calling one of our advisors here, Narriman (the woman whom we are incredibly indebted to by facilitaing the homestays for us as well as a number of other things), telling her how happy they were John-Michael and I lived there because of how respectful and immersed in their culture we were. I hope the villagers experiences with us helped to establish a positive dynamic for the people, and future researchers that may come to the area.
Kizimkazi is a very popular destination for dolphin tourism. In fact, it is the best in all of East Africa it seems. Whenever someone around Zanzibar mentions dolphins, we are told they think of Kizimkazi. The Bay area the village of Kizimkazi sits on is known as Menai Bay,which is kind of like the dolphins home. There are other places to see dolphin, but Kizimkazi is the place to go, as you are sure to see dolphins.
One morning, we had the opportunity to go on one of the Dolphin Tours, headed by Ali. We woke up at 6 in the morning, and left the beach by the soccer field on a small boat with Ali, our translator Abass, and another guy driving the boat. We had no idea what to expect as we rode further out into the water, until suddenly, our translator Abass says to us "OK, now I think it is the time to put on the fins and masks and prepare to jump in..." At this moment, I look over at John-Michael and find he has the exact same expression of confusion on his face as I do. But, we do as we are told, and put everything on. Shortly after, we see a rather large pack of dolphins. About 12 in fact, a family of several adults, children, and teenagers. My first thought is, "Oh how nice! We actually got to see some dolphins today!" then as we draw closer and closer to the rather large family of dolphin, Abass says "ok be ready now". Once more...confusion...both of our faces. Finally, as we come right up onto the pack, Abass yells in a very excited and enthusiastic manner, "OK GOGOGO", and tells us to jump in ON TOP OF THE DOLPHINS. We jump in, and immediately look down. Suddenly instead of being in a cold, windy small boat, I am surrounded in the water by this family of dolphins. It was incredible to see them so close, and literally swim with such a large group. Shortly after we got in the water though, the dolphins dove down to the bottom of the bay, and kept going. When they left us, we all got back in the boat, and proceeded to hunt and chase of the dolphins as they resurfaced around the bay. It almost felt like some sort of marine training, as we were yelled at to jump out of the boat, look down, then get back on, over and over and over.
While it was incredible and breathetaking to see the dolphins so up close, overall I did not like the experience, nor did John-Michael. We felt strange about the hunt and chase tactics. It was as if we were harassing and scaring the dolphins, instead of being there with them. After speaking with a representative from a local NGO called KIDOTOA, which stands for the Kizimkazi Dolphin Tourism Association, I learned that there is an established protocal for taking people out on Dolphin tours, and that they actually send the boat captains through an education program, before they can take people out. Regulations and procedures include driving slowly to the dolphins, (we drove quite fast), staying behind them and not cutting off their path, (we sped ahead infront of them and cut them off sometimes), slowly getting into the water next to the pack of dolphins, (we were instructed to jump in as quickly as possible and look down), and many other things, all of which the captain seemed to have forgotten from his training. This type of behavior with the dolphin tour operators is actually a problem in the area we found. Needless to say, I do not plan on doing any additional dolphin tours in Kizimkazi for quite some time.
My schedule in the village varied day to day, but typically I would wake up in the morning, grab some breakfast, (which consistently was bread and butter, some fish, and a bit of tea), go out and conduct interviews during the morning, come back around 1p.m. for lunch (this was usually some sort of rice/coconut sauce dish with squid or fish), then rest or continue to conduct some interviews for the rest of the afternoon. John-Michael f requently gave me crap because part of my interviews are with tourists. This means I got to sit at a resort drinking sodas and reading whilst I waited for tourists to come out. At night, we would eat dinner, (again fish with bread and butter), then watch the craziest most violent movies I have ever seen. There is this whole market from china, which produces these films jammed full of crazy fight scenes, explosions, and very poor translations to english. The villagers will watch these movies almost every night, and because many of them do not know english well enough to watch an entire movie all in english with a plot, they watch the films for the explosions and action. Some of the films I admit...were pretty awesome...others were terrible and the translations would make me cringe. As I was leaving the village, John-Michael told me they watched Spiderman. I kid you not, one of the scenes peter parker yells get out of here. They translated it to "want to go watch a movie with me"? I thought to myself..nay nay...spiderman does not wish to watch a movie with this gentleman...he wishes to shoot webs and punch him in the face.
Overall, my experiences in Kizimkazi were great, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have lived in the village. While it was tough, I feel I am a better person for having gone through the experience. I now have a completely different outlook and perspective, which I have carried with me during the remainder of my research here in Zanzibar. There are so many things in the United States that I rarely consider as blessings. Really, its the little things that I plan to never again take for granted. These include having a chair to sit on instead of concrete, tables, air conditioning, not eating fish and bread 24/7, not having to sleep in mesh prisons known commonly as mosquitoe nets, not hearing a crying baby with a megaphone seemingly built into her vocal chords 24/7, actual showers instead of a ladel with a bucket, clean water, movies that make sense and I can understand, toilets that you can sit on, and of course...actually understanding what everyone around me is saying... yea there is alot to appreciate in the United States
Apologies for the giant post, hope those who are reading enjoyed. I will try and post again about the rest of my experiences for the remainder of my trip. I am actually finishing this post at a place called Mercury's in Stone Town, a restaurant created by Freddie Mercury, the member of queen. Yes marafiki...be jealous...im in a famous restaurant conducting research in the tropics as I hear the ocean waves crash around me (:
