Zanzibar in the Season of Bougainvilleas

If the Christmas season is to be remembered for anything in Tanzania, it would have to be the bougainvilleas. As we pass through the calendar year a second time here, I am beginning to get used to the topsy-turvy seasons of the southern hemisphere. The October spring crowned with blooming jacarandas along nearly every street, gives way to mid-summer December with flame trees and teeming vines of bougainvillea cascading down trees and the sides of buildings. The tropical colors are a far cry from the austere evergreens with red holly berry accents of winter in North America. It does not feel like Christmas, but it does feel like a tropical paradise.

Our bed made at the hotel every day.

And what better way to enjoy a tropical paradise than to visit Tanzania's  storied island of Zanzibar! This is only the second time our family has been there, and the last time was when we were working in Burundi (in 2012). It is quite a magical place with a Swahili mystique that feels a bit like a setting for Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves or Pirates of the Caribbean.

The occasion to go to Zanzibar last week was for an MCC team retreat. I guess working for a mission organization located in a beautiful settting puts these kinds of 'perks' within reach. The participants in our team retreat included our family, Sharon our country rep., Lucia our finance officer and her two daughters, Chrispin, our ag. coordinator and his daughter, as well as Ken and Laura, the two East Africa area directors. Twelve of us in all. Rebecca had been one of the main organizers of the retreat including logistics, and made arrangements for us to fly to Zanzibar and stay at the Samaki Lodge and Spa.

We left Monday evening and took a small Air Tanzania Bombadier to Stonetown in Zanzibar, about an hour flight from Arusha. We arrived around 10pm, well after dark but it still took a tremendous amount of arguing with David to convince him that he could not head out to the beach to look for crabs. He finally went to bed that night but was up before 6am the next morning. I did go out with him and it was quite glorious to walk out on the fine coral white sand of Zanzibar beaches! He found many shells the first morning and would have stayed out all day if I would not have coerced him in to have breakfast.

Meals were all provided by the hotel and each meal was a huge spread covering many tables in the restaurant. The staff was obsequiosly friendly, and I noticed that most of the tourists there were Italian and Russian. Almost no one but the staff spoke English.

After breakfast the first day, we had a team gathering and did some ice breakers including a game that was kind of like Pictionary, only one person has a drawing and without identifying it, has to try to get another person to draw it. The game took on interesting dimensions as we tried to find ways to describe a shape in a cross-cultural setting. We also did some reflecting on what Chistmas means to us and chose secret santas. (The rule was NO money could be spent. You had to find or make something by the last day of the retreat.)

We spent the rest of the day relaxing. While the beach is nice, Samaki lodge also has two enormous swimming pools, both of which are beautiful and very pleasant to swim in. David and I went in the ocean part of the time in low tide and walked out about a kilometer to find tide pools. We saw many cool fish including, clowns, blue damsels, a puffer fish, some eels, and starfish. The most common creature by far were sea urchins. We had to wear shoes at all times to avoid stepping on them and getting stung. When we got back, he, Oren, and Lucia's girls, Novella and Esperanza, spent most of the late afternoon playing in the pool. Dinner was fabulous as well featuring Italian and Swahili food. There was entertainment afterwards although I was pretty tired and went to bed.

The next morning David was up early again to catch crabs. We had a plan to do a field visit and sightseeing in Stonetown. There is a Mennonite couple who work for EMM, Peter and Christy, whose office is in Stonetown. We visited them, saw the work he is doing as faculty in an Interfaith Peacebuilding Institute. It is quite impressive, and Christian and Muslim students study peacebuilding together. Their office is in a 6 floor walk-up that looks like a Dr. Suess house. It overlooks Stonetown, but seems a bit precarious considering how narrow the upper stairways are.

We had lunch in Stonetown then headed to a protected forest area where we were able to see the indigienous and very rare Red Colobus monkey. We had a guided tour through the forest by a very funny guide who told us we might be lucky enough to see a python...or if we were even luckier we wouldn't as they are very dangerous. He also took us through a very cool mangrove forest with a boardwalk running through it. We saw many indigenous species in there and had an informative tour about how mangrove forests prevent flooding and reduce erosion.

We got home in the evening, quite exhausted. But David was up bright and early again on Thursday morning for more crabbing. For a team event we did a scavenger hunt. After lunch, our family did a more extensive snorkeling expedition during low tide after walking out more than a kilometer. We saw quite a few interesting fish although the beach where we were was not particularly close to any big pieces of coral or deep tide pools. We played in the pool in the afternoon and did watercolors. In the evening we had our final team gathering on the roof of the hotel, where everyone exchanged gifts. Lucia had made me a picture, and I had made Laura a watercolor of a wall covered with bougainvillea which were ubiquitous around the hotel. David, the prime collector of beautiful shells gave one to Novella. It was a very satisfying, creative end to our retreat.

We did not have to leave too early on Friday, but by noon that day we headed to Stonetown. Our trip home was more complicated than our trip to Zanzibar. To save money we decided to fly back out of Dar Es Salaam. This entailed taking a ferry from Stonetown to Dar where we would catch our flight.

The ferry was quite an adventure, but much more modern than I expected. it was one of those giant catamaran style hover craft. It was surprisingly fast and smooth and we saw some beautiful views of Stonetown from the water. We got to Dar 2 hours later. The taxi ride to the airport though took nearly as long as the traffic was horrific. Nonetheless we got to the aiport and on our plane without a hitch. We got back to Arusha about 7pm and back to our house around 9pm, tired but exhilerated from the trip.

No rest for the weary though as Rebecca had a worship committee meeting the next morning, then her mom "Grandma Jean" arrived on Saturday evening. Actually she did not get in until nearly midnight, but the kids insisted on staying up and waiting for her.

Sunday was an unusual day at church as we did not really have a regular service. It was the 10th anniversary of the hospital where the church is located and there was a big ceremony with much pomp and circumstance and a service in the middle of it for religious and political leaders. Our choir sung two songs in it. The whole event went on for over 7 hours but we left after about 4. After church in the afternoon we participated in some Christmas carols for people who were sick at various wards in Mt. Meru hospital. It felt like something good to do although hard to see people suffering so much in such non-private settings. They seemed to appreciate the carols and prayers.

That about ends it except to say the kids are not in school and David found 2 baby hedgehogs at Gymkhana that seemed abandonned. He brought them home and now we are all taking turns feeding them with an eyedropper 6 times per day.