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

A ceremonious weekend

This weekend was very busy and productive for me and it was kicked off by a great Indian dinner in town on Friday evening.

On Wednesday of last week I received mail at ZANGOC from one of its member organizations ZAO (Zanzibar Anti-Poverty Organization). The vision of ZAO is “better and improved living for youth in Zanzibar in all aspects of life, in rural and urban areas.” The mission of ZAO is “involving youth in activities and to facilitate these activities toward better living situations, individually and for the community.” The Executive Director of the organization, Mr. Ali, invited me to attend a ceremony Saturday morning in a district of Zanzibar called Chumbuni. The ceremony was held by ZAO and its purpose was to give awards and recognition to the students who had passed from form three to form four with excellent marks on their final exams. ZAO gave recognition to these students as a way to encourage them to keep up the good work and stay in school for as long as they can, which acts towards achieving their vision statement.

So at 9:30am on Saturday I walked into the school and was greeted by Mr. Ali who then directed me to the head table which I should have expected but forgot that I was the “muzungu” and people would want to hear from me! With this being said, they had also inserted me into the ceremony schedule to “say a few words”! Having been put in this situation multiple times while working overseas, I have become much better at making things up on the spot! I really don’t even remember what I said but I think I spoke for about 5 minutes around the basis of obtaining a good education which is the key to success (or something like that!) The rest of the ceremony was in Swahili and having sat through a fair amount of meetings in Swahili already, I am also getting better at pretending I know what the heck they’re talking about while trying not to nod off!

The ceremony ended and I had a quick interview with a reporter who was asking me what I do for ZAO which was kind of awkward as I had to re-explain that I didn’t actually work FOR ZAO but rather for ZANGOC and then had to explain again what ZANGOC does and how they work with ZAO. However, this I’m not even quite sure of just yet as ZAO is a recent member of ZANGOC, and also because ZANGOC doesn’t really know what their members do which is part of the problem and a huge task that I am undertaking starting next week! 

Anyways, we left the Chumbuni district around 11:30am and I thought that I would be home soon but Saidi ended up taking me to visit the Sultan’s Palace ruins since we were in that area. It was a really interesting tour and nice to learn the history of the Island. The first Sultan of Zanzibar came from Oman in the 18^th century and had this particular palace constructed as his “weekend getaway” and also where his concubines lived. The ruins were cool to see and they even have a reconstructed part of the palace so you can see what it actually looked like when it was still a standing structure. I also learned that the last Sultan of Zanzibar (whose reign ended in the late 1960’s) is still alive and currently living in London! 

Sultan's Palace Ruins

I have a home!

I officially have a home in Kiembe Samaki, Zanzibar! Wednesday evening Sabrina and I finally shifted from the apartment on the second floor to our very own apartment on the top floor! It was so nice to be able to unpack everything and find a home for all of my stuff!

The apartment is much more than I could ever hope for and for just the two of us, it’s huge! We even have a spare bedroom for guests which, at the moment is currently being used to hang laundry. And on that note, we actually have a washing machine which I definitely was not expecting! This aspect makes me very happy considering I have yet to master the art of hand washing my clothes.

The apartment as three patios, one in the living room, one in the dining room and best of all, one in my bedroom. I feel so spoiled as I even have my own bathroom which is equipped with a hot water heater, no more cold showers! (Check Facebook for apartment pictures!)

Work is coming along pole pole (slowly slowly)! For you to have a better understanding of ZANGOC as an umbrella organization, let me just describe the organizational structure first. It has a General Assembly which is comprised of 120 people (3 representatives from each of ZANGOCs 40 member organizations) the General Assembly attempts to meet once a year but this is sometimes constrained by lack of funds. However, the next General Assembly meeting is set for early May, 2011 and I am excited that I will get to observe this and maybe even hold a workshop or two for the member organizations, time permitting!  

Next is the Steering Committee which is comprised of 40 people, 1 representative from each of ZANGOCs 40 member organizations. The Steering Committee meets on a quarterly basis and the most recent meeting was on April 10, 2011. I attended this meeting because I wanted to start networking with some of the member organizations, which I was able to do. I even started my data collection process in which I hope to find out what each member organization does (ie: their vision, mission and objectives), how they currently work with ZANGOC and how they wish to work with ZANGOC over the next 5 years. The meeting itself was not really all that useful to me as it was entirely in Swahili and I did not have a translator!

After the Steering Committee is the Executive Committee which acts as management for ZANGOC staff and projects. However, since all of the Executive Committee members have full time jobs during regular working hours it is hard for them to meet and it is also difficult to get information. However, I have been lucky so far to have the full support of two Executive Committee members and one member of the Steering Committee. For example,last Friday I had a meeting with my supervisors to discuss the strategic plan, including the need to revise the vision and mission statement. I thought I was going to get suck at this point as I would need to wait for the Executive Committee to create these documents. However, in the meeting, I found out that the vision and mission had already recently been revised but in Swahili! So, Mohammed, my direct supervisor, had to translate the document for me and yesterday I received the updated vision, mission and objectives in English! Pole pole!

What I fear the most....!

Take a second guess, because your first one was probably wrong! What I fear the most here is something I take for granted at home. In Takoradi it was running water and here in Zanzibar it is electricity, or rather, lack there of!

During our first week here on the island we noticed that the power was going out at approximate the same time each night (9:30pm) for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. After talking to people who live in our area and have been here for a while we came to the conclusion that this 1 hour power outage is routine and to be expected daily. This one a hour a day seemed tolerable and not all that frightening until last week when it went out routinely at 9:30pm but didn't come back on for nearly 30 hours! Ever since this night (which we no longer like to talk about) we have been living in fear of the routine power outage! Is it coming? is it not? More importantly, when it does happen, will it ever come back on?!?! I think what fears us the most is knowing that some few years ago the entire island lost electricity for about 3 months! 30 hours was long enough for me, I couldn't even image 3 months! I think we would have to pack our bags and work remotely from Dar es Salaam!

Sometimes the man who flips the switch likes to keep us on our toes for instance, last Sunday it didn't go out and we were waiting anxiously with our laptops fully charged! And, a few nights ago it went off earlier than usual (7pm) and we were afraid that it wouldn't come back on until the usual 10:30pm time! Fortunately, this was not the case and it did come back on exactly 1 hour later.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I just think it's funny how every night we get worried over something trivial that I would not even think twice about in Toronto. I guess that's what you can expect when you live in a developing country, and to be more exact, live on a tropical island in a developing country!

Catching the sunset in Stone Town

Ocean view from our favourite Indian restaurant in town

The beautiful, old architecture in Stone Town

Stone Town and the like

I have to say, the streets of Stone Town are lovely...if you know where you're going that is! The streets are very hard to navigate for a number of reasons some being: all the streets look the same, all the shops look the same and sell basically the same curios, and possibly worst of all...the buildings are tall which means that you can't see the ocean to navigate your direction! I like to say that I am good with my directions but the first few times walking through Stone Town, I was absolutely lost! On our second attempt wondering aimlessly we were lucky enough to run into a muzungu who looked like she knew where she was headed so we stopped her to ask for directions! To our luck Wendy (also from Canada!) has been working in Zanzibar for about 6 months now with CUSO/VSO and she was happy to help us find our way. We ended up having coffee with her and another CUSO member we ran into. After coffee these 2 lovely ladies let Sabrina and I tag along with them through Stone Town and showed us some much needed landmarks to watch for to avoid getting completely turned around!

This past weekend, Sabrina and I attempted our luck at Stone Town just the two of us and I am happy to report that we did not get lost! In fact we made a "to do" list before hand and we were able to locate and purchase everything we needed.

Work is going swimmingly! The ZANGOC office as a whole is very nice and the best part about it is that I have my very own office complete with 2 desks and chairs, a computer and reliable internet which is more than I ever hoped for! The staff members (that I have met so far) are all wonderful and very eager for me to be here which is nice. I have made good friends with Saidi who is a project coordinator and also who drives Sabrina and I home from work everyday! Yes, we have a fairly good set up going on!

Last week I had a few productive meetings with my supervisors to compile a list of tasks for me to work on over the next 7 months. It has turned into a very extensive list and I am hoping that I can accomplish a few of the tasks! The first thing I am working on is the ZANGOC strategic plan for 2011 to 2016. This five year plan will include an updated vision and mission statement for ZANGOC as well as delve into issues the organization is currently facing and creating goals, objectives and activities which will focus on where the organization wants to be and how it is going to get there. Obviously I cannot make up the organizations objectives for the next 5 years but I do have full support from the ZANGOC Executive Committee and I am in the process of setting up meetings with key committee members to talk about where they see their organization in the future.

In terms of living arrangements, we are currently in the apartment complex that we want to be in but we are waiting for a lady upstairs to move out so we can move in! Our wonderful, and very patient, landlady has told us that we will be able to move in Wednesday or Thursday at the latest which actually works out perfectly for us as Thursday is a holiday here so we can spend the day nesting in our new pad! I know I keep promising apartment pictures and I know I keep saying soon...but I do promise they will be posted SOON!

I have heard vicious rumors that there was a snow storms recently in Toronto. I think I've already forgotten what winter feels like as the temperature here is just crazy. Everyday is hot and so humid that as soon as you step foot outside you are already sweating. I don't think I will complain about being cold ever again!