In my last post, I said I would be spending a month in Zanzibar, Tanzania teaching English and other things.  I got back from this amazing trip in the middle of June, and can’t wait to tell you all about it. For the geography impaired (me), Tanzania is on the east coast of Africa, under the horn.  Zanzibar is an island on the northern end in the Indian ocean.  

OACS organizes this trip every year, called the Zanzibar Project.  Eleven of us went together for 30 days of teaching, interacting with others, and lounging on the beach.  Ten of us met in DC on Mother’s Day (my mom was thrilled…) and headed out.  After what seemed like a million hours of flying, we finally touched down on the island.  We got off the plane and were greeted with miserable humidity and heat, and the clouds were grey.  It wasn’t too long before it started raining.  Turns out, we were there during the rainy season, meaning that for the first half of our trip, it either poured down rain or was unbearably hot.  It rained the first six days in a row.  Great.

After we got our visas, we headed out to Creative Solutions (CSRS).  The roads were all lined with rivers of water from all the rain: it seemed like the town was flooding.  It took about an hour for us to get from Zanzibar Town up north to Mangapwani, where we were living.  The compound was welcoming, exotic, and beautiful.  Aida and Mbarouk, the directors of CSRS were very excited to have us there.

We unloaded all of our luggage (believe me, there was a TON), and moved into our house, which was similar to the one on the left (the right is the school in which we taught).  We had a nice, 5 bedroom, 6 bathroom house with an indoor kitchen and a dining room.  It was luxurious living, especially compared to many of the surrounding mud-and-stick huts or cinderblock houses.  Naturally we were starving, so we went to the kitchen for some dinner: fish heads and coconut rice!  Did I mention I don’t like rice?  It was certainly an adventure for sure, and it was only our first day!  So many more good events were to come.