Queasy in Stone Town

Rose here. Sitting in an air conditioned internewt cafe in Stone Town AKA Zanzibar Town. Sal is doing some last minute sightseeing while I sit my queasy self down for a break.

As Sal thought, the last day was hard. The blur of 200 or so children separated into individuals with names - Samueli who wanted my address, the boy who thanked me for bringing computers to the school and said God Bless as I left, the wildness that emerged when the camera came out. I will miss that walk to school although my feet will never be the same again.

We spent Friday in rainy Tanga at the Mkonge Hotel playing games and reading and visiting and saying goodbye (I hope Simon remembers to record my second win in a row at Catan!). We arrived at the airport at the same time as Reverend Mattiya but I'll let Sal tell you about that. After he left, we hung around until it was time to say goodbye to ALGS. Good byes were hard.

The flight to Zanzibar was via Pemba Island, an island north of Zanzibar but part of the same archipelago. Zanzibar is much more urban than what we had seen so far with more money and more white tourists. Quite a shock coming from Muheza. Our first night's accomodation did not suit so we moved to a new spot the next morning - a bit upscale before embarking on a spice tour which took us into the outskirts of Zanzibar Town and beyond to old ruins and Plantantions where we were shown the various plants, roots and trees from which lemon grass, vanilla, cardamon, peppercorns, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and tumeric come from. Who knew tumeric was a root!

The trip included a lunch on one of the plantations which was touted as featuring many of the spices we'd been shown but it was a disappointment, We'd had much better similar meals in Muheza. And, within a few hours, it became clear to me that I'd eaten something bad for me. The evening and night were unpleasant and nausea continued into the next day.

We had booked a trip to Chumbe Island, a marine eco-resort for Sunday and I felt well enough to go so off we went. We met a couple from Halifax who had also been on the same spice tour and one of them had also had a reaction to the meal.

Chumbe Island was lovely and appears to be doing excellent preservation work primarily through education. We went snorkelling although my snorkelling was interspersed with retching. and Sally had her best meal in Tanzania while I retired to our Banda. In the afternoon, we were taken on a guided forest walk. The eco-system is Coral Rag Forest - the island was at one time under water and what is now exposed is dead coral. There is no soil and all the vegetation is the result of seed being deposited by birds.

We are just about to leave for the east coast of the Island to a place called Bwejuu where we will lounge for a couple of days before heading home Wednesday night arriving Thursday afternoon in Victoria.

Love to all and see you soon.