After 3 months in Africa, a bout with typhoid, and a month
in a country that looked like a sandbox filled with dirt- I am tired. Our team
decided to take a mini vacation (1 night) to the beach. I had never even heard
of Zanzibar, but I need a rest so I went. We traveled 2 days on a bus to Dar
Esalaam- which was a fast moving oven. We had a short nights sleep at a hostel,
got up at 530 am to catch the 7am ferry. The ferry was fun, we made friends
with the “chief steward” who gave us a thorough tour of the ship, took us to
the front of the boat where we played titanic, gave us free coffee and cashews,
and let us sit in VOP and watch TV.
Then
we arrived at Tembo Hotel- it was paradise. I def recommend it if you’re
looking for an amazing vacation. We had a beach front room with a balcony
facing the Indian Ocean and another facing the fool. The served us a FREE
extravagant breakfast right away while they took our bags to the room We had 3
beds (my own bed!), a couch, AC, flat screen- might seem like normal amenities,
but after the past 3 months of eating rice and beans and carry a 50lb pack, I
literally teared up at the comfort!
Even
though we’d only had a few hours sleep of course you cant nap with so much to
do! We went straight to the beach where a man offered to take us snorkeling for
$30 for the 4 of us! The boat did look a bit rickety, but my Dad’s driven me
around in worse J
so we spent the afternoon snorkeling off the Coast of Prison Island. (Zanzibar
used to be a hub for slave trade. We also visited the old slave market and
museum) I saw all the fish from Finding Nemo, an octopus (which I later ate)
and swam through millions of tiny jellyfish!
So
we’d heard about a night market that was just down the street, so when the sunset
(beautiful ps) we headed over. I cant really explain how magical and lovely it
was. Booths filled with seafood, fore grills, famous Zanzibar pizza, lights
flickering like stars, smells of cooking spices…ah. You could but grilled
skewers of fresh fish for 2000sh ($1.50) I got crab legs for $3! The 4 of us
ended up with 12 plates of food! Lol (shared of course) Now that im writing it,
it sounds gluttonous, but it did lead to what happened next- so it’s ok. A
young guy that was brown-baggin it next to us commented on how he loved that we
were sharing- this opened up a huge convo about Christianity and we had the
chance to witness to him! The we noticed a man eating from the trash and tried to
share our food, which we thought our sharing friendly neighbor would appreciate
(wrong) but neither party seemed to understand what was going on. The friendly
neighbor sharply rebuked us for sharing with this “crazy person.” We answered
this rebuke by buying the homeless man 2 plates of food and giving it to him.
Not sure if he understood, but that’s not why we did it. The night went on with
more and more crazy encounters- several hours of buying hungry people food,
witnessing to a very drunk man, talking to lots of muslims about Jesus, singing
with kids- it was amazing. Looking around I realized so SO many people need to
be reached. I don’t know whats happening to me- this is who I am now.
