– Chandra

Kari (our crazy taxi driver) was 15 minutes early which was perfect as we had just had the porter pick us and our luggage up. We got to the airport in a short hour today which was a good 30-40 minutes faster than our arrival taxi cab ride. Louisa continued to try to convince Kari to slow down…on occasion, he’d oblige. But mostly, he cruised along like his normal speed maniac self. Checking in at Zanzibar airport was not the slightest bit intuitive and pretty much a joke. When I got up to the agent, he asked for my ticket. Did not ask for any ID. He told me that Sarah and I could only check in 2 bags, 20 kilos each. We, given that we were flying all the way home today, had all our luggage. We were, indeed, checking 2 bags each. However, we each had one that was around 40 kilos. I somehow convinced the agent not to charge us (even though his English was not that great and he talked at a whisper volume which didn’t help our language barrier challenges) and he checked our bags all the way through to Kili. Once in Kili, Sarah and I would collect our bags and then recheck them into our KLM flight. Once the agent checked us in, we then were asked to take our bags through security check (which was located behind the check-in agents). There was a big group of people with a lot of bags hovered around two women dressed in their Muslim garb. Apparently, the security scan/check machine was broken and these two women were manually going through people’s luggage. We pulled our bags in line to be checked. At that time, a man walked up to me and ‘helped’ me take my bags up to the ladies. As we walked, he told me that I could give them some money (a few shillings or so) and they would let my bags pass through security without having them manually checked. What security precautions, eh? I told the man that we had time and that I was OK with having my bags manually checked. He said, “What? Do you really want them going through your belongings? Your clothes? Your panties? Your valuables?”. I guess I’m not a supporter of paying for a ‘get of security scanning free card’. I told him I didn’t mind and then he left. Later, when Sarah and I were chatting about this, we decided that we only hoped that if I would have taken the man up on the offer that he would have taken the money for himself and ran and not that we could have actually paid security off. Now we’ll never know. Once that was done, we put ourselves through security…which was a line of people passing through a very stuffy room…and eventually boarded the plane. It was open seating so we each just grabbed the first open seat we could find. The flight was only 20 minutes long from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam…it was actually the shortest flight I’ve even been on. We got off in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, and that’s when our travel troubles began…

You could tell we were in a larger airport. Dar has a population of over 2.5 million people and is the largest city in Tanzania. The airport gave signals of the city’s size as it was definitely a bit more developed and mature compared to other airports we’ve flown through. We deboarded outside, as usual, and walked towards baggage claim. We had to find an agent in order to get our next leg’s seat assignments. We walked over to get our seat assignments for our next Precision Air leg…from Dar to Kili. The agent told us that that flight had been delayed until 9:25pm. FRICK! Sarah and my KLM flight leaves Kili at 9:55pm. This wasn’t going to work for us. We explained our situation to the agent and she told us that she would need to connect us up with the Precision Air supervisor to see if we could, perhaps, catch the KLM flight in Dar rather than in Kili due to the Precision Air flight delay. The KLM flight that Sarah and I are on actually leaves Kili at 9:55 and has a super quick stopover in Dar before heading to Amsterdam. Once we got to the departure terminal, we waited and waited and waited for Anita, the Precision Air supervisor, to meet with us. Other mazungus were there ahead of us, working through flight issues. While we waited, Sarah and I decided that we should have our luggage pulled off of the Dar to Kili flight. We asked a luggage valet to help. He and Sarah both went back and literally pulled our luggage off. Sarah’s first up-close-and-personal experience being an aiport luggage handler…too funny! During this same period of time, Louisa was actually able to get herself on another flight that left a bit earlier than 9:25pm. As Sarah returned with our bags, I was laughing (merely at the fact that she physically went back to pull it). I could tell by the look on her face that something was wrong. She mouthed to me, “Your bag is ripped.” I looked at my bag and saw that my Tectura bag (which I questioned taking to begin with as it didn’t seem super durable) had ripped alongside the zipper. For all the things that the Dar airport doesn’t have, thank goodness they had a machine that plastic wraps your luggage. So, five minutes and five US dollars later, my bag was super sealed in plastic. Yea! Anita finally met with us and told us she would connect with KLM and make it so we could get on our KLM flight in Dar rather than Kili. Sounded great. However, the KLM agents don’t start until 8pm so we couldn’t get our tickets reissued or our bags checked in until then. It was only 3pm. Looks like we had more waiting to do (which are really good at by this time in our trip). Anita gave us refreshment vouchers to use at a restaurant upstairs in the airport. However, we couldn’t get there with our bags (and had no place to store them) as there is no lift! There was no way that we were going to lug all our bags up steps for food right now. So, we waited…sat around in passport control (Louisa sat with us until her flight left), talking to Joachim (a super nice security employee who talked to us for over an hour about US vs Dar culture, HIV/Aids, marriage, driving, laws, etc.), sat in the departure terminal under a “physically challenged” sign), and once we saw the KLM stantions go up, we parked ourselves first in line for service by an agent. Finally, around 8:15, the KLM agents were ready for us…so we hoped. Other than the many smiles and nice conversations we had with from and with the local aiport workers who had seen us sitting in the airport all day long or had taken the time to chat with us…nothing was going super great for us. The KLM agent didn’t make things better. She seemed knew and quite uninterested in helping us. She said we had no ticket numbers in teh system. We re-explained our situation. Then, a supervisor tried to assist. We re-explained our situation to him. We waited, and waited. Nothing. Then, I overheard him saying something about a system ‘error’ message while trying to change our departure origin in the system. At one point, we actually saw them pull out a KLM system manual. We were scared! We stood at the same agents terminal for over 40 minutes without anyone really telling us what was going on. We pieced it together through the actions we saw and the little Kiswahili we could understand. I kind of exploded at one point…trying to get some clarification and an update. Finally, a very nice agent walked up to us and told us what was going on. Basically, they knew what they needed to do in the system to change/reissue our tickets, they were trying to do it, and they were getting an ‘error’ message. They didn’t know how to resolve the error and were waiting for help from KLM over the phone. She asked us to once again, step aside and wait while they awaited a response from KLM. I gave the woman huge thanks for taking the time to actually explain to us what was going on. Sarah and I told her that it had been a long day for us…we were tired (of waiting), hungry, hot, and both of us a bit crampy to top things off. While we were standing by, Anita walked up to us and tries to play a bit stupid, almost trying to uncommit to being able to reissue our tickets so we could board in Dar. Sarah lost it at that point and rightfully so. She reminded Anita that she had promised to get us on that flight and that we didn’t care how she does it, but she needs to get us on that flight no if’s, and’s or but’s. And is she didn’t, people will hear about it and it will not be pretty for her, Precision Air, the Dar airport or KLM. As Sarah was conversing with Anita, the male supervisor walked up to me and told me that my tickets had been reissued…two boarding passes were waiting for me. Sarah’s were waiting for her too. We checked our bags in, went through passport control and grabbed some food and a drink. Of course, the refreshment vouchers Anita had given us earlier were no longer valid…it was now 9:30pm. Oh well…we were at least one more giant step closer to being on our way! Our flight left Dar just after midnight. Sarah and I had a row to ourselves which was nice. We both tried to get a bit of rest before landing 8 1/2 hours later in Amsterdam. We bummed around the Amsterdam airport together for a bit, then Sarah left for her Amsterdam – Boston flight. She then would catch a flight to Minneapolis from Boston. I headed up to one of the lounges (Servair) and spent some time online and drinking some coffee. The Amsterdam airport is absolutely freezing. Drives me nuts as I couldn’t warm up to save my life, especially as I waited at the gate for boarding. As I waited, I heard someone yell my name. I looked up and it was Sarah. Her flight to Boston had been delayed and she was therefore going to miss her connection to Minneapolis. She was super upset as she desperately wanted to get home at this point. I sympathized with her before jumping on my plane. My flight to SFO left on time. Initially, my seat was a middle seat in between two German men who were traveling in a bigger group. One of the men was pretty large and spilling over to my seat. One of the flight attendants came up and asked if I wanted to move. I appreciatively accepted her offer. The men were also happy, I’m sure. I moved to the back of the plane, on an aisle which was just fine. I sat next to a woman from Holland (originally from Turkey) who flies out to San Francisco each year for 5 weeks to visit her good friend. We both chatted throughout the 12 hour flight and also complained to each other about how flipping freezing it was on the plane. We both were wrapped in multiple blankets, with our feet wrapped and off the floor as the airplane floor alone was about 100 degrees below zero. CRAZY! I, too, was excited to just get home at this point…especially after a very, very long and stressful 24 hours of airports and flying. I finally did return home…got to SFO on time and returned home safe and sound around 3:30pm. It is quite cold in San Francisco and the winter weather and rain has crept in just recently I hear. I got a text message from Sarah while in flight letting me know that the agent in Dar had actually changed her flight itinerary and didn’t even mention it to her. I’m not sure when or how Sarah will get home, but told her to ping me when she finally does. Through it all, I am still very happy that I went to Zanzibar and that we saved it for our last weekend in Africa. It was the perfect way to end an incredibly meaningful, touching, memorable and emotional 3 weeks in Africa. The lovely Fairmont Zanzibar and beach at Matemwe played a big part in my ability to leave Africa in a state of peace and goodness. Dar es Salaam, however, did not!

After placement, we had a quick lunch and then we jumped into the CCS van to head to Arusha where we would hopefully be able to sit in on one of the Rwanda War Crime trials at the UN. Arusha is just over 270,000 people and considered a more popular tourist town compared to Moshi. It acts a the safari hub in the Kili area since it’s city center is relatively close to Ngorongoro, Lake Manyara, Tangeriere and Serengeti (which is still a few hours drive). After a 50-minute crazy van ride there with Peter (bumpy and jolty as we weave in and around other vehicles and people), we unfortunately learned that court was not in session today. We were all really disappointed. Instead, we ended up driving around Arusha, stopping to jump out of the van at a local store that sells Tanzanite for fair and reasonable prices, a local Masai market (which was a bit irritating as the vendor swarmed around us, begging us to step inside their shops), and ShopRite where I was able to buy cupcakes and juice that I will take to the girls at Mkombozi tomorrow for my last day there with them. You can feel that there are more people in Arush…the streets are packed with people, bikes and automobilies (yes, tons of Daladalas, too). The city is also not as clean as Moshi, considered one of the cleaner towns in the Kili area. Throughout the day (which was hotter than super hot) and throughout the van drive, I was beginning to feel a bit queasy. At times, I was a bit clammy, then a bit chilly. About 45 minutes into the ride back to Karanga, I knew I was in trouble. Sadly, I had to have the van pull over at the side of the road while I jumped outside to puke. I felt better, but decided to play it safe and ride in the front of the van for the remainder of the ride home. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fully rid of whatever little ‘bug’ was in my system. When we returned home, I basically went directly into my bed…this time I took hospice in the lower bunk as I didn’t have the energy to climb to my top bunk. Louisa took my temperature…I was normal. I ended up getting sick one more time and was basically grounded in my bed for the night. The other CCS volunteers and staff went out for a group dinner while Louisa stayed behind with me. Of course I was sad to miss a group dinner, but a bit relieved that I could skip out on another traditional African meal (since that was the lunch that was currently leaving my body). The rest of the house returned after dinner and many came to check in on me. During the course of the evening, Louisa and Sarah had found out that our Air Tanzania flight for tomorrow at 3pm had been cancelled and that we had been reassigned to a Precision Air flight that was leaving at 11am. That meant that we would have leave our placement by 8:45am to catch the 9am shuttle from Moshi to the airport. Sarah and I were super upset as we really wanted to have our last day at placement be a full day with our mentors and my students. I was so sad as we thought through the little options we had…either we throw the money away that we spent on our tickets (which was even more than we had originally budgeted as we had ended up with 2 one-way tickets on different airlines) or we say our goodbyes in a short and sweet fashion on Friday morning. We decided on the latter. Then, I continued my recovery in bed while desperately hoping that #1) I wake up tomorrow morning feeling better and #2) I wake up early enough to pack up my things entirely as I’ll leave Zanzibar on Sunday and continue my return back to the States and #3) I wake up with enough time to get my parting gifts ready for the girls at Mkombozi. I honestly can not believe that I will be saying goodbye to everyone tomorrow…CCS volunteers, CCS staff, Mkombozi mentors, my lovely, amazing students and of course, the little boy I’ve connected with at the school. I will be so sad, but I keep telling myself that I will keep in touch with many after I return to the States and I know that I will also return to Moshi to see all my new friends again…and soon.

After class, Tracy worked on building a gradebook that she’ll use to track the girls’ progress while she’s here. She is also recording our lessons to assist the school and CCS with smoother transitions between different volunteers. I really hope that another CCS volunteer follows Tracy. The girls would really appreciate it and really need someone there to teach English. I focused on creating a prototype for tomorrow’s art project which will be jingle bells. As I was doing this, we saw a line of little boys (ranging from 3 to 6 years old) walking through the school carrying wood for what I presumed to be for the stove for cooking. We actually saw one of the smallest boys (probably about 3 years old) walking in with a stack of wood that had to weigh more than he did…AND his stack of wood had old, rusty nails jutting out all over the place. Tracy and I could not believe our eyes. After dropping off his stack of would, he decided he was through and literally sprawled out across my lap. I recognized him from the night before…he was one of the little ones who joined us on the dance floor during our Culutural Dinner and Dance at Mkombozi. He is adorable and I so want to bring him home with me. He sat there for over an hour, watching me and trying to help me with my art project. I gave him a sticker and it was if I had given him a piece of gold! Soon enough, there were another four boys hovered around me. Looking through some of our teaching materials and consumed by watching us work. I broke down and gave the additional boys a sticker and they were stoked! Pretty soon, it was time for us to meet Peter and the van back home. Louisa and I jumped off at Sarah’s placement again. This time for a bit of shopping before lunch. I spent a productive hour buying parting gifts for the girls at Mkombozi along with additional school supplies. Once that task was done, we headed back to CCS for lunch and our final feedback session.

Later that evening, I went out for dinner in Shanty Town at a great Indian restaurant (believe it or not it is called El Rancho which to me sounds a heck of lot more like a Mexican joint) with Rebecca, Ellie, Tali and Anna. We had a really nice dinner and laughed a lot throughout it. The veggie bahjia was fantastic as was the channa masala. The nan was a bit different…a bit thinner than the nan I usually have…but it was super tasty regarless. It was great to get out and explore more local restaurants and also a bit nice to get a break from eating African food ever now and then!

We got back to CCS Karanag for a Batik class which was awesome! Samuel Mototo, our batik teacher, brought some associates to assist with the class. Batik (though not easy), is actually a fairly doable process and art. We started with a clean piece of cloth, sketched out a design with pencil, outlined it darker in pen, and starting applying wax where we wanted the existing color to remain. Then, using water-based dyes, you begin layering on the color, waxing in between as you want to ‘sustain’ the color you just applied. You continue to repeat the wax and dying until you’re done. Then, you apply hot wax over the entire batik, crumbled it all off by rubbing your piece of cloth together, iron and voila…you have you own piece of batik art! The process does, however, require patience as it’s step by step and involves a lot of time for drying between stages. But it’s very worth the wait!

After Batik, it was time for our Cultural Dinner & Dance with the entire CCS Karanga house. We loaded into the van and headed to Mkombozi (the school where Tracy and I teach). Mama Asha and the hotel services graduates would be hosting us tonight for our Cultural Dinner. The food (cooked by the school’s students) was excellent and the music was great! There was a DJ (who is also an artist trying to launch his own rap career) that I’ve chatted with a few times while teaching at Mkombozi. Most impressive were the dancers, chanters, and drummers. The entertainment was superb and included acrobats, fire eaters, drums, singing and local dances. Mama Asha and Madame Ruth were the perfect hostesses. All the CCS-ers were really impressed with ‘our’ school (i.e. Mkombozi, the school where I teach), our mentors at Mkombozi and also loved how funny and witty Ruth is. She is such a natural hostess/Master of Ceremony. We all danced together, both in traditional Tanzanian fashion as well as boogied American style. Many of the little children joined us after observing us on the dance floor. Soon they were taking center stage and we all danced with and around them…a true cross-culturally moment. So much fun and sharing! We danced so much that we all were dripping in sweat by the time we headed back home to CCS. We thanked Mama Asha and Ruth for a fantastic night and for putting together such a nice experience for us all. Asante sana!!Thanks to all my friends at Mkombozi!