Since one of the trucks was out of commission with a broken clutch, we could only get one car for Wednesday. Tanya and I decided to go to the office while Jaclyn and Hai went with Makame to hold our last community meeting and to map a few cases in the area. It was a nice change of pace for me since I got to ride my bike after my morning run but I felt bad for Tanya because she’s been in the office every day dealing with all of the issues involving ending the research study and this is not what she signed up for this summer. But no one else knows what needs to be done or how to do it. I had some training when I first arrived, so I’ve been able to help, but I still defer to Tanya on many things.

I worked on writing a report of our mapping progress in May and June while Tanya made certificates for the 94 health care workers who have been enrolling patients in the study. The morning flew by quickly and in the afternoon I worked on data entry which was piling up quickly while Tanya made final reports for all of the health facilities.

Jaclyn and Hai came back in the early afternoon and again Jaclyn wouldn’t look at us and didn’t listen to anything we had to say. We were both very frustrated with her. They planned for the next day while we worked on our projects. I didn’t see them for a while so I thought they had gotten a ride home, but then I saw Hai sleeping on the couch in the hallway and Jaclyn sitting next to him waiting. I was embarrassed for them and me. How inconsiderate to fall asleep at work, especially since Hai has not even been introduced to most people. They were on the couch for nearly an hour, doing nothing and not even trying to help us.

Tanya and I were two of the last to leave work and when we got home we agreed it was time for a swim. High tide was mid-afternoon which made swimming perfect. We spent quite a while in the water and when we were getting out I realized that I had done a reverse triathlon that day: I started with a run, then biked to and from work, then ended with a swim! I had earned some good dinner.

A few days before (when I was really frustrated with Jaclyn and feeling like I needed to socialize with other people) I had e-mailed this girl, Amee, who I met through Tanya’s friends. Amee is from Indian and I love her negative, no-nonsense attitude; she’s not afraid to tell it like it is. We had agreed to get dinner on Wednesday at La Taverna, the best Italian restaurant in Zanzibar. I invited Tanya to join me but didn’t include Jaclyn and Hai because I needed to get away from them.

The two of us took the dalla dalla into town but got to the restaurant a bit late and didn’t see Amee there. We got her phone number from Tanya’s friend and found out that she had just e-mailed to say she was stuck at work late and couldn’t make it! We decided to have dinner there anyway because we were hungry and the reputation was good.
I really like Tanya and have always felt like we were on the same page but that was cemented tonight when she suggested we share a vegetable pizza and pumpkin ravioli. It was like she was reading my mind; that’s exactly what I wanted to do. And we totally made the right call. The grilled vegetables on the pizza were perfectly cooked and the pumpkin filling was so tasty. The meal came with bread and breadsticks with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I haven’t had olive oil since coming here (it’s really expensive and everyone uses sunflower oil to cook) and it was so good. We also shared half a liter of red South African wine which was the icing on the cake. It was so good to get out and talk freely and be happy. I am definitely going back there.

We took the dalla dalla home for the first time to save money on a taxi and only overshot our house by a few hundred meters before we could indicate that we wanted to get off. Overall, a most enjoyable evening.

On Tuesday we had two cars going into the field again, one going to Uzi at 7:30 and the other going to Tunguu at 8:30 am. On Sunday night we agreed that I’d go to Tunguu and that Jaclyn would go to Uzi and Hai would go with one of us. After she learned on Monday night that the car going to Uzi would be leaving so early, Jaclyn did say a word to anyone and stormed off to her room. The situation didn’t look good so on Tuesday I skipped running so that I could be ready to go at 7:30 just in case Jaclyn wasn’t ready. It’s a good thing I did that because she didn’t emerge from her room until 7:15 and when I asked Jaclyn if she would be ready to go, she replied, “Well, I never wanted to go to Uzi in the first place.” Like that was even an answer to my question. And why hadn’t she said that on Sunday when we were planning? I knew that she was worried about having to wait for the tide to go down before coming home but sitting in the car is not hard and I had already done it.

I decided to take the high road and not argue and volunteered to switch with her. I thought the coral road would be a neat experience for Hai so I told him to come with me. Makame and Juma picked us up at 7:45 and we headed off.
We made the final turn off and were just a few hundred meters from the start of the coral road when the truck started slowing down and Juma pulled to the side of the road. The clutch on the truck broke and we couldn’t go anywhere!!
Makame and Juma called another ZMCP driver to come fetch us but we waited for nearly an hour on the side of the road. Finally the other truck arrived and we piled into that one and booked it to Uzi. On the way Makame told me that there weren’t that many cases to map and we would be leaving before high tide and not after, making it a short day instead of a long one. It’s a good thing Jaclyn didn’t hear that.

We met up with the Sheha and two of his assistants and rushed from house to house, marking way points in a hurry. Instead of walking everywhere, we drove from place to place when possible to save time. I taught Hai how to mark the coordinates and what to write on our data collection sheets. The Shehas knew we were in a hurry and they would start walking back to the truck while Makame was still talking to the malaria patient. It was certainly the most efficient mapping ever.

We left Uzi with plenty of time to spare and didn’t even see water wash over the road. On the way back we stopped at the broken truck where the other driver was still waiting and they hooked the trucks together to tow the broken one back to the office. I don’t think there are any tow trucks on Zanzibar. The other driver stayed in the broken truck and steered while being towed, but it was still a bit scary when we made some turns and the back truck didn’t quite turn with us.

We also picked up a girl who was walking along the coral road toward town. She didn’t speak any English but could write a bit so she and I exchanged messages on our cell phones! She was in secondary school and needed to go to Stone Town to borrow a book from a friend so she could study for a college entrance exam. I didn’t ask how long it would have taken her to get to town if we had not picked her up.

Back at the office Tanya had her hands full with Plasmotrack stuff so I helped her as much as I could since I knew a bit about it. Tanya told me that after Hai and I left, she biked to the office and a bit later Jaclyn arrived there office because our other field coordinator, Madja, had not gotten to work yet. Tanya had a lot to do because two district supervisors were there demanding supplies but instead of helping Jaclyn just sat down stairs for an hour until Madja came. I shook my head at the news.

When Jaclyn got back from her mapping she wouldn’t even look at us and was in a very sour mood. We just let her do her own thing and tried to stay out of her way.

Hai, Jaclyn and I got a ride home from one of the drivers and Tanya came back shortly after us. Hai announced that he was going into town to get some coffee. I asked if he knew how to take the dalla dalla, where it dropped off at and where he was going. He didn’t know anything. I shook my head again. I gave him the map and showed him where he needed to go and made sure he had small bills for the bus then sent him on his way.

When Tanya got back she told us about meeting two South Africans who work for the Medical Research Council in Durban and are consulting for ZMCP on setting up a computer server and training staff members about GIS and mapping malaria cases. We were flabbergasted by this news because no one told us that ZMCP was going to try to do our project after we were gone! Surely the manager, who has to approve everything, knew that we would be here at the same time but he said nothing to us.

Tanya set up a dinner meeting with Sarel and Ishen for that evening at the Silk Route in town. Since Hai was out and didn’t have a phone, the three of us went on the dalla dalla. We had a great dinner explaining our projects and goals and asking each other questions. Sarel is originally from Zimbabwe but moved to South Africa in the 1990s so I grilled him on things to do when I’m there in the fall. Ishen has also visited Zim and recommended a few things as well. It was a far more enjoyable evening than I thought I was going to have and I came home feeling satisfied and well pleased.

Now that we have four students to map malaria cases, we’re trying to be more productive by having two cars go out into the field every day. I’ve already talked about how useless it is to have more than one mzungu in the car so I volunteered to go to Uzi with Makame to map cases while Jaclyn showed Hai how to find the patient names in the Malaria Case Registries of four health facilities nearby. Tanya went to the office to plan for the week and make some final reports.
We got picked up at 9:30 because on Monday mornings ZMCP has a staff meeting. It’s in Swahili so we’ve never gone and are not expected to attend.

The drive to Uzi took longer than last week because of the road construction that is going on in town; we had to take a detour along some dirt roads to avoid the traffic. We got to Uzi around 10:30 and stopped at the health facility to give them more money since they’ve run out again. They’re having 6-10 malaria cases a day right now, and that only includes the people who come to the health facility, there could easily be ten times as many cases. It’s unbelievable.

Makame explained that there are three different areas of Uzi so today we would concentrate our efforts in one part. We met up with one Sheha then spent the morning walking around, mapping cases. I felt like we were walking in a large circle. Unlike the other areas where we would drive to a place then map 3-4 cases, we were on our feet the entire day in Uzi and only returned to the car at 3 pm. I did get a 20 minute break while Makame and the Sheha went to pray at 1:30. During that time I really wished I had not left my lunch in the car which was several kilometers away at that point.
While the men were at the mosque they told me I could sit on the porch of one of the cases we had mapped. The lady living there was kind enough to provide me a chair and I was able to sit in the shade which was a nice relief. School was getting out at that point and the house where I rested was on the main dirt road so many people passed me by and stared, either saying “Hallo” or “mzungu”. I felt like a monkey at the zoo. A few young guys gathered in a field across the way and were obviously talking about me based on how often they looked in my direction. Luckily Makame returned in 20 minutes so I didn’t have to endure my captivity for too long.

We spent two more hours mapping cases then met up with the truck and driver who had moved to a new location. We mapped 42 cases today! A new record!

We stopped to talk to the Sheha we would need tomorrow then headed back to the coral road and the way out. While driving out of town, a bunch of young men hopped into the back of the pickup truck, hitching a ride. The driver obviously didn’t mind and I got the impression that this sort of thing happens a lot since very few people own cars here, but they had to be quick because we did not stop for them. If they couldn’t hop in the back while the truck was going 15 miles an hour, they got left behind. At the peak there were guys sitting along both sides and three or four standing up in the back.
When we got to the coral section of road we had to wait because the tide was still too high to pass. All of the guys we gave a “lifti” (lift) to jumped out, took off their shoes and started walking through the water. They must have really tough soles to their feet because the road is sharp rock and coral!

Makame, Juma, and I walked down the road a bit until we got to a very flooded section. Makame waded up to his knees but I stayed back because I didn’t want my running shoes getting soaked. We waited an hour for the water to recede enough. After two dala dalas drove past us in the opposite direction we decided it was safe and headed home.

Because of the delay, I didn’t get back until after 5:30. The other car had picked Tanya up at 3 pm and had been home for two hours before I got back. When I got back, everyone else was making dinner and I didn’t want too many cooks in the kitchen so I showered then updated my blog while dinner was prepared. Two hours later I began to wonder what was taking so long. Tanya told me that the vegetables and chapatti were ready but that the rice was still not done. Jaclyn was in charge of the rice and apparently she didn’t add enough water at first so then she added more water but that water was cold so it took a long time to heat up. Finally Jaclyn said we should just eat. It rice was a bit crunchy but the other things were great. I wish I didn’t have to do all of the cooking, but I wish to eat tasty, properly cooked food even more.

I slept in until 7 am on Sunday, after my late night. That’s the latest I’ve slept in here since the sun comes up at 6:15 am. I am very glad that I can sleep through the call to prayer now and Tanya is very jealous of that. It’s a good thing my mom isn’t here because she wouldn’t have a single night of undisturbed sleep since the call to prayer at 5:15-5:30 is far louder than any insects we heard on all of our camping trips. 🙂

Tanya and I were discussing what to do that day since we didn’t have any plans when Jaclyn appeared and said she was going to church. She asked if we were going to the beach after she got back at 11:15 so we felt obligated to wait for her. Her timing was quite unfortunate because high tide was at noon so the best swimming would be between 10 am and 2:30 pm. If we didn’t leave home until 11:30 and it took an hour to get to the beach, we’d only have two hours to swim before the water was too shallow and that didn’t sound worth it. We decided to go to Kendwa because it’s the sole beach where you can swim all day since the ocean floor drops away very quickly near shore. This is the beach that I went to on my first full day in Zanzibar and met up with Stacy. I really wanted to go to a different beach to see something new but that didn’t really work out.

When we got to the beach it was sprinkling a bit so we walked along and found a place that had beach beds under thatched roofs to shield us from the rain. After we got settled the sun peaked out and we tried to swim but the water was very cold. I submersed myself for two minutes before getting goose bumps and getting out again.

Jaclyn was awful all day. She didn’t really speak to anyone and laid down on a bed away from the rest of us. Later on when Tanya and I went swimming, she also came in the water but didn’t come near us at all. She wouldn’t even sit on a sofa in the restaurant with us while we ordered our lunch! And when we ate she didn’t say a word unless she had to. In the afternoon when Hai, Tanya and I went for a walk without her, Hai asked if anything was wrong with Jaclyn. Sadly, we could only answer that she’s like that all the time. Sometimes she’s okay, but others she just makes everything uncomfortable.

I took a nap in the afternoon and read some more of the Arabian Nights. It was a nice relaxing day and it was better than staying at home but it wasn’t that great.

When we got home the power was out and had been out all afternoon. The power situation is getting worse and every day I just hope it holds out a little longer.

Tanya went out with Paulo, leaving me alone with Hai and Jaclyn. We were going to go into town for dinner but then the power came back on so I was able to cook. I spent an hour and a half making a Moroccan lentil and bean stew all by myself. It wasn’t a lot of work because most of the time the stew just simmered but neither Hai nor Jaclyn said anything about how good it was; Jaclyn didn’t even thank me for making dinner. We all sat in silence until I started asking Hai questions about his life. It was incredibly awkward and I wanted to cry out of frustration. As soon as she was done eating, Jaclyn washed her bowl then scurried to her room like always, leaving someone else to clean up afterward. I dislike her more by the day.

Hai went to bed early since he was still jet lagged, but Tanya and I talked for a long time after she got back. If it weren’t for Tanya I would probably go crazy since I’m surrounded by crazy people. Luckily Tanya’s great and we can laugh at how ridiculous Jaclyn is. I went to bed at midnight feeling slightly better but still counting down the two and a half weeks until I go home.

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.

On Friday Jaclyn was still feeling sick so Tanya and I went to the office to plan for next week while Jaclyn stayed home to rest.

We were getting a lot done in the morning when I suddenly started to feel very ill. I felt like I was going to throw up and even spent some time in the bathroom just in case. I didn’t vomit but when I walked back to the office my vision suddenly became dark and I felt faint. I don’t think I had a fever but everyone immediately thought I had malaria! They were so concerned that they gave me the rapid diagnostic test (RDT), which fortunately came back negative. I thought I might have food poisoning because the lunch I had the day before was pasta with a cream sauce and shrimp and it sat in the warm car all morning. I sat on the office floor for half an hour then ate some glucose biscuits and started to feel better. Soon I was able to sit in the chair and look at my computer screen. I drank a lot of water and ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and felt much better. My illness came and went in less than an hour.

By 2 pm we finished everything we needed to and Tanya was pretty hungry because she hadn’t had lunch so we called Jaclyn then rode our bikes to town and went to Lazuli’s for lunch. I had a mango banana juice which was so good and a chapatti stuffed with vegetable curry. We then headed to the film festival and watched two short films. One was a documentary about a singer from South Africa and how she made a huge comeback later in life. The other was a documentary about two teenagers growing up in a slum outside Cape Town. It was interesting but ended very suddenly without really wrapping up any loose ends.

After the films we stopped at the grocery store to buy some granola then rode home. Friday evening was the big Shaggy concert at the Old Fort and Tanya planned to go although I passed since I wasn’t really interested. I had some leftovers for dinner then hung out and read a bit then watched some TV. It was a pretty quiet evening but that was just what I wanted.

I haven’t been running all week and I told myself that I would go this morning but I just didn’t have the energy at 6:30 and we had a conference call at 7:30 am with San Francisco so I ended up lying in bed for a few extra minutes. It was rather nice.

We talked to our advisors on Skype for an hour then had to cut them off because our car was at the house to pick us up. It was only then that Jaclyn told Tanya and me that she wasn’t feeling well and thought she had a fever. We quickly changed our plans and I rushed to get ready to go into the field so Jaclyn could stay home and rest. Tanya was also not feeling well and decided to stay home too. Because of our late start and traffic getting out of town Makame and I decided to scale back our ambitious plan for the day and only go to two shehias in the northwest part of the island. It took us an hour to drive to the health facility where we met one of the Shehas. We easily found all of the cases we were looking for thinned switched Shehas and mapped some more cases in a different area.

It was really hot; much hotter than the previous day and I got very dehydrated. I didn’t want to drink too much water because there’s no bathroom available but I really should have had more water. I was sweating a lot and started to feel a bit ill. I ate my lunch in the car (again) and felt a bit better after that.

Fortunately we ended our day much earlier than yesterday and headed back to the office at 2 pm. The water had gone down a lot and the drive was much less hazardous as well.

When we got back to the office, the place was in an uproar of activity. There was a big celebration at 4 pm to launch universal arteminisinin combination therapy to treat malaria in Zanzibar (maliza malaria Zanzibar means “eliminate malaria in Zanzibar”) and everyone was going. I got a free T-shirt to commemorate the event then we went to our house to pick up Tanya and Jaclyn who were both feeling better. The celebration was held in a park just outside of town and a concert stage, several tents, and a lot of chairs had been set up. Everyone from the Zanzibar Malaria Control Program and the Ministry of Health were there as well as several hundred school children and many community members.

Sadly, all of the speeches were in Swahili so I didn’t understand exactly what was going on, but I enjoyed the entertainment which included several skits and music and dancing by local artists. There was even a song by a famous group all about eliminating malaria from Zanzibar. All of the kids and most of the adults were on their feet dancing and having a good time. It was really great to see people let loose and enjoy themselves. I took some videos which I’ll try to upload at a later time.

Based on past events I was expecting the party to go much later than scheduled but it ended right on time at 6:30 pm and people cleared out very quickly. It was only when we were dropped off and heard the call to prayer that I realized that the party ended on time so that the men could go to the mosque.

Again we were all feeling exhausted and the vegetable stand didn’t have many good offerings in the evening so we had pancakes for dinner which left me hungry again in an hour. I had some leftover lentils, chickpeas and rice but still went to bed feeling like I really needed more vegetables in my diet.

I was startled awake early Wednesday morning by the heaviest rain I had ever heard. It sounded like the roof was going to cave in with the force of the rain. Mvua kubwa—big rain! It rained really hard for several hours and only lessened around 7 am. I was worried that we would have to cancel our mapping trip but it finally stopped around 8 am.
After being in the office on Tuesday and all of last week I was really looking forward to going out into the field for a change so I asked Jaclyn and Tanya if they had a preference. Tanya wanted to stay in the office because she’s been having some GI issues and Jaclyn didn’t care so I volunteered to go.

Makame picked us up at 8:30 am and we dropped Jaclyn and Tanya at the office on our way to the southern part of the island, to a region called Tunguu.

We stopped at the health facility and picked up the Sheha who would be assisting us and we were off! We drove down the road for a ways, until we were in a different area. This area doesn’t have its own health facility so everyone who lives there travels quite a way to be seen by a doctor.

Since we had given the Sheha the list of names on Monday, he had already located where everyone lived and we were able to map the 6 cases very quickly. We were on a roll!

We got rained on a bit, but it didn’t dampen our spirits because we were doing so well. Once those cases were done, we dropped that Sheha off and picked up a different person who knows an adjacent area well. We had a long list of people—26 cases to find. Luckily our lady had done her homework and she took us straight to a lot of houses.

It had rained a lot and the roads were really wet so in some places we had to park the car and walk around because the truck would have gotten stuck. It took a bit longer, but we were making good progress.

Around 1 pm I really started to get hungry and I thought we would stop soon so Makame and the driver, Juma, could pray. Makame said we would just find 2-3 more cases first then stop for the day.

At the next village we came to Makame said that one of the malaria cases was his cousin. I thought that he just had the wrong English word, but then he introduced me to his uncle and his grandmother! Makame grew up near Stone Town but his extended family lives in one of the rural villages we were mapping. He visits nearly every weekend so he knew the entire village. It was interesting to see him interact on a more personal level. I tried to tell his family that he’s doing a great job.

5 cases later Makame stopped by the side of the road and bought a large bunch of bananas and started eating them. I had a few glucose crackers to tide me over for a while and we continued on.

At 3:30 I realized that we weren’t going to stop until every case had been mapped so I quickly ate my lunch in the car driving between houses. I was really glad that I did because we didn’t finish until nearly 5 pm! And we still had to drive back to town. On a high note, we mapped 32 cases in one day, doubling our previous record!

On the drive back we encountered road construction and had to take a detour along some dirt roads. We drove through some large puddles and through some potholes that were more like ditches and finally came to another road block. Makame pointed to the driver and indicated that he should take a hard right. I looked to see where he was pointing and saw a loose pile of dirt at a very steep angle with a single set of truck tracks going through it, next to a pile of garbage. The driver leaned out the window and took a good look at the “road”. I shook my head and cringed.

Juma decided to not take that route and I was very glad for it. We turned around and went back through the ditch then took a sharp right. In front of us we saw a very large lake where the road should have been and a school bus stuck in the middle of the lake. All of the students were standing along the edge of the water and they all started yelling and cheering at us as we approached the lake. Juma took a long look at how deep the water was then gunned the engine and started through. For a brief moment the wheels started spinning and I thought we would get stuck, but we found traction again and made it through safe and sound.

The road we came out to was the main road next to the office and we only had to drive a few hundred meters to our turn off. Juma decided to not bother getting in the correct lane of traffic and drove the wrong direction down the road into oncoming cars and trucks! My heart skipped a beat as a truck bared down on us without slowing down but Juma pulled off at the last moment and we were safe.

The ride home was much less eventful thankfully, but it was nearly 6 pm by the time we got back. After such a long and dirty day all I wanted to do was to take a nice shower and relax. None of us had the energy to make dinner and we were already late for the movies showing in town so we rode our bikes down the street to Mbweni café and I had a tasty penne pasta dish in cream sauce with shrimp and zucchini.

The power went out just as we got home so I spent an hour reading in the dark then didn’t even realize that the power had come back on for a while because we forgot to turn on a light or the fans. Finally I noticed that the refrigerator was running and I figured it out.

I talked to Jacob on Skype for a few minutes then went to bed quite exhausted after a long but very productive day.

We learned from our experiences on Monday that we really didn’t need more than one student in the field at a time so we sent Jaclyn out on Tuesday while Tanya and I went to the office to plan for next week. It’s a good thing that we both went because we spent nearly the entire day preparing supplies for the data collection aspect of the project. In the past two weeks there has been a huge surge in the number of malaria cases and many of our health facilities have been running out of consent forms, questionnaires and barcode labels. While Tanya went across the street to make copies, I printed labels and made filter paper packets. It seemed like just when we got one packet ready and were trying to do something else, another supervisor would call and say they needed supplies and we’d have to start all over again. I didn’t even have time to check my e-mail until 12:30 when I ate a quick lunch in-between projects.

In the afternoon we had a meeting with some of the other foreign researchers to get an idea of what projects they are working on and how we may be able to work together. It was a useful meeting although it lasted for an hour and a half which meant that we didn’t get to leave work until after 5 pm. Another long day.

Jaclyn went out to dinner with another girl from California to discuss career stuff so I made dinner while Tanya had a phone interview for a job. I was getting really tired of the same sautéed vegetables with either rice or chapatti so I made chana daal (red lentils with chick peas) with rice. I may be biased, but it was really good. Mostly it was nice to have something different. I think I am finally perfecting making rice on the stove (and not the rice cooker) but I still always make too much.

I spent much of the evening talking to Tanya about her job opportunities. She has to accept one of several fellowships in the next two days and can’t decide what to do. On one hand I envy her choices but on the other I don’t envy how hard of a decision it is.

I started reading “The Arabian Nights” today and I can’t get the song from the animated version of “Aladdin” out of my head now. I am enjoying the stories a lot and am having a great time remembering the play that Jacob and I went to at the Berkeley Rep last year.

A few weeks ago there was a large outbreak of malaria cases in the Uzi district, which is in the southern part of Zanzibar. Uzi is really interesting because it becomes an island during high tide when the water submerses the coral road, so you have to plan your trips there carefully or you will get stranded for 8 hours. With so many cases we thought it would be useful to do some mapping there so we planned to hold a community meeting on Monday to inform the villagers of our project and ask their approval of our presence. The girl who had piloted this mapping project, Stacy, had done several community meetings with Makame in March and said it was a big success. Since Makame had done 8 meetings and we had never done one, we thought we would follow his suggestions. We should have known better.

Makame called the health facility on Friday afternoon and told them we wanted to have a meeting on Monday. Perhaps that was not enough time in advance because when we arrived on Monday there were only 18 people assembled for the meeting which was far fewer than the 30-40 that Stacy reported at her meetings.

We also thought that Makame knew what to say and had prepared something. Another wrong idea on our part. After introductions, Makame told Tanya to start speaking and he would translate into Swahili for her. Completely blindsided and unprepared, Tanya did an amazing job on the fly explaining the research study, what we wanted to do and how it would help them. We had found a short protocol that Stacy had written up so Tanya asked a few questions such as, “What do you think causes malaria?” and “do you sleep under a bed net every night?”.

When Tanya was done talking, Makame turned to me and said, “Now Lisa, I think you should say something to them.” I thought the meeting was over and I had no idea what to add since Tanya had gone through all of our points. So I just told him to thank the community for coming and we look forward to working with them in the future. Then he wanted Jaclyn to say something as well!

It was like the 8 previous meetings he had done had left no impression and he had no memory of them. And his suggestion that the three of us, plus him and Madja all go was overkill. We only needed one Swahili speaker and one student. I felt completely useless.

After the meeting was over we consulted the health facility records to get the names of the most recent malaria cases and gave a list of the names to the Sheha (the village leader) and told him we would come back on Thursday to map the cases he had found by then.

We departed around noon, driving back over the coral road and off the peninsula.

Uzi

On the way back to the office, we stopped at another health facility called Tunguu and copied the list of malaria cases from there and gave them to the local Sheha so that we could map cases in two areas at once.

We ate lunch back at the office around 2:30 then spent an hour planning for the following day before getting the driver to take us home.

I wasn’t feeling hungry at 6 pm when Jaclyn just went ahead and started making dinner without saying anything to me or Tanya so I didn’t eat the pasta and vegetables that she made. Sadly, the power went out at 8 pm when I was hungry so I had some granola for dinner then spent an hour reading in the dark until the lights came back on.

Paulo and some of his friends were going on an all day boat and snorkeling trip called Safari Blue on Sunday and he invited us along. Tanya and I decided to go and Jaclyn passed so she could go to church in the morning. Paulo picked us up at 8:45 and we drove to the southwest corner of Zanzibar, which is a small peninsula. We waited for the other guests to arrive then all of us (about 35 people) were divided into three groups and we walked out into the water to the boats.
We first motored out to an area where dolphins frequently hang out and we got to see a few surfacing and jumping out of the water. Sometimes when there are more dolphins around people get in the water and swim with them, but not this time. They were really fun to watch though.

Next we headed to a sandbank and got snorkeling gear and dropped off our bags. We got back in the boat and went out to a reef to snorkel. The water was very choppy and I was starting to feel a bit nauseated but I felt a bit better after I got in the water. It was quite cold and I had to swim hard to stay warm. I saw all kinds of cool fish and corals and eels. I can’t really name any of them and I couldn’t take pictures in the water but suffice it to say that if the fish was in “Finding Nemo” I probably saw it. The visibility was not so great though and the water was really rough so I got out a bit early and had the boat take me back to the sandbank.

We hung out at the sandbank and watched the tide slowly come in and cover our area for a while then we had the option to snorkel some more or to hang out. Since I wasn’t feeling so great I decided to hang back. After talking to some of Paulo’s friends for a bit, I decided to walk from where we were to the island where we would have lunch along this shelf of coral reef that was still exposed in the low tide. I had an amazing walk along the coral, watching all of the crabs scurry away from me. There were so many of them that I could hear their claws clicking at me. Some were tiny but others were the size of my fist and they came in many colors. I also watched some fishermen bring in their catch and some women gathering seaweed to dry in the sun and sell. It was a great walk and I really wished Jacob was there because he would have enjoyed it so much.

The walk took about 40 minutes and I only waited a few minutes to meet up with Tanya and company. Then we were served a delicious seafood feast! For lunch we had lobster, prawns, calamari, two kinds of fish, rice with two different curries and a whole array of tropical fruits for dessert. It was so good and so filling.

After lunch we explored the island a bit (it’s pretty small) and saw this huge Baobab tree then climbed this observation deck to get a nice view of the surrounding area. The observation deck was made out of small trees lashed together with rope and was a bit scary to descend. It was not for the faint of heart. Next we swam in the super warm water near the beach then got back into the boats to head home.

On the way back we stopped in a large lagoon that is surrounded by mangrove trees and we went swimming some more. The tide was not high enough for us to go into the trees but it was really pretty.

Since the wind was good, the mates hoisted the sail and we sailed back to land. My stomach did not like the movement of the sailboat however, and I started to feel quite sick midway back. I made it to shore without throwing up though and I immediately felt better after getting onto stable ground.

By the time we drove home it was after 6 pm. It was a very full, adventurous day.

Safari Blue

Our plan for Saturday was to go to the northwest part of the island to a place called Kendwa because there you can swim all day without having to worry about the tide. I went running in the morning then did my laundry and was getting ready to go when Tanya said that Jaclyn wasn’t feeling great and didn’t want to go anymore. We decided to scrap the beach idea, which was probably for the best because we were going to take a dala-dala (the local bus) up there and that may have taken three hours.

Instead, Jaclyn and I stayed home and read while Tanya went to the grocery store with Kim, who has a rental car. Tanya was gone for a very long time and I was starting to get concerned but she made it back with a lot of goodies. We just found out that $600 of food will be reimbursed per person for the time we are here and since I’ve only spent $220 during half of my time we don’t have to worry about food money anymore. Tanya splurged on cookies, chocolate cake mix, cheese, and yogurt.

In the afternoon, we went down to the pier and swam for a while. We ran into a local guy that we met in town last week and chatted with him for a bit. We told him we were planning on going to the opening night of the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) which was starting that evening in Stone Town.

ZIFF is an annual festival which has been going on for 11 years and has evolved to include movies, music, workshops and other events. 71 movies from producers in East Africa, Europe, and the Americas will be shown over the next 10 days and prizes will be awarded for certain categories. Some of the films are only 10-15 minutes long, but many of them are feature length. Shaggy is also performing on night. Some of the movies sound really interesting (too many to list here) while others sound only so-so.

We thought we’d check out the first movie, but the guy we chatted with said the opening night movie is never the best and that we should just go on a different day. We didn’t really know what to think at that point.

We had planned to go into town for dinner at a new restaurant called Lazuli’s and to meet up with Tanya’s friend, Paulo, after dinner. We took the dala-dala into town, which is always an experience. Jaclyn looked distinctly unhappy in the crowded bus but I thought it was fine. There was no one leaning over me or putting small children on my lap so I was cool with it.

Dinner was amazing! I have never had such good juice! Lazuli’s has 8 kinds of juice available and you can mix them in any way you want. I got mango and pineapple and it was blended with ice to make it super cold. It was so yummy. The best dollar I have spent so far this trip. I ordered the seafood “Bunny Chow” for dinner. It’s a small loaf of bread carved out (like a bread bowl) and filled with seafood in a coconut curry sauce. It had prawns, calamari, tuna, and octopus in it. It was so good. I was sad I didn’t have my camera to take a picture but I’m sure we’ll go back there.

Jaclyn wanted dessert but they were out of brownies so we walked around for a bit and met up with Paulo at the Archipelago Restaurant. Tanya had been texting another friend who was at the opening ZIFF ceremonies so we found out that they started an hour and a half late so we weren’t in a hurry. I was so full of dinner that I didn’t order dessert, but I tasted the two cakes Jaclyn and Paulo ordered and they were only okay. I would have been disappointed if I spent $3 on that cake. While we were enjoying dessert the movie started but by that time it was after 9:30 and none of us really felt like staying out late so we ended up just going home. There are still 70 movies to watch so I didn’t feel too bad about missing one.

It’s difficult to do work that involves talking to people on Fridays because afternoon prayers are extra long and all of the men go to the mosque for 2-3 hours. We didn’t have too much to do on Friday and didn’t have any food at home for lunch so we decided to go to the office early and leave before noon. We should have known better.

When we got to the office one district supervisor was there, bringing in data for 50+ malaria cases from the previous two weeks. Usually the district supervisor only comes in once a month, but there were so many malaria cases that they ran out of money in several of the health facilities and couldn’t enroll any more patients because they could not compensate them correctly. Tanya and I looked at the data and prepared the voucher to get the money while Jaclyn dealt with some computer problem she was having.

As soon as that district supervisor left, another arrived with 60+ cases and the same problem of no money. We started the whole process over again.

We had a meeting scheduled for 11 am with the head of RTI (Research Triangle Institute) who is based in Dar Es Salaam, but was in Zanzibar for two days. At 11 he was not ready for the meeting so it got pushed back until 11:30. We met with him for over an hour and during that time I got really hungry. The meeting was also upsetting because he made it clear that our advisor from UCSF did not actually communicate with him at all about this other project we were supposed to work on.

In order for our summer to be really meaningful and for the study to continue, there has to be an easier and cheaper way to record where a patient lives. In the US we call this an address. There are no addresses in Zanzibar so our advisor wants us write a protocol to give everyone on the island a unique household identifier number, essentially an address. It’s a really important thing to do but since hearing about this I have been skeptical that 4 students who know nothing about Zanzibar could write a feasible protocol in eight weeks while doing the other projects as well.

Our conversation with the head of RTI in Zanzibar confirmed my suspicions. He and his team have been working on this project for more than two years now and the first system they came up with and piloted completely failed so they are in the process of drafting a new proposal and working with the different government ministries to roll out household identifier numbers. He told us that we could help write protocols if we want to but I feel that I would only be a hindrance in the process because I don’t know much about the culture here and would rely on his team a lot. I left the meeting feeling like I wasted that poor man’s time and was upset that our advisor did not look into this situation more before sending us off on this task.

By that time it was after 1 pm and my stomach had been growling for half an hour so Tanya and I went to a local restaurant to get some lunch while Jaclyn stayed in the office trying to get her computer to work. The place we went to didn’t have a menu so we just asked for rice, curry and vegetables. The food wasn’t great but it was fast and super cheap—only $1.30 for lunch!

After eating I felt much better and was ready to finish printing the data collection sheets we needed for Monday. By the time we finished organizing the cars, drivers, data sheets, and ourselves for next week it was 4:30 and we were all exhausted. Everyone else had gone home for the weekend so we finally called it a day.

Since we were so tired, we didn’t feel like cooking dinner so we went to Mbweni Café down the street where we had gone the night before. On Fridays they have a buffet dinner with two beers for ~$7.50. The grilled vegetables were good and the pasta tasty but the rice had mayonnaise in it which tasted funny and the French fries were not cooked enough. I passed on the beef and liver. It was a decent value and I left feeling full although I wouldn’t go back unless I was desperate.

In the evening we watched some ridiculous TV shows from the US then went to bed.

Somehow I have become the unofficial breakfast maker. It started when Edmund was here and we didn’t have enough granola so I made pancakes one day. And since then I’ve been the first one out of my room in the morning so I’ve just gotten into the habit of making breakfast for everyone. Jaclyn takes so long to get ready in the morning that I wonder if she would eat anything if left to her own devices. I bought some oatmeal earlier in the week and it was much more filling than pancakes because I didn’t get hungry until noon on Monday. Yesterday I tired adding some of the oats to my pancake mix to see how it would taste. They seemed to go over well, so I made them again this morning. However, now we are out of flour, eggs and butter so tomorrow will be something different. I don’t mind making breakfast every day, but it would be nice to have some help every once in a while.

In our discussion about who would do what on Thursday, no one voiced a strong opinion about preferences so finally I said I would go to the office again and plan for next week. Tanya said she would join me so that left Jaclyn in the field with Makame again.

Today I spent several hours trying to print a map of Zanzibar that outlined all of the Shehias we are working so I could mark where we have done community meetings and where we have completed our mapping project. It was quite frustrating because the two maps I could find had very different boundaries for the different Shehias and I don’t know which ones are correct. I finally just chose one at random and printed it as large as I could.

After lunch when Madja had returned from her other job, we got her to help us read some names on consent forms so we could finish making our data collection sheets for next week. We also got her to call several health care facilities to schedule community meetings and mapping trips for next week.

Overall it was a productive day but both Tanya and I rode home at 3:30 feeling exhausted.

We decided to go swimming because high tide was at 4:30 so we got ready as soon as we got home then rode down to the pier. It was cloudy this afternoon and there was a bit of a breeze and I actually got goose bumps after being in the water for 20 minutes. It’s kind of strange to be cold again.

Tanya’s friend, Paulo, joined us and we enjoyed a glass of juice at the restaurant and hung out a bit. We left Paulo around 5:30 and came home to shower. None of us were feeling up to cooking tonight so we went down the road to a local restaurant we haven’t tried yet. I had an amazing chicken curry with rice for 5,000 THS ($3.30) and a banana milk shake for $1.75. We now have a great option for those days when we don’t feel like cooking, but don’t want to take a taxi into town.

We also got great news from work today that they will reimburse us for our bicycles and the taxi rides we needed while Edmund was here, so that’s another $80 I can spend on fun things here.

This has been a busy week and I think we are all looking forward to our short Friday and a nice, relaxing weekend.

Tanya and I have been keeping a running “to do” list and when we looked at it this morning, we realized the number of pressing things to take care of in the office. Because of that, the two of us decided to bike into work while Jaclyn went into the field by herself. Their previous day’s mapping activity had been extremely successful and everything was in place for today so we didn’t really need to of us in the field. Even though she’s only been here for a week, we felt confident that Jaclyn could handle things by herself.

The morning passed a bit slowly because many of the things we needed to do involved talking to the manager or accountant who were out most of the day or they involved a fluent Swahili speaker who wasn’t available until the afternoon. I spent most of the morning getting extremely frustrated with Microsoft Excel while trying to make some graphs of malaria cases but not being able to get the program to display what I wanted on the x-axis. I never figured it out and quit working on that at lunch time before I started throwing things.

We had a really busy afternoon when Makame and Jaclyn returned from the field and we didn’t leave the office until after 4:30, about an hour after everyone else had gone home. I wanted to go to the yoga class but couldn’t make it there on time so instead I stopped on the way home to get a bottle of wine and some vegetables for dinner.

We had our first dinner guest over tonight! Kim, who is from San Francisco and worked on a similar project last summer, is here for a month working on a new project and we decided to have her over for dinner.

Sadly, we bought a bottle of wine without remembering that we don’t own a cork screw.

Luckily, Kim has a rental car so she and Tanya drove down to a bar and asked the owner to open the bottle for us. This is Africa.

We had a great dinner of pasta with veggies in a tomato sauce and the power only went off mid-way through our meal. We’re getting used to eating by head lamp but keep telling ourselves that we should get some candles.

It was great getting to know Kim and to have someone else to talk to at dinner. Hopefully we’ll have more people over in the future.

When she was leaving, Kim told us that a lunar eclipse was happening that night and sure enough, we looked up at the sky and part of the full moon was covered with a dark spot despite a cloudless sky. The Earth’s shadow made the moon look yellowish orange and over the course of the next few hours we kept going outside to look at it. We looked up on-line and it was the longest total lunar eclipse that has occurred for 11 years, but don’t worry, you didn’t miss it because it could only be seen in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia. It was really amazing and we probably spent an hour over the course of the night watching it.

And if I didn’t mention this before, the stars are really amazing here. There is very little light pollution (especially when the power is out) so the Milky Way really lights up the sky. It’s so bright in fact that Tanya first thought it was a cloud until I told her it was the galaxy! I’ve seen a number of shooting stars here just from watching the skies. And since it’s so warm at night, it’s very pleasant to stand outside for a while, at least until the mosquitoes find you!