The final student in our group, Hai, arrived on Saturday morning and since I was the only one dressed at 9 am, I went to the airport with the taxi driver to get him. Jaclyn was still sick so she spent most of the day in her room and Tanya left just after we got home to hang out with one of her friends at the beach so I was left with Hai. And the power was out for several hours.
Because I had to go to the airport then show Hai around, I missed all of the films I wanted to see that day. The power was still out at noon so I decided to bike to town for lunch and to write my last few postcards. Hai wanted to come so he borrowed Tanya’s bike and we were off.
We had lunch at Lazuli’s (I know, but if you had their juice, you’d go back every day too) then I showed him around town a bit. The movies that were playing in the afternoon didn’t seem very interesting so we just came home around 4 pm.
In the evening, Tanya and I went to Paulo and Deler’s birthday party which was just down the street from our house. We both agreed that it was good that Jaclyn was sick because she gave a bad first and second impression to Paulo and we didn’t want to bring her to the party. Hai went to sleep at 5 pm so we didn’t feel bad for leaving him at home.
The party was excellent! I knew or at least had met many of the people there so the conversation was good and interesting. They also served the most amazing food, much of which they prepared themselves. There were two kinds of rice, an octopus stew, eggplant stuffed with ground beef and spices, curried vegetables, mandazi, samosas, a potato dish I don’t know the name of, and bread, plus plenty of drinks. It was enough food to feed an army but there were only 20 of us. We all over indulged. Then there was chocolate cake, peanut bars, and a type of fried dough covered in sugar for dessert. The food was out of control.
Around 12:30 the party was starting to wind down so Tanya suggested we go to Bawani, the one club in Zanzibar. We rallied the troops and piled in to three cars and drove to town. Bawani is on the roof of a building that used to be a hotel. I’m not quite sure what is inside the building anymore, but they have added a bar to the roof and set up speakers. There’s also an empty pool on the roof that’s about 15 feet deep. A flimsy railing warns people to beware but Tanya said that wasn’t even there last year and I wondered how many tipsy people have fallen in on accident.
We danced for an hour and a half. I only recognized a few of the songs but some of them were certainly American, many of the others were in Swahili. It was really interesting to see the local guys dance and try to break into our group. Despite being outdoors it was really hot and I sweated so much. They turned off the music promptly at 2 am so that was our cue to go. I went to bed around 3 am, which is by far the latest I have stayed up since coming here. I had so much fun and am really glad that I went. It was my best night in Zanzibar yet.