Yesterday was my 33rd birthday. It was a perfect day. Amanda and I spent the day kayaking, reading, and talking about the stuff we’ve learned. We’re reading a book together. It’s the first time I’ve tried reading a book with someone. We can only read a couple of pages at a time because it provokes so much reflection and conversation. We’re on page 10. Only about 100 more pages to go! It is precisely the book that we needed for this trip.

We return to Moshi today. We’ve been in Zanzibar for 4 days now. I have very mixed feelings about this place. Amanda and I are very conscious of being women here. Men make it a point. Women are not really seen on the street, and if they are they’re completely covered with a burqa.  You feel very naked and exposed when you happen to show your neck, or your face.  The funny thing is, while walking on the street, our exposed skin is all the men seem to notice, but when we’re in line, say at an ATM, we mysteriously become invisible again.  Men feel completely comfortable cutting in front of us in line, and if another man doesn’t restrain them (as a security guard did at an ATM), we’d sit waiting for every single man to finish his task before we had a turn.

On one hand, Zanzibar beaches are beautiful.  On the other hand, we haven’t heard a peep about environmental sustainability since leaving Moshi.  I suppose it’s easy to take such beauty for granted, thinking that the environment will magically regenerate itself, but watching some local girls using the pristine blue ocean water as a toilet while tourists were swimming just a few yards away was a bit difficult to stomach.

Wherever there is a subtantial concentration of people here, there is pollution.  Trash lining the street, air choked with smoke and exhaust, dust everywhere.  We fought the urge to leave for the first couple of days, but the northeast part of the island was more unspoiled.

manka This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 5:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.