Exodus from the Zanz

Whoa, a month and a half flies by in paradise, doesn't it? I booked into the noon fast ferry (1st class!) to Dar es Salaam tomorrow, and it may be years before I see Stone Town again. I rarely get choked up about leaving a place that doesn't rhyme with Zontreal, but I'm pretty shook up about leaving Zanzibar. My hotel/apartment, while small (really, really small) was beginning to feel like home, with breakfast (fruits! eggs! coffee!) outside on the balcony every morning. Work at ZIORI, while very mundane, was really interesting. I got to skim articles that seemed to tickle my brain, talk to the random academics that came to visit Prof. Sheriff (I got TWO buisness cards and an invite to info for scholarships to Oxford!). Plus my enormous lunch break left me with time to take Swahili lessons, so my Kiswahili has been upgraded from "utterly painful" to "passable" in most personal interactions. Plus I've got a steady group of friends (I nice mix of locals, Canucks, Brits and Yanks), which is always nice.

So yeah, wistful pensiveness aside life has been good. Food every night at the market, followed every now and then by drinks on the beach. I've spent another weekend Nungwi with my two Canadian ladies and attended the thoroughly insane Full Moon Party in Kendwa last weekend. Try to imaging about 1000 people dancing to techno and reggae (odd mix, I know) in a giant tiki hut on the beach (for the Peskinds, it was at Kendwa Rocks where we had lunch). Aviva (who I met in Kenya) came up for a few and we had a fairly chilled out time in Kendwa and Stone Town. Aside from that it's really just been a relaxing few weeks since we last spoke. For the first time this trip I had a routine, one that gave me enough responsibility to not get bored, but not so much that I couldn't relax when I wanted to. So yeah, I'll be back in Zanzibar one day. Mark my words.

In Dar tomorrow I'll sample the penultimate Chinese food sampling of my journey (wait for the upcoming Bujumbura/Kigali/Nairobi/Jerusalem/Kampala/Zanzibar/Dar es Salaam/Lilongwe Sweet and Sour Chicken Showdown! Bated breath, while not required, is recommended), fill up my passport with new pages (I hope), buy me a train ticket to Mbeya and move on to Malawi.

Also, I had a new Fanta. It was Apple and it tasted like really sweet cider. Mmmmm.

Also, Alexander, I found a coin more worthless than the 10 Tanzanian Shilling Coin. It's the 5 Tanzanian Shilling coin. $0.0039. Seriously. I swear this thing exists.

Cheers,

-Dave