Vacation in Zanzibar

Last night of vacation and I am sitting with my travel buddy at the Swiss Garden Hotel in Dar es Salam with a G&T fighting the mosquitos. We end our vacation in the same way we have spent it, being incredibly lazy and going to bed early. We started our trip here in Dar with a 15 hour sleeping marathon before we took the ferry to Zanzibar and Stone Town last Sunday morning (and almost missed the boat). We spent 2 days in Stone Town doing all the touristy stuff, visiting house of wonders, prison island, sunset drinks at the Africa house and snorkling the Indian ocean in pouring rain. We also satisfied our shopping withdrawal by buying shoes, pants, dresses and just enjoyed window shopping... I also met my fellow FK participant Tiffanie who lives and work here which was lovely. Tuesday we took the Dala Dala (lokal bus) to the town of Jambiani to stay at Mango Beach House which is a lovely 3 room guesthouse right on the beach, run by the lovely Lisa. We hired a sailboat to go out to the reef for some snorkling and sailing. We slept outside on a platform one night to wake up to the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. Most of all though, we just lazied around. It was not all vaca though, there was a boy in the village who came by Lisa's guesthouse (as they often do) with bad burns on his hands. We cleaned and dressed the 3rd degree burns and asked him to come back the next day (yesterday). He came back and the burns were no better and we took him to the local hospital. This is where it gets ugly. They removed all the dead skin on his fingers without analgesia whatsoever. They had no scalpell to cut the dead skin off but used sterile compresses and just pulled it off while holding him still. Finally, after what seemed to be an hour (more like 30 min) they decided to admit the 10 year old boy to the hospital to anesthetise while continuing cleaning his wounds... Just heart wretching!

I have been incredibly lazy about my blog and see that it has been 2 months since my last blogpost. Time pass so quickly when everything is new and you meet new people every day, trying to figure out how everything works. For example, back home you get all your bills directly to your bank or on email and you go online and it takes 20 minutes every 2 weeks to sort your bills out for the month. Not so much here... Electricity is prepaid and bought at the gas station, you go to the waterboard to pay your water bill, to the internet provider to pay that bill, to the Alpha security company to pay their bill etc etc etc, you get the picture. Also, there is no one stop shop here. I go to one shop to buy most of the groceries, mainly because they irregularly have greek yoghurt, sour cream and cream. Another shop to buy other certain groceries, another shop yet again because they have meat and frozen seafood and some edible cheese. Then you go to another couple of shops because one is a greek butcher and the grocery store next to that have some European/American products. If there are any furniture needed you do not go to IKEA, you call a carpenter who will build you the furniture you need, like our bed for the annex. The conclusion to this is as follows: I need a stay at home ex-pat husband!