Our second car was still at the shop so only one group went out mapping on Thursday. Since Jaclyn isn’t good at communicating her feelings or desires it wasn’t until Makame was at our house waiting that it was decided that Jaclyn and Hai would go to the field while Tanya and I went to the office again. I don’t know what I can do to make the situation better because every conversation I have with Jaclyn is awkward and forced.
Tanya continued working on the final reports while I did more data entry and organized things in the office. It was a pretty boring day and I already forget the details even though it was just yesterday. It was successful though because we got everything printed and entered and were ready to go home by 4:30. We saw Sarel and Ishen, the South Africans we had dinner with on Tuesday, and told them about Quiz night at Mercury’s that evening. They said they would try to come if their dinner meeting got done early.
Just when we got home and I salted the eggplant to have in a pasta sauce, the power went out. There went cooking dinner. That meant going out to eat in town for the third day in a row. Jaclyn said she didn’t want dinner so the three of us took the dalla dalla and went to Lazuli’s where I had another amazing mango banana juice and a chapatti filled with seafood curry. It was so delicious, and I think the best value for food in town.
After dinner we went to Mercury’s and met up with all of the wazungu (white people). Sarel and Ishen were there and Jaclyn came as well so the six of us played on a team. The categories were “basic science”, “man land”, “assassinations and executions” and “miscellaneous”. We chose “basic science” to count for double but I was a bit disappointed in some of the questions, like “what does DVD stand for?” I don’t consider that science. But there were some good ones, like “at what temperature do the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales intersect?” (-40 in case you didn’t know). There was also a bonus sheet where your team had to draw some country flags, name the 5 countries outside of Europe that start with “L”, name the 5 European capitals that have 4 letters in their names, and write in the name of the country based on it’s outline. Overall, I thought it was better than the first quiz night. Our team came in second out of seven, which was not too bad.
When the quiz was over most people went home but we decided to go out to a whiskey bar called Tatu that Sarel and Ishen had discovered next to their hotel. It was near 11 pm then and the party was just getting started at Tatu (which is the number 3 in Swahili because it’s on the third floor). We met some medical students from the UK and Ireland and watched some older ladies dance in the corner. We tried a few of the many whiskies they have available then I had a margarita while the others had beer. The owner of the bar was there, acting as DJ with his iPod so I requested a few songs and got the entire bar on their feet, singing “Livin’ on a Prayer”.
Our conversations were really good and before we knew it, 3 am had come and gone. By that time we were getting hungry again, so we went to Sarel and Ishen’s hotel, the Serena (the most expensive hotel in Zanzibar) and ordered grilled chicken and chips (French fries) then swam in the pool while our food was being prepared.
It was the most outrageous night and it ended with us arriving at home in a taxi just as the morning call to prayer went off (at 5:15 am). I haven’t stayed up that late in ages. We had gotten most of our work done for Friday but Sarel and Ishen had to give a presentation to everyone at ZMCP at 2 pm! But sometimes when you are having such a good time, it’s worth the pain you know you will suffer the following day and this evening was worth it.