It's Zanzibarific

So, we've given ourselves three days off in Zanzibar. We're beat tired.

Before anybody cries foul let me explain. We've been going seven days a week, 7:00 am to 9:00 pm for five weeks now. Breakfast meetings, school, orphanage & NGO tours, travel, presentations and generally just being "on". It's far more grueling than people looking in from the outside would believe. So, we're taking three days of R'n'R - at our own cost, not Rotary's.

So, how did we get to where we are since the last post. We hit Zanzibar after flying in a very small, single propeller plane out of Tanga and across the Indian ocean. Our hosts met as at the airport and took us on our seperate ways to their homes. Once again I lucked out on the acomodation front. Where the others spent their two days in the suburbs of Stone Town, my host Zaher, has an amazing roof-top apartment right above the narrow streets in the heart of the 300 year-old town.

Stone Town itself was great but hot and the days were pretty long. Our vocational tour day (our only full day there) had stops, meetings etc... at Save the Children, an OT clinic, the West Indian Ocean Marine Science Association, The Zanzibar International Film Festival and a bank.

The evenings in Zanzibar were spent at supper, walking the streets of the old town and at one Rotary Club meeting.

So now, we've bussed across the island to a tiny little town called Jambiani. We've met a retired Canadian couple that run an NGO here that is training local people for meaningful careers in the Tourism Industry; beyond just housekeeping jobs.

These are days off for us. Yesterday we spent 6 hours on a dhow sailing around the local area, snorkeling, eating fish, and drinking local beer. Today is an absolute nothing day. Tomorrow Bill and I are off to a town called Paje for a day of diving on the reefs around Jambiani and Paje.

On Tuesday it's back at it for the few days - jammed packed full of official stuff until we go home. Be back in 9 days folks.

Later