We had the best of luck with the weather this weekend, which I just realized is Memorial weekend back home! Our weekend adventure to the Zanzibar archipelago is coming to an end, and we’ll back in Kisarawe tonight. We had a fun day and a half getaway, but I think we’re all also very eager to get back to work in the hospital this week and look at the remaining broken equipment as well as plan the rest of our outreach trips to more rural villages. I fly out on Thursday so that only gives us three full days of work here before Katie and Nathan return for two additional weeks.
We woke up this morning in a small town called Bwejuu on the eastern shore of Zanzibar to a perfect beach day. The sun came out and there were no rain clouds in sight (contrary to the weather report)! We spent a good part of the morning and afternoon relaxing on the beach. As it was low tide, there were all sorts of sea life in the tide pools, including sea urchins, sea cucumbers, starfish, crabs, and clams. There were also a ton of beautiful seashells everywhere! Nathan ventured out with the GoPro to capture some wildlife footage, while Katie stayed higher up on the swings to enjoy her book. I definitely had intentions to lie out and read my book as well, but I noticed a ton of school-aged local children digging around in the sand. When I asked them what they were doing, they explained that they were digging for chazas, tiny little clams, to eat. So, I ended up spending a good part of the morning helping them dig for clams and playing games. Apparently hopscotch is a universal game! I also taught them how to build sandcastles, which seemed like a new concept to them.
After lunch and checking out of our hotel, we headed over to the Jozani forest to hike around and find some wild red and black colobus monkeys. These small and curious monkeys are special to Zanzibar and are protected by the government, so many of them will let you get really close. The park ranger actually kept urging me to get closer to a small female red colobus to get a good picture, but I chickened out before the monkey did! We saw a ton of these wild monkeys, as well as several juveniles still sticking close to their mamas. Sadly, we also saw several missing an arm or part of tail, and the park ranger explained that before they had set up speed bumps on the road through the forest, monkeys would stick their hands or tails too close to the cars and get injured (no worries, there are plenty of speed bumps in the road now).
After hiking through the monkey trails and mangrove trees for an hour and half, we headed to Stone Town. There wasn’t a ton to do here (plus we were carrying our heavy backpacks), so after walking around for an hour, we settled down at a little park to watch the beautiful sunset over the water.
Now it’s back to the airport (which, by the way has to be the smallest airport I’ve ever been to), flying into Dar es Salaam, and driving back to Kisarawe for the night!
Cheers from TZ,
~Irene
