Long time no blog... I've been back in town since Thanksgiving, but before that I was in Pete, near Jozani for about 3 weeks straight. Pete was great and the family I stayed with was wonderful. I ate delicious food, with lots and lots of fresh fruit (about 4 servings per meal!!) Pete has great mangoes - my favorite fruit, and I've never tasted such ripe perfect ones. There was no running water at the house so it was bucket showers for 3 weeks but that was fine. Most of the time there was power, and Ali even had a bike and a laptop that he let me use! That was great because for one thing I had nothing to do and for another I could work on my ISP during my field observations! I got pretty much the whole thing done while I was there, and I just finished it today!

2 of my friends and I are going to Paje today to spend a few days at the beach after we print our ISPs. Our academic director has some hookup for this great huge house where no one lives, so we can stay there for 8000 shillings a night each(about 7 bucks!) without food, no matter how many people are there. Paje is a somewhat touristy place on the east coast with a beautiful beach - I'm looking forward to a little relaxation.

The monkeys were great though! I spent 6 hours a day observing their behavior, and got to know pretty well where to find them and how to recognize their behaviors. The Jozani guides were great too, and really friendly - they're used to having researchers around. They, and my family, were pretty much the only human contact I had for the three weeks so I was grateful for the company! At the house I had a LOT of time to myself - I read 9 books in 3 weeks, did about 70 sudokus, played Solitaire on the laptop, and had time to write most of my paper. I also had no phone service in Pete so couldn't even talk on the phone! I didn't get too bored though - lots of entertaining myself!

Now we have less than 2 weeks left of the program! I can't believe how fast that snuck up on me. I will be really sad to leave the people here. I love most of the people on our program and we have a good time together. On Thanksgiving we even had an American feast! Every single person on our program cooked a dish, even the boys... so we had 15 things, including traditional Thanksgiving foods like pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, and stuffing, as well as some Zanzibari additions like nutella-custard-fruit pie, and my papaya/condensed milk custard with mango and banana. We invited Zanzibar friends and even gave a little speech about the origins of Thanksgiving (which our academic director translated into Swahili). There were 30 people there! It was quite the event, and a really nice way to enjoy the holiday, even in Tanzania!

The last couple of days have been pretty relaxed. I haven't been doing much since I was mostly done with ISP, but we've just been hanging out and doing work and have gone out a couple nights. On Friday we went to Livingstone's, the bar on the beach, and then to Dharma Lounge, where the 6 Americans or so in the house got a little too excited when they played Living on a Prayer and Summer of '69 - seemingly odd music choices for a club in Zanzibar? Last night we went to the reggae party that's every Saturday at another place in town. I'm trying to soak up all the Zanzibar-only opportunities I have before I go home!

One little recent Zanzibar lost in translation bit:
on the dessert menu at a restaurant in town, one of the most appealing items:
Ice cream with Leeches!
Yummy!! I think it was supposed to be lychee...
Almost as good as "All dishes served with rice or fresh flies"

I'm going to miss this place and all its ridiculousness.

We leave in two days for ISP! Ahh. It's so weird to think that after two months of spending all day every day with the same 14 people, we're all about to split up for a whole month. Hopefully it won't be that long, and we'll be able to get together for the end of ISP on the beach.

We've been in Stone Town for the last few days, just doing lots of school work. We celebrated Halloween, which was lots of fun. For being in Zanzibar, I think we did a pretty good job scrounging up costumes. We trick or treated around the hotel with weird Swahili candy and drinks, etc, then went to Livingstone's, a bar on the beach with a live band. After that we went to Bawani, the crazy club with bad American music and strobe lights.

Before Stone Town we were in Pemba. We flew there in two tiny planes (maybe 10 seats total), which was exciting and a great way to see the island. It was a bit scary being able to see everything the pilot was doing and seeing during the landing, but definitely worth it for the excitement. Pemba is sometimes called the "Green Island" because it's rural and undeveloped. It's a beautiful place with a more varied landscape than that of Unguja. Apparently, it's also referred to as the "Dark Island," which I now understand after spending a week there without power. The island is powered by a single giant generator, unline Unguja which is powered by a cable from Dar es Salaam. Apparently, someone "forgot" to order fuel for the generator, so there was no power! The boat operators were on strike, so there was no guarantee that the fuel would be coming over on the boat anytime soon. At the end of our stay in Chake Chake, the most happening town in Pemba, power finally came back. It wouldn't be so bad without power if it wasn't so HOT! It was unseasonably hot while we were there, causing even the locals to complain. My house also didn't have running water (although there were taps?) so I could only do bucket showers, which just don't work as well for cooling down. Either way, it was quite the experience.

During our week in Chake Chake we saw a bunch of cool stuff, like the Pemba Health Lab, where we saw their TB lab and they also showed us slides of malaria and other parasites like those that cause elephantitis. We also went to the Pemba Essential Oil Distillery and saw kilos and kilos of cloves being prepared for the distillation process. Pemba's biggest cash crop is cloves, so the whole island smells like cloves. We also went to Misali Island, where green turtles nest and there are also cool caves and coral reefs around the island. Also salt farms, a cool idea but not carried out terribly profitably in Pemba.

After homestays in Chake Chake we went to Wete, Pemba, where we visited some local farms and went to Ngezi forest. Some people in our group saw a Mozambique spitting cobra there, and also a dead bushbaby and a tree that bleeds (!). On our last day in Pemba, we visited Kidike, the site of a conservation project of Pemba Flying Foxes, a species endemic to the island. They're pretty much huge bats that roost all over the place in Kidike.

So now ISP in two days! Back to Jozani to study monkeys. Should be cool. Send me emails!