Worldschooling

ZANZIBAR

Zanzibar was one of my favorite places we’ve been so far on this trip so it was hard to decide what to write about. We spent nine days in Zanzibar and we went to three different places. Zanzibar is an island off the east coast of Africa in the country of Tanzania. The first place we went to was Kiwengwa, then we moved on to Kendwa where we had lots of time on the beach, and finally our last stop was Stone Town where we saw what life was like for the people who live there. We spent a lot of time doing school work and catching up on video editing, but of course we managed to have some really fun experiences that I’m going to be telling you about. I’m also going to be writing about the spice and fruit tour we did one day because Zanzibar has so many exotic fruits I’ve never heard of, and is home to many spices we use in our daily life. So today’s blog post is basically going to be a “what we did in Zanzibar” post -minus the spice tour because that will be a different blog post.

SWAHILI COOKING CLASS

The first thing we did in Zanzibar was a Swahili cooking lesson at our tour guide Yahya’s house. Yahya’s family welcomed us into their household and showed us their culture through food. My mom and I posed for some photos in the traditional Swahili clothing before we got to work cooking. Yayhya’s mom and sister demonstrated how to chop numerous vegetables for the dishes we made because, like many places around the world, the women do the cooking at home in the Islamic culture. To cook, we sat on mats spread across the floor. To cut the vegetables, we used a paring knife but instead of using a cutting board which is how I usually do it at home, we cut everything without using a surface.

DISH #1: Vegetable and octopus curry with coconut milk and turmeric

DISH #2: King Fish with cumin, garlic and ginger

DISH #3: Vegetable Samosas

DISH #4: Boiled Bananas with coconut milk and cardamon

SWIMMING WITH DOLPHINS

One of my favorite things we did in Zanzibar (okay, scratch that-I loved everything we did in Zanzibar!) was snorkeling and getting to swim with dolphins. Our tour guide recommended that we wake up at 5:00am to see them because dolphins are up early in the morning, but mainly the reason was that we would be able to see them before all the other tour boats got there. We had to drive for about an hour to the beach, and then we got into a boat with our snorkeling gear to head off and find dolphins. We were one of the only tour boats out on the water, but there were a lot of fishing boats packed with people. I noticed that there were a lot of plastic bottles tied together and floating on the surface to mark that there was some sort of trap below. There were some divers who had swam a far way out in the ocean looking for fish.

We had been looking for a while for a dolphin sighting and Yahya said that it usually only took 20 minutes to spot them, but so far we had seen nothing. After boating around for 2 HOURS, we finally spotted a pod of dolphins. However, there was already a tour boat there with a bunch of people who were already out in the water with them. I was a little surprised that we’d finally found dolphins after using all of our extra time trying to find them. So we followed the tour boat that had found them, and we were the first out of a boatload of tour boats to do that. When we spotted dolphins for the second time, my dad stopped video taping with his camera and we quickly jumped into the water. Sadly, we lost the doors on our GoPro so we weren’t able to video tape the dolphins under water. We definitely saw them about three times below us, but they swam so fast to try to get away from all the chaos and people jumping into the water to try to swim with them. That was the part that I don’t feel very good about. Even though dolphins are very friendly and like being around humans, being totally surrounded by people is very overwhelming and probably pretty scary for them. Think of it like this: How would you feel if you were just walking on the street and a bunch of random people tried to corner you for no reason? You would probably feel pretty freaked out. That’s exactly what it’s like for dolphins. I know I said that I was really excited to see dolphins and I do want to do it again, but all I’m saying is that we should be careful with our actions around other animal habitats. Maybe a couple of people at a time would be better because the dolphins might feel more free and open to be around us, and not like they are trapped in the place that they live.

What I learned from this experience was that to try to swim with dolphins sometimes means surrounding them with boats, and that was something I didn’t know or even think of before I did this. I also learned that when swimming with dolphins, you have to be quick, meaning you have to have your gear on and be ready to jump into the water at any given time. And you should definitely make sure your GoPro works before you do it.

SNORKELING

The same day that we swam with dolphins we also went snorkeling, and believe it or not, I’ve never been snorkeling before. One time I was going to go snorkeling in Mexico about five years ago, but when the time came to jump in the water, I bailed because I didn’t want to use the snorkeling mask to breath underwater. This time I did go though because I obviously wasn’t going to miss out on anything. I also got to wear this type of snorkeling mask that goes over your whole face and you can breath through your mouth and nose through the mask, so I totally scored on that and I think its way better than the normal snorkeling gear.

We went to two different places to snorkel, and both were very cool. The first place we went snorkeling had a lot of sea plants and sea urchins on the sea floor and lots of fish swimming near the bottom. The second place we went had less sea plants, but a lot more fish that swam pretty close to the surface. It was so shallow that you could swim down 10 feet and touch the sandy ocean floor. The water in Zanzibar is also crystal clear which makes it really easy to see sea life under water. Snorkeling in Zanzibar was really fun and I definitely want to do it again at other places on this trip.

SWIMMING IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

So we did do a lot of swimming in Zanzibar both at the pool and in the ocean. Although, this was my first time ever getting to swim in the Indian Ocean, and I’d say it was pretty different than other oceans I’ve swum in. At the hotel we stayed at, we went swimming in the ocean almost every day and I noticed a lot of differences there than in any other ocean I’ve been to.

First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever seen water so clear. If its shallow and there is no seaweed or rocks, the water can be a beautiful aqua blue. (Which, by the way, is my favorite shade of blue!) Even if its very deep, the water is so clear that you can see the ocean bottom and it looks like you can easily swim down to the ground when really its double the amount deeper than you think.

Another thing I noticed was that when we first got to Kendwa and went swimming in the Indian Ocean, I remember seeing a shadow laying on the sand underwater. When I looked closer, I realized that it was a starfish! And it was really big. I tried to point it out to the rest of my family, but when I came back to show them, I couldn’t find it. My parents did end up seeing a starfish the next day laying on the sand when they went to watch the sunset. I just think its so cool that there are starfish in the Indian Ocean! I’ve only seen them at the aquarium, but never in the open ocean like that.

The third thing I noticed about the Indian Ocean is that the sand is incredibly white! At least, if there’s no seaweed around, that is. When we flew over the ocean yesterday to get to Arusha, you could see so many sandbars poking out of the water and the sand looked like it was flour. The thing about sand in Zanzibar is that its not so soft that you sink into it, but its not so hard either.

STONE TOWN

Our last day in Zanzibar we spent in Stone Town, the oldest part of Zanzibar City. We started it off by walking through the market place and looking at all the interesting foods and products the vendors were selling. After walking around town, we got on a boat to go to a giant sandbar that was great for swimming. My dad went in the water, but the rest of us didn’t because we didn’t bring our swimsuits, and I also didn’t feel like going in with my clothes and then being super wet for the rest of the day. I really regret it though because the water was so warm and it looked really fun. Because we were on a sandbar, waves came from both sides and crashed against each other, making the water spurt up like lava from a volcano. We had lunch on the sandbar that Yahya’s family had made for us that included pillau spiced rice with beef, a kind of red vegetable/tomato sauce, vegetable samosas and we tried Zanzibar spiced coffee. 

After lunch we boated over to Prison Island which was orginally known as Changuu Island. Prison Island was first used in the 1860’s for slaves under Oman’s rule. After the slave trade was abolished, the British actually used the prisons for the slave traders and other criminals. The British built a new prison and by the time it was finished, the need for the space had changed. The island was used as a quarantine for workers who arrived by sea with cholera and other diseases like yellow fever. The island became known as Quarentine Island and was used by all of East Africa. This was only for six months of the year when the boats came through the port, and the other part of the year the island was used as a resort for health because of the sun and fresh sea air. I was thinking, wouldn’t people be apprehensive to vacation in fear of getting cholera from the people who lived there before? Apparently not. The resort on Prison island ended up closing down recently— It’s still there but not used. Now Prison Island is just a place for tourists to visit and see the tortoises.

The island has a tortoise sanctuary. The Seychelles exchanged a group of their native Aldabra tortoises for Zanzibar’s fruit plants back in the early 1900’s and eventually the tortoises were moved to the protected Prison Island where they’ve lived happily for about 100 years. The tortoises are huge and seem to be very social because you could get really close to them. We got to feed the tortoises spinach and we saw a lot of them sleeping in the mud which, I’m guessing was to keep cool. The oldest tortoise there was 194 years old! Tortoises can live a long time. We also got to see baby tortoises and I was surprised at how small they were because they grow up to be so big! Bigger than Jack even!

Thanks for reading this blog post! I will be uploading another post about our trip to the spice farm soon, so stay tuned for that. We just got to Arusha yesterday in a really tiny plane with only 12 passenger seats, and we’re getting ready to go on safari with our friends in a couple of days so I’m really looking forward to it.

Today is Thanksgiving and we’re spending that with friends. Happy Thanksgiving!