city life in Zanzibar

Hi there dear readers! It's Elisa here. I think it's about time I also write something in this blog…

My mates here have already been writing about what's been going on over here during the first weeks, but I guess you'd like to read some new stories, am I wrong?

First of all, I gotta say that life here in Zanzibar is not as bad as it sounds, but you have to take things easy, dip yourself into this hakuna matata mentality they all have over here, and, of course, realize that you're not in Europe anymore, you're in Africa now, and that everything here is different.

Needless to say, there are lots of handicaps that make any research here even more complicated than usual… from arranging a meeting with your supervisor, to get hold of some sampling gear, everything can take what it feels like forever. But as one of our supervisors told us after one of our days of desperation for not being able to get things on time: "if ecological field studies in a developing country were easy, everybody would be doing them". So I guess we just have to try our best, and feel lucky for having this amazing opportunity!

But despite all the chaos we're encountering so far regarding our project, these last week we've finally got some time to chill, relax, and enjoy life in Zanzibar as any other tourist.

Last Monday we left Nungwi, and we finally moved to our apartment in Stone Town, even though it's not our real apartment, just a arrangement until the 27th when the girls staying in our apartment leave. By the way, those two girls are also Swedish and I already knew them from before; what a small world! (ok, maybe not such a big coincidence considering that I already knew one of them was coming…).

Anyway... what was I saying? Ah, yes, moving to town… Well, we have been here for more than a week now, and I can assure you that it has made a huge difference for us! Now we finally have a place we can call home, a place on our own, where we can spend the time doing whatever we want.

Living in town also have some other advantages, like having more than one shop where to buy food or being able to go to the ATM any time you need more money (if any of the six ATMS in town works of course...). Here there are also lots of great bars and restaurants where one can have a drink or a meal for a pretty fair price while enjoying an amazing view of the bay. One of those places is the Africa House, a fancy hotel located only 4 minutes away from our apartment and where, in a terrance on the second floor, they have the Sunset Bar with lovely views, great service and drinks served in a coconut! (we still have to try those though…). We have decided that the Africa House is the place where we'll have all our meetings from now on; because, why would you want to discuss about work at home or at the office when you can do it sitting on a comfy couch, contemplating the sea, and with a waiter coming to your table once every 30 minutes to bring you a new drink? But in case you are more up in the mood for a Friday night out, let's go to Livingstone's! Awesome bar by the beach, where one can sit outside listening to the murmur of the waves and have a drink, or go inside where locals and wazungu chat a dance together in a fun mixed atmosphere.

Shopping is one of the other things that we are quite enjoying from being in town. So many shops, so many cool things! But we should be careful and try to save some money, and also, we still have about 2 more months here... so for the moment we just bought some clothes we needed (or wanted). Souvenir shopping will be done later on, although there are so many things I want that I have no idea how will I manage to fit any stuff in my rucksack! Also, we still need to improve our haggle skills before we dare to buy in any of these little shops… one should never pay what they actually ask for!

And I think that's all for the moment. Tomorrow we are moving to the new apartment, and a new weekend is almost here! Unfortunately our project is not going much better for now, so wish us best luck! Hopefully next spring tide will be able to finally do some proper sampling.

We´ll be back soon with more news!

Elisa.

PD: sorry there're not many photos in this post, but we haven't taken that many here in Stone Town yet… we'll post some pictures soon :)
For the moment, you can check out my photos on Flickr if you like, or read some more stories in my blog (sorry it's in Spanish!)

Water in Zanzibar

We are on Zanzibar now (Sunday January 15) in a village called Nungwi on the northern tip of Zanzibar Island, and we have lived here since Wednesday 4 January.

So the thing about living in Africa is that it is extremely hot which means we need to drink water all the time. We flew for eight hours from Turkey to Dar Es Salaam where we took a ferry to the biggest town on Zanzibar called Stonetown (hereafter called “town”) where we arrived on Wednesday around 9:30. We had to arrange many things at the Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS) and around the town before we could travel to our temporary apartment at our Swedish supervisor’s home in Nungwi, which is almost 2 hours drive from Stonetown, and get the first rest after our journey. This is when we first felt the strong need to drink water and we always carry around many bottles of water from now on. Because of the strong heat we are constantly sweating and our clothes and sheets are always dirty. Every night there is a power cut that happens all around Zanzibar to save electricity. When this happens at night and the fans in the bedrooms stop it is impossible to sleep and we sweat even more. To make the dehydration worse, all of us have had diarrhea. This is frustrating because it makes the work with our project harder. Below is a picture from our second day in Zanzibar of us having drinks while disinfecting our worst wounds, wearing the first hats we could find to protect us from the sun.

In Africa there is also a water shortage, which we have to deal with in our everyday life here. We cannot drink the tap water and it is not available at all times. Therefore we have to save it when we have it, which we do in a big bucket in our shower room. We wash ourselves and our clothes with a scoop from the bucket and often flush the toilet with the same water. It is inconvenient, but we hope we will get used to it.

Another thing about water in Zanzibar is of course the reason why we are here, to do marine biological research in the ocean which means we are going to spend many hours under water. The first night in Nungwi was short, we did not get the rest we needed and instead woke up early to have a planning meeting with our supervisor Lina about our research project. We moved out of her apartment four days ago and she left for Sweden shortly afterwards, which meant we had to maximize our time with Lina right from the start. We were physically exhausted and suffering from the culture chock and really did not want to start working immediately, but already on Thursday afternoon we went snorkeling in the seagrass meadow, starting to learn the species. We have snorkeled almost every day, trying to refine our method for the fieldwork, but we have also spent some of our time running errands in town. These visits to town are frustrating, because they always involve us having to ask the people at IMS to do things for us. The mentality of the people here is far different from anything us Europeans are used to. The fundi at IMS, the carpenter who is hired to make whatever field equipment the researchers might need, was supposed to make a number of items for us that we would pick up on Monday so we could do our first sampling test in field early on Tuesday morning when the tide was good. The only thing he had accomplished on Monday was scribbling on a paper a list of how much money he wanted for the work and telling us that the material for our plastic sampling corers was going to be very expensive. We then had to go to town to buy material ourselves, and the equipment was not ready until Wednesday. This meant we could not try them out with our supervisor but we went out in the field on Tuesday anyways because we had already rented a boat with a skipper. The fieldwork was further hindered by our diseases and the skipper who was two hours late which meant we missed the sampling at high tide. We discovered big problems with the field methods which we might have to change completely.

The last four days, however, things on Zanzibar have become better. On Wednesday we were happily surprised to find our ordered field equipment, though late, made ready by the fundi in town. This meant we had time to buy several handy items in town, among other things a machete for about 1 Euro to take seagrass samples with, which Floriaan was very happy about. In the afternoon we moved out of Lina’s apartment and into new rooms right on the beach where we work. It’s an awesome place where the touristy resorts are not visible and the rooms belong to a turtle conservation pond which means we can cuddle turtles whenever we want. The place is situated a short but very nice walk along the beach from our favorite restaurant, where we have enjoyed fresh seafood and cocktails with a view of the sunset four nights in a row. The only down side is that we have to walk back from the restaurant through the dusty, poor and dark village of Nungwi. Usually this is no problem, there are plenty of people in the street and children playing around, but last night on the last stretch home, two teenagers tried to snatch Elisa’s bag. Luckily the bag broke and the contents (a phone and some mosquito repellent) fell out and the thieves only had a broken bag as a prize.

This might all sound pretty negative, but it doesn’t take away the fact that this place is breathtakingly beautiful and we think that our stay here is a very good experience and we are learning a lot.

Travelling to Zanzibar

First off, we'd like to introduce ourselves. We are all students at the Masters program in Marine Biology at Stockholm University, now doing our thesises for the department of Systems Ecology. Michaela is Swedish, has taken the Bachelors program in Biology and Earth Science and has only been outside of Europe to visit relatives in the Philippines. Elisa is Spanish, did her Bachelors degree in Marine Sciences in Spain and has never been outside Europe. Floriaan is Dutch, did a Bachelors degree in Coastal Zone Management from Holland and has never been outside of Europe.

Yesterday, on Monday, we flew from Stockholm to Istanbul to make a transit for our next flight to Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. At Arlanda airport we had our first problem: Both Floriaan's Swedish and Dutch debit cards did not work when he tried taking out US Dollars from the Exchange Office. We went to his Swedish bank's office at Arlanda Sky City and took care of the problem quite smoothly. The flight was uneventful with a screaming baby in the seat in front of us. Luckily, whenever the baby got a look at Floriaan's face she stopped screaming and just stared in awe at him. Another good thing on the plane was the free booze.

We arrived to Istanbul around 21:00 and started looking for a place to sleep on the airport since our next flight to Dar-es-Salaam would not take off until 18:10 on Tuesday. We found a "Transit information" desk at the airport and asked the woman there if she had any tips on how to entertain ourselves for 20 hours. She gave directions to a room downstairs which looked a bit like a basement with security control. We started thinking we had the wrong place, but luckily a man called for us and started handling our boarding passes. He said something about Turkish Airlines providing us with a free stay at a five-star hotel with free transport and breakfast, but it sounded like he was joking. The following hour we were being ushered around the airport by different Turkish Airlines staff, getting Turkish visas and so on. At one point a woman asked us "How many rooms would you like?" and we replied "One room for the three of us". Of course we want to share everything! Later we realised we could have gotten one room each for free. We ended up in a taxi which drove us through Istanbul for a very long time. Seeing Istanbul at night was very exciting since none of us has been in a Muslim country before this, but the most exciting part was when the taxi pulled over in front of the five-star hotel, with the flashy marble and glass entrance and the neat ushers welcoming us. "No way!" we all said, and with big smiles on our faces a man explained that someone will drive us back to the airport tomorrow afternoon. We installed ourselves in our room and then went down to the Lobby for drinks.


This morning we woke up in the comfy hotel beds to a great view of Istanbul from our window and enjoyed nice showers and a free Turkish breakfast buffet. Being stuffed after breakfast we took a nap and some tea in our room. Soon we'll be heading back to the airport and our flight to Africa.

Cheers from Istanbul!

Michaela, Elisa, Floriaan


For pictures of the hotel there's a website: http://www.akgunhotel.com/ImageGallery.aspx