Happy Union Day

Along with it being Easter this past weekend, we also celebrated Union Day in Tanzania which gave us an extra (and much needed) long weekend. Union Day in Tanzania falls on April 26^th and it marks the union of Tanganyika (mainland) with Zanzibar (island). On this day in 1964, the two states united to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, which later that same year was renamed the United Republic of Tanzania (Tan-Zan-ia).  

This extra day off work was much need as last week I began my field visits to the ZANGOC member organizations. Over a span of 2 days I visited with 10 organizations and evaluated their current capacities and limitations and discussed how their organization can move forward under the ZANGOC umbrella over the coming years. As I expected, most of the organizations suffer from lack of financial and HR management and policies and what everyone wants to know is how they can get money to implement activities and projects. Just by visiting with these 10 organizations I can tell that the capacities of each organization vary extremely while organizations such as ZAPHA+ (Zanzibar Association of People Living with HIV and AIDS) are every well funded and well organized, and others such as ZAO, have great project aspirations, full commitment from their members but have no funding to implement long term projects. As exhausting as those days were, I hope to visit with 10 to 15 more organizations by the end of this week so I can start planning some train the trainer workshops in project management and proposal writing. 

Enough about work for now...I did have a fabulous long weekend! Larissa, the YCI intern in Morogoro (who is currently working through Faraja Trust Fund to implement new environmental projects in the surrounding villages) came to visit us on the island. Saturday we did some shopping around town then Sunday we headed up north to Nungwi beaches complete with a spice tour along en route! 

With our warrior paint on, good to go!

Lovin' the passion fruit

Last time I was in Zanzibar I went on a spice tour but it was much more interesting this time around because I actually took note of what I can buy in the markets and use for cooking fabulous things such as curry! So we spent the morning on the spice tour playing tacky tourist then headed to Amaan Bungalows in Nungwi where I had the craziest daja vu as this hotel turned out to be the exact spot I stayed in on my last visit in 2007. Saturday and Sunday we relaxed on the beach, I had an amazing meal of BBQ jumbo prawns, got ourselves some henna then took the daladala back to town Monday afternoon and cooked ourselves some curry with our new spices. This is my new equation for life: Beautiful beaches + Amazing seafood = happiness!

Beautiful Beaches

Amazing food

My henna