Lesotho

Lately I’ve had the good fortune of spending a lot of time out in the field with m2m. We have an enormous report due at the end of May to one of our big funders, Johnson&Johnson, in which we will be evaluating our programs in Lesotho, Swaziland, and all across South Africa. This first requires a lot of time spent out in the field collecting data from the sites (where all record keeping is paper based) so we can complete the next stages of analysis. I love the opportunity to travel and I especially love seeing a new place through the eyes of local m2m employees. It’s very interesting to see a country/area by visiting hospitals and clinics as opposed to regular tourist attractions.

So, last week it was Lesotho (the week before, East London, this week Durban, and next week Swazi). Carey (the Program Development Manager for Lesotho who splits her time between there and Cape Town), Johannes (Operations Research Specialist in DSITS), and myself left very early Monday morning and few into Bloem. (That would be Bloemfontein. For some reason, South Africans seem find it necessary to shorten every name possible. Thus, Bloemfontein = Bloem, Johannesburg = Joburg, Zimbabwe = Zim, Zambia = Zam, Botswana = Bots, Swaziland = Swazi, etc…you get the picture. At any rate, use of the full name of a commonly abbreviated place is a good way of telling everyone you haven’t been in South Africa that long, so I do my best to fake it and make an attempt to “blend in.”) Bloem is the capitol city of the Free State (located in sort of the northern central part of South Africa). To give you an idea of what Bloem is like, we were waiting at the airport for our flight and found it a bit disconcerting that our flight wasn’t coming up on any of the reader boards, despite the fact that it was almost time to board. Carey looked over at the people sitting next to us (dressed in knee length jean shorts, with t-shirts tucked in, calf-high socks and hiking boots, along with canvas hats, and of course, huge mullets) and simply said “don’t worry, we haven’t missed our flight because they’re going to Bloem.” Perhaps that gives you an idea of who lives in the Free State. I’ll give you a hint: think redneck Afrikaner farmers.

Anyway, after an uneventful flight to Bloem, we sorted out our rental car and were soon on the road to Lesotho. (The only way to fly from Cape Town to Lesotho would be to go through Joburg, so in some ways it’s just easier to drive from Bloem.) The drive was beautiful. Rolling, golden fields and big, blue skies.

The scenery of the Free State





It was about a 2 hour drive to Lesotho. Once we got to the border, we crossed our fingers we weren’t going to get stuck behind a ton of taxi travellers needing to go through immigration (of course most people in the area don’t have cars, so they rely on minibuses (also called “taxis”) to shuttle them around, and each one can be packed with 15 people or so), and luckily, things went pretty smoothly.

Heading into the mountains of Lesotho...

...of course, behind a taxi


Made it to Lesotho - so beautiful!



Maseru (the capitol of Lesotho) is pretty much right on the border, so once we passed immigration it was a quick drive to our hotel. It was a cute place, and we each stayed in our own rondavel!

Maseru is quite small, which isn’t surprising given the size of Lesotho itself. Officially the “Kingdom of Lesotho,” Lesotho is a small country completely surrounded by South Africa. I think I remember reading somewhere it’s about the size of Maryland, with around 2 million people. The Basotho people somehow managed to fight off the Dutch back in the day, with the help of the British (becoming a British protectorate in 1868), so they were able to keep a piece of their homeland and remain independent from South Africa. They gained independence from Britain in 1966. Unfortunately, Lesotho is one of the countries with the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world – around 23%. Numbers like that are just so high, it’s hard to wrap you’re head around them sometimes…

Anyway, downtown Maseru kind of felt like it was the size of Hamilton, haha. And talk about “small town” feel…I was looking to connect with another Princeton in Africa fellow based in Lesotho, but she had told me via email that she had just lost her phone, and of course my South African phone wasn’t going to work in Lesotho, and I previously didn’t know where we were staying or where the office was, so we weren’t quite sure how to find each other. But then, as we were checking in, Carey of course sees one of her expat friends in the lobby, who happened to be working from the hotel for a conference that day, and asks if she knows a Whitney and if she could possibly help us get a hold of her, and her friend is like “yeah, do you want her work number or her roommate’s number?” So there you have it.

The metropolis that is Maseru


Having arrived mid-day on Monday, we then went to the office and met with staff there to explain the project and let them know why we were there. The view from the office was pretty nice, I must say!


Proof of how cold it was: little kids dressed in winter jackets

Lesotho in general is gorgeous. I had really wanted to travel there before leaving South Africa and was in the beginning stages of planning a trip for myself, so the fact that I was able to go with m2m instead was quite fortuitous. Lesotho is known for its rugged beauty, and you know me, I like mountains! It’s located in the highlands of the Drakensburg Mountains. (FYI, J.R.R. Tolkein was born in Bloemfontein and supposedly some of the scenery he wrote about in his books is based on the Drakensburg .) So yeah, the high elevation also meant it was COLD – as in frost-in-the-mornings cold! (Which is hard to take when you haven’t encountered that for an entire year, haha!) I may be mistaken, but I’m guessing Lesotho is probably the only place in Africa where you can go skiing. There are truly some very remote areas there – so much so that we have to give our Mentor Mothers motor bikes so they can get out to the rural clinics (since the roads are so bad and you would need a 4x4 otherwise.)

Anyway, after working a few hours, we headed back to the hotel and then got ready for dinner. I had managed to reach Whitney, so Carey, Johannes, and I went to meet her at an Indian restaurant in town. It was funny because Carey had been talking about how she really wanted to catch up with her other friend (the one who gave me Whitney’s number) at some point, and lo and behold, Whitney brought her to dinner, without even knowing the connection to Carey. She also brought another expat friend who Carey knew well, so again, Maseru is a small town, if you know what I mean.

You might not have guessed it, but the one Indian restaurant in Lesotho serves AMAZING food. Johannes even said it was some of the best Indian food he’s ever eaten. It was really fun to meet new people and share good conversation. Amongst us, there were 2 black Americans, 2 white Americans, 1 person from Sierra Leone, and 1 Indian who grew up in Hong Kong. We had a very interesting conversation about race and peoples’ different experiences in South Africa. Some areas, like Bloemfontein and Stellenbosch, are extremely white and the black people amongst us talked about how uncomfortable they felt being in those areas given the mentalities of the populations who live there. We talked about how truly separated Cape Town is, in terms of black and white populations rarely intermingling. We talked about what it was like to be West African in South Africa, where everyone assumes you must be from Nigeria and are taking their jobs. We talked about how, despite being 50-50 white and black, UCT is not an integrated place –Johannes, who used to teach there, even said there was a palpable divide between professors. We talked about how black Americans are often more accepted here by whites than black Africans, and how that is more symbolic of being accepted for being American and not for being black. There are so many issues South Africa has to sort out. It’s definitely not exactly the “Rainbow Nation” it declares itself to be. But I digress – back to Lesotho…

The next day we worked from the office in Maseru all day, and nothing too eventful happened. For lunch, I did get to try a drink made of a mixture of sugar cane juice and ginger beer, which came from the street market served in a used water bottle. I was a little afraid of getting sick, but it was good, and I decided to risk it and take advantage of all things local. Later that day, we shared maize off the street, which was delicious – an ear of corn grilled until the kernels turn brown and then you eat it kernel by kernel (which are hard and crunchy). I also worked hard to try the local beer, Maluti – definitely an African beer (very light), but still good.

Wednesday morning, Carey and I left the hotel at 6am to get on the road and drive up to Butha Buthe, a town about a 2hr drive north. (Johannes had to catch a flight out to Joburg that day, so he didn’t join.) The drive was extremely beautiful, especially as the sun was rising.








And you probably know by now, I love driving through Africa. So many interesting sites to absorb! There is always a steady stream of roadside foot traffic, and it was interesting to pass through little villages and see the hillsides dotted with rondavels and get a feel for what life is like in the area.



There are also a lot of herders and people who ride donkeys around – a very rural country, as I mentioned before. In Lesotho, many, many people wear these traditional colorful Basutho blankets wrapped around them, which I loved seeing.



We spent the day working from a small room in the Butha Buthe hospital, along with the m2m Site Coordinator from there. She was a pretty amazing SC – single handedly going out in the community and convincing tons of men to come join their partners at our support groups (it’s pretty rare to be able to get men involved). Even though I’ve seen a lot of resource-poor hospitals in South Africa, it felt like we were one more step removed working out there, as you would open the door and chickens would be walking around everywhere and all day we could here animals outside. For lunch, Mojalefa (the Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator in Lesotho, who helped us all week) and the SC took me out to get food (Carey decided to stay in the office), and once again, I ended up eating things that I thought for sure would make me really sick. (It all worked out in the end, and I think this trip was a good lesson for me that I shouldn’t always be so uptight about things, haha!) We pulled up into the taxi rink (the area where the minibuses load passengers – tons of people milling about, as you can imagine), where the car could barely navigate over the trash piles and mud puddles to park, where I stepped out of the car and everyone started asking Mojalefa and the SC why they were with a white person (I got the feeling Carey and I were the only white people in the whole town), and we walked up to this completely dilapidated small store front where I discovered we would be eating lunch. Needless to say, this place would not exactly have passed any food inspection regulations in the U.S., haha. Mojalefa ordered beef stew with paapa (the maize-based, thick, porridge-like starch that is the food base of many Southern African cultures – in South Africa it’s called paap) and then he ordered me stew with rice (though he was speaking in Basotho, I could understand “rice” and “paapa”). I then interjected and said I wanted paapa too, at which point Mojalefa and the women working behind the counter started laughing hysterically and kept asking me again and again if I really wanted paapa, as they couldn’t believe a white person would want to eat it. Well whatever, I actually like it! We were also served more ginger/sugarcane juice, this time with lots more interesting floaty things in it, including hair, but I still drank it. When in Rome…

This isn't the exact place where we ate, but it's representative, haha


After a long day, we managed to leave the hospital just in time to watch the sunset as we drove home, but most of the drive was in the dark.

Driving in the dark is certainly not ideal when there’s that much road-side traffic, often with people dressed in all dark colors walking along in the middle of the road. Sadly, on the way home, we passed one person who had been completely mauled by a taxi. Sometimes I think the real danger of in living in Africa isn’t crime, it’s road safety. I still don’t know how I haven’t been run over/run over someone here, given how people drive and the positions pedestrians put themselves in.

Thursday morning was another very early morning, as we had to drive 2 hours south this time to Mafeteng.

More beautiful scenery




And great clouds

And endless cornfields

Really, it shouldn’t have been a 2 hour drive, except that there was so much road construction. At one point we had to just sit and wait on the side of the road for about a half hour. Though Carey and I were skeptical that there was any method to the madness of which cars were allowed to go through vs. when which cars had to wait, you gotta love at least the attempt to inform you of what was going on:

Waiting...


As locals know there is a good opportunity to sell things when people are stuck waiting in their cars, there were a lot of people milling about while we sat and waited. Carey bought breakfast (boiled eggs) from a cute old woman wrapped in her big blanket sitting by the side of the road. I think each egg was 2 rand (like 25 cents), and after selling to us, she said “I need to go make more money” and headed off to the next car behind us…while Carey pointed out that if that were a man, he probably would have sat there begging us for money as opposed to getting back to work. There was also a guy with a cardboard sign taped to his back symbolizing he was selling airtime. And then there were the taxi drivers, who got out of their taxis to talk to their friends and smoke cigarettes.

It was really funny to just talk to people and observe the goings-on of the day. Carey asked one guy talking to us what he did for work, and he answered “door slide.” We almost died laughing. Probably only those of you who have experienced Africa would get that. Minibuses/taxis/combis – whatever you want to call them – are ubiquitous all across Africa, and typically how they are set up is that one guy is the driver while another guy works yelling to people on the street, collecting the fares, and operating the sliding door to let people in and out. Usually these helpers are pretty crazy, completely hanging out the windows, yelling all the time, shoving people in and always managing to make one extra person fit and somehow also managing to hoist themselves in as well as the taxi starts to move away. Sometimes they don’t even bother to shut the door while the taxi is in motion. Anyway, it was just hilarious to have someone sum up that crazy, crazy job as “door slide” – I never knew it had an actual name, haha! I guess you had to be there. It was an entertaining wait, needless to say. I also saw one of the funniest sights I have ever seen (funny just because of the combination of the setting and people’s attitudes, and it being another just plain African moment): a group of young teenagers walking through the cornfields about to cross the road, one of them a bit bigger than the others and clearly the “cool” ringleader, with this cool kid wearing his big winter jacket, along with hot pink mini sunglasses. Yes, HOT PINK. And they were clearly way too small for him. I don’t know, it was just really funny to see this kid thinking he was so cool wearing little girl sunglasses in the middle of winter in Lesotho. Perhaps another “you had to be there” moment…sorry…

Arriving in Mafeteng





Mafeteng Hospital


Meeting the staff in Mafeteng was really nice. One of the Mentor Mothers pulled Carey and I aside to tell us that she just got back the results from her baby’s second PCR test (you’re supposed to have two, one at 6 weeks, and one once you have stopped breastfeeding to make sure the virus wasn’t transmitted later through breastmilk) and that they were negative. She was truly glowing, and then she high-fived both of us. I know it sounds really cheesy, but it’s moments like that that just make you feel really good about going to work everyday. Anyway, the hospital in Mafeteng was a bit less rural than the one in Butha Buthe. At least we weren’t distracted by crowing roosters all day. No, instead we were serenaded by m2m support group members. It was so lovely – and honestly, quite moving – to hear all these women who come together through m2m to support each other, all with their beautiful voices singing things that, though I couldn’t understand a word of, you just know are very uplifting thoughts. I can’t imagine a random group of white people getting together and being able to hold a tune, haha!

Luckily it was an uneventful drive back to Maseru, though Carey and I couldn’t help but wonder how this beautiful new paved road would probably actually be less safe in the end as people would speed so much. Yeah, with intermittently spaced roadside signs that read “Please don’t kill us,” it obviously tells you how dangerous it is to be a pedestrian along these roads.

Friday morning, I had a flight to catch at 11am, but before I left, Carey was kind enough to arrange a site visit for me to the largest hospital in Maseru, called Queen II.

Outside of Queen II (FYI it's really hard to try and take a picture discreetly from the back seat of a moving car...so this is definitely not the best shot)


It was by far the best site visit I have been on this year, and I’m really thankful to Carey and Molebohang (the Country Manager) for arranging the visit just for me. It was just so interesting to be at such a big facility and really get a feel for client flow and what happens to a pregnant women who walks in the door of a large hospital in Southern Africa. Yes, I’ve worked at large hospitals in South Africa, and yes I’ve been on many site visits before, but never with the real opportunity to see the details of everything.

When we first pulled up, there was a line of people stretching around the corner, as parents were bringing their kids to get the measles vaccine, following a recent measles outbreak in Lesotho. With all those people, it was a bit difficult to get through the door to see our site staff. Inside, it was just as crowded. The Site Coordinator took us around and showed us the room where pregnant women first go. All pregnant women who don’t know their status are pre-test counselled as a group and advised to test for HIV. Of course I knew this before, I guess I was just typically naïve in picturing it in my mind as a large waiting room with chairs lined up. No, this was literally a closet with equipped with an old wooden bench that could barely fit all of us in there. Being at the hospital that morning with so many people in such little space, everything felt so crazy. I can’t imagine how you would feel going into the hospital and trying to navigate your way through everything – another reminder of how lucky we are to have the facilities we do in the Western world.

It was also interesting to see how closely m2m staff works with facility staff to connect with all pregnant and postnatal women who come to the clinic before they leave. Mostly it’s just nursing staff there. Yes, in this large, crowded hospital in the capitol city, I was told that the doctor comes one day a week for OB/GYN needs – the rest of the time, it’s just the nursing staff. That doesn’t count the delivery wards though, which are in a separate area of the hospital. I had never seen delivery wards in any of the sites I’ve been in, so it was also really interesting to visit that area.

Molebohang also took me to see the hospital lab, where they process all the blood samples for HIV tests, blood transfusions, CD4 counts, etc. I really loved the opportunity to see that area (and I wasn’t supposed to be there, but Molebohang’s close friend worked in the lab, so she let us in). Apparently they process 300-500 blood samples for CD4 counts per day – that’s a LOT! I don’t know how they keep them all straight. Most of you know this, I’m sure, but it’s really important to get a CD4 count (a measure of the immune cells in your blood) when you’re HIV+, because once you drop below a certain number, you need to start anti-retroviral therapy for the rest of your life, and it’s especially crucial for pregnant women to know their CD4 count because it determines which medications they take during their pregnancy to get their viral loads down low enough so as to reduce the likelihood of transmission to their children. (People with low CD4 counts are experiencing more advanced stages of the disease and have higher viral loads.) The lab at Queen II processes CD4 samples for clinics all over the country, as many clinics aren’t equipped to run the tests on their own. I was told how, previously, there was a huge problem in getting the blood samples to Maseru what with so many clinics in such remote areas – blood samples would be taken and then they would just sit there in the clinics with nobody taking them anywhere, eventually clotting and becoming useless. Recently Elton John stepped in and helped fund a program called “Riders for Health” which employs people whose sole job is to transfer samples to and from remote clinics to major hospitals by using motorbikes that come equipped with coolers on the back. Apparently it has made a huge difference. Again, talk about something simple and practical that is so crucial – transporting blood samples – but yet so easy to overlook in these types of settings. And again, talk about really making a difference – I must say, you really have to hand it to Elton John.

As we were about to leave the hospital, a doctor came up to Carey and warmly greeted her “hello neighbour!” It was funny how he had just mistaken her for another white person. It was actually interesting to talk to him beyond that though – he was a doctor from the DRC who could no longer work there because of the pay and the situation in that country. Apparently Lesotho has a lot of imported Congolese doctors, as they don’t have enough skilled workers on their own (or rather, the people who are able to often leave Lesotho to work in South Africa…and then some aid agencies help bring in foreign doctors, none of whom speak Basotho of course…not exactly the best scenario, especially when you stop and wonder with this system, who is still practicing medicine in the DRC?).

After the site visit, I had to hop in a taxi to the airport, and once again, I found incredibly useful to be able to talk about soccer, haha. The Maseru International Airport was the smallest airport I have ever seen (not counting those landing strips in the middle of rural Botswana).

The airport, truly in the middle of nowhere


There was not a single thing to be sold in the airport – nope, I don’t think you could even buy a bottle of water if you wanted to. After checking in my bags, as I was in line to go through customs, a guy came over and pulled me aside and said there was something in my bag he needed to check. So he took me out back where he was scanning the checked luggage and showed me on the screen what he was looking at and I tried unsuccessfully to explain that they were ankle weights (which I use to do exercises to strengthen my bad knee) and he absolutely did not understand, so I had to unzip the bag and take them out and show them to him. I’m pretty sure he thought I was the weirdest person ever, haha.

Sadly, it was a very quick trip to Lesotho, but I really enjoyed it and feel like I learned and absorbed a lot while there. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to take very many good pictures – it’s hard to take pictures from a moving car, and I generally try not to take pictures of people out in the open for fear of making them seem like spectacles…oh well, next time, I suppose! I really would love to go back someday. Everyone in Lesotho was just so amazingly nice, and the country was stunningly beautiful. I’m really thankful I had the opportunity to visit. I guess if all else fails with med school, etc. I perhaps have another option: door slide 

Did you know? China is taking over Africa

I read a very interesting article in The Atlantic the other day about Chinese investment in Africa, and then just today the New York Times published an article about China’s investment in Niger’s oil. It’s something that most people in the West probably don’t realize, but these days China’s role in Africa is huge…which is not necessarily a good thing. China is willing to invest in areas no one from the West will touch, which is good and bad – yes the West is ignoring a lot of development opportunity and investment that Africa desperately needs, but on the flip side, China is willing to work with whatever regime happens to be in power, largely ignoring any political implications, and their influence can have an edge of exploitation.

The Times article talks about how much the government in Niger was reliant on the influx of Chinese money, and how after a coup in that country, China didn’t hesitate to keep on working on their development projects, readily joining sides with the new regime. As the article says, they just don’t care who is in power, as long as they are still able to get what they want. And their influence – such as allowing for stipulations in a large development contract that call for payment of millions of dollars to an anonymous account to be chosen by the Niger government (an example in the article) – well, it often significantly helps those in power, though it might not help the country as a whole. The article also talked about how, despite some very negative impacts stemming from the Chinese backing the old regime in Niger, the new regime couldn’t do without China’s money either and sought to maintain the relationship. China’s not going away anytime soon…

The other Atlantic article is very long, but a really interesting read, and it does a good job at talking about both sides of the issue. For one thing, Western aid to Africa over the past many decades has not had the impact in jump-starting African economies like everyone wants to believe, and maybe there is strong reasoning for focusing on not just aid, but real investment, in Africa. Which is where China steps in. They certainly are not afraid to invest here. And China really does help build important infrastructure in some areas…the problem is, the infrastructure they agree to build for a developing nation often comes with significant stipulations. For example, China may build roads, but only to the primary mining areas, so that once China gets its resources, it’s out of there and you’re left with a road that no longer goes to anywhere of importance. Or they build hospitals in exchange for mining contracts that allow them to take away significant amounts of resources from a country, resources that might be better worth holding on to. Or they make deals with shoddy leaders who use money to prop themselves up while China gets to take away resources from the rest of the country. And when it comes to building infrastructure, most often the Chinese import their own labour so there isn’t even the temporary benefit to local people of having a job from the construction or mining work. The whole time I was reading this article, all I could think about was how, in some ways, it’s like a new colonialist period is occurring in Africa. China is outpacing the resources available in its own country, so it has to look elsewhere, and it has no problem taking what it can from Africa. Obviously the West has and still is continuing to do its fair share of that too; I don’t mean to be completely one-sided. And as I said before, Western aid hasn’t exactly made Africa rich (a topic which could be a whole other 20 pages or so, but I'll spare you for now), so maybe it’s time we start looking to other methods of jump-starting economies. But I do think there are significant differences compared to the West in how China approaches development in Africa, and to be honest, it just really scares me. I don’t know – you read the article and decide.

While I was travelling in Lesotho last week, Carey, a woman I was travelling with, pointed out a neighbourhood we were driving through and said “I call this China Town because no one speaks English here.” I bet you didn’t know there is an all-Chinese neighbourhood in the middle of Lesotho. And that if you get on an airplane coming into Lesotho, you might find yourself amongst many, many Chinese. No, I certainly didn’t know that either. Yes, I have read about Chinese influence in Africa before, but it doesn’t really occur in South Africa (or certainly not that I know of or have seen, anyway), so to see it first-hand in Lesotho was interesting. And the weirdest thing is, it all seems like a big secret. I kind of get the feeling that we’re all going to wake up a few years from now and realize China owns Africa and no one will have noticed it happening. Of course that’s rather extreme, but I do think it’s a huge issue, with multifaceted implications, that many people, particularly in the West, are completely ignoring.

Oh, South African Politics…

I’ve already written about Jacob Zuma a couple of times, so I’ll refrain from talking further about him and his 20 children. Allow me to introduce you to Julius Malema, the leader of the ANC Youth League (the youth organization for the primary political party in this country). He is amazing brazen when it comes to public stunts. A few weeks ago, he was at a press conference talking about how people fighting politics in Zimbabwe shouldn’t be talking from their air-conditioned buildings in Sandton (an affluent Joburg neighbourhood), if they were serious they should be fighting on the ground in Zimbabwe. Then a white BBC reporter in the audience commented “you live in Sandton,” at which point Malema completely blew up and had the reporter thrown out, calling him a white bastard with “white tendencies” who doesn’t understand and doesn’t deserve to be in a building of revolutionaries. (It’s pretty outrageous if you want to see it.) That’s just one example. He is on record for saying many, many other things, as well as publically leading people in a song with lyrics “shoot the Boer” (the white Afrikaners) – which he claims was just a historical song, the singing of which was just meant to bring people together. The fact that he has such public backing is rather disturbing. Of course many people are starting to denounce him, including some higher-up ANC officials, but for him to have gotten where he is, you have to accept the fact that the things he believes in hit home to a significant number of people in this country. In particular, he has a lot of backing amongst the poorest people in this country. It’s hard to describe national feelings here (especially because it’s very different whether you’re talking to whites, rich blacks, or poor blacks), but I think South Africa has some very interesting years ahead of it and it remains to be seen exactly what direction it will head in. There are so many people in this country for whom life really hasn’t changed since apartheid, especially economically speaking. If Malema continues to rise through the ranks and inspire people with his hatred, having a leader who doesn’t set an example of practicing safe sex or remaining faithful may seem like nothing…

Just look at South Africa’s neighbour, Zimbabwe. What used to be the best-functioning country in Southern Africa, with a real education and health system, very productive farms, and a stable population, is now in absolute ruins. Why? Because of the appalling leadership of Mugabe (who, by the way, Malema readily supports and is even on record for saying he wants to follow the same land-seizure techniques). Mugabe, once the Zimbabwe liberation struggle’s leader, never gave up power and is running his country into the ground 30 years later. He forcefully removed all the white farmers from their land, and food production is so low that there isn’t enough food for people in a country that used to produce enough food to feed people all over Southern Africa. Of course that’s not to say white people are the only ones who suffer under Mugabe. His regime is very oppressive and his bad politics and ineptitude have meant education and healthcare are nothing what they used to be and the life expectancy has dropped significantly. Inflation is in the hundreds of thousands of percents, effectively making the currency worth nothing. Desperate people try to sneak into South Africa for work, but South Africans aren’t terribly keen on that idea (unfortunately, there are a lot of xenophobic sentiments here – in particular, people here don’t like the idea of foreigners taking their jobs when they themselves are so poor) . Perhaps most criminal is how other African countries in a position to put pressure on Mugabe to change – South Africa in particular – just don’t. Anyone who goes against Mugabe, he labels as falling in with the West and old colonial powers, which no African leader wants to be associated with. I just don’t know what’s going to happen with Zim. As Kristof talks about in an op-ed article in the Times, it’s rather disturbing that, decades after being liberated from harsh colonial rule, many people in Zimbabwe long for those times, because at least then they could eat.

This post isn’t to say that things are hopeless in Africa – quite the contrary – but obviously there are still some huge issues when it comes to leadership that cannot be ignored.

Things you never think about

After arriving back in Cape Town from Zanzibar, I had one day to pack and unpack and then head off to East London with Johannes, the new DSITS Operations Research Specialist. We spent 3 days working with Nzwaki on another round of data abstraction from the sites for a giant report due to Johnson&Johnson in May. As always, I love the opportunity to get out in the field, experiencing the clinics and meeting with site staff.

We started off the trip by having a meeting with all the Site Coordinators for the 10 sites that were involved in the Innovation Center study that we recently completed. We wanted to share the final study findings with them, as they are obviously the ones most affected by the outcomes and also the ones who put the most effort into making the study a reality. It was fun to be in a room with them all, especially when they were clearly so interested to learn the results. And they are such smart, dynamic women. They really want to use data to improve their services, so it’s exciting to see the DSITS department evolve within m2m and come into a position where the organization is able to focus on self-improvement through data use and identification of weak areas and engaging site staff in these issues. When we started talking about how none of the clients liked the home visit aspect of the study because they were afraid of involuntary disclosure and being associated with HIV, one of the SCs immediately said “Well this is very good because it tells us we need to help our clients more with disclosure,” though that wasn’t part of the study goals at all. It sounds silly to say, but sometimes it’s just not that easy to connect the dots, so it was really fun to watch the Site Coordinators take everything to heart and get excited about new areas to focus on. They really are so passionate about their work.

A couple of other things struck me during the days we were there – things you (or more specifically, I and probably many other westerners) just never think about but that are really important when it comes to developing ways for people to access the best possible care, and not only that, but make strides in getting ahead.

At one point we had to make a trip out to a huge tertiary facility – an extremely large hospital serving lots of people in the East London area. Nzwaki was going to meet us there, so Johannes and I planned to use the GPS navigator, assuming it would definitely have this enormous hospital as one of its landmarks. It didn’t...and we really couldn’t figure out how that could be. We had to just head towards the neighbourhood we knew it was in, and then stop at gas stations along the way to keep asking for directions. Well, this huge facility was in the center of a very large township and primarily served that population alone...which is, I’m sure, why it wasn’t on the GPS machine – no one with enough money to have a GPS would ever possibly need to go to that hospital or stay in that area.

Anyway, it was really interesting talking to the Site Coordinator from there. We were asking her what she liked and didn’t like about the data collection tools used to keep track of clients, and one thing she mentioned was how they didn’t really make it very easy to record information for cases where the “Granny,” as she put it, brings in young kids asking m2m for help. These are of course grandmothers who are now responsible for being the primary care-giver for kids whose mothers have died from the virus. It was just a very big reality check for me to flip through the logbook and see just how many of these cases do show up at that particular clinic. Sometimes, when all the women I interact with in the office or out in the sites are healthy and able to access ART that allows them to live normal lives, it’s easy to forget that for many people, this is still not the reality. And it’s easy to forget just how different service is, depending on where you live. Running a large facility like that in such a resource-poor setting...it’s just so different from all the doctor’s offices I’ve ever been to in South Africa. So hard to believe it’s all the same country sometimes.

Another thing I found really interesting was the cultural traditions I learned about talking to Johannes and Nzwaki and the impact on poverty in the era of HIV. Somehow the topic of African funerals came up, and Johannes (from Sierra Leone) and Nzwaki (Xhosa) explained to me just how big of a deal funerals are to many African cultures. Of course you can’t lump ever African culture together in terms of having one common burial system, but there are many commonalities. Apparently funerals are often week-long events, with feasts each day involving everyone in the community. No one can be turned away from the feasts, no matter who you were in the community and what your relationship to the family was, and the family of the deceased is expected to pay everything. In addition, the family is expected to buy very expensive caskets, etc. for the actual burial. To not spend all that money would be extremely socially unacceptable and make you look very bad in the community. For people who often live day-to-day and who do not earn relatively much money over the course of a year and who have little ability to save, being faced with paying for a funeral on that scale is very problematic. As Nzwaki and Johannes explained, this often means going into debt, which is a terrible situation for people living on those amounts of resources. I had no idea, but apparently all the banks in South Africa cater to this scenario, having special loan programs for funerals. You can imagine the money the banks make off of that! To make matters worse, in the era of HIV/AIDS, the cost of funerals is a very, very real roadblock in allowing families to get ahead. I honestly had just never thought of this issue, but Nzwaki was saying it is quite significant. She also talked about how now there is starting to be a community push for the richer members of society to have very low-key funerals, to set the example that not spending tons of money on burying the dead is not an implication of your class status, inability to do so, or lack of desire to bury the dead respectfully.

I am constantly so amazed at how much I overlook in everyday life here – things that are so relevant to one culture but not at all to another, but that have huge implications in the long run.

Zanzibar

For Easter break, Mikael and I managed to meet up in Zanzibar, which was an amazing vacation. Conveniently, our flights landed at almost exactly the same time in Zanzibar and off we went to first stay 2 nights at the Dhow Palace Hotel in Stone Town, the major “city” on Zanzibar. According to Wikipedia, over 200,000 of Zanzibar’s 1,000,000 residents live in Stone Town. Zanzibar is truly such a unique place. Technically part of Tanzania (as of 1964), I got the feeling there was a strong sense of independence present in most Zanzibaris, and certainly the island has a very different history from the mainland. First the island was controlled by the Persians and used as a trading port for travels between the Middle East, India, and Africa. Then the Portuguese gained control and ruled for a couple hundred years back circa 15-1600. Then in 1698 the Sultan of Oman took control and ruled for the next several hundred years (during which at one point it even became the primary residence for the sultan). During this time it played a huge role in the spice trading routes, and as well as serving as a major shipping-off point for the slave trade in East Africa. Then it fell under British control around 1900 until finally gaining independence and falling in with mainland Tanzania. Today Swahili is the primary language and Islam the primary religion, but needless to say, with all that history, there is a huge blend of people and cultures. I’ve never been anywhere like it.

The hotel we stayed at was quite nice. It was kind of funny getting there though – the car cars can barely fit through the streets! Pictures of the hotel:




The view from the rooftop:



The first day we got there, we went out to the night market on the waterfront to grab some authentic food. April is the beginning of monsoon season in Zanzibar, so some people had cautioned us about going, but it turned out not to be a problem – we only ran into a few cloudy mornings and major downpours (none of which lasted too long, and it didn’t really matter because it was so warm there). It was raining a bit at the market at first, but that didn’t faze anyone else in the least. It was a really fun atmosphere to experience. As all the boats were coming in for the end of the day as kids lined the docks running and jumping and playing in the water endlessly. The boats there are primarily rickety old wooden boats, with a lot of traditional Arab sailboats called “dhows” – definitely not any fancy motor boats to be seen. It was a beautiful place to watch the sunset after the afternoon rain subsided.

The busy shoreline as boats come in for the day

Kids lined up jumping off the docks





Then the market started to pick up as dinner time came. The market consisted of dozens of vendors set up with tables lined with fresh seafood and vegetables, and then you go point out what you want to eat and they throw it on the grill. There were also lots of people squeezing fresh sugar cane juice, but we didn’t try any. I thought we were very brave to try some shrimp, considering the setting, but we braced ourselves for food poisoning and decided it would be worth it. It was, and amazingly enough, we didn’t get sick! We also had grilled bananas, cassava, and a naan-like bread. So good!
Forodhani Gardens where the market set up


Squeezing sugar cane

So many things to try!


Later that evening, we walked down to the pier where there was a fun bar called Mercury. I bet you don’t know why it’s called Mercury…because Freddie Mercury (lead singer of Queen) grew up in Zanzibar, believe it or not! I had no idea. Nor did I know that he and I share the same birthday. Yes, plenty of opportunities to brush up on your Freddie Mercury history while in Zanzibar, as they are quite proud of him.

We spent the next day just wandering around the city. Stone Town was amazing – truly labyrinthine. I don’t have the opportunity to use that word very often, but Mikael and I quickly realized there was no other way to describe it. Many of the buildings are hundreds of years old and of course the city was not built with a grid in mind. Narrow, twisting alley ways was all there was. It was incredibly hard to navigate, especially since a lot of the streets are so narrow and curvy that you can’t see over the buildings or around the corner to look for landmarks or orient yourself towards the ocean. We had a map, but honestly that did us absolutely no good, especially because there was not a single street sign to be seen. And even if you knew on the map what path you wanted to take, the likelihood of being able to stick to it was basically non-existent just because there are so many small streets angling off of each other at every corner. Luckily, Stone Town just isn’t that big (at least the old town part) so you can wander and wander and not worry about being too far away from a landmark at some point. I loved walking through the streets, with shops lining the alley ways, bicycles and mopeds constantly ringing bells or beeping horns to let you know they were coming around the corner, people pushing carts of vegetables or other goods to take to the market, etc.





Sometimes it's a tight squeeze! This guy certainly struggled trying to get his mattresses through this street




Some buildings looked a little worse for the wear. You know it's bad when you're using ricketly wooden poles to support a cement building!


The other really cool thing to see was all of the old doors on the old buildings – elaborately carved wooden doors with Arabic and Indian design dating back hundreds of years, representing homes of rich merchants and others who used the doors as a status symbol. They were really beautiful.

Just a few examples:





And the occasional refurbished one


And it’s also really interesting to walk around Stone Town because it has such a great mix of people – Africans, Indians, and Arabs, and of course the occasional white tourist. I tried to be careful about being respectful of the Muslim culture and wearing skirts or long pants and shoulder-covering shirts, but it was SO HOT! We saw plenty of women dressed in the full burqas and I honestly don’t know how they do it. I guess you must adapt.

The first thing we did was wander in the direction of the market. It took us a while, and we had to be pointed in the right direction every once in a while, but we eventually made it. It was really fun to walk around and see all the fresh seafood out for sale, as well as all the colorful tropical fruits and vegetables. I managed to buy some spices as well. Quite the hustling and bustling place, as you would imagine.

Nearing the market



The fish selling area

You can go with fresh...

...or dried

Also lots of veggies to choose from


All the beans you ever wanted

Or a million varieties of bananas


After the market, we found a coffee house to enjoy some Zanzibari coffee (well, Mikael had the espresso and I, the coffee hater, chose to consume my coffee in the form of chocolate coffee cake). We then started looking for a restaurant which had been recommended to us, which, according to our map, was located on the same street as the coffee house and couldn’t be more than a block away. Ha. We must have spent an hour trying to find it, wandering the entire vicinity of the neighborhood and getting turned around a million times. It was so frustrating – even though we theoretically knew where we were on the map and where we wanted to go, we just literally could not get there! We eventually gave up, but ironically, a little bit later on we walked out of a store and found ourselves standing right in front of the very place we had been looking for, so in the end we did manage to make a reservation for later that evening.

Later in the afternoon we went to a place called the House of Wonders, which was at one time a ceremonial palace, but is now a museum. It was very interesting to read about the Swahili culture of the East African coast. They also had a giant traditional dhow set up in the middle of the museum and talked a lot about the dhow culture of the Indian Ocean. The crazy thing is, the old original boats didn’t use nails at all – the boards were sewn together.

The House of Wonders (no longer in its glory days)

Views of the city from the top


The boards sewn together on the old dhow


After that, it was so hot we had to go swimming in the pool at the hotel, which was nice because it was secluded in the middle of a shady courtyard. In the evening, to celebrate Easter, we managed to retrace our steps back to the fancy restaurant where we had made reservations earlier. It was a rooftop open air restaurant, with a very small seating area requiring you to sit on cushions. It was really fun to watch the sunset over the city and to eat the delicious Swahili food. One of my favorite restaurant experiences of all time, I think!

The rooftop seating area

Enjoying dinner


The next morning we were picked up in Stone Town and transferred to our beach resort on the northeast coast of the island.

Our arrival drinks

The room area

With lots of hibiscus around


Wow. It was sooooo beautiful! The main building in the resort was quite nice – huge, open air, tall ceilings with thatched roofing. The lodge had multiple layers leading down to the beach (it was built into the side of a hill, and at the top you had the restaurant and front desk, then going down a few shops, lots of seating nooks where you could just relax or have a drink, then a bar, then a pool, then eventually it opened up onto the beach). On the beach there were a few chalets and umbrellas and chairs, as well as another bar.

An incredibly big roof


Looking down at the different layers of the lodge from above

The pool

The main lodge as seen from below

The beach area at the bottom

A nice hammock to relax in

I love palm trees!




The beach itself was like nothing I’ve ever seen. The water was crystal clear and bright turquoise, with white sand stretching on endlessly. The waves were only breaking extremely far out. You could walk for over 30 minutes and still only be in waist-deep water and not even be close to reaching the breaking waves. And of course the water was like bathtub temperature. It was so much fun! The resort was the perfect place for relaxing.

See what I mean about how amazing the water was?

Trekking out


Everyone in Zanzibar is also incredibly friendly. Most people speak English, at least in the tourist industry. It was funny though, because most of the tourists on Zanzibar are Italian. Who would have thought? It was kind of like when Mikael and I were in Namibia and everyone was German. Apparently there are direct flights from Italy and most of the big resorts are owned by Italians. At least half of the people at our place were Italian. Mikael and I were mostly taken to be South African because we spoke English, but then when people asked where we were from it was rather hard to explain that I live in South Africa but am from the U.S. while Mikael lives in the U.S. but is from Sweden, yet sometimes we were paying for stuff in British pounds (I had some leftover from a trip a long time ago)…basically each person who asked us where we were from got a different answer, whichever response was easiest to go with at the time. It was fun to talk to people though. And as soon as you bring up the UEFA soccer games, people immediately become at ease and start talking endlessly about their favorite teams, etc. It’s funny to say, but being able to talk about soccer is always such a great way to start a conversation with many Africans. They’re usually pretty surprised when a white American girl likes to watch soccer and says she plays too, haha. Mikael and I watched a few games at night with some other guests and members of the staff on the one tv at the lodge.

Sadly, I didn’t pick up too much Swahili while were there. Only jambo (hello), sawa sawa (ok/it’s all good), hakuna matata (no problem/no worries, as most people probably learned from The Lion King), and asante sana (thank you very much). There is a Zanzibari song called “Jambo Bwana” (hello sir) and everyone sings it to tourists and restaurants and shops are constantly playing it because they think tourists like it. People come up to you in the street and start singing Jambo Bwana and try to sell you CDs. The unfortunate thing was this means I was stuck singing “Jambo Bwana” in my head pretty much the whole week, haha!

The other nice thing about Zanzibar is that the island is so small, you can get anywhere in just about one hour, making it very feasible to do day trips even if you’re based at a more remote resort. One day while we were there, we took a spice tour at a village in the middle of the island. I loved it. It was so fascinating to learn about how all the spices we see in the supermarket are actually grown. Our guide took us around the village compound and would point out a plant, pick off a leaf, and ask you to smell it, and all of sudden you would realize that something that looked just like a regular tree was actually a clove tree, for example.

It was also interesting to get a feel for village life, watching people working in the rice fields, seeing the mud huts, and watching the chickens and cows run around.

Walking through the forest area


Walls made with mud

Working in the rice fields



The start of the spice tour: turmeric plants

And the roots where the spice comes from

Cardamom plants

Inside the pods that are found on the vine type things at the bottom of the plant are the cardamom seeds

I had no idea that vanilla grew as large bean-like pods on a vine. Apparently each one is $5-6 because it's so hard to grow and maintain.

Papaya

Giant banana leaves

You can go for the red variety

Or the green

Our guide holding a starfruit

Lemongrass

Mandarins

I actually had no idea pinapples grew up from the ground like that. I don't know, I think I assumed they grew from a tree.

A cocoa tree

I also had no idea how cocoa beans were grown, which is sad, considering how much I love chocolate!

Believe it or not, that's nutmeg!

On the inside is the nutmeg seed, which looks nothing like what we're used to seeing until it's dried

A coffee tree

Coffee beans

I also had no idea that peppercorns grow on vines like this

It's a bad picture, but maybe you can still see the peppercorns. Apparently black, red, green, and white peppercorns all come from the same vine, it just depends how long you let them stay on the plant/how you dry them/whether you peel the outer layer off in terms of what color you end up with. (The white ones are most expensive because you have to boil the red ones and then peel the skin off and let them dry, or something like that.)

A clove tree

It's a little hard to see, but the small stem-like buds shown here are picked and then dried to produce cloves

A cinnamon tree! It was amazing how powerful the smell of the bark was. I have never had such fresh cinnamon as that available at the lodge to sprinkle on your food. It was so much more powerful, like chewing Big Red gum, haha!

Of course I knew what a ginger root looked like, but not the plant on top


After the tour, we were fed lots of fresh tropical fruit (oranges, papaya, banana, pineapple) and then watched someone climb a coconut tree (which I actually found quite an amazing feat, given the height of the tree and the fact that there are of course no branches) and bring us coconuts. They cut off the top and I tried the liquid inside, and also the flesh, but as a coconut hater, I didn’t really like it. However, I will admit that fresh coconut is not at all like the dried coconut flakes and this stuff I could actually eat without wanting to throw up immediately, at least.

Climbing the coconut tree


Cutting open the coconuts

Politely drinking as much as we could stomach

The guys giving the tour were also quite handy with the grass weaving and made us lots of necklaces and hats out of grass. A blatant attempt just to please the tourists of course, but still fun.

A nice grass tie for Mikael

And hats too!


Another day, we took a trip to the southern end of the island to see the dolphins. Ironically, the one day we signed up to go out on a boat was the one day it absolutely poured rain. When we arrived at the harbor amidst a torrential downpour and our guide was still making preparations to go out on the boat, I was more than a bit skeptical and also very curious as to how he could possibly still be intending to go out with the weather like that. Well, he was very enthusiastic about the whole thing, saying that in fact it was the best weather to see the dolphins because when it gets hot and sunny they go into deeper water and don’t come up to the surface as much. We were the only boat out on the water at first, but I was comforted by the fact that other tourists were soon following suit, hoping that our guide wasn’t insane after all. It was a rickety old wooden boat that someone had to carry the motor out and attach manually, and then people were sitting in the back bailing out the rain water the whole time, haha.

Our lovely boat


At least the rain wasn’t too painful because it was warm. However, I will say, I was incredibly wet after the whole experience, though it was fun to see the dolphins. Most people go out to go scuba diving with the dolphins, but I opted to just sit on the boat, having never been scuba diving before and not wanting my first time to be in the open ocean in the middle of a monsoon. Mikael at least jumped in once. We followed one pod around for a while, and they do get very close to the boat. However, it’s just impossible to take good pictures of them, as by the time they surface and you push the button, they’ve already disappeared again. Not to mention the fact that it’s hard to focus when moving up and down on a boat, and the rain didn’t help either.

This is a blurry picture, but it's pretty much the only one where I managed to get a head in the shot, haha




Most people on the other boats were scuba diving, however it looked like very hard work to jump off as the boat neared the dolphins and then swim as fast as you can to try and catch them before they took off




The color of the water was still beautiful despite the storm coulds

Coming back into shore, amidst tons of kids messing around in the water. I get a bit nervous when little kids who can't be more than 3 or 4 are left alone to play in the water, but I guess that's life here...


Anyway, the whole experience turned out to be fun in the end. Yeah, despite the monsoon season, I’m so glad we went to Zanzibar in April. With the exception of that one boat trip, the rain really wasn’t an issue, and even better, it meant there were tons less tourists. There were at least 5 boats out there with us that rainy morning, and apparently during high season there would be 5 times that number, plus you would have to sign up for activities way in advance as opposed to the day before. (Our lodge was probably only 20% full as well, which also made it very pleasant.)

Afterwards, the rain let up (of course just as we were pulling back into shore), and we had lunch at a beach restaurant – grilled barracuda and fried octopus legs (which were actually really good!). Over lunch, we told our guide about the Zanzibar song that plays on NPR (Zanzibar is very far…you can’t get there by car…or something along those lines), and he thought that was absolutely hilarious and could not stop laughing.

After lunch, we set off for the Jozani forest in the interior of the island, the only place in the world where the endangered red colobus monkey lives. It was so much fun to watch the monkeys! They are obviously quite used to people walking in the forest, so they come very close to you. At first you walk into the forest and don’t see anything, and then all of a sudden you realize they’re truly everywhere. They are so cute! It was fun to watch them playing with each other and jumping from tree to tree, and occasionally scampering around on the ground.

This monkey isn't actually a red colobus, but I can't remember what it was called. 99% of what we saw was the red colobus, however.

Look how long their tales are! Apparently to help them balance, especially when they fly from tree to tree

So cute! I especially love how their hair sticks out around their face

See what I mean by how close we got?

Baby!

This one reminded me of that statue, "The Thinker"


After the monkeys, the other interesting part of the forest to see was the mangrove forest area. When we went it was low tide (and apparently the seawater comes in from quite far away), so there wasn’t much water around, but that made for better viewing of the open tree roots. There was a nice boardwalk that led through the forest and it was really beautiful to see all the crazily intertwined tree roots. It was also kind of odd to be walking through a forest and see crabs and snails, which probably would have felt less weird if it had been high tide.

The boardwalk

A little bit of water still there during low tide

Very interesting roots



It's hard to see, but there's a giant crab coming out of the hole in the middle of the picture

And giant snails on trees too


The last couple of days at the resort, we mostly just relaxed. It was an all inclusive package, which was really nice because then you didn’t have to worry about carrying money around and could just get food and drinks whenever you wanted. Yeah, it’s a rough life when you spend the day transitioning between the dining area, the pool, the beach, and 2 bars. Haha, it was a daunting task, but we managed to successfully sample all local Tanzanian beers (Kilimanjaro, Tusker, and Serengeti). We at least got some exercise in by playing some ping pong.  Oh, and we did a bunch of kayaking too. It was the best way to get out to the coral reefs near where the waves were breaking, since it took impossibly long to walk out that far. We attempted walking a few times, but eventually got thwarted by sea urchin colonies each time. I’m not particularly brave and the idea of stepping on a pokey sea urchin didn’t excite me very much. The kayaking was great though. I loved just sitting in the kayak and looking over the edge and watching everything in the coral. It’s so funny to see all the tropical fish you normally see in fish tanks out in the wild. Unfortunately, I also discovered that looking over the edge of the boat into shimmering water and trying to focus on things below while bobbing up and down in the waves also makes me quite nauseous, but I tortured myself and kept going back for more.

Kayaking out by where the waves were breaking, where all the coral was



It's really hard to take pictures of stuff underwater, but the water was very clear, making for great viewing of the coral and fish. And lots of sea urchins too!


The view during another attempt to wade out as far as we could go




We also took some walks along the beach, which of course means being bombarded by people trying to sell you stuff. At one point we came across a group of grass stalls set up, and the hilarious thing was that each stall had a different name like Gucci, Versace, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, etc. We even found one with called Ikea! It’s funny what people think will attract tourists to buy stuff.

Just enjoying the scenery as we walk along


Our trusty kayak

Ikea :)

And selling sea shells by the sea shore

Lots of nice dhows to be seen as well




Perhaps the most impressive feat of the trip was that I managed to make Mikael wake up to watch the sunrise multiple mornings in a row, haha! Since we were staying on the east side of the island, sunset was unfortunately not an option. I loved the sunrises though, especially because we were the only ones on the beach at that time of day, making it very peaceful.





Even on the day it was very cloudy, it was still very pretty



It was also interesting to watch the early morning fishermen head out and a few people biking by or women walking around with loads of wood on their head to start their tasks for the day.

A fisherman heads out with his spear. Once when we were out wading in the water a guy showed us the seaweed farms (they hook up support strings in between poles, which apparently helps the seaweed grow?) and he also managed to stab an eel with his fishing stick when we were out there. You have to have good aim for that!


When you walk along the beach, with each step you take it seems like little white spiders are running away from you, but they are actually crabs that feel you coming and then scurry into their holes too fast to see. But it turns out when you just sit down to watch the sky and no one else is around, eventually they come out of their holes and you can get a good look at them. It was fun to watch them work really hard to dig sand out of their holes.

They blend in incredibly well! It's hard to see, but there's one in the very center of this picture

This one is easier to see because his eyes are at least very visible


And if the baby ones survive, eventually they'll get to be giant like this one


After such a wonderful time, it was really sad to have the trip come to an end. After 5 days at the beach resort, we headed back to Stone Town where I was dropped at the airport and Mikael had to spend another night, since the cheaper flight he found didn’t leave until the next day. I’m still really glad it worked out so well for us to meet up, and it was such a great place to spend the week. I very much recommend Zanzibar to everyone! Hakuna Matata is truly the motto for a Zanzibar vacation :)