Wazuri si wote, Wabaya si wote

Brace yourselves, this is a long one.

By now I was supposed to have returned to Kenya, but I just had to extend my Zanzibar stay as long as possible because 1). I love love my family & friends here, 2). my Swahili improves DAILY, and 3). I had to see at least the first few days of the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), which starts this Saturday! So I'm still here until the 22nd, and then it's back to Nairobi where I will welcome the fabulous Jahna Lundberg on her first visit to Africa.

The house has been very busy and in flux recently, which I have greatly appreciated because Trisia has abandoned me in the afternoons for a volunteer project. In the last week, we welcomed several new guests at Mama Rahma's houses: an older German woman and an older Norwegian woman, both of whom are studying Swahili at the other school here, and an American girl around my age who came for just a few days and is interning in Arusha. Ironically, she's a grad student at Brandeis in Waltham! Small world. None of them really speak Swahili yet, so I have transitioned into designated interpreter/homework-helper/guide, a role I have been more than happy to take on.

On Tuesday I made my visit to the health clinic with Bibi Fatmeh, the nurse-midwife I had interviewed before, where I met her colleagues and observed some of the services they provide for women in the surrounding villages. There was one German nurse-midwife who has worked there for 4 years, who is so beautifully fluent in Swahili I couldn't help but envy her, but otherwise the staff are all Zanzibari and mostly women. I learned a good deal about some of the services they provide for mothers and children, including weight and height charting, vaccinations, family planning, and educational seminars which change their topic each month. They also do STI/HIV testing and counseling, and blood tests for malaria and sugar levels. There is a separate birthing facility for women who are in labor, another for some limited in-patient services, and they are building an OR which I presume will be used mostly for C-sections and other pregnancy-related emergencies, though perhaps it will be for more general use too. The facilities were very bright, clean and spacious, which in my experience with smaller clinics is usually not the case, and there were a lot of educational materials posted on the walls about good nutrition, the importance of having a birth plan, the different immunizations children receive, etc. Their services are almost all free, or are extremely cheap (Tsh 200 or about 15 cents), so they are accessible to the community. And speaking of accessibility...there is a WORKING AMBULANCE in use for just this one clinic, which pretty much blew my mind. I was told it is available 24/7, as are the services at the birthing house, which I have no reason to doubt. I think that someday, with luck, you will find me working at a clinic like this one.

Wednesday I went on a Spice Tour, an absolute Must Do here. I got to try many of the various fruits and smell the spices straight from the ground/tree, some delicious and some just not my cup of tea. I enjoyed the trip, but unfortunately Trisia and the Zambian crew had all already been on it, so I went with a group of the new SUZA students. They are all nice enough, but aside from one German woman who was a missionary in Tanzania for 14 years, they are beginners, so the tour d r a g g e d o n f o r e v e r with all the translations and word repetitions our guide had to go through. You all know me well enough to imagine me standing there, arms crossed, sighing heavily in my impatience to get on with it!

Saturday there was an impromptu trip to the northernmost tip of Unguja, to a gorgeous beach village called Kendwa. A friend of a friend of Trisia's hooked us up at a hostel called Kendwa Rocks, where there also happened to be a promotional party hosted by the ZIFF organizers and Tusker Malt Lager. We had a fantastic night watching the performances, including a very enthusiastic Michael Jackson impersonator, and dancing til the early hours, followed by a rejuvenating day on the beach. Trisia and I were also overly excited by the prospect of cheeseburgers and veggie stir-fry. Enjoy the pictures I am currently uploading because they almost didn't exist...

I have once again been slapped in the face by a harsh lesson in security. I have been keeping my laptop, books, and various USBs/cords/chargers on the desk in my bedroom, as opposed to hidden with my money and passport, so I could easily access them every day. What I failed to notice was that the 7x7 inch hole in my net-covered window made the smaller items easily accessible to the rest of the world too. Last week, some enterprising young teenagers stole every last charger, cord, and connector that could fit through the hole and promptly sold them to various neighbors. At first, being the daft idiot that I have proven time and again to be, I only noticed that my goofy headlamp was missing. I chalked it up to carelessness on my part, or perhaps one of my little sister's inquisitive young friends, and didn't aggressively pursue the matter. It took three more days before I went to use to my laptop.....and realized there was no charger and all my plug adaptors were gone too. Slowly, my Deadbeat College Graduate brain put things together, and I went to Mama Rahma with my concern. She leaped into action, through word of mouth learned who had taken my things, and promptly called such-and-such parent or older sibling to demand their return or else the police would be involved. What four days of my own polite searching and questioning hadn't accomplished, she managed in less than two hours. The first returned item was my Macbook charger (ALHAMDULILLAH!), which was the only thing they hadn't managed to sell because no one owns an Apple here! And by this point, everything is back besides two plug adaptors, which I accept are my punishment for being so careless.

The worst part of the whole debacle, however, was not when I realized everything was gone, probably for good. My 'Nairobbery' experience in Kenya taught me that things can usually be replaced, and until then you find a way to manage. What really hurt was that these weren't some random thugs in a matatu, they were my neighbors, who I thought I had at least started to build a connection with. And on top of that, the people who bought my things didn't return them out of the kindness of their hearts, they made Mama Rahma buy everything back! Talk about a cycle of injustice! She's such a good, honest person because she didn't even tell me she'd paid for everything. I overheard Bibi mention it in Swahili to someone else, and Mama won't let me pay her back. Just goes to show, 'Wazuri si wote, Wabaya si wote', which is what my Mwalimu always tells me if I've had a rough day (and I've had several, though I have not previously written about them). It means 'Not everyone is good, Not everyone is bad'. Sage words, Mwalimu. Sage words.