Zanzibar and Mzuzu Photos

by Dom on April 29th, 2008

Yes, you read that correctly. I have added photos from my recent trip to Zanzibar and some others I took a few months ago of Mzuzu the biggest town closest to me; and my personal favorite of the three big towns.

Currently I’m just hanging out in Lilongwe. Getting VAC stuff done as well as working on term reports, seeing the doctors about glasses, looking for grad schools and some other things.

Cellphones and Logorithms

by Dom on April 26th, 2008

So my Celtel phone is lost/stolen(gone either way); so any number you have for me that has a 9 in it doesn’t work anymore. Zanzibar was of course good. You can read about it below if you like. Schools been school. Nothing uber spectacular. Just been playing guitar. It was suggested that I learn “Take this job and shove it” by David Allen Coe, to play at the 4th of July celebration, if I play. Still need to look up the tabs, but it should be fun. Got a couple parties coming up.

Made form 2 compete against form 4 in a sudoku puzzle. It was a good time. They did pretty well too I was impressed. Although they have the hardest time differing how to find the degree of a monomial vs. a polynomial. (now I know most of you don’t know what I’m talking about but if I showed you how in a 40min period you’d probably be able to know the difference…I hope.) I’d never heard of a monomial before, but maybe I just don’t remember. Learned the defiintion of a logorithm too. That was crazy; I never knew. Just thought it was some other operation that gave an answer. Although again, I probably just don’t remember.

Zanzibar Finale

by Dom on April 7th, 2008

The trip home was long; and since we were taking a night ferry we had a day to wander with nothing to do so it seemed even longer. The night ferry straight to an all day bus, then stayed a night in Mbeya then took four buses back to Mzuzu. We were a bit tired.

The boat was heaving and someone had a TV on loud the whole night so I got to listen to some super crappy soap opera movie thing. Ridiculous. Saw more elephants and giraffes and impalas as we drove through the park.

Some other tidbits. They had some real great carbonated beverages there. There was one called Bitter Lemon. Yorgos speculated it was their way of making tonic water drinkable. He then enlightened me that it was originally used as an anti-malarial; I noticed it had quinine in it. Of course some med students we met at the beach said they did some calculations and figured you’d have to drink like 40 gallons of tonic water a day for it to be effective. There was also an excellent ginger ale. Very strong.

The sugar cane juice was excellent. They just took sugar cane and ran it through a press a few times putting a lime in with it sometimes. It tasted like lemonade but better.

We met this American grad student who was doing research on the art. I don’t remember exactly but something about how much culture is for sale. There are a lot of generic Masai paintings sold in the shops. By that I mean almost identical paintings in almost every shop. She was trying to figure out why there weren’t many real artists making real art. She showed us some shops though owned by this art co-op. They had some great paintings and drawings. Watercolors and oils and all that, big and small. There was some real good stuff there, it was refreshing.

It was the start of the rainy season so we got wet a lot. I didn’t feel it was worth it to purchase an umbrella mostly because it was just a vacation but also because the streets were so narrow and there were so many awnings that you could almost just stay close to the buildings and stay dry. That is except that some streets would still flood. So you’d be stomping through water up to maybe 8 inches deep. It was mostly clear water, not too muddy so it seemed ok.

It was just nice in general. The people seemed to not notice us and the children seemed clean. It seemed like the standard of living was worlds better though I’m not sure how accurate that is. It was a good trip but I’m glad to be home. Not knowing any of the language really wears on you. Especially when your used to atleast knowing a little.

Hubba soda and Octopus soup

by Dom on April 4th, 2008

So the food here is pretty good. Hubba soda is this strange dark topping on this strange date(fruit) based drink; which to order I was told to say “one to one” or something that sounded like that. No clue. Octopus soup was good too. I had it for lunch yesterday, red like tomato but real lemony. The little suckers kept popping off in my mouth when I’d bite into a tentacle. Good stuff.

The beach was real nice. Expansive white sand with that teal water that you can see through to the floor. Scuba didn’t work out but Yorgos and I did a snorkeling trip and it was beautiful on the reef except for all the broken coral. Saw a lot of very colorful fish but I know jack about fish so who knows what they were…besides colorful that is. There was this crazy Italian only place right down the beach from us. That’s about all there is to say about that. Laid in the hammocks a lot, got a little burnt, played a lot of bao and pool and swam a good bit. Life at the beach huh.

The rainy season is just starting here and so it’s a good time to be heading out. It’s been a great trip