I ate a fish head – even the eyeballs…

As you may have surmised from earlier blog posts, September is the holy month of Ramadan where Muslims fast between fast between sunrise and sunset (and by fast I mean no food, no water and no sex). At the end of each day after the call to prayer Muslims break fast with Iftaar (also known as Fotari). Our Aga Khan Foundation coordinator was nice enough to invite us into his home to join him and his family for Iftaar and it was quite an experience. First, we ate just with him as his wife and children ate elsewhere, I gather there were a lot of children over that night so they kept them separate. We sat on the floor and ate with our hands and did we ever eat. The food was amazing!

There were potatoes and beef and these mash potato things that are just amazing and noodles (but cooked with sugar which I have to say I still find a little strange), and these dough balls with honey (amazing!) and a maize porridge (kind of reminds me of congee) and fried fish – like the whole fish. Now I took the fish not even thinking about eating the head but then I glanced over at me host’s plate and saw that all that was left was the backbone. So I was like: “shoot, now I have to eat the whole thing too!” But I wasn’t really sure how to go about doing that – like do you put the whole thing in your mouth or take bites or what? Thankfully, my host noticed my dilemma and kindly offered to show me how to eat a fish head. His advice: small bites and chew slowly. And you start at the back of the head and then the bottom and save the top of the head for last. Not bad actually, although the eyeball was a bit squishy.

The House of Comforts

So the new intern arrived two weeks ago and one week ago we moved into our new place. Now usually I hate moving with an unparalleled passion…it makes me very grumpy. But this time I was actually really looking forward to it (mostly because I was tired of losing the battle over the soap with the mice in my first apartment). My new home is right behind the central market – great location, right next to all the fresh produce and the grocery store (that actually just got a huge shipment of packaged chocolate chip cookies!). And of course it has the obligatory Mosque close by…and it being the holy month of Ramadan, we get a lovely extended version of the call to prayer at 5am…and as a bonus feature there’s an Anglican Church on the other side that rings its bells at 6am. Gotta love being so central!

But there are no mice (at least that I’ve seen – knock on wood) and while there may be birds in the ceiling you can’t hear them that much. Plus I now have a kitchen and a fridge (although with the market so close there’s not really any point in stocking up on anything because you can buy it fresh every day – so the contents of our fridge consist of some vegetables, like eight 1.5L bottles of water, juice and yoghurt…and chocolate of course). There’s also an oven-type appliance (something of a cross between a toaster oven and an oven) and my new goal in life is to learn how to make cookies in it. Unfortunately you can’t get chocolate chips here but since my Dad was nice enough to write me an email about how he was going to bake his amazing peanut butter cookies (that was really nice of you Dad!) I thought I’d try too, just to show him up. I’m thinking peanut butter cookies with a big chunk of Cadbury chocolate in the middle of each one…I’ll let you know how it goes (unless they don’t work at all, in which case forget that you read all of this).

Plus there’s a shower in my new place so last Saturday I got my first real shower in over 2 months – it was magical. AND the day after we moved in they installed a heater so I got a hot shower, I feel so spoiled! But then I realized that the hot shower is too hot and not really all that comfortable because it turns the bathroom into a sauna and you overheat really badly so you have to finish with a blast of cold water. But whatever, I have hot water.

When we discussed the terms of our stay and our rent with them they asked us what we wanted to change in the house – aka furniture, appliances, decorations…not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings we told them that the place was great (which it is) and that we were happy with it the way it was. The decorations though are definitely something – they totally add to the character of the house. Our living room is graced with a giant picture of some Tanzanian beauty queen or someone like that and right next to it is a lovely picture of our landlady, all dressed up including the henna designs. To the right of the paintings is an awesome statue of a camel that we made sure to keep well displayed since it’s pretty awesome and on the opposite wall is an awesome sign that reads: Beit al Raha, literally translating to: House of Comfort (or bliss, contentment, enjoyment, entertainment, joy, peace, quiet, and rest). We tried to make our house live up to its name (or at least some of them) our first night there and had some people over – a full house plus a box of Konyagi baggies (papaya alcohol that often comes in 250ml bags – very classy) certainly seemed to do the trick.

The family lives right next us and they are so nice – and super relaxed and casual (as evidenced by the bottles of Bacardi and champagne that we found in our fridge to first day – at first we though they were gifts for us but when we checked they took them back pretty quickly). But they brought us traditional fotari food (for breaking fast during Ramadan) on our first day and they are so friendly that it’s just great. I try to practice my Kiswahili with them and they’re nice enough to humour me but I’m pretty sure they don’t understand half of what I’m saying. But sometimes they understand me and reply, but then I have to idea what they say back so I just smile and nod.

And so begins the House of Comforts stage of my journey here.

So you're in Zanzibar...and what are you doing?

I’ve had a lot of questions about what exactly I’m doing here in Zanzibar (and yes, it is more than lying on tropical beaches and swimming in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean…) so I thought I’d use this blog to describe a little bit about my job.

Through the Aga Khan Foundation Canada I was placed at the NGO Resource Centre (NGO RC) Zanzibar. The NGO RC is a project of the Aga Khan Foundation and works to improve civil society and organizational capacity (so strengthen civil society and the environment in which it operates), primarily on the two islands of Zanzibar (Unguja and Pemba) but they have also recently expanded their operations to two provinces on the mainland and hope to continue this expansion until they reach all of Tanzania.

Permanent staff in my office include: Director, Deputy Project Director, two project officers, a monitoring and evaluation officer, and the administrative assistant. Beyond that there is myself, a local intern from Tanzania mainland and a VSO (volunteer) from the UK.

My official title is Communications Officer, although that’s not quite accurate. My job is to support the work of the project officers as well as the Directors. So far I have written an entire project proposal (including logical framework analysis!) for submission to Google.Org (the foundation arm of Google) for a project to geo-reference water and sanitation service provision in Zanzibar (we’re still waiting to hear back). I have completed background research for an upcoming project on food vulnerability in Zanzibar (funds pending). I have also produced a communications document that will explain who the organization is and what is does that will be distributed to stakeholders and potential donors. There’s also a lot of editing work to be done because English writing skills are somewhat low here. Most recently I worked on a research paper on the dynamics of community participation in local governance structures in Zanzibar. My organization also maintains a database for civil society organizations which I am responsible for updating and monitoring. So those are the major projects that I have been working on.

My organization also has a strong focus on youth and development so I have visited the Zanzibar Youth Forum to talk to people there and to discuss upcoming projects and events. With the help of the NGO RC the Zanzibar Youth Forum just recently lobbied successfully for the creation of the first National Youth Policy in Zanzibar.

As for projects in progress, I have been asked to develop some ideas for a compilation of partnership stories as told by organizations affiliated with the NGO RC. This would involve interviews and discussions to get the stories and then finding a creative and accessible way of making them available to the public – could be very interesting! I am also developing an annual report for my organization since they don’t have one yet and I think that it would be beneficial for them to have one so that they can distribute it to donors and stakeholders every year. And we’re also waiting for funding to be approved for various projects and once things are confirmed I’m hoping to get involved in the development and implementation of these projects (especially the Google one because how cool would it be to work with Google?!?!).

So there you have it, it’s kind of a little bit of a lot of things, but such, as I understand it, is life of an employee of a non-government organization. So far it’s been an interesting journey learning to work in a different country with a working and office culture that is significantly different from home.

"Ladies Only"

In my eternal quest (well at least off and on quest) to stay at least somewhat healthy while traveling – especially since living overseas tends to give me huge cravings for burgers, chips, sodas and chocolate – I sometimes find myself in some somewhat strange situations. I found myself in one such situation about a week ago…looking down a dimly lit hallway, listening the hum of machinery and wincing just slightly as Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” blared from overhead speakers (just slightly because it’s one of their favorite songs here and you hear it everywhere and I think/hope that I’m becoming numb to it by now). Where am I? Well this is the gym.

First of all, just finding a gym or place to exercise was a quest in and of itself. Stone Town is a tourist town I thought to myself at first, how hard can it be to find a gym? The first few people I asked got this “really amused but like they were trying to contain it” sort of smirk on the faces when I asked them where I could find a gym….they suggested I try the hotels. But apparently none of the hotels here feel that they need to have a gym so that was a dead end (they wouldn’t even let me pay to use their pools!) so I asked around some more and had some people outright laugh at me and not even bother to answer. I tried looking around to see if there was a place where people run or jog but the dominant trend here seems to be that boys and men can run around but you don’t see women doing that. You don’t even see women or girls at the soccer fields watching the boys play…so that was another dead end.

My last attempt led us (I somehow formed a group of girls looking to exercise) about 15 minutes out of town (walking) to a run down super sketchy looking hotel where we were told we would find a fitness centre. And then right after being told this we were also told that under no circumstances should we be anywhere near there after dark. After poking around a bit we did finally find it and we went inside to look around. The first impression is quite promising actually (minus the blaring Barbie Girl song): a big open room, exercise equipment, fans (a totally necessary appliance) but then we take a closer look and realize that there are no women to be seen…although there were quite a few men, many of whom came over to side of the gym to try and strike up a conversation as we walked past…awkward!

We talk to the guy at the front desk and ask him if we can work out here and he promptly points us to the end of the hall. So we wander down the aforementioned dimly lit hallway and come to a door with the sign: “ladies only”. We go through the door and find another narrow hallway with a small room with some exercise equipment and a few women walking on the treadmills and pedaling on the bikes. It’s a segregated gym we realize, we have to work out at the back of the building behind closed doors so that nobody sees us. This is fine, we have women only gyms back home too and sometimes they do provide a much more comfortable atmosphere for working out. What I’m struck by though is that while the men’s side of the gym is large and open with many machines, the women’s side is a narrow room with hardly any equipment and half of it broken and the fans don’t seem to go past the lowest speed setting (first thing we tried to do!). But fine, I wait for my turn on the treadmill and hop on, and then almost go flying off as I hit a bump. The equipment is apparently quite old and it felt like running on a bumpy road where you always have to watch where you’re putting your feet. But it felt so good to exercise after over a month of not really doing any cardio that I soon found my rhythm and was able to release my death grip on the hand rails and eventually managed to get a pretty good workout.

Our second visit was even more successful. We arrived and started out on the exercise machines but then all of these women began arriving and hastily stripping off their buibuis (the robe-style garments that the women wear that cover them from head to feet) revealing exercise clothes underneath and then filing into the adjoining room chatting very animatedly. So we decided to follow them to see what was going on and we ended up joining the aerobics class. For about 45 minutes in the afternoon heat and in a room without a fan, we jumped and stepped and turned in time with about 8 other women and it was really really fun! We basically laughed our way through the entire class and they in turn laughed right back at us, but they seemed really happy to have us there and made sure to invite us back. I don’t know how great the workout actually was but I feel like I sweated enough to at least pretend that I’d worked out hard.

And considering how conservative the society is known to be here, considering how we work out at the end of the hallway behind closed doors, the class was actually quite….liberating? I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but the instructor had us moving our hips and doing these crazy twists (or at least trying to because my hips definitely don’t move like that as they are firmly attached to the rest of my body) and jumping up and down and then at one point we were literally just dancing around out steps for like 5 minutes!

Walking out I was again struck by the difference between the two sides of the gym…I mean maybe it’s because more men work out then women here…but they definitely have the better space (at least they’re not put in a closed room!) and equipment. But then, we have the aerobics class and that will definitely keep me coming back. So there.

I’ve attached a picture of our side of the gym…I would have tried to get a picture of the men’s side, just for comparison’s sake, but I wasn’t sure how much they’d appreciate that and I wanted to be allowed back in later.