ZANZIBAR 2018
A Short Background Story
On June 2nd 2018, my Kindergarten friend Chiara and me started our very own adventure in Zanzibar, Tanzania. We booked this back in February with the German agency "Welt-sicht" and our aim was, to work at an Orphanage in Bububu, a town a bit northern of Stonetown, for four weeks.
Chiara
needed those four weeks of (social) internship for her school and I just
decided to tag along. First, we had to make a very hard decision between
a Street kids project in Ecuador and this Orphanage one in Zanzibar. In the
end, we decided, that the latter would be best for our needs this year but
we're determined to go to Ecuador as well, when the time is right.
The Journey To Zanzibar
After planning everything, getting required shots, buying essentials and packing our bags, we left Austria on June 2nd. Our flight could've been a disaster. We flew with Ethiopian Airlines and were aware about one layover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Well. After a few hours of flying, we realised, that we weren't heading to Addis Ababa, but were going somewhere in the north instead. After a while, the pilot told us, that we'd have to stop over in Djibouti because there was too much fog in Addis Ababa and the airport wouldn't allow any machine to land.
You could
say that we were just slightly stressed and anxious because we obviously had to
catch our connecting flight to Zanzibar and only had three hours waiting time. Two
of which we spent in Djibouti. In the end, it luckily worked out and we even
arrived at our gate, when it wasn't even open yet.
We then thought "How great, now well be in Zanzibar soon!" but nope. First, we had to wait about two hours in the plane for other passagers, that were still in their first plane on their way to our current airport. When they finally arrived, we, again, thought about how we're going to be in Zanzibar soon but we were disappointed again. Turns out, 80% of the people in the plane, we're going to Tanzanias mainland and therefore had to get out at the Kilimanjaro airport. That meant for us another landing, another hour of waiting for their luggage to be unloaded and another take-off.
Arriving
When we were finally in Zanzibar, I was shocked by the
airport there. It was basically one building with two shop booths (one for SD
cards and one for changing currency). There we had to show our Yellow Fever
Confirmation, fill out a Visa fom, take pictures and register all of our finger
prints.
After completing all those security checks and getting our luggage, we went outside and soon found our coordinator with a sign that said our names. We followed him to a truck where our driver already waited for us (it later turned out, that he was actually part of our host family and also living with us). Our coordinator introduced himself as Edi and started to bombard us with questions about what we're expecting from our whole trip.
On the drive to our home, it, for the first time, hit me, that we were actually in Africa. There were slums on both sides of the road, with small houses with tin roofs, huge pot holes in the streets and small market stands everywhere. We also drove by a gigantic gabbage/trash lake, which was really devastating to see.
Our New Home
After a few minutes, we turned right into a side road and soon arrived at our house. We could already tell, that our family has to be quite wealthy to be able to afford a home like that. More to our family
Edi brought us to our room, which was, got to be honest, actually quite nice. It was very spacious, had a double bed, a wardrobe and a cupboard in it and we even had our own private bathroom with a sink, a shower and a european (!!!) toilet. More to our host family will be in the next post.
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