Ghana

I think its about time that I updated this blog. Lots has happened since the 23rd, for example Im in Ghana at the moment. But I think its best if I start from Christmas eve.

Myself this other Australian I met at Q bar, and a Tanzanian friend (who I met in South Africa :)) took the ferry to Zanzibar, unusually for me I didn't get sea sick. We met these two Danish girls who didn't really know where they were going, so they stuck with us, and stayed at the same hostel, which is basically hidden in stone town. Interestingly enough quite a large amount of the locals remembered me from when I was there earlier in the year. We spent most of the day walking around, and then relaxing at a beach side restaurant,before moving onto a beach side bar. One of the Danish girls had been feeling sick for a while so we took her to the hospital, which didnt have any doctors as they were at prayer, we tried a further two clinics, but they were both closed.

Christmas day was more of a relaxing affair. Many of the restaurants were playing awful Christmas carols, we asked one to change the music!. I was feeling quite sick (from food) so I went to the pharmacy, they gave me a few different things, but I only recognized one, and that seemed to help. We had lunch at this amazing Indian restaurant, probably the best Indian food I have eaten in Africa! We actually went back there for dinner it was soo good. The thing about stone town is that the beaches are packed, its not actually tourists who really pack them, more of the locals, who play soccer and perform acrobatics on the beach. Thus on boxing day we went to the northern most point of Zanzibar which is about an hour and a half drive. The beachers up north are much more touristy, and the beaches are better for swimming with a large number of hotels overlooking the shore. Funnily enough even in these parts sea urchins hid in the water. Myself and my friends were quite weary of them, from our previous enjoyable experience, unfortunately many of the tourists were not looking out for them, and when lying on the sand you would often hear the screams of some swimmer, who would come out of the water holding a foot. This one angry South African had two barbs in his ankle, and he was complaining like a baby (I had at least 5 in my foot still). Again we spent most of the day relaxing on the beach! and for once in my life (although this might be the second time) I got burnt, my back neck and shoulders were red!

I got back to Dar on the 27th and my friend Hank took me out to dinner, as a going away present. I also had a few drinks with my cricket friends. My plane to Ghana left at a terrible time 3.15am! Alas I didnt get much sleep. Ethiopian airlines was ok, nothing special, well until I got to Ghana and I realized my bags were not there. At this stage they are expected to arrive tomorrow (hopefully) Im getting quite sick of wearing the same clothes and my music and phone are about to run out of batteries.

Ok! Lately I have been catching up with a few friends. Yesterday for example I had lunch with my old Swahili teacher, he was very impressed I still remembered quite alot of Swahili. On Sunday we played cricket. It was a 50 over match and my team was bowled out for just under 100 I didnt do well at all, but neither did anyone else. We basically though we would loose quite badly as our opposition was the number one team. Surprisingly we had them at 7 for 80, with a real chance of winning, but alas we couldnt get anymore wickets.

I have spoken to a few lecturers in economics at the University of Dares salaam, I would like to meet some of them and discuss their research, its actually quite interesting some of them have degrees from really good universities.

Yesterday I went to the beach and was just walking through the shallows when I stood on some sea urchins, now these things are painful, they have large spikes that puncture your skin. Im luckily I only stood on them with one foot, I counted about 10 puncture woods in my heel, so I think it might be difficult to walk today.

Tomorrow I would go to Zanzibar for Christmas, it will be packed with tourists but I think it will be better then staying in Dar.

Tanzania has been great! I went to a place called bagamoyo a few days back with a friend. Bagamoyo is the main port where they traded slaves and it used to be the old capital city, its kind of dump and very underdeveloped. My friend and I had chips mayai which is basically an egg omlette with chips inside, healthy! I played cricket yesterday, but we lost! Anyway Ill write a bigger blog tomorrow, as I need to go into town now

Tanzania

I arrived in Tanzania last night! surprisingly the flight was great! and no problems this time catching my flight! Its probably best that I update on what I have been up too in South Africa.

I spent most of the past week in Pretoria, just relaxing really! the people that work there are awesome, they have many good stories to tell. One of the guys that was staying at the backpackers in Pretoria was an exiled freedom fighter during the 1960s, he has been jailed four times, he lives in Canada and has been for the past 25 years. The guy reminds me of Tabo Mbeki although he seems a lot smarter (Mbeki couldnt resolve a conflict between two dogs!) , he told stories about how the ANC used child soldiers from South Africa to attack the ruling party.

On Sunday I decided to do something more interesting rather then just sitting around the backpackers. Myself and a French guy took a bus into town. We wanted to see inside the parliament buildings, but the ANC were running some discussion. Some of the ANC members invited us into the building, we thought it would be a good experience so we sat down and listened to some ANC people give a speech about how they need to place running water in this township, otherwise the township wont vote for them. After about 15 minutes, some of the ANC members decided we shouldnt be listening to the discussion and they kicked us out!. Some ANC guy come out afterwards and apologized,he told us we should tell everyone back at home how open and transparent the ANC is. We then ventured to the Paul Kruger Museum, I personally didnt know much about the Anglo Boer war, but the museum really informed me about the conflict, I guess most people generally focus on the apartheid history of South Africa.

On Tuesday I left to go to the Joburg airport. I decided to fly as the tickets were not that expensive and actually cheaper then taking a bus. The tickets were booked over the internet. When I arrived at the airport I realised my credit card I needed to show was back in Joburg in my bigger bag (I left I big bag at the backpackers) and there wasn't enough time for me to go back and make the flight. So as you could imagine I was not too happy. So I decided to just change my flight to Thursday. I called up the backpackers and arranged a pickup.

When I was waiting at the information desk, I started talking to these two Ghanaian guys, one was actually an Australian citizen. The other guy was a journalist and as it happened he had a meeting with the consulate general on Wednesday. I told them about my Ghanaian visa problem and how they wouldn't give me a visa in South Africa. We exchanged numbers and he said he would call me later that night. At this stage I wasn't thinking much of it, he might have just been trying to scam me (cynical I know).

I spoke to him Tuesday night and he asked to meet me Wednesday morning outside the Ghanian embassy in Pretoria. I didn't really have much to do, and Pretoria is not too far plus one of my favourite backpackers is located near the embassy. I arrived at the embassy quite early, while the Ghanaian journalist arrived late. He basically took me straight inside the embassy to meet the consulate general. They spoke in their language and the consulate general said the journalist needed to guarantee me while in Ghana (basically to say that he knew me and was inviting me into the country), and he needed to fill out all these forms. The Ghanaian journalist apparently told the consulate I was helping him and was a great friend of his. It took around 1 hours to fill out all the forms. We went to the receptionist to hand in the forms and she said I was unable to get a visa as I was Australian.

We asked to speak to the consulate general and while we sat in his office (he was just laughing and talking to the journalist) he filled out my visa and stuck it in my passport. This process usually takes 3 days!. It was awesome! I was ecstatic after getting the visa! and took the journalist out too lunch! It was just one of those crazy days!

It took me quite a while too get to Jane Furse on friday. I spent around 2 hours waiting in a taxi untill it became full. I then stopped half way to Jane Furse to buy flowers, you would not believe how hard it is to find flowers away form the city.

The funeral for Modzi's mother was on Saturday. The funeral service started at 6am. We arrived at Modzis house around 6:15, the family had set up a tent out the front of her house and there was already around 200 people. The ceremony at Modzis house went for around 3 hours their was no priest as the mother was part of the ZCC which is the Zionist Christian Church. A few people gave speeches and there was alot of singing. The group then went to the cemetry which took around 1 hour to get too. Another ceremoney occured at the cemetry this time only for around 2 hours. Although I couldnt understand anything anyone said the funeral was very heartfelt, they also had another ceremony on Sunday where they killed a cow and ate its head but that wasnt really my thing.

I went back to the school on Sunday but their was no students left (they all finsihed on the 30th of November)
At the moment I am back in Joburg as im flying to Windhoek tomorrow :)

Joburg

My plane flight over was ordinary, the turbulence was terrible the majority of the flight from Malaysia to South Africa. I arrived quite early around 6am and went straight to a backpackers in Joburg. I was quite content with just bumming around the backpackers for most of the day but this Italian guy I met wanted to see the city. We took a taxi to the city center in Joburg and spend a few hours walking around Hilbrow and the surrounding areas, the Italian guy really wanted to eat Pap so we stoped off at some restaurant.

By some stroke of luck the Joburg art gallery was just around the corner so we went and had a look. They had a photo exhibition with photos spanning 1950-2010. The photos of the apartheid and pre apartheid era were really interesting but also very sad! I would try to describe some of the photos but its one of those things you really need to see.

I went to the Ghanaian embassy today to get my visa, but they wont give it to me, so ill have to get it either in Kenya or Namibia.

I'm off to Jane Furse tomorrow to catch up with some friends!! otherwise I have nothing much planned

Untill Next Time!

I leave tomorrow morning for Mexico from there I fly to LA a few hours in LA and then straight to Melbourne.
Costa Rica is much more developed then the other countries I have been to, many people speak English and the backpackers even have hot showers!. There are alot of tourists, mostly Americans.
We spent a night in San Jose from there we took a bus to La fortuna. The place is famous for having an active volcano. Generally you can even see Lava. Near the bottom of the Volcano there are about 50 different hot springs. As you would expect from prvious failures at other hot springs we wanted to actually go in these ones (and not risk 3rd degree burns). The hottest got to 67 oC while the coldest was around 25 oC. They even had water slides at this place. It was like constantly been in a bath that never gets cold. The hottest pool I got into was around 50 oC of which I could stay in for only a few minutes. Some of the pools even had wet bars although it was really expensive!
We also decided to see some of the volcano so we sent a few hours getting near the top, although it didnt explode for us it had a good view.
Anyway thats about all the interesting things I can remember!
See people soon
Joe

After a day on corn island we decided we needed our own wheels so we went to a rental place to hire some bikes. When we got there we saw these golf buggies. As you would have guessed we couldnt resist and hired a four seater. We though it would be fine as most of the island is paved.
The Golf buggie was pretty amazing with a top speed of around 3o we couldnt really race any of the other cars but with the amount of speed humps we were able to almost overtake some cars. I nearly overtook a car once but had to take my foot off the gas when a car came from the opposite direction.
We spent the next day hanging around the beach and stoping whereever we pleased. (We ate lots of Lobster and Fish) Around lunch time we stared to drive off road looking for some different beaches and there were all these kids who had recently finished school and were waiting for taxis. Thus we picked some of them up and dropped them off home, they all though it was amusing. We even bought some of them chips (not to lure them into the car we are not stalkers)
We also drove around one night and some kids were playing volleyball so we stoped and joined them for a game!

A few hours before we had to hand the ¨car¨ back Sarah was drivng and smashed into a tree branch bending the roof! so we spent a few hours re bending the roof back to normal.

We flew out of the corn islands on Thursday and took a 10 hr bus ride to Costa Rica (San Jose) where I am now. We plan on climbing a volcano but everything is up in the air.

We spent the last few days in Ometepe islands, basically its two smallish islands with a large volcano on one and a smaller volcano on the other. It is situated in this huge lake in the middle of nicaragua it takes around 4 hours from Granada. Our hostel was locacated on the beach, so most of the time we spent in the fresh water. We originally wanted to climb the smaller volcano except we had no time, and it would have taken 8 hours.

We hired a motorbike, for an hours with the intention of hiring it for 5 more hours the day after. My experience on motorbikes are zero, I thought I would be ok, cant be to hard right?, I completly failed, it was also a manual so that didnt helped I kept on stalling but I did do a mono as I accelerated too quickly after letting go of the clutch, the kickstart was my biggest problem the kick kept on coming back and kicking me in the leg. Thus our plan of motorbiking around the island never came to.

At the moment we are in the corn islands, the island is in the Caribbean. To get here we had to take a flight, the plane was insane, a 12 seater cessna plane, every little bumb was amplified by 10 we all thought we were going to die ha the hour flight felt like 10.
More people on this island speak english and many have that awesome Jamacian accent
In some bad news my credit card was stolen and they managed to take 1500 before I realised and canceled the card.
Otherwise everything else is going well, we will be on the island for 5 days relaxing in the Caribben

Granada

A few days ago I was bed ridden for most of the day. You assume that when travelling most people get food poisioning and consequently sick and this would be a common reason for staying in bed. Myself on the otherhand strained my neck, I just woke up in alot of pain and I couldnt move my neck to the right,I got some medicine and hanged around the hostel for most of the day. Although we did manage to get out to the mud puddles, they are similar to hot springs but instead of water imagine mud just flying in the air. Our guide said they get to 250 oC so we were not allowed to get in, apparently the last person that tried escaped with severe burns.

We arrived in Granada on Tuesday, it is similar to Leon and you can see the Spanish infulence. Lots of Catholic chruches, more tourists here then in Leon, and the backpackers are not as friendly. Yesterday we went Kayaking into the jungle, it was amazing, in someparts the river was so thin we were basically on the banks. We saw a few aligators mostly baby ones.Although a bigger one swam under Gabrielles (a friend of Sarahs) kayak. It was very quiet and peaceful. In one section we had to manoveur around a large tree that had a hornets nest in it, apparently if we touched the tree the hornets would attack, these are the ones that continiously attack you, and actaully go out and find you, needless to say I didnt get my paddle and continiously wack there nest just for fun. My kayak nearly sank when we were kayaking along some river and this speed boat zoomed by. All in all we had lots of fun racing each other!
It was tiring at the end, and thus we spent the rest of the afternoon at a craft market. If anyone has any special requests for presents send me an email/comment.
They had these weird frogs that were actually real that they had stuffed and preserved and then placed with another frog in different sexual positions ha.

Granada is not as interesting as Leon so we leave today to ometepe which is an island off the coast for a lazy time on the beach, we also want to hire scooters to zoom around the island.
Joe

Mud Puddles

Nicagraura is awesome, who would have through. We arrived Friday, the bus ride was fine a air conditioned coach from San Salvador (although at 2am in the morning was not the best time) we got into Leon around 12 the backpackers is a laid back place quite alot of Spanish arcitecture and relatively a small town. Saturday we climbed up one of the active volcanoes it was a good 500 meters high once at the top the steam was everywhere and the ground burnt our feet. On one side of the volcano was basically covered in ash, it was this side that we used snowbaord type instruments to slide down. It was crazy I was a wuss and sat down on my board it was very much like sand boarding ( Cass I told everyone about your stack) except the ash made everypart of your body black. Sarah decided to do it standing up and fell off the board at least four or five times (she is starting a trend).
Originally we were susposed to go for a hike up a 1km volcano except our hike would have finished around 1 and their was no one available to lead our, it was strange at first as there didnt seem to be too many tourists but lots of companies. We then realised that the final of the world cup started at 12;30 and no one wanted to miss it. Our guide up the volcano made us rush so we didnt miss the cup. In a way it was quite strange that most of the locals were going for Spain since they had conalised them. Fireworks stared going off when Spain scored a goal in extra time.


. Monday night was quite fun, we had met some US medical students working at a hospital here and it was one of the girls birthdays on Monday night some a few people from our backpackers went out for dinner and a few drinks. We ended up registering for trivia at this resturant. The trivia was run by an NGO that was raising money for street kids. Our huge group came second so we won this big bottle of rum to share. We leave Leon to go to Granada on Tuesday

El Salvador

El Salvador is an interesting place! I wish I could speak Spanish though. My vocab consists of three words at this stage, of which I cant spell and therefore I wont type out but its basically hi, thanks, and el hafe which means the boss, all extremely useful words. I just went to the supermarket for instance and the clerk asked me something and I hedged my bets and said no hoping that was the right answer, she just looked at me strangely and continued scanning my items, I would really like to know what she had said, it was probally something like hows your day been ha. When I got out of the airport Adrian had written a couple of words for me to say and I just pointed at can you take me here, then I pointed at the address to which the driver said si. Luckily he knew what he was doing and I got to the backpackers in no time. Although in another instance some Police asked me something when I was walking down the street and I had to go find Sarah as I couldnt understand a thing he said apparently I look sus and he wanted my ID.
Although once I was glad that I didnt speak Spanish as some guy came into our bus and was shouted all these Bible verse in Spanish.
I spent most the day just walking around with this American girl. I had tacos for lunch! but they are nothing like the tacos at home, the corn taco is really soft and much smaller not to mention they cost $1.50 for three.
On Wednesday I went out with some english guys and some Americans to this crazy bar to watch the soccer! the centeral Americans loveee soccer, everyone was going for Spain and we stuffed our faces on more tacos and tortas not to mention refried beans.
Sarah (a friend from uni) cam in from Mexico around 7 am I was actually sleeping at the time due to a long and hard game of spoons that I was playing with the above group ( we changed the rules to include alchol)
We had decided that the beach would be the next best place to go, thus we spent about an hour to go to a place called playa el tunco which apparently has a great beach. But to be honest it was not really something I would call a beach there was no sand more like pebbles and the surf was huge. We tried to be aventerous and walk out at low tide to this small island about 50 meters from the shore, about half way Sarah slipped and fell in the water bag (she didnt have swim wear on) she then go up and walked another 5 meters an slipped and fell again.
At the moment im back in San Salvador heading off to Nicaragua tomorrow to a place called Leon where we are going to go crater surfing, I really have no idea how it is done, but it just sounds great ! ha, there is lots of other stuff to do there as well and its apparently quite beautiful.
I havnt really seen much of El Salvador just San Salvador and the beach, but Nicaragua is susposed to be where everything is going on, so we though it would be best to check it out. The people here are nice we constantly get lost but always find people that are willing to help.
Ill try and update in another few days
Joe

¿¿¿¿¿¿¿

Well another trip overseas.
Firstly let me say that US boarder security is much tougher then African (as one would expect)
I had to scan all my fingers and even take off my shoes not to mention that they take multiple photos of you. Not to mention you can make any jokes with them as they will probaly think your a terrorist. I remember going to Swaziland and they didnt even have computers at the boarder.
Anyway my stop over in LA was nothing special I got a room at a Holiday Inn I then I spent a few hours walking around it turned into a few hours mainly as I had no idea where I was going then before you no it I was lost.
At the moment im in Mexico. People here think I am Mexican for instance I was on the plane and the hostess asked an American couple behind me in english what food they wanted, see then turned to me and asked me the same question in Spanish.
So far I have been flying/in transit for 36 hours so this is the most exciting stuff that has happened . Ohh wait .......
In other interesting news I saw a Mexican guy that looked like Tom, he then winked at me weird.
I arrive in El Salvador tomorow
Joe

My Final BLOG?

It has finally come to my last few days here in Tanzania..Today I am going out with the Lattitude volunteers for dinner and maybe a few drinks as they are all coming down to Dar for a little break, they all say its tough, they use buckets for showers they eat rice and beans everyday hence they are coming to feast on the lovely food here in Dar. Im quite spoilt for food here usually I go to this Turkish restaurant near my place, close to that is this nice little Thai place. On Saturday we are having a little going away party for me here at the Hotel. The weekend looks very exciting
On Sunday I am playing two games of cricket, I have been selected to play in this 20/20 tournament, its quite proper, well proper for cricket here in Tanzania. The owner of the team took us out to dinner after training on Wednesday. He owns some big telecom company here. Our first game on Sunday is against the Tanzania U19 national team, I really dont no why I'm playing but they seem to really want me to play.

As you can probally tell this should be my final blog, I might update on Monday but I should be back in Aus by Wednesday

Konyagi

Since my last post I have had more free time on my hands for instance on Saturday I just tutored a few people so that was quite a relaxing day. . I didnt play cricket on Sunday as the team didnt have a game, but they have assured me that they will have two games next Sunday, that I can play in.


Something that is quite astonishes is happening just outside my window. A company has started to build a hotel, now building here is very different to back at home, this hotel is quite a big building and they have no electrical equipment such as cranes or saws nothing. They layed the foundations by carrying buckets of cement on their heads after it had been mixed and then dumping it in a pile so that someone else could smooth it out. They have at least 30 people working on the site just going back and forth with buckets of cement on their heads. Just today they started the second story, of which they have no scaffolding , they work through the day and night.
I started my Private lessons in Swahili yesterday but today I decided I didnt like the teacher (my old teacher was not able to tutor me privately as he was busy) since he didnt teach well, and he didnt seem to want to be there.
My new teacher would you believe it is an Australian, he used to live in Warrnambol but he resides in Dar and has been for the past 30 years, so his Swahili is at the local standard if not better. His actual job here is to teach Swahili and apparently he is quite good. I have spoken to him quite a few times as he often comes to the bar here.
The next week I think I will just relax and go to the beach and catch up on my reading.

Cool Blue Maji

The past few days I have mainly spent learning Swahili and doing tutoring. I managed to write a whole page story in swahili without to many mistake, the teacher was impressed. Last night we went out to a Ethiopian restaurant with an Austrian couple that had arrived the night before, the food was ok, it was new for the others so they enjoyed it. I think the best Ethiopian food I have eaten was actually in China.

Today was actually my last day of the intermediate course, I still feel that i'm more advanced beginner so I have hired a private tutor for next week to help me out a few hours a day.
Anyway their is not much else to think of right now so ill leave it at that till next time.

Sikutaka

The past weekend went quite quickly and as always I had planned to spent most of it catching up on my swahili which ended up not happening.
Saturday I tutored a few people. I had managed to find english as a second language worksheets on the internet which I had printed off. My English is ok but its obviously not the best (as I'm sure you have realised from reading this blog) and when we were going through the worksheets their was this one question that I didn't even understand, and found it difficult to explain to the student, other then that I went through the news paper with one of my students and looked at past interest rates and trying to figure out why they were moving.

Sunday morning I woke up feeling quite sick, this was quite annoying as I never really go out to restaurants here but on Saturday night I had gone to "Spur" this South African chain of steak ranches and I'm relatively sure the salad was poisoned or something. Therefore most of Sunday I was in bed untill 1 when I left for the cricket ground. I met the captain at the relatively large ground located next to a mosque. He was quite tall and basically the first thing he mentioned to me was that he was the first African to play for the national Tanzanian side (the side is basically made up of people from the subcontinent). The game started soon after, the team I was playing for was called the Dar raptors which was made up of young kids, I was the 3rd oldest after the captain and one of the fathers, they were all asking me about cricket back in Australian. Anyway back on to the game, my team bowled first, the opposition was made up of old Indians the oldest being 65 it reminded me of the 4ths back at home. Both sides had 25 overs and after about 10 in the field I was quite dehydrated and this overtook my stomach pains, it also reminded me that Im still unfit. The other team managed to make 140, which was decent on that ground. Now the ground was interesting, it was quite hard and had a turf pitch it was one of four cricket grounds "apparently" in the country.
My team came close and lost by 10 runs, I manged 18, the bowlers were ok, slow but accurate. All the kids on my team seemed to really enjoy it and since they were so young they were managing to do quite well in the senior league. They want me to come back again next week as well as going to training to help the kids out.

This past week alot of people staying here have gotten malaria so everyone is on the lookout, I dont no how some of those locals survive they casually tell me that they get malaria every few months, one of the receptionists was only able to get one day off as if he took anymore he woundn't be paid, he didnt even complain.

Hamna Sheda

My class is going well, yesterday I went over to "the" Germans house (refer to an early blog post to who the German is) along with my teacher and the other student in the class, he lives with his wife in a place called sinza a suburb of Dar es salaam. It was quite a nice house, we were also treated to quite a feast that I havnt had for a while. His wife works for a German development agency where she consults with a local NGO that focuses on civics in schools. She was complaining about the bureaucracy she has to go through and basically saying how the agency has a certain way of doing things and they want her to implement these ways in Africa in which she says is impossible, we then got onto the topic of AID which very much interested me.

The lattitude volunteers left yesterday to go all over Tanzania, most of them were quite happy as they didnt really like Dar its very dirty and can be quite busy. On Thursday I met them again in the city and we went to a few craft shops where they could buy some curios. Most of them tried eating ugali which is the local stable here in Africa made from maize meal, some of them thought it was ok, but they didnt really like it, they all knew though that they would most likely be eating it at least once a day.

Today I'm holding my own classes again 3 people will be coming for English classes and I have just spent a bit of time finding worksheets for them to do, everyday I'm now getting at least 3 people wanting to attend my classes but most I have to say no to as I just dont have any time.
Ohh and tomorrow is the cricket match which is quite exciting.

So in general nothing that exciting has been happening here, just the usual stuff, better go off now and catch up on my missed Swahili.

Ninajifunza

Since my last update a few things have happened.
On Tuesday the new lattitude volunteers arrived, the first group were 9 British volunteers arriving at 8am I wasnt able to meet them at the airport as I had class so Judy the local rep for lattitude went and picked them up. I managed to get to their hostel the YWCA at 12 soon after Judy left to pick 2 Australians up who had taken Qatar air. The Uk volunteers were left with me, which was quite interesting as I didnt really no Dar es salaam well as I had only been to the city a few times, but they all wanted to go to the market after we had gotten some food (we got Steers a South African company). Catching the Dalala in the city is a struggle as not many people can speak english and the volunteers didnt no a word, my swahili managed to hold up quite well and they all seemed quite impressed.
Although their was a small problem, one of the girls got her camera stolen while we were crossing the road to catch the bus, now the guy who robbed her was quite skilled, she had her camera in a bum bag just below her stomach and the guy had walked across her and in one motion unzipped her pouch and took the camera, she didnt realise it was gone until she had gotten on the bus.
I felt quite bad as she had been in the country not longer then a few hours and she had already been robbed, we were very easy targets I guess. Im quite surprised I havnt been robbed yet, at the time she had been robbed I had a MP3 player, camera, phone, money and a credit card in my pocket haha.
Being in such a big group of westerners we attracted quite a large amount of attention, and not many of the people talking to us could speak swahili so I got to practice quite a bit.
Tomorrow Ill be seeing the volunteers again to go shopping and do other various things. At the moment I need to catch up on quite a bit of Swahili I have missed.

Joe

Amelewa

I thought I would give you a brief update about how my classes went.
On Saturday I had three people come and see me after they responded to my ad, the first guy was in his mid 30's doing a masters in business and he had taken an economics subject that he was struggling with, hence I spent about an hour with him going over some basic economic theory as well as some basic financial maths.
The next guy also needed help in economics but with this guy, I went through some relevant economics (which at times is hard to find) the guy had gotten a loan not of a huge amount and he wanted to know about interest rates and inflation, and how that affects his loan, needless to say it was quite interesting and I think he actually learnt quite a bit of practical stuff.
The last person was a women who was studying journalism and she needed help with english, so for the class we just spent the time talking as I wanted to see how her english held up.
I have two more classes on Wednesday.
There have also been quite a few other people respond to my ad who just wanted to be friends, ahh Africa.

In other more interesting news my beginners class finished on Friday, so in celebration we went to the city to have a look at the local markets, the market stall were mainly taken by fresh food and vegies as well as fish, generally I hate fish markets but this fish market was much worse then anything I had smelt before, mainly due to it being underground and hence air ventilation was non it was quite a challenge to stay down there for more then a few seconds but hey I learnt a few new words like "what smells, this place smells"
My intermediate Swahili course starts on Monday, I wont be coming to the first day though as I have to go to a meeting with the head of lattitude in Tanzania (Lattitude being the volunteer organisation I help out with in Melbourne) the volunteers to Tanzania from AUS and the UK will be arriving on Tuesday so we have to organise an orientation with them. Im sure most when they get off the plane they will be in awe.

Here in Tanzania their is quite a large number of "white people" who mainly work here with NGO's I have spoken to quite a few of them, they all seem really nice, but hardly any of them no the language and they admit its a huge problem, which really just reinforces my decision to learn Swahili.

Yesterday I also met this Tanzanian man who runs a local cricket club for the kids they are called the Dar raptors and he wanted me to come down to their next game on Sunday to help out, which I am quite excited about.

Joe

Chezie

Well I have only two days of my beginners course left, I then start my intermediate course on Monday, so I really don't have any rest.

On Friday we will be going on an excursion to the market for class, I don't no if my Swahili will be able to hold up.
Class is becoming quite hard, for the past few days we have been learning different noun classes for example the M/Wa class is for living things ie people (with a few exceptions), there is about 5 different noun classes. What this means if that for every noun classes there is an different construction for example in the M/Wa class of nouns the word for "This" is Huyu or the possesive prefix to say "that is mine" is wangu. This might not seem too hard but in the N/N class nouns "This" is "Hii" which means "These" in the M/WI class of nouns.
In other words when someone speaks you need to no what class noun they are talking about so that you then no who and what they are talking about. This is quite easy compared to adjectives prefixes for the different noun class's which also change and in some cases depend on the what the starting letter of the noun is which will tell you what the correct prefix is.
Haha it requires alot of practice to get used to, at the moment I'm just guessing what they are talking about.

Well in other news I went to a school on Tuesday to speak to the principal to see if they needed any help and if he knew anyone who needed extra tutoring. The school was not the worst in the area but it was still very run down, the class rooms were packed but there was still a huge amount of kids still outside, the reason being they couldnt pay apparently it cost around 400,000 shillings a year for high school students, which in comparsion to the average yearly wage of 1.6 million shillings ( adjusted for PPP, my previous figures were understated) is often not a option for many familes.
So far my tutoring has had quite a large number of people interested, my first class will be this Saturday and I will go from there, I have about five people for Saturday and I am going to see how it works before I try to help and more people.

Joe

Hodi Hodi

Now yesterday was an interesting day!

I had a day off yesterday and on Saturday I had decided to make a poster advertising free tutoring for students in English, maths and economics in exchange for helping me with Swahili. Anyway so I made this poster on Sunday at the local internet cafe, and on the way back to my hostel and old women and her son came up to me wanting money for the kid for school clothes, at this point I was quite skeptical as you often in Africa get people seeing a white person and assuming money so they make up a sob story to con money from said person (thus a begging culture is created).
A story when I was in South Africa comes to mind where a kid wanted some money for bread, thus I went and got him bread but didn't give him the money and he threw the bread at me. Anyway to continue the story, I spoke to this women for quite a while in my broken Swahili and I ended up giving her about 10,000 shillings (7USD) that she said she needed for the school uniform, and I told her if she wanted me to buy books as well she had to come back and meet me and show me the new uniform in about 2 hours.

I was 99% sure she wouldn't come back so I went off to post my advertisements for free tutoring around the place, I had decided to go to one of the big shopping centers and post it on the advertising board, except when I got there the shopping center management wanted 10,000 shillings to put the poster up for one week, that I could not afford and subsequently I decided to post it illegally elsewhere. I was about half way across the shopping center when I was stopped by the shopping center management who told me some random heard about my poster and they had donated 10,000 shillings to me as they thought it was a good cause. This I was quite impressed about as most Tanzanias wouldn't get paid more then 15,000 a week.

In a good mood I took a taxi back home and to my utter surprise the mother was waiting for me, with the new uniform she had bought for her son, she even had change. Now this felt like a miracle and I was quite amazed that these things had happened out of the kindness of the human spirit. I then went to the shops with the kid so he could pick out a bag and books. Tanzania had taken me by surprise twice that day. The kid was quite happy and he said he would come and visit.
I had school again today and posted a few more advertisements up there has been quite a few people interested ill keep you informed.

All in all it was quite a interesting day.

Amekunywa Pombe kidogo

Im half way through my beginners class and only have six more lessons left. Its growing in difficulty everyday with new rules and many new words. We learn about 30 new words a day which I have to try and memorize. I have become quite good at reading Swahili but listening is still the most challenging I might be able to pick up 1 word out of every 5 and then I have to analyze to see which tense ect they are using so as you can guess it takes me a long time to reply and by that time they have probably already said something else.

Swahili in my opinion is quite illogical for instance a day starts at 6:am when the sun rises. This means for example on you clock it could be 8am but if someone ask's you the time you would say 2am in other words anytime you want to tell the time you have to minus 6 hours from your clock unless you have a Swahili clock with the 6 at the top.
Also in Swahili the week starts on a Saturday which is obviously very illogical for me.

On Thursday I saw a movie at the local cinema her in Dar es Salaam, apparently they only have 2 cinemas in the country, the one I went to was at this small shopping center. They even had Shoprite there, which when I went into reminded me very much of South Africa.

The last few days after class I have been going to this local NGO to help them with their computers. They are having problems with excel, printing and things like that, its quite an interesting organization, they provide radios (which run on solar energy) to disadvantaged areas so the kids are able to listen to stations that provide education.

In other news the African cup of nations is being played at the moment so thats basically all everyone is talking about, yesterday we went to a local pub to watch Ivory Coast play Ghana, it was quite an experience.

Im off,

Rafiki

I leave Zanzibar in a few hours, its been great. We got ripped of getting here. On Friday when we got to the port (we being myself and this Norwegian girl who is learning swahili with me) a group of guys came up to us offering to help, they tried to take us to one of their friends but we refused and went to one of the ticket booths, these two men were standing outside and I mentioned that I wanted to catch the 11:30 ferry, they said that it was full and that there was a ferry which was faster which left in 20 mins, at first I refused as they were offering it at hugely inflated the price, but they kept on pushing us saying if we don't catch this one we will have to wait for 5 hours. They eventually put the price down , we paid in shillings which was more complicated as we had to convert everything to the AUD. (I was quite worried about the ticket as a friend of mine had been there and bought a fake ticket which he couldnt refund). When we got down to the dock, there was this large catamaran boat which I was quite relieved about but as soon as we showed out ticket they took us to this small speed boat from asking other people it seemed we paid 20US to much. It was quite a scary ride but water was only coming in from the side not the bottom hahha.

The thing about Zanzibar at the moment is obviously the problem with electricity I found out that the government had not been repairing the line from the mainland of Tanzania to Zanzibar but instead had been using it on building houses for their wives, consequently the line has broken down leaving 1 million people who live on the island in the dark (intended) only a few shops and hotels have generators which run for only a few hours a day. Tourist number are down and many shops have had to close, the local people are suffering greatly especially at night, they have no place to put their food as most can not afford a generator.Street lights are few so its not safe walking around at night.

Most of my time here has been practicing Swahili, my favorite Swahili words that I use regularly are, I like that, how much does it cost? and that way to much.Its been quite fun to talk to the shop keeps in swahili and they are all very impressed with the amount of things I can say. The problem is when I say a few words in Swahili like, how's work today? they think I'm fluent in Swahili, so they start speeding along speaking Swahili to me which 90% I have no idea what they are saying usually I just reply with yes which does not always work and they just start laughing at me.

On Saturday night we had quite an adventure the Norwegian girl thought she had malaria, so we had to take a taxi at 2am to this private hospital. When we got to the hospital the doctor simply took her blood pressure, and since she was taking malaria tablets he believed she couldn't get malaria and that it must be a virus. I then mentioned that shouldn't he be checking her temperature, his reply was ohh yeah. We left the hospital quite dissatisfied. On the way home we were speaking to one of the locals, who told us about the local doctor who lived in the local community. We thought it was a good idea and that it couldn't hurt to get a second opinion. The doctor was actually quite good, he took a blood test and urine test, he seemed to know alot more then the doctor at the private hospital and he was much cheaper. Luckily she didn't have malaria, well yet anyway. All in all Zanzibar has been quite an experience and has helped my confidence in Swahili quite alot.

Well im off to catch my ferry

Joe

Habari za safari?

Our teacher today told us a funny story:
For this story you need to no one thing: In swahili the word fua means take off your clothes and the work vua means wash clothes.
One of the teachers other students wanted his clothes washed by the maid so he went to the maid to ask her. He asked her "fua the maid in astonishment said "no I do not do that" and the guy replied with "you have to thats your job" and subsequently offered her money saying that he would even pay her, long story short he apparently got arrested. Ha

This Tuesday is the Zanizibar revolution holiday so we get Tuesday off, we also decided to take Monday off so we can have a long weekend. I have decided to travel to Zanzibar on Saturday coming back on Tuesday.Zanizbar hasnt had power for over month and they wont be getting any till March, which is quite abnormal even for Africa, imagine if they didnt have power in Australia for that long. Although most of the hotels have generators many had to close down, so it's going to be a ghost town.

My lessons are getting better, the teacher makes it quite interesting and we play lots of games ie flash card games. The hardest part is listening to other people speak Swahili and then translating that to English. I'm comfortable now to ask questions and greet people on the street . I went to the grocery store yesterday for bananas and had to order in Swahili unfortunately I gave him the wrong number and I couldnt understand what he said so I got double the amount of them.

Im off
Joe

Kiswahili

This post will be short

Swahili is quite a hard language, for me anyway. The other people in my course already no at least 4 languages, so its kinda embarrassing.

The arrangement is quite different to english, I also have to re learn all the verbs and nouns as well as tenses. Its hard work.

Last week in Tanzania someone poisoned some stock of ugali which is the same name as pap in south africa and lots of people died, so no one wants to eat ugali at the moment.
I have asked around for volunteer work and lot of people need help, they have huge shortages of teachers much worse then in South Africa.
Im about 30 mins out from the center of the city and even where I am the roads are non existent, so its often easier for me to walk everywhere.

I better be off
This post went off in small tangents that were quite useless but hey!
Joe

After a long plane flight....

The place I'm staying in during my stay here is called Q bar, which is basically a large open bar as the name suggests and has about 4 stories of rooms above the bar. I am staying in the backpackers room features include a sometimes hot water shower, a toilet that does not flush and the list goes on!. Yesterday I met some French students, who are working on Risk Management for Farmers and had dinner with them.

A large problem with the bar is that it attracts many expats and other weird locals who bring the prostitutes with them, in a way its sad, out of 80 people at the bar last night I would say their was maybe 20 prostitutes, and since I was new they would constantly harass me. In a way it is also frustrating that these westerners come here and hire out a room with a prostitute. I was talking about this to an America guy who had been living in the area for over 10 years (he actually owes mines in the congo) and he said the majority of people who come for the prostitutes are the westerners, he also made a comment that I really cant judge as there was prostitutes in Aus, but the difference was here they didnt hide, which made it more obvious.

My first class was today. I atually got lost walking there and had to ask some people where it was, luckily they couldnt speak english and in my broken swahili I asked them, how to get to the place, most of their reply I even understood which I was proud of, what would have been useful though is if they had actually given me the correct directions.

Anyway I have a huge headache from the sun. Im going to get beer !
Cheers
Joe
ps Gin and Tonic is going for 2 USD brillant