I started Tuesday bright and early with a conference call with our advisors in San Francisco. As always, we had questions answered, but didn’t feel satisfied at the end of the call. But at least we got some answers.

We could only get one car to go into the field on Tuesday and since three wazungu (white people) are a crowd, I volunteered to go to the office and organize things for the rest of the week while Tanya and Jaclyn went to map cases. I won’t go into the boring details (mostly because I already can’t remember them) but the day flew by pretty quickly. By 3 pm I was pretty much done with what I needed to do so I headed home.

Our drinking water was completely empty so I decided to get a new jug then go down to the pier and swim in the high tide. When I opened the front door, I saw a swarm of ants trying to make their way inside! They were everywhere!! At first I thought they were carrying food from inside the house out into their home, but when Tanya and I looked closer, we realized that they were carrying ant larvae from under the porch into our house!! It was so disgusting. I tried to sweep them away with a broom but they just kept coming. Next I got my spray bottle of Deet and sprayed the hell out of them. That stuff really does the job; there were any bodies everywhere. Not wanting to use my entire bottle of Deet, I took the water jug and rode down the street to find some insect repellent and fresh drinking water. For $2 I got a large can of bug spray and when I got home I emptied about a third of it in every nook and cranny that had a hint of an ant. I hate ants. I would be an awful Buddhist.

Since all of that took about 45 min, I didn’t have time to go swimming and make dinner before the book club meeting that was at 7:30 so I just hung out for a bit then helped Tanya and Jaclyn cook dinner.

At 7:30 we rode our bikes down to Mbweni Ruins hotel (where the pier is) and met up with 10 other white women who have a moving library. After introductions, we went around in a circle and everyone gave a brief description of the books they had read recently. Then we went around again and everyone got to choose one book from their collection of 700+ books. We kept going around in a circle until everyone had taken all of the books they wanted. The organizer recorded our names and the book number so they can keep track of who has what so it really is like a library. The book club meets once a month on the second Tuesday so we have plenty of time to read our books. Since I have a Kindle with 30 books on it, I wasn’t planning on taking anything but they had a copy of a book I’ve been wanting to get so I checked that out and I’ll read it next. Tanya and Jaclyn both took 3 books each so now we have some good reading material in the house.
We rode home around 11 pm and it was very pleasant to ride at night with the cool breeze and little traffic. For the first time I wasn’t afraid for my life at every moment.

The three of us did some planning for the following day then talked about things in general so I didn’t get to bed until after 1 am, which is the latest I’ve stayed up since coming here.

It was cloudy and almost cool when I got up on Monday so I went running before work. It may seem like I go running a lot and you would think that I’m getting into super good shape here, but I don’t think that’s the case. Running is pretty much the only exercise that’s available to me (except for the yoga class). It’s so flat here that I don’t think I burn that many calories running. Certainly I stop running because of sweat and dehydration far before actually feeling tired.

Jaclyn bought a bicycle on Sunday so we were all able to ride into the office this morning to plan our week. We had a very long meeting with the three of us, Makame, and Madja, the ZMCP staff who are helping us with the mapping project. Madja is very quiet but I think she understands a lot more than she lets on. When you ask her to do something, she does exactly what you say, but no more and no less. As long as you are extremely specific, Madja is great. Makame, however, is a different story. It gives me a headache just thinking about how much harder he makes things. He has awful ideas which he thinks are good but you can’t convince him that his plans don’t make sense or won’t work. I had to tune him out during parts of our meeting because I was getting so fed up with him. It gave me time to upload all of my photos from the weekend though. Our meeting lasted for three hours and we didn’t even get through everything we wanted to talk about.

We asked Madja and Makame to call some health facilities that we wanted to visit this week and Madja was ready while Makame just sat there saying he was calling them. Tanya and I both wanted to strangle him. We spent the afternoon constantly checking up on their progress and arranging for the vehicles and such. Everyone else in the office went home well before we left at 4:30. I started getting a headache late in the afternoon and I think it was from dehydration, but I’m sure dealing with Makame didn’t help.

On the way home we stopped at the Diplomatic supermarket and our typical veggie stand and got some supplies to make vegetarian chili and biscuits for dinner. We got home at 5:30 and started making dinner right away because we were so hungry. Luckily the power stayed on all evening and we are able to enjoy our dinner. I think I’ve figured out the lucky charm to the power: as long as I remember to have my headlamp with me in the evenings the power stays on, but if I leave it in my room the power goes off and I have to find my way down the dark hallway to get my light. Always be prepared!

I was really exhausted after dinner. Since it gets dark at 6:30 I thought it was really late when I started feeling tired, but really it was 8:30 pm. I was falling asleep reading my book so I decided to just go to bed at 9:30.

Taking Friday off work really made Sunday seem like a bonus holiday; it was great. I went running in the morning and saw the largest snail ever! Its shell was nearly the size of my fist and it must have been eight inches long. The shell looked like it belonged to a crab, not a snail and should have been in the water, not up on land far from moisture.

After a shower and breakfast it was time to do some laundry! I haven’t washed my skirts since I’ve been here (three weeks now!) and they smelled a little funky. We don’t have a washing machine and the nearest Laundromat is difficult to get to on a bike, so I washed my clothes one piece at a time in a bucket in our backyard and rinsed them in the outdoor sink. The soap they have here is called Omo and is really basic. It makes your hands feel very slimy, like the outer layer of skin is being dissolved away slowly. The packet even says to wash your hands well after using Omo. It takes a long time to wash your clothes by hand, even when you only have 3 skirts, one pair of shorts, 4 shirts, 3 pairs of underwear, and two towels.

I spent the rest of the morning finishing Les Miserables. It was really good and had a bittersweet ending. I would highly recommend it. In the afternoon Tanya and Jaclyn went to the pier to swim, but I got a bit sunburned from Paje on Saturday so I decided to stay out of the sun.

Zanzibar doesn’t have landfills for trash the way the US does. People either throw their trash on the side of the road or in empty plots of land (there’s garbage everywhere) or they burn it. Perhaps Sunday is the trash burning day because I could smell it inside the house and I saw smoke in the air when I checked on my clothes. Again, poor air quality.
We made homemade tortillas and a mexi-type dish for dinner which was really yummy.

After dinner we decided to watch one of the movies Tanya had on her computer. Sadly, the version of “The Tourist” that she got was in French with Arabic subtitles so we tried to watch “Burlesque” instead. There were two files to that movie and the first played fine but we couldn’t watch the end of the film because the second file wouldn’t play for some reason. Even though the movie wasn’t that good and I could guess exactly what happens, we were a bit disappointed that we couldn’t finish it. Perhaps the video store next to where we get water has it.

Check out this video that Tanya took during our spice tour!

Edmund’s flight home was Saturday evening so we had just enough time during the day to do one last fun activity with him.  We decided to go to the beach on the east coast of the island.  Masoud picked us up at 9 again and it took us about an hour to drive to the other side, to a beach called Paje.  This section of the beach is famous for kite surfing and later in the morning we watched some people launch their kites and go out on the water.

On the drive out we passed through one of the national forests and caught a glimpse of the rare red colobus monkeys that live on the island.  You can’t stop and take photos without paying a fee, so we settled for a quick look before driving on.

We walked along the beach, which actually had a bit of tide to it, looking for a good place to set up camp.  All of the beds are for hotel guests only, but we found a nice spot under an umbrella which suited us well.  There’s a reef a few miles off of shore we could see the surf hitting the reef.  The water between shore and the reef is not very deep, which gives it a very green color.  With the waves in the background and just a hint of deep blue ocean, it made Paje very picturesque.  The sand was nice and soft and there aren’t too many rocks which makes swimming nice.  There was a bit of seaweed, but it was small and not slimy so we didn’t mind too much.  The water on this side of the island is noticeably cooler, although very comfortable.  We swam for quite a while and for the first time in weeks I actually got goose bumps.  Luckily the sun warms you up and dries you off very quickly so I wasn’t cold for long.

We got into a routine of swimming, drying in the sun, reapplying sunscreen, reading our books and watching the kite surfers then going back in the water.  It’s amazing how a morning can float away when doing these things.

Since we were using a bit of beach next to a restaurant, we felt obligated to have lunch there.  The waiter explained that because it’s the low season, they didn’t have a menu, but we could choose from fish, prawns, calamari, or octopus, with or without curry sauce, served with either rice or chips.  I ordered the calamari to see what it was like.  We said we wanted to eat at 1 pm, giving them 45 minutes to prepare the food, but even then we ate at 1:30.  Jaclyn seemed upset that we had to wait, but the rest of us were content to sit in the second story, open air restaurant and watch the ocean slowly recede.

After lunch I went for a nice long walk by myself.  It was really great to be alone for a few minutes.  It’s great to have people around to do things with, but it’s also nice to have a bit of space every once in a while.  When I got back I had just enough time for a quick dip in the ocean before drying off and changing for the ride home.

We left the beach at 3 pm and got home by 4, giving Edmund just enough time to shower and pack up before he headed to the airport at 4:30.  I think he enjoyed his time here and I really hope he has the chance to come back for more than just a few days.

There was a bit of daylight left and we were out of drinking water so Jaclyn and I biked down to the store and got some supplies and another 10 liters of water.  It’s amazing how much we drink in just a few days.

I chatted with Jacob on Skype while Tanya and Jaclyn had dinner.  It had been a few days since we spoke and it was good to catch up.  I was just heating up some leftovers for dinner when the power went out at 8:15.   Luckily, this time I was quick enough and my food was hot before losing power.

The still air caused Tanya and Jaclyn to retreat under their bed nets to avoid the mosquitoes, but I preferred to stay in the living room where there was a bit more of a breeze and it was cooler.  The power came on after an hour or so, like usually, and I read for a long time before going to bed.

See picture here:

Paje

Since Friday is a short day (due to prayers), we decided to take off work entirely and to show Edmund a bit of Zanzibar.  We decided on a spice tour and arranged for Masoud to pick us up at 9 am.  I went running in the morning then made some pancakes for breakfast.  Edmund made scrambled eggs but because the eggs here don’t have a very yellow yolk, they did not look as appetizing, but tasted fine.

Masoud was there promptly at 9 and he brought with him a guide from town.  On the 35 minute drive to the spice plantation, the guide (named David) explained how there are 49 mosques in Stone Town and two churches (one Catholic, one Anglican).  We climbed up the highest hill on the island, which is called “the Kilimanjaro of Zanzibar”, which put us 300 meters above sea level (almost 1000 feet).

Our first stop was at the Persian baths that the Sultan of Oman had constructed for his wife in the 1830s.  The baths aren’t used anymore and have not been persevered very well but you could get a glimpse of what it would have been like when it was new.

From there, we walked across the street to a private spice plantation and started our tour.  The place was not laid out in any discernible pattern except for the cassava rows, but that made the tour even more grand because David would go up to a plant at random, strip off some leaves, crush them a bit then hand them to us and ask, “What is this?”  All of the smells seemed familiar but we were horrible guessers.  I got ginger (a root), vanilla (a bean), cinnamon (the bark, but not the leaves), cardamom, and pepper correct.  I failed on allspice, cloves, turmeric, and a few others.  They look so different in plant form than as a powder in a bag!  It was really cool to see all the plants growing naturally and to learn of the many other traditional uses of the spices.  Many spices are also used as teas and pastes to help cure common maladies.

At the end of the tour, we watched a guy climb a coconut tree using only is bare hands and a small piece of rope that held his feet a short distance apart.  It was amazing and frightening to watch.  He was 50-60 feet in the air and would have been seriously hurt had he fallen.  While holding onto the tree with one hand, he cut down 4 young coconuts then climbed down, singing a song, then stripped to coconuts of their bark, opened them and let us drink the juice.  Then he whittled spoons out of the husk and we used them to eat the coconut flesh, which is much softer and slimier than when a coconut is more ripe.  We all gazed on in amazement.

In the meantime another guy who worked there weaved crowns and necklaces out of palm fronds for us and made glasses out of the bark of a tree.  Later on we got small woven baskets as well.  It was very touristy, but the weaving was very impressive, and overall it was silly and fun.

We also got to taste some of the fruits they grow on the plantation.  I’ve never had a better mango and I wished I could have more.  We had two very flavorful teas as well, one lemongrass and one masala.  Tasty delicious.

Finally, we ended the tour with a hardy lunch of rice pilaf, with curried potatoes, curried bananas, curry, king fish, and cassava.  Lunch was so good and I ate way too much.  We all went home feeling satisfied and full.

We got back by 1 pm and Tanya and Jaclyn immediately went down to the pier to get a bit of swimming in before the tide went out.  Edmund took a nap while I read more of Les Mis.

Around 6 we took a dala dala, the local bus, which is really a 12 passenger minivan, into town for dinner.  We walked around a bit to build up our appetites then went to the Silk Route, a very good Indian restaurant.  I had a wonderful saag paneer curry with naan.  For dessert, we shared a waffle with nutella, banana, and chocolate sauce.

The dala dala doesn’t run very late so we got a taxi back home in the evening and hung out before going to bed.

Check out the pictures here:

Spice tour

Since we didn’t cook dinner the night before, we didn’t have anything for lunch on Thursday so I got up with enough time to make pasta and sauce before we had to go to the office.  Apparently I should not be in charge of making food anymore because I have been making it too spicy.  I put two very small peppers into a lot of pasta sauce and it was a bit spicy, but it was too much for the others.  I’ll have to tone it down in the future.

We spent the morning with another lecture on GIS, focusing on some of the data analysis parts of the software then broke into small groups for the new exercises.  The morning went by quickly and before I knew it, I was hungry for lunch.

After lunch we went back for more training but some of the attendees did not return so we ended a bit earlier that we thought.  Overall the training went well, but I wonder how much GIS will be used here.  When Edmund asked the ZMCP workers about their research that might need to be mapped, they had a hard time coming up with project ideas.  I hope this trip of Edmund’s was not a waste of time!

I wanted to go home after the training but other people wanted to go into town and since they are in opposite directions and taxis are expensive, we decided to go into town.  Edmund really wanted to get coffee so we went to the coffee house but I didn’t have enough money for a drink and dinner and I wasn’t feeling so well either.

We spent a long time hanging out at the coffee shop then walked around town a bit, before going home to make dinner.  I wasn’t feeling hungry so I spent the evening reading my book and went to sleep early.

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.

On Tuesday morning I went running in the morning and made it back just before it started to rain.  Jaclyn (another student who will be here for two months) and Edmund (a professor from Berkeley who is a Geographic Information Systems expert) were arriving at 10 am so Tanya and I spent the morning at home so we could go to the airport and pick them up.  Mid-morning the power went out on us and we discovered that we were out of electricity credit, and were the only ones in the area without power, instead of the typical area-wide outage.  Tanya said she would buy electricity credit on the way to the airport, since the store was on the way.

There wasn’t room in the taxi van for both of us to go, so I stayed home while Tanya and Masoud picked up Jaclyn and Edmund.  It would have been nicer at home if the fans had been on, but since it was still morning it wasn’t too hot.

They arrived safely and Tanya secured electricity for us so we were with power again!

After chatting and catching up a bit, Jaclyn and Edmund unpacked while Tanya and I made a vegetable curry, rice and chapati for lunch.  It was quite delicious.

Keeping with the theme of not giving anyone a moment’s rest when they arrive in Zanzibar, we headed to the office at 1 pm to get set up for the GIS training Edmund would be giving this week.

We did some introductions then started the training around 2 pm.  I spent most of the afternoon helping people to install the ArcGIS software and to register their accounts and to transfer the data needed for the exercises from a flash drive to their computers.  There was an hour and a half of lecture just as an introduction to GIS since not many people here have worked with spatial data before.  It was a pretty short session, which was good for the first day.

From the office, we went into Stone Town and walked around a little bit before going to dinner.  We had dinner and drinks at the Africa House, which is on the second floor of a hotel that’s right on the beach, overlooking the ocean.  It was nice to relax and watch the sunset.  I even remembered to take some pictures this time (to be posted at a later time).

After dinner Jaclyn and Edmund were feeling pretty tired after their long journey so we went back to the house and hung out for a while before going to bed.

Even though we didn’t have to be to work until 9, Tanya and I got up early to go running before it got too warm. The air quality here is rather poor in general but mornings are not so bad.  Many of the cars and trucks here are old and emit a thick black smoke.  I’m sure none of the vehicles could pass the California smog test.  There’s also a lot of sand everywhere so I get very gritty running or biking around.

At work I spent the morning doing data compare from all of the data I entered last week.  It’s not hard, but takes a lot of time because if you find discrepancies between the numbers two people entered, you have to look up the questionnaire to see who was right.  Luckily, it made the morning go by quickly.

After lunch I designed a certificate to give to all of the health care workers who have taken part in our study.  Data collection for one part of the study ends on June 30 and we wanted to give the 90 workers something to show we appreciated their efforts.

Tanya had a phone interview for a job at 5 pm, so we left work around 3 to make sure she had time to prepare for the interview.

There was no power at home when we got back.  It was the heat of the day and there was no breeze at all so it was pretty uncomfortable.  Plus, high tide is not until after dark so swimming in the evening is not really an option for the next few days.

Fortunately, the power came back on around 5:30 and we were able to get the fans going again.

We didn’t have a lot of time to make dinner, so we got a taxi into town, stopping at a grocery store on the way to pick up some milk and granola, and had dinner at the park we went to the previous night.  I tried the vegetable Zanzibari pizza, which is filled with finely chopped onions, carrots, peppers, and tomatoes.  It was pretty good but could have used a bit more spice and salt.  We also had a skewer of shrimp that was grilled for us as we watched.  It was a great meal for $2.50.

We went to the film festival again, which was at a different location than the night before.  This time they showed the Jack and the Beanstalk short again and another short film in Portuguese about a young boy who has a crush on his piano teacher.  The feature film was a bio-pic of Luis Ignacio de la Silva, one of Brazil’s recent presidents.  It was the story of his life from when he was a boy up to when he became the head of the worker’s union in the early 1980s.  It was incredibly interesting since I didn’t know anything about him, but it dragged a bit and I think it could have been 30 minutes shorter.  I had a great time at both nights and am really glad we went.

The skies opened up in the middle of the night on Saturday.  I was awoken by the rain sometime around midnight.  I haven’t heard it rain that hard in a long time and I was very grateful to have a good roof over my head.

By morning it was hard to tell that it had rained: the sky was cloudless and the sun as hot as ever.  Only a few puddles remained as evidence of the storm.

We spent a few hours in the morning reading and relaxing then rode our bikes into town and bought postcards.  After walking around the shops a bit and buying a bag and sarong, Tanya and I went to a restaurant for lunch.  I had a great fish curry and we spent a long time there writing postcards and watching the people on the street.

But it was very hot and I wanted a cool drink, so we made our way to the place where we got the delicious banana milkshakes a few nights ago.  Sadly, their blender was not working so they couldn’t make my favorite drink.  They didn’t have anything else cold on the menu, so we walked across town to a coffee house and I got a mango lassie while Tanya got a cappuccino.  We wrote more postcards.  A guy handed us a flier about a free film festival going on in Stone Town that night and on Monday that sounded interesting.  The movies were made by this Brazilian production company and this is the second year they are showing their films in around Africa.

In total, I wrote 15 postcards and Tanya eight.  There are only two post offices in the area and we were near one, so there was a push to write them so they could be mailed right away.  Chances are if you are reading this and following my adventures, that there’s a postcard in the mail for you.  It might not arrive until after I’m home, but hopefully it will arrive sooner than the one from Nepal.

Next we went to the Darajani market in town and got some okra and vegetables for dinner.  Since it was getting on in the afternoon, we biked home and tried to cool off a bit.

We decided to check out the film festival so got a taxi back to town in the evening.  It was held in an outdoor amphitheater and reminded me a lot of being a kid and watching the movies outside in the evenings at the campground in Disney World.

There were two films.  The first was a documentary film called “Mama Africa” and it was a series of interviews from people all over Africa about what is means to be African, what they are proud of, and how they hope their countries will improve.  There were a few people from Zanzibar in it, and one of them was sitting right behind us in the audience!  It also featured people from South Africa, Ghana, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Senegal, and a few other countries.  Luckily it had subtitles so I could understand what was being said.  It was great and really offered a glimpse into the richness of the culture on this continent.

The other film was a short, animated movie that was basically Jack and the Beanstalk but South American.  It had no speaking parts but did a fabulous job of conveying emotion through expression, music and light.  Jacob would love the art.

Afterward, we walked across the street to a park where vendors set up food carts every evening.  For a few dollars you can get grilled fish, shrimp, or octopus, chapatti, falafel, or Zanzibari pizza.  Zanzibari pizza only vaguely resembles what American know as pizza.  It is a very thin piece of dough that is filled with toppings (either vegetables or meat), with an egg cracked in it.  The dough is sealed to make a packet and it is cooked on a pan over an open flame.  I got a dessert pizza with mango, banana and nutella in it and chocolate sauce on top.  It was wonderful!  I definitely want to try some other flavors.

Overall, it was my best evening in Zanzibar so far and there are more films tomorrow!

We told Makame to meet at our house at 8 am to get to the Bubweni Misufini health facility by 8:30, the time he said we would arrive. He and the driver picked us up at 8:20 so we were a bit late. When we got to the health facility, there were people everyone, which is unusual for a Saturday. Then we learned that there was a community health meeting going on that day that Makame failed to mention. All of the doctors, health care workers and the district supervisor were busy getting ready for their own activities but were kind enough to help us with finding the names we needed. I felt so bad disturbing them though. If Tanya and I had known, we would have gone there a different day.

The doctor had all of the patient records that we needed but we noticed that all of the resident villages in their records were different than the ones we had recorded. We were confident it was the same person, but confused as to why the information was different.

The fortunate part was that all of the village elders were there so we had a lot of people helping to figure out where these people live. Unfortunately, they didn’t know all of the names on our list. We had about 9 names from three different general areas we were looking for. We found one pretty easily, which was great. We found a young girl with the same name as one of our patients, but the wrong age and malaria diagnosis. We walked or sat around a lot of villages while the children stared at us and the adults tried to think of all of their neighbor’s children. It was hot and sweaty. I drank half a liter of water and was still thirsty. We were out all morning and I got hungry around 11. I don’t know what I would have done without the glucose biscuits!

a lifesaver

Overall, this rural area was no easier to map than the urban areas of last weekend. We only found two of the 9 cases, which was quite disappointing. The Zanzibar countryside is very pretty and we got to see some amazing landscapes.

I'm getting a lot of exercise

The project itself is not going so well and the bit of data we are collecting is costing a lot of money and may not add a lot of value in the end. At points I feel like I am wasting my time here. I am learning a lot, which is great, but I’m not sure my contributions will be meaningful.

We were pretty bummed and tired in the afternoon and it rained a bit so we hung out at home, reading and napping which was great.

In the evening, we went to Kristina and Deler’s for dinner. They are two researchers from Sweden who are working on malaria projects on other parts of the island. Tanya got to know them last summer and I have met them several times now. They are very nice and fun and cooked a feast for the ten of us they invited over. It was an enjoyable evening talking to new people and getting to know them but the music was too loud and it was hard to hear and I really wanted to go home at 11 but didn’t want to walk by myself so I had to wait until midnight when we could get a ride. I’m glad I went and was social, but because I wake up to the call to prayer at 5 am every day and get up at 6-6:30, I was very tired by the end and probably not very good company.

Friday morning Tanya wasn’t feeling well, so I went running alone. I should explain a little bit about where I run because it’s pretty interesting. From where we live, you can run to the ocean in about seven minutes. There are several roads that all lead to the same place by the beach and I’ve run down all of them now. The main roads, which are paved, are maintained by the government so they are pretty decent. The smaller roads that come off the main roads are not really maintained by anyone, however. So although I run past splendid, huge, ornate houses, the roads are packed dirt and have huge craters in them. A car must go so slowly on them that you can pass a car on your bicycle.

There is also no sewer system on the island at all. That means when it rains (which it has been doing a lot) water just collects on the road or in ditches on the side or anywhere else and it just stagnates until it evaporates (which could take days). A perfect mosquito breeding ground.

All of the nice houses around here have walls or fences around the property so it is hard to get a proper look at them from the street. Some have signs warning of electric fences and most places have guard houses. Overall though, I would say security is higher than in Berkeley, but lower than in Cape Town.

Work on Friday was pretty short. I spent most of the time doing data entry of all of the malaria cases that came in earlier in the week. There were more than 50 questionnaires to enter so that took several hours, even at a good pace. Meanwhile Tanya finished organizing our mapping activity for Saturday. That mostly involved getting Makame to verify things, which was much harder than what I was doing.

We left work around lunch time, when all of the men went to the mosque for Friday prayers, and in the afternoon went down to the pier/beach near our house. We swam a bit then rested and talked. I read my magazine and we swam again. It was very peaceful since no one else was out there, but for me it is getting a bit old already. I do have a pretty good tan going on despite wearing SPF 50 sunscreen constantly.

In the evening we went out to dinner with Tanya’s friends Paulo, Mortiz, Ranil, and Amee. Mortiz and Ranil wanted to watch the French Open so we went to basically a sport’s bar that had two large, flat screen TVs. I wasn’t much into the tennis, but I enjoyed the grilled calamari and chips I had for dinner. Paulo, who lives close to us, was very nice and picked us up and brought us home so we didn’t have to get a taxi, which was an added bonus. Tanya’s friends are nice and it’s great to have other people to hang out with, but it’s not the same as having my own friends around; I miss you all!

On Thursday we had to be home in the morning for the fundi to come back and finish fixing the toilet. That took a little while so we biked to work around 10 am. Although the temperature doesn’t change much from dawn to the heat of the day, 10 am seems much hotter than 8 am because the sun is very strong. It was an especially sweaty bike ride and the streets are more crowded at that time so we will try to go to work earlier from now on.

Two of the district supervisors were there when we arrived so the rest of the morning went by quickly with checking their paperwork, getting their salaries, and resupplying them with study documents.

Things calmed down after lunch and we were able to focus on planning our next mapping excursion. We decided to go on Saturday (even though neither of us wanted to work on the weekend) because next week Edmund Seto from UC Berkeley is coming to give some training on ArcGIS, the mapping software that we use. We’ll be busy with that training all next and only have two months to do all of the mapping so we decided to go to the field on Saturday and hope the mapping goes better.

On Tuesday we had made our data collection forms and found all of the names we could from the consent forms so we went through all the data we had to decide where we should go first to be most efficient. We decided on a health facility called Bumbwini Misufini, which is farther north, near the coast. We told Makame our plans and asked him to call the health facility and the Sheha to let them know we were coming. He told us that he already called a different health facility and told them we would be there on Saturday. He hadn’t consulted us at all about that decision and had not mentioned it. We were both so upset. We made him call and cancel that other one and plan to go to Bumbwini instead. Working with this man is very frustrating. He doesn’t listen and makes decisions on his own, which are most often the wrong decisions. He must be some relative of some important person to have gotten this job.

We finally got all of that sorted out and made our to do list for Friday so we were free to leave at 3:30.

We stopped at the Diplomatic supermarket on the way home and got some more milk and granola. The milk here is treated in a different way than in the US: it is completely bacteria free and can be stored at room temp until opened. Once it’s opened it has to be used within 4 days though, so it’s good to buy a small container.

From our successful market shopping on Tuesday, we had all the fixin’s for a good vegetable chili, so we made that for dinner. The power stayed on the whole time and we had a filling, spicy meal.

After dinner we got a taxi into town and met up with some of Tanya’s friends for a little bit. I had a great banana milkshake at this cafe. It was nice and cold and really hit the spot. I haven’t been eating much sweet stuff here because we don’t have dessert type things at home, so the milkshake seemed even sweeter than unusual. It was delicious.

Luckily, everyone wanted to go home at a reasonable hour and we were able to get a ride since Paulo lives just down the street from us. We got home around 11 and shortly after went to sleep.

The toilet in Tanya’s bathroom wasn’t flushing correctly so we had the landlord send a fundi (repairman) over to look at it. He could only come at 9 am on Wednesday so we needed to be home to let him in. Since we didn’t have much work to do at the office and we were planning on working during the weekend again, we decided to take Wednesday off.

We went running in the morning then relaxed around home until the fundi came. He didn’t take too long because he quickly discovered that he needed a part that he didn’t have. He said he would come back the following day to finish the job.

It was quite a lazy morning spent learning some Swahili and reading Les Miserables.

High tide at the beach was at 3:45 pm, so we rode down there around 1 pm and went swimming and hung out on the dock for a few hours. It truly felt like a mini-vacation.

I went to the yoga class at 5 pm and worked on my balance and head stands. The yoga class is an hour and a half but I really wish it were a bit shorter. Just after 6 pm the mosquitoes really start coming out and you need to put on an extra layer of insect repellent. Also, it gets dark around 6:15 and there are no street lights so riding home in the dark is a bit of an extra adventure. Luckily my bike has a light mounted to the front tire that lights up when you peddle so I can see a bit more. Plus, I always have my headlamp with me, just in case.

When I got home, I was about to heat up some left over curry for dinner when the power went out. I don’t like cold food so I ended up having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner. The power came back on 1.25 hours later, which was good because the still air makes the house quite stifling even with the windows open.

I have been reading Les Miserables for two weeks now and I’m not even half way through. I’m not a fast reader, but it’s a really long book! It’s very interesting and I recommend it, although an abridged version might be just as good.