I woke with a start at 4:30 in the morning, feeling something bite my pinkie finger of my left hand!! My finger really stung and after a few minutes I got up and turned on my light. I flipped over my pillow and say a centipede crawl away under the other pillow!! Gross! Even though I had the bed net down, it was able to crawl up my bed and bite me. I tried to swat it, but it was too quick and crawled into my bed frame. After that I couldn’t get back to sleep so I read in bed for an hour, constantly looking over my shoulder to see if it was coming back.
My finger stung for three hours. Luckily it didn’t swell up or turn color so I think it’s alright now.
After talking to Jacob on Skype, I had breakfast and we departed for the office at 8:30.
The GIS training lasted all morning, starting with an hour and a half lecture, then continuing with small groups working on some exercises. I helped people to install the software, upload the data, and answer any questions. By 12:30 everyone was tired and hungry so we ended for the day and had Masoud take us home.
Since we didn’t have anything to eat at home, we decided to go to Mbweni Ruins Hotel (where the pier and yoga are located) for lunch and to see the beach. We changed into our swim suits and walked down there.
If you desire fast service as restaurants, Zanzibar is *not* the place for you since no restaurant has anything prepared in advance. If your dish has rice in it, they will start cooking the rice when the order is placed. Foreigners sometimes joke that the cook is going out to catch the fish that’s in your curry. That’s an over exaggeration, but sometimes they really do have to go down the street to get mangoes for instance. We waited for an hour and a half for our food and were the only people there.
Lunch was great. My prawns came with heads still attached and were served in a poppadum with mango salad on the side.
After lunch we walked along the beach and then sat on some beach chairs. Tanya and Jaclyn tried to use the pool, but got kicked out because it’s for guests only. Since the tide was so low we couldn’t go swimming, but had a nice time hanging out.
On our way home we stopped to get some veggies for dinner then I went to buy fresh water on my bike.
The power was out from 6:45 to 8:15 pm, but since we had such a late lunch we weren’t really that hungry for dinner so it didn’t affect us much. When the lights came back on we read some books and chatted about the news. I went to bed early because I was tired from my centipede attack in the morning.
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