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Zanzibar Day 5: Nice and Easy

So today is my last day in Zanzibar and I have to say that I am sad to be leaving. When I first arrived I just assumed that I would be spending most of my days on the beach doing w hole lot of nothing. But as it turns out, I had a really packed vacation week with lots of see and do. And with everything that I have seen and done in Zanzibar, there are things still left to do. So for me, that means that a second visit is in order 🙂

So for my last day, I decided to slowly walk around the city and take it in one last time. I walked with no destination in mind. I only wanted to capture with my camera the beauty of a place where sands meets the sea.

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After I walked around for a hour or so and looked around for some souvenirs, I found a little place for lunch that was just about the close. It had no name, but it was a really busy place and seemed like it would be a good place. Luckily I wasn’t disappointed. It was a great lunch! There were 3 courses for $20 and more food than I could eat. Whilst eating I started talking to two women from Germany who were hanging out with this really strange guy. A European guy, he said he lived on the island permanently and owned a mansion and wanted the 3 of us to come and party with him. He also had an interesting car with 2 different coloured eyes. Although the guy was intriguing and the cat cool, my spider-sense was tingling so I said that I had to leave to go and pack. I think the German women took my cue and left shortly after me 🙂

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For dinner, I finally (after 2 tries) got a dinner reservation at Emerson Spice where they do a 5 course menu for $30. It quite simply was absolutely delicious! While at dinner, I got to talking with a newly married couple (an Irish guy and a Danish woman) who were also at dinner. Turns out that they were traveling around Africa for several months for their honeymoon. We ended up talking long after dinner was over and continued the conversation over drinks at the Freddy Mercury bar. We exchanged contact info which was fantastic because they are really cool and I would love to keep in touch with them the next time I find myself in Copenhagen or Amsterdam. For me, I slept for a hour after meeting them and then was woken up by the hotel to make sure my I made my 02.00 AM taxi in order to get to the airport and begin the 30 hour travel journey back to Sweden.

So overall, I have to thanks Zanzibar for an AWESOME week, which was just a bonus to the AMAZEBALLS adventure I had climbing up Mt Kili with Christina! The past 6 weeks have been such a transformative experience for me, in ways I am only now beginning to understand and with more reflection and time, will hopefully become even clearer.

Thanks awesome family and friends for following along! This won’t be the end of my blogging, that much is for sure 🙂

Zanzibar Day 4: Safari Blue

Today’s adventure was to participate in the Safari Blue experience. The concept is that you get to go out in Dhow Boats and look for dolphins, do some great snorkeling, and then go for lunch at their private beach. At $65 per head with food and soft drinks (and beer), equipment, and all other things included, it’s a great deal! The owner of Safari was pretty cool too! When I called her, I told her that I didn’t know how to get to the Safari Blue location, so she let me ride on the supply truck to the Safari Blue launch location (provided I got myself from Stone Town to the Chinese Embassy). Very nice of here and riding on the back of the supply truck I met up with another American and we made friends with the staff.

After getting to our dhow boat, I met up with a group of South Africans who I have to say were pretty welcoming and awesome to hang out with. They were staying along the beach at a resort up north. They couldn’t have been nicer people to hang out with 🙂

On our way to our first snorkeling site we saw dolphins! It turns out that they are remarkably hard to photograph on a rocking boat. So you have to keep an eye out for them. I was lucky enough to get a bit of picture!

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After watching dolphins for a bit of time, we reached our snorkeling destination where we saw awesome fish and coral reef wildlife. We snorkeled off the coast of a sandbank that we swam towards and stopped for a few soft drinks and recovery. These little sandbanks are everywhere in the Zanzibar Archipelago and not only do they look fantastically inviting, but you swim in clear blue water against white sandy beaches! Simply amazing 🙂

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After our short stop, we went further afield for more snorkeling and to a place called Pirates Cove. It was a really scenic location dotted by awesome little islands and trees and vegetation of all kinds. I didn’t get out of the dhow to take more pictures because of the coral reef bottom and the fact that I damaged my foot on the kili climb (didn’t wanna make it worse), but I took some cool pics anyway.

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We then went to the Safari Blue Island where we had lunch, listed to a band playing traditional music, and just relaxed for a couple of hours before sailing back to our launch point. At the island was also some really old awesome climbable trees and I couldn’t resist the urge to go climbing a bit 🙂

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It was a great day and I was wiped out again. And my foot I have to say is damaged enough that I won’t be able to do the dolphin safari that I had wanted to do. So instead I will have to figure out a new adventure for my final day in Zanzibar. Ah well, such is life 🙂

 

Zanzibar Day 3: Prison Island Tour / Snorkeling

Today I went to visit the Prison Island in Zanzibar which was actually never used as a prison. It was intended to be used as a prison (those British and the ‘lock the miscreants away on an islan” approach), but instead was used as a quarantine location when certain diseases broke out in Zanzibar. But today it is home to a cool turtle population and really expensive bungalow hotels 🙂

Anyway, my tour began with looking at the turtles, some of which were 130 years old. The turtles were in mating season, but took time away from their frivolity to be social with us 🙂 I even got to hold a baby turtle which was very cute. And a couple of curious birds came by as well.

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After visiting the turtles, I took a walk around the island and did some snorkeling off the coast of the Island. They fish weren’t very big, but they were really curious and didn’t hesitate to come close enough to touch. It’s moments like this when I wish I had bought an underwater camera or had found some way to make my camera waterproof if only for a few minutes 🙂 But anyway I got in some swimming and snorkeling, and we stopped our boat to talk to some fisherman who make their living getting fish for Darjani market. I learned that they often go our far into the sea, spend the night at sea, and come back the next day — in what basically amounts to a sailboat!

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Overall it was a great day, but I was wiped for the day. It was about 4 hours for the whole experience and I didn’t start until 10.00 so there was no afternoon event. Instead I walked around the souvenir shops, settled down at Africa House for a few drinks, wrote some post cards, and then found a place for dinner and had an early night. There isn’t really a nightlife culture in Zanzibar like you find in other cities, so no late nights here! But that is part of the charm actually. I enjoyed my final sunlight moments on my private sundeck having a couple of more drinks 🙂

Tomorrow, Safari Blue!

Zanzibar Day 2 (afternoon): Anglican Church/Old Slave Market and Stone Town Tour

After a great Spice Tour visit I decided to get a little more cultural and learn some more about the history of Tanzania. So with a guide I visited the Anglican Church which used to be the site of the slave market in Zanzibar. More specifically, it was a slave market used by the Portuguese and the Arabs to sell slaves and then when the British came they closed the slave market and in it’s place put a church as a way to change the karma of the site. I had a really good guide who was happy to answer all of the questions I had. What struck me most was the following:

  • The extend to which Africans sold other Africans into slavery was much wider than I thought. Warring tribes would sell each other off to foreigners who were only too willing to receive them.
  • Red tiles around the altar which was placed where the tree was used to sell and/or hang slaves
  • The baptism bowl was located at the spot (in the back of the church which is atypical because it is usually in the front) where slave children used to be killed who weren’t strong enough to be sold for work
  • The tomb of the Bishop who drove for the closure of the market and construction of the Church.
  • The place where they kept up to 125 slaves in a place where you could only literally fit 40 people overall
  • The monument that was build to remember the old slave site.

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After our trip to the church, we spent another hour walking around Stone Town, visiting the different markets, and learning more about the location and history. Stone Town – a world heritage site – has lots of beautiful doors which have Arabic and Indian influences. We also stopped by “Jaws Corner” which is named that way because it means that people stop there for conversation and talking. Finally we stopped by the location where Freddy Mercury (of Queen) was born. It was a really good way to spend 3 hours 🙂

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Zanzibar Day 2 (Morning): Spice Farm Tour

So this morning I wanted to visit a spice farm. But I didn’t want to visit just any spice farm. I wanted to visit a spice farm that had a track record of re-investing in the community so that it wasn’t all about profits. Thankfully the hotel knew what I was looking for and we (I was joined by one of the hotel owner’s counsins) ended up finding a spice farm which benefited children orphaned who parents had died of HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately I didn’t get any opportunity to spend time with the children like I had hoped (they were currently in school session), but I said hi to as many as possible and they were nice enough to let me snap some photos.

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We continued onto the spice tour where our guide Solomon showed us the different spices and we got the opportunity to sample many spices right from the plant. It was a bit embarrassing at times to not know what some of the spices I really like the most (e.g. nutmeg, etc, etc) look like. I considered this to be a great educational experience involving food as well. After learning about the different spices in Zanzibar (including something called Freddie Mercury Fruit which turns your lips red) we sat down for a traditional lunch using spices grown at the farm. The lunch was delicious and not at all hot (as was my assumption that all of the spices would be hot, but there was a delicious range). Also interesting here was watching the guys climb the trees without any forms of harness. And they do it barefoot. I don’t think that this would be allowed anywhere in the Western Hemisphere 🙂

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Finally, now I update this blog post to include a link to the video I took of one of the tree climbing boys singing the Kilimanjaro song whilst climbing the tree tops 😀

Zanzibar Day 1: Darajani and Forodhani Markets

So today I decided to get lost wandering around Stone Town’s markets. It was really an interesting experience to walk around Darajani Market (where everything from food to socks to sunglasses to mobile phones are sold. I have to say the spice markets smelled wonderful, but the meat and fish markets were an assault on the senses. And there were flies everywhere. It took some getting used to, but the immersion experience was fantastic. It was what I had been missing during my trip to Nigeria – a chance to interact with the local culture on my terms, without security, and haggling just like everyone else. I ended up not buying anything really, but it was really nice to look around. It turns out that most people are sensitive to having their pictures taken, so I didn’t take much in the way of photos of the market.

After spending time at Darajani Market, it was early evening so I headed in the opposite direction towards the Forodhani evening food market near the water. Interesting to note that there is fre wifi there 🙂 It’s in a really clean area of down by the sea. In terms of food, the food market was clean and delicious. I ate something that call “Zanzibar Pizza” which is more of a kind of pie cooked Halal-style with ingredients which have mostly been pre-pared and only need to be re-heated. But the pizzas were delicious. I ended up eating a chicken pizza and a beef pizza. And I washed it down with sugar cane juice, which is juice from sugar cane with lemon and ginger added. They run the three ingredients together through a kind of wheel press. I was skeptical at first but I have to say that it tasted great! I finally ended my eating experience with a chicken kebab which was yummy and then a cafe latte at a local restaurant. It was a really great food market and I will be making a return visit before I leave Zanzibar 🙂

Not the best photo, but here you can see how sugar cane juice is made
Not the best photo, but here you can see how sugar cane juice is made
My Zanzibar Pizza being made. They were so good I had to eat two of them :)
My Zanzibar Pizza being made. They were so good I had to eat two of them 🙂
A person checking his phone at sunset. The power had just been out for a few minutes
A person checking his phone at sunset. The power had just been out for a few minutes
Panorama shot of the Forodhani Bay
Panorama shot of the Forodhani Bay
Panorama shot of the Forodhani Bay
Panorama shot of the Forodhani Bay
Boats of all sizes out on the water
Boats of all sizes out on the water
Boats of all sizes out on the water
Boats of all sizes out on the water
Boats of all sizes out on the water
Boats of all sizes out on the water
Sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time...
Sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time…
The water is beautiful even at night
The water is beautiful even at night
Enjoying the sunset
Enjoying the sunset
Lesson Learned: Don't set your food down for a second, otherwise the cats get it :)
Lesson Learned: Don’t set your food down for a second, otherwise the cats get it 🙂
Lesson Learned: Don't set your food down for a second, otherwise the cats get it :)
Lesson Learned: Don’t set your food down for a second, otherwise the cats get it 🙂

Zanzibar Day 1: The Hotel Experience

I promise I will get around to posting pics and experiences later. For now I just wanted to write about my hotel experience.

So after 6 nights on Mt Kilimanjaro living in tents, I have to confess that it is nice to finally stay in a hotel in Zanzibar. The hotel I chose to stay at is the Zanzibar Palace Hotel in Stone Town. Granted it is far away from the popular beaches, but from a historical and architecture perspective, it is cool to stay around Stone Town.

So far so good in the hotel. I am staying in a suite call the Dunia Suite and I have to confess it is pretty nice! The only thing off-putting is that it is on the top floor and there is no lift, but after climbing to 5900 meters this should be a cake-walk, right? 😉

The coolest thing about my room besides the furniture is that the bathroom is essentially outside (yet tastefully concealed) and I have my own private sundeck. The AC works and the power is on 99,5% of the time. And the wifi is fast. And I got a great rate due to the fact that as of this week I am the last guest before they close for the low season, so I feel like I have the run of the place.

So this is what heaven feels like after putting myself through the trial-by-fire that was climbing Kili 🙂

And now for the pics! 🙂

The entrance to my hotel room. Something cool is behind the door
The entrance to my hotel room. Something cool is behind the door
The bed is really high up! Has an Arabian feel to it.
The bed is really high up! Has an Arabian feel to it.
The TV and the artwork
The TV and the artwork
The relaxing chairs in my room. A good chunk of the downtime will be spent here!
The relaxing chairs in my room. A good chunk of the downtime will be spent here!

These stairs lead to the second level of my hotel room

These stairs lead to the second level of my hotel room

The sitting table on the second level...perfect for reading newspapers downloaded to my iPad in the morning.
The sitting table on the second level…perfect for reading newspapers downloaded to my iPad in the morning.
The sundeck. Won't spend that much time there, but since the hotel will deliver martinis straight to my sunbed if I request it, I will have to take them up on that offer.
The sundeck. Won’t spend that much time there, but since the hotel will deliver martinis straight to my sunbed if I request it, I will have to take them up on that offer.
My shower and sink, with a view to the sea. It's open air but I have complete privacy.
My shower and sink, with a view to the sea. It’s open air but I have complete privacy.
The sink with a view
The sink with a view
A huge bathtub. I used it the first night and plan to use it again before I check out.
A huge bathtub. I used it the first night and plan to use it again before I check out.
These bathrobes make me feel like Liberace.
These bathrobes make me feel like Liberace.
The view of the bathroom and additional sitting area once you get to the top of the staris
The view of the bathroom and additional sitting area once you get to the top of the stairs

For the rest of the week, I have a lot of things I want to do, but not a lot of things planned (if you know what I mean). I am taking it pole pole all the way this week. I need the recovery to restore my sanity and get prepared for the craziness that will be my return to my normal life..

Final CSC Blog Entry: “Just Walk Beside Me, And Be My Friend” – for my CSC Nigeria Team 6 Colleagues ( #ibmcsc )

It’s a bittersweet moment now. If I said that I wasn’t at all emotional, I would be lying.

The team has officially disbanded and have gone towards their onwards journeys. It’s sweet because I know many people are ready to begin their post-CSC experiences. For some that will be going back home to see family and good friends. For others, the adventures continue around Africa and around the world for a couple of weeks more.

It’s bitter because we started out as colleagues, but ended up as friends. And it is always hard to say good to those you care for.

I had the incredible fortune and honour to work with Leslie, Kelsen, Bouke, Cinthia, Minh-Hai, Bob, Sundar, Mithilesh, Christina, Bianka, Peter, Laura (hereafter known as My Little Sister), Bhuvana, and Mariana. Our bond was immediate from the day we all first met on location at the Sheraton Hotel in Lagos. Laughing and getting to know each other, if you hadn’t know about us and were walking past, it would have seemed to the casual observer that we were friends for a long time.

In our four weeks together we supported each other, learned from each other, tested each other, grew frustrated with each other, had our assumptions challenged by each other, grew as people from engaging with each other, and somewhere in between the first meal we shared together and the last team toast –  became friends with each other. This group has my greatest admiration and deepest respect. It’s hard to imagine that we won’t keep in touch. But I will miss having daily access to their thoughtful insights, their passion for the client and to make IBM proud, their wisdom and balanced judgement, their infectious willingness to go the extra mile and serve, and just plain fun. But I also know I carry a part of each of them with me.

I think I would close this entry with a group picture, a quote from Albert Camus, and a sense of feeling blessed and grateful for having 14 new colleagues friends to walk besides me in my life’s journey.

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“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead.

Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow.

Just walk beside me and be my friend.”

May you always be blessed, watched over, and looked after. May you know that my tears are not because our time together is over, but are tears of gratitude for the opportunity to be a part of my life. And finally, may you know that this is not goodbye; rather it is take care until we meet again.

<3

The Governor’s Dinner ( #ibmcsc )

So after our final presentations, we were graciously invited by Mr. Governor to a dinner to celebrate the end of the assignment and as a way to say thanks to the CSC Nigeria 6 Team for their work. The night was filled with a sense of celebration, notes of appreciation from all involved, and a fantastic dance performance by the Ekiti State Troupe. The evening ended with commerative gifts from Ekiti State and some very nice words relayed to us from Mr Governor.

Pictures from the fantastic night!

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CSC Nigeria Team 6 Final Presentations to the Ekiti State Governor’s Executive Council ( #ibmcsc )

So today is the day! The four weeks of work that we have done culminates today in a presentation of our work to Mr Governor’s Executive Council (which includes his Commissioners and Special Advisors, Permanent Secretaries, and other guests of Mr Governor).

The team decided to do the presentation wearing traditional Nigeria clothing, which was very well received by our clients and the Council!

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After some comments and introductions from the Governor as well as from the IBM General Manager for West Africa, the team gave their presentations on the 5 projects that we had been working on:

  • New Initial for Social Development (NISD) – a NGO (Presented by Bob)
  • Ekiti State University (Presented by Christina)
  • E-Schools (Presented by Peter)
  • E-Government (Presented by Cinthia)
  • Citizens Information Management System (Presented by Rodney)

I have to say that I was proud of everyone presenting! And for representing their teams and IBM so well. It was a great source of pride to be associated with such a great team!

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After the presentations with Mr Governor, Christina and I took questions from the television press. I have a new appreciation for those who be interviewed all of the time!

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In the evening we are invited to a dinner hosted by Mr.Governor as a celebration of the work that we had done. We will cover that in a separate blog entry 🙂