Do you have passion? ... how much are you selling it for?

(I wrote this 9/13... sorry for the delay in posting it!)

While the title of this entry might seem like a lame attempt at a pick-up line, it's not.  It is a tribute to the deliciousness of the passion fruit.  I can ask someone this in the market and they won't blink an eye thinking I'm strange or creepy.  And, I'll "get the goods" without doing anything morally or legally wrong.  I will miss these when I leave Zanzibar!  

On the opposite end of the food spectrum, Choco Beans are the most disgusting candy ever.  What we thought was a substitute for M&Ms was a sore disappointment.  The kids here concluded that Choco Beans taste like puke, and that they'd rather eat thrown-up M&Ms than fresh Choco Beans.  That's saying something...  And why they have talcum powder and titanium dioxide in their ingredients, I'm not sure.  Can't be healthy.  I'll stick to the passion (fruits), thank you very much.

We went to a sandbank off the coast today.  The closest one is frequently populated (during the day) by white tourists, making it a possible location for an EU meeting, complete with too-small Speedos on men too old to be wearing them.  We went to the sandbank about 20 minutes by boat past that and had it all to ourselves.  It was fabulous.  The water was a spectrum of turquoises that look fake in the pictures (hopefully they'll actually load!  see below).  It was so nice to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and surroundings.  If you want to join in, come visit!  I’ll take you to the secluded sandbank unless you’re itching for some speedo eye “candy” (clearly in line with Choco Beans quality, not M&Ms). 

A photo of birds, a few kids, and the turquoise Indian Ocean surrounding the sandbank we went to last weekend (9/13).  The kids liked scaring the birds away, as shown here.

here is our canopy & picnic site:

I've been going on runs in the night time rather than during the day, and think I've converted to doing so, perhaps permanently.  It's cooler during the night, fewer cars are on the roads, and the sensory experience is nice.  If your runs are your time to let your mind wander like they are for me, having less scenery and people to see is great.  It’s something between sensory deprivation and heightening: visuals are obviously lessened, but it makes you much more in tune with your running form, your surroundings, and either the sounds of Zanzibar at 10pm or the playlist on your iPod.  There are more people running in the evenings now than during the day because of Ramadan.  People generally expend as little energy as possible during the day because they can't eat or drink until sunset.  After that, people come together for a meal and usually stay up fairly late visiting together.  Some people wake up before sunrise (when you can't tell the difference between a black thread and a white one) to eat, while others sleep in to reduce the amount of time they are awake and unable to eat.  I think the harder part would be abstaining from drinking any water during the day rather than no eating. 

Next weekend (ie: this weekend) I’ll either be trekking around the island via motorbike or going to some place with rocks and cliffs made for jumping.  I’ll report back to let you know how they go! 

Zanzibar post #1

Hmm. I’m not quite sure how I managed to abstain from blogging the entire month of August. Whoops. The quick & dirty update: I’m in Zanzibar and doing just fine. Here’s the extended version & highlights from the past month:
-I went to a large outdoor market in Mombasa (at Kongowea) and found some Little Mermaid bed sheets, exactly the same as those we had when I was a kid. My bag (well, my little sister’s bag that I’m not sure she knows I have…) was slashed when I was in the food section of the market. Luckily, nothing was taken. The market was overwhelming, but very cool. Soooo many people, so much fresh fruit & veggies. It probably took up at least 1/2 of a city block. I wish I had a picture of it to show you.
-“Fundi” is a Swahili word for a craftsman/specialist of some sort. I was the “salad fundi” for the trip the class of Yale students took to Vipingo, a beach town north of Mombasa. We stayed in a lovely shorefront house that had waves decent enough for some quality body surfing. I was in charge of the kiddos and the salads, so multi-tasking looked something like this: reading the 5th Harry Potter book to the kids while grating carrots (yes, I still have all my fingers!!). It was a full moon when we were there and spending the late night hours on the beach was fantastic. It was incredible how illuminated everything was from the moonlight alone.
-I was pulled over by a cop when driving. Not for any reason, just because he felt like it. However, when he looked at my license, a satisfied grin spread across his face before he said (in Swahili) “this is expired… it expired on February 9th.” My license expires today (September 2nd: 09/02/2009). We tried to explain that in America we write the date as month/day/year, but accidentally said “day/month/year,” the same as how they do here and in most parts of Europe, as he thought. When we realized that, the back tracking wasn’t effective. He simply said “why should I believe you?” Ummmmm… how do you get out of this one? Luckily, someone else in the car had a license and her birthday is on the 25th of the month (03/25/19??), thus proving that in America the month indeed is written first. Lucky for me. I was starting to taste the rubber sole from sticking my foot so far in my mouth. I guess it taught me to keep my Swahili vocab words for days, months, and years straight.
-The trip from Mombasa to Zanzibar looked like this: 12 hour bus ride from Mombasa to Dar es Salaam keeping track of 23 pieces of luggage and 3 kids. The bus ride was partly on dirt roads, and was stopped at least 10 times for police checks to make sure people weren’t schlepping electronics or other valuables across the Kenya-Tanzania border without paying customs duties on them. Sometimes the people that pulled over the bus weren’t in uniform, other times they were in military fatigues carrying machine guns. Our bags were so incredibly dusty by the time we got to the ferry that took us to Zanzibar. The ferry ride was uneventful, and there was a huge sense of relief when we reached the shore of Stone Town with all of our bags in our possession.
-ZANZIBAR!! Lovely place. Friendly people. I live in Mazizini, about 8km from the center of town and very very close to the ocean (look for it on maps.google.com!). We inherited 3 dogs from the previous tenants of this house, one of which is a puppy. My Teva sandals incurred puppy teething injuries the first night we were here when I forgot to bring them inside. Nothing a bit of DuckTape can’t fix, although I may bring them to a shoe fundi. It’s so nice to have more space and not live on a major street like we did in Mombasa. Traffic is no longer my lullaby. A rogue rooster that insists on crowing in the dead of the night rocks me to sleep, and a cow takes over to wake me up in the morning with his forceful “MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”… and we live right near a mosque, so the morning call to prayer (before sunrise, around 4:30 or 5am?) is quite audible from its loudspeaker projections. The rooster/crow/mosque combination is a different wake-up call from the bells of Yale’s Harkness Tower that I’ve had for the past 4 years!
-This past Sunday, we went snorkeling and had a picnic on a sand bar just off the coast of town. Besides me getting a bit queasy, it was such a nice time. The water is incredibly turquoise and a pleasant temperature for swimming. Speaking of temperatures, I successfully guessed 234ºF when making fudge without a candy thermometer. The traditional sweets we have in the US are scarce here, so we’ve been making our own. You also can’t get plastic bags here (for the most part). The ban was part of a trash-reduction effort. I think it’s great, except that I keep having to buy cloth bags at the market because I forget to bring my own from home.
I think that’s all for now. Only other quick thing I can think of is that I chopped my hair to chin-length and am still failing to remember that I now need to use about 1/2 the shampoo I did when it was long. I’ll be sure to post a bite-size blog with more updates (and pictures?) soon!