How to travel around Pemba

Finally, today is the day that I will actually talk about a topic that is pertaining to the title this blog, The HITCHHIKER's guide to Pemba. Yes I am talking about traveling around on the tropical island that is my home, Pemba. If you would have to ask me what is the easiest and best way to travel from the middle of Pemba such as say a village near Chake Chake to the northern part of the island to visit various tourist sites, I would give you a simple answer, “Join the Peace Corps”.

Well, it is not that easy. But since I am already a Peace Corps volunteer, this method has proved to be quiet effective for me. I did not need to pay to ride a dala dala. I did not need to ride in a dala dala packed like sardines. I did not have to ride in a dala dala that stops every 2 minutes to pick up and drop off passengers. Here was what I did:

1. I woke up early enough so that I can be on time to teach at my school, which is a long 3 minutes walk from my house

2. I taught my first and second period of Form 1 Chemistry.

3. After I finished teaching, I went outside and chatted with the students and my fellow teachers.

4. As the dala dala arrived, get in the front seat of the dala dala next to the driver.

5. Enjoy the ride to North Pemba.

Ok, I will stop messing around now. All in all, today was a great day for me.  I was able to go on yet another field trip with my school.  We went to the amazing Ngezi Forest in the northern tip of Pemba.  It was quite a refreshing trip because this whole week was really hard for me, with my crazy irregular school schedule.  To be honest it was starting to get on my nerve, so this field trip was a good break from all of that.

Inside a fare pote type of structure just outside the forest of Ngezi as we were waiting for our guide

 Inside the Ngezi forest, there were a wide variety of flora and fauna, but I was not able to see any that were of interest to me.  Well I lied, I did see a specimen of Teak (Tectona grandis) and a specimen of Mahogany (Calophyllum inophyllum).  Beside those two particular plants, I did not see any other species of flora or fauna that caught my eyes.  One thing that really bugged me during my visit to Ngezi was the fact that some of the students and and teachers were uprooting seedlings.  I did not know how to address this during the walk, but I plan to address this issue at a later time in the future.

After visiting the forest, we went on a relatively long bus ride through the forest.  As I was sitting in the very front of the bus, the whole experience felt like an Indiana Jones movie, as we were trekking through the small dirt road in the jungle, bouncing up and down as the tires travel across every bumps and pot holes.  Alas, we finally made it to the lighthouse, Ras Kigomasha, and what an amazing site it was.  This lighthouse was built in 1905 by the Chance Brothers.  I am to believe that this lighthouse is still active, due to its current condition, but then again I am not sure

For a minimal fee of 500 TSH or $0.31 USD per person, we were able to climb the tower to get a view from the top of the lighthouse.

The endless spiral staircase

 It was very scary to climb the lighthouse, but I fought back my fear and ascend the tower.  Luckily I did, because the view was amazing.  It was like switching from a CRT television set to an Ultra HD 4000K television.  My eyes was blown out from the clarity of the scenery.

The view from one of the small windows along the spiral staircase

 And here we are at the top at last.  If any of you ever get a chance to climb a lighthouse, do it, it is worth every aching muscles in your legs.

Ultra HD 4000k eyegasm

The clear fringing reef

Who need a fancy DSLR when the scenery is just that awesome

And of course the required selfie

 After taking this selfie, I realized that I have done this exact pose in a wide variety of places.  It got me thinking of making an entire album dedicated to this pose.  I guess this can be hashtagged as #Lonetraveller.  But that will be for another time, another day.

Some of the Form IV students in my school

He was really adamant about having a picture all by himself

My attempt at being artistic.  I shall call this "The Grated Life"

Last #LoneTraveller picture before my descend

 After descending the long spiral staircase, I was greeted with a friendly fellow.  It was as if he was mooing me to come and pet him.  Naturally I complied.

The flag of Zanzibar waving to greet all visitors of Ras Kigomasha

After our short stint at Ras Kigomasha, we jumped on the rickety bus to venture toward another location, Vumawimbi  Beach.  This is one of the most pristine beach that I have been to, and that is saying a lot.  It was a shame that I did not pack my snorkeling gear, but from the view on top of Ras Kigomasha, it looked pretty interesting.  During our stay there, I was introduced to a delicacy by a student, Pinnidae mussel.  All you had to do was dig up the green pen shell mussel from the sandy beach, pry it open and wash away the sand, and just gobble down the sweet nectary flesh of the adductor mussel.  I was able to deduce the genus of this sweet delicacy to be either Atrina or Pinna.
Well here are some pictures that I managed to snap before the torrential rain

Of course I cannot go to a pristine beach without the #LoneTraveller pose

After a fun field trip, I was able to visit a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer on Pemba, as she lives really close to Vumawimbi and Ngezi.  It was really good to see her because I did not see her or any other volunteers for over 1 month.  It was nice to vent and catch up with her.  All in all it was a great end to a fun day of adventures.

Until next time

The Lone Traveller

Tắm Mưa - Dancing in the Rain

I guess this would be the most recent picture of me that most of you would have seen in a really long time.  Just like my physical appearances have change very little, beside some major details, my personal character has seen some minor adjustments.  

Last night after having the chance to talk to a really great friend (who was also an equally awesome roommate), I realized that I have finally learn one of the greatest lessons to be in my lifetime, letting go.  I have always been an emotional creature, albeit not a very vocal one.  In the past, I always thought my biggest strength was my perseverance, to keep on going toward a dream even under the watchful eyes of impossibility.  This added with the fuel that is my emotion, has proved to be my biggest downfall over and over again both in term of relationships and career choices.  For the longest time I would always dwell on the past, dwell on the what if's, dwell on what was there, dwell on what wasn't even there to begin with.  By talking with my close friend, he enabled me to see the folly that was my mentality in regard to dwelling.  In response to one of his statements, I said, "I finally figured out the secret to being happy with the friend zone, just accept and embrace it."  Ever since then I have not look back and just keep on having a wide smile on my face.  To some of you out there that are having trouble with relationships, I say "Move one, do not dwell on what was there before, don't even dwell on what is here now, for one day you will dwell on what was here now.  In short delete dwell/dwelling from your dictionary."  Thank you Mr. Cool Guy for helping me with this.

Well today, you all are in a for a treat, you get to see a preview of what is my house, pre-renovation.  But first I will document my lazy Sunday, a day with much as much unproductivity as there are sporadic rainfalls.

The view that I was greeted with for the whole day as I was leaving in search of food.

As I was peacefully sleeping on Magodoro ya SUPER BANCO foam mattress, under my toasty 30 degree Fahrenheit rated sleeping bag to keep away from your friendly neighborhood female Anopheles mosquitoes, I was awoke not from the sound of my alarm blaring on of my favorite Dan Nguyen song (Nho Me).  No, I was awoken by the constantly clanging noise of pellets of rain striking my questionably nailed tin roof.  It has become an orchestra, a symphony of perfect meshed sounds of metallic splatters.  As I laid there in my bed, realizing "great another weekend potential going to be wasted due to the rain."  Seconds went by, then minutes flew passed me, and off to lala (coincidentally lala is the verb for sleeping in Kiswahili) land.  For what my internal clock perceived to about 30 minutes, I was sleeping peacefully under the sound of the Metallicaqua orchestra.  My alarm blared off in the fashion of an old transatlantic cruiser.  I jolted up quickly hoping that the rain has already settled down in the red soiled ground.  But alas, I was quickly disappointed with contrast of my expectation and reality.  Trying to wait out the rain, so that I can embark on my adventure to the northern land of Konde, I decided it was best for me to catch up with some news about the United States, the world, technology, cars, and science.  So on to Facebook I went.  Hours passed by and still the rain was be quite persistent, raining for a couple of seconds, then stop for roughly 10 or so minutes ten raining again.  This went on for who know how long, and thus my complaining self emerged.  This time I'm glad he emerged because as he was complaining to one of my coolest friend who is also a snazzy professor at a snazzy community college, a memory from the past emerged.  The memory of tắm mưa, running around in the maze of alleyways that was my neighborhood in Vietnam during the rain, doing slip-n-slides, and just having fun.  Naturally I acted on this memory and went out to my court yard and stripped down and danced to my heart content, well until my fingers were numbed as the water was drawing little by little the heat away from my body.  Overall, today I was really happy to be able to experience one of those lost memories from my childhood again.  Thank you Ms. Nguyen.

Collecting rain water in my court yard.

Well peace outside

- Son

Kwanza

Today is the first day of the rest of my life, similarly everyday for the rest of my life will have the same description.  But what makes today a bit more special than other days?

Well today marks the 99th day that I've been in Tanzania.  Today also marks the 4th month that I have been in Tanzania.  I have been an official Peace Corps Volunteer for 23 days.  I have been at my site on Pemba for 21 days.  Thus today, I decided that I will start a blog.  Originally I wanted to do a VBlog during my service in Tanzania.  Just like many of the roads in country, my VBlog idea suddenly was bombarded with thousands of speed bumps (or sleeping policemen if you're British), well more like 2 speed bumps.  The first, uploading watchable videos (more than 144p) posed to be a problem due to A) the limited bandwidth that I have and B) the 2G/EDGE Internet speed that my allegedly 3G/UMTS is able to attain.  The second problem was after the first 3 or 4 days of doing my VBlog, I consistently forgot to do my daily video every night.  So my plan for a VBlog or even a blog was scrapped.  Fast forward to now, today will be the first day of the rest of my volunteering service.

Let's recap all the events that I remembered since I arrived in country.

First, this was my 3rd day in country.  This would be our first visit the city of Dar es Salaam. *notice the architecture*

Next up, you can see the types of food that I was eating for approximately 9 weeks.  Every night, without fail, I would be eating at least one dish of carbs (rice, beans, or the delicious ugali), one dish of vegetable, some proteins (either fish or goat), some sauce (most of the time it was just some variations of the same tomato sauce), and some fruits).  Surprisingly the food tasted a lot like Vietnamese food, so I fitted right in.  It felt like I never even left home, they even have a variation of Canh Chua.

Here we can see some examples of the types of clothes that are worn in Tanzania, especially in the Muslim community.  That was me in a kangzu and a kofia.  My dada (sister) is wearing a traditional kanga setup.

This here was Simba (I named him), the cat that kept me sane for a while during PST (Pre-Service Training).

Then one day, my kaka (brother) and his friend invited me to come along to Tanga to drop off my youngest dada to a boarding school.  On a side note this boarding school is supposedly one of the best school in Tanzania, and was very cheap to attend comparing to a normal community school.

While in Tanga, I made my kaka and his friend trek with me to the bahari (beach), just because I heard that Tanga is right next to the Indian Ocean.  Thus I touched the Indian Ocean for the first of many time.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, most of the trainees went to the mountainous region of Tanga, Lushoto.  Lushoto was quite different than how most people would imagine Africa.  First it was mountainous and not plainly flat like the savanna of NatGeo fame.  Secondly it was chilly, so chilly that I had to wear a light fleece jacket.

After the trip to Lushoto, the whole training class continue to be bustling with training of course and the the occasional hangouts at either the Atlantic or the Mountain View bars (best mishikaki place ever).  Then alas came the day of site announcement, and as you can already see from the title of this blog, I was assigned to be on Pemba.  I was really excited about the revelation, because I always had a hunch that I was going to be placed on Pemba (even to the point of packing a good amount of my snorkeling/diving gears). Here are some pictures of my first visit to my site.

This was at the ferry landing in Dar es Salaam, about 6:30 AM.

These next few were taken en route to Unguja, the main island of Zanzibar.

Land Ahoy

During my visit, I managed to convince some of my future students to take me on an excursion to a local beach.  I had no idea what to expect of the beach, but it surprised me in more ways than I can imagine.  The beach is the site of a future resort or so I was told by the students.  While I was there I met the Minister of Pemba?, but I wasn't sure.  Apparently he is the one heading this project.

A classic baobab tree, after all TIA (this is Africa), I have to take a picture of one of these at some point, might as well be early.

Finally training is over and we all passed our language, practical and medical exams, and off we go to our site.  But before that I was able to take a glimpse of America in the form Walmart (well GAME, but it is just a recent acquisition of Walmart).

Being at site is a weird experience.  I do not know how to describe it, but most of the time, I really enjoy being in my community.  I sure hope that my neighbors and villagers feel the same way about an Mchina . . .

A lot of the time, my school can be really random.  For example, one day I was just sitting in my desk, minding my own business, preparing lesson plans, then my counterpart came up to me and asked me if I wanted to take the students on a field trip, and being the Yes man that I am, I said uhh of course.  So here I am taking the students on a field trip to the Old Fort converted into the Pemba Historical Museum.  Then we went on a really long and sketchy dala dala ride to some ruins, Ras Mkumbuu ruins.  I guess even on days that I work, I still get to go the beach.

That weekend, I decided to go up to Konde to visit Swahili Divers.  Swahili Divers is a chill location, it felt like a little paradise with the lush tropical forest, and the white sandy coastline.  It was just what I needed after being in country for almost 4 months.

And here we are now, done with my report of what happened to me during the last couple of months, stuck here in my room, not knowing what to do next.  I guess tonight will be a movie night again.

Back to topic, during my time at site, I have had the privilege of cooking a lot of interesting food that I would have never tried to make back in the States.  Some examples are Lengua tacos, Pho, and baked fish.  I guess now that I will have a lot of time, I will try to hone my cooking skill and be the next Iron Chef Tanzania :).

Until next time

Sonnypop out