Zanzibar Finale

Posted in Travel 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.