whoa, it's been a busy month

The blog doesn't say so, but it was a busy August. We still haven't gotten permission from the government and university to do the research that we were supposed to do this summer, but we had lots of other tasks, like visiting organizations and government officials, and furnishing the project house. Here are some events and pictures from August:

Three times we drove (Justin drove, we were passengers) south to visit other towns in the region for work. Njombe is a large town, far enough away that we had to stay overnight. Once, we broke up the trip and stayed on a farm in between Iringa and Njombe.

Lucky us, the staff made a mistake and upgraded us to a luxury cabin.



We took the day off and hiked around the farm, stopping to see their crops, cattle, and lakes.




On one of the trips to Njombe, we stayed with some new-found Danish friends, on their farm. They had tons of fowl, goats, sheep, and cows




as well as a bunch of pigs. These little piglets were just 4 days old.




Njombe has a club that was once the British colonial club, complete with a library of old books and a snooker table. It's a bit like pool, but the table is huge.



Part of our work-related travels were documented in a Tanzanian newspaper!






Back at home, we put our fireplace to use. Yes, it is cold enough in Iringa to have fires!




Juma roasted hot dogs over the fire, and invented a new dish: chocolate hot dogs. He claims it was good. Later, Justin has a metal worker make a grill for the fire, so we can cook lots of yummy stuff.




Since we moved into an unfurnished house, Justin has been having a carpenter build us furniture (Iringa region produces timber). Here's a view of the empty dining room



and now with our 8-chair table.



We also bought some tables that are serving as work desks for now in our once-empty living room. (We still don't have couches or anything.)






We also had beds made, then fancy mosquito nets.




Right now, we are in Zanzibar for the end of our trip. We got to see the new baby boy of our friends we met last year. Meet Nuh (Arabic version of Noah).

another cutie picture of little Sarah

She is now in Pemba with her mom, meeting her grandparents for the first time. They are, of course, thrilled.

monkeys and bullfrogs and butterflies, oh my!

next leg of the journey home

We are in the Dar es Salaam airport, killing time before our delayed flight, surfing the net to use up our modem credits, and spending our last Tanzanian shillings on candy. Fun stuff.

on our way home!

Can you believe it? The eight months are over!

We took a boat from Unguja to Dar es Salaam yesterday.

Here's Juma saying, "Goodbye Zanzibar, Hello Dar es Salaam!" Juma was pretty excited because he's never actually been in Dar anywhere other than the airport.



Our next leg of the journey takes us to London on Sunday. We'll spend the night at a friend's house, then our final flight on Monday brings us to Washington, DC.

Once we get to our car and storage unit in Baltimore, I think our first priority will be to find our air mattresses and some linens so we can just sleep, sleep, sleep in our temporary apartment. Then we have one day to unpack before I have to go to school!

Death, of rats

Unguja

Juma and I are back in Unguja (aka Zanzibar island). We made a rather hasty exit from Pemba when it was clear that Juma and I had some...well...intestinal issues. We're being treated, but we have better luck with health matters in Unguja than in Pemba, so we decided to spend our last days here. Justin will follow us in a couple days.

It was rather weird to leave Pemba, for the second time, without saying goodbye to my friends, especially since we really won't be back for a long time. At least until next summer.

We have less than one week here, then we'll all head to Dar es Salaam for a couple days, then a night in London, then it's home to Baltimore! Crazy. These eight months have flown by. At least in retrospect.

last days in Pemba

We are coming down to our final days in Pemba. Juma and I (Sarah) plan to leave Saturday, so I can get some final work done on the other island, Unguja, before we head home to Baltimore. Justin will stay in Pemba until the last couple days so he can get in as much work here as possible.

So how are we spending our days here in Pemba?

Juma has homeschool. Each morning, I write his "schedule" on the chalkboard (which Justin painted onto the wall of the dining room which we use as an office/school room). Today, his assignments are reading, writing, punctuation, math, science, art, geography, and PE. He can do pretty much anything he wants (within reason and safety, of course) except things involving electronics (Wii, movies, iPhone games) until he gets his school work done. Once his work is done, he can watch a movie, play Wii, etc. I also make him take breaks between electronic entertainment so he's not glued to a screen all afternoon. By noon or so, he's generally finished school. In the late afternoon, Justin takes him to "tennis," the basketball court. There, he plays with the neighborhood boys--soccer, soldiers, spies, whatever they come up with without having to communicate using actual language. You see, Juma knows only a few words of Swahili, even after almost 7 months here. He's really resisted learning it. His little form of rebellion, I guess.



I, Sarah, have work which I can do mostly at home on a computer. Today, I'm in the process of translating a group discussion about reproductive health that my research team conducted back in March. I am also supervising two Zanzibari and two ex-pat research assistants back in Unguja while they continue work on our project. They are why I need to return to Unguja before we head back to the States. I've got to wrap up all the completed work, make sure electronic copies of all data exist and take them with me, close up our office, and transfer the last remaining supervisory role to one of the ex-pats. Our project will continue interviewing some women through December. (Writing this just reminded me I'd better check up with the research assistants. Just sent them all text messages.) Some days, I go out to hospitals and gather statistics and interview doctors and nurses. Those days, I drag Juma along with me, which he hates, but, hey, we don't have a babysitter, and Justin is almost always gone.



Why is Justin almost always gone? He takes his motorcycle (when it's running; he takes a local daladala bus when it's not) out to various villages all over the island of Pemba to interview people who were around in the 1960's and early 1970's. That is when the archipelago got independence from Britain, then the losing party overthrew the ruling party on Unguja and proceeded to punish Pembans for being members of the overthrown party. That revolution has shaped Zanzibari political, economic, and social life ever since, but no one has ever written about those changes in Pemba. Justin is the first. Pretty cool, eh? Justin gets back in the late afternoon, goes and plays basketball, then hangs out with us at home. Busy, busy, busy.

clove harvesting season in Pemba

The scent of cloves was strong as we drove from Mkoani, on the southern coast of Pemba, up to Chake Chake, where we live.

People harvest and then dry their cloves in the sun, on the side of the road, and even right in the middle of the road on the medians. It made a usually awful one-hour ride a little more pleasant.

Juma is 8 years old!

Juma turned eight! It was the last day of school, too; what better birthday present is that? Well, even better than that is that Justin came down from Pemba, suffering two awful ferry rides on a choppy sea, just to be here for two nights to celebrate with us.

On the first night, Juma's actual birthday, we ate out at an Italian restaurant (pizza! gnocchi! three types of bread!) then had a birthday cake (unfrosted, at Juma's request).





The next day we took a boat ride with some of our friends out to Changuu Island, about 30 minutes away, for a relaxing picnic and swim at a little beach.

Abdul, who lives downstairs, and Najesh, who lives across the street, came along. Juma's known these kids since we lived in this same house in 2004, when they were all just toddlers. They had a blast playing in the ocean and then in the sand.






And of course Juma's namesake Juma came along, and helped him stay warm in the wind after his swim.



Our newest friend, Chase, also came, for her very first trip to one of the outlying islands in the archipelago. (That's me, Sarah, in the picture, by the way, the one with the shaved head and sunglasses.)

sailing the seas

One of Juma's classmates had a birthday party yesterday. We met at a beach called Mbweni, where the tide was so low, we had to walk to the end of the pier and then be ferried to the boat on kayaks.



We sailed to a sandbank--actually using the triangular-shaped sail Zanzibari boats are known for; ate, swam, and snorkeled;







and motored back with the sunset in the background. Gorgeous.

friends weekend

Two of my classmates who are working in Dar es Salaam came out to Zanzibar for the weekend, and we had some fun showing them around town and going to a northern beach.

This thing-a-ma-job Juma is holding is to help you take bucket-showers, but Juma used it on the beach.




These pictures are in Forodhani, a area right on the seashore that was fixed up last year to look nice like this. It's very popular with both tourists and Zanzibaris in the evenings.





These are from around Stone Town.







These are the crazy, scary steps up to our apartment.




And these are from Nungwi, a village on the northern tip of the island.

my fellow students

I popped over to Dar es Salaam to meet my professor/advisor, in from the states, as well as the other students from my cohort who are here in the country on internships. It was so fun to see them, since I had said goodbye to them all in December, not knowing if I'd ever see some of them again. (Though the international public health world is pretty small, so I'll likely run into them in one capacity or another in the future.)



They are, from left to right, Sarah, Ashley, Chase (also living in Zanzibar), Peter (my professor), and Aliya.