Bagamoyo

The painting I purchased

In front of our hotel

The old Catholic Church

My chicken and olive pizza!

Riding my bike

The Kaole Ruins

Crocodile Farm!

This weekend we went to Bagamoyo!!! Bagamoyo is about an hour and a half north of Dar on the coast of the Indian Ocean.  We got took off from the University at around 8:30 Saturday morning and got to the hotel in Bagamoyo around 11:00.  It was absolutely beautiful!  Think picturesque bandas on the beach to sleep in and little private hotel rooms for others.  It was right on the beach and you could literally walk to the ocean!  We ditched our stuff at the hotel and walked to the old Catholic church in town.  There was a cute little museum there that told all about the slave trade and slave market that used to exist in Bagamoyo.  Originally, Bagamoyo was settled by the Arabs, but later was colonized by the Germans and then by Great Britain.  In the 1800’s, it was used as a slave port for shipping slaves either to Zanzibar, Egypt, Persia, or a variety of other countries.  There were a ton of artifacts in the museum and it was really cool to see all of the old slave possessions.  We got to walk through the Catholic church and it was extremely beautiful.   So much more colorful than the churches in America!  After that, we headed to lunch at a little roadside restaurant.  I had pilau (brown rice with spices) and meat.  Unfortunately, the restaurant managed to run out of food before they could serve all 19 of us, and we had to go to another restaurant.  While the second half of the group was eating, we toured the Caravan Serai, a building and museum where they used to keep the slaves before shipping them off to other countries.  We did a little shopping at the shops on the side of the road and I got an adorable little blue scarf for 5,000 Tsh ($3).  We then visited Dr. Kessey’s project (he is an archaeology professor here at the University) and he showed us his excavation site.  Basically, legend has it that there was an underground tunnel that was used to shuttle slaves from the interior of the island to the coast, and he is attempting to find the tunnel.  Currently, he has 5 holes that he has excavated and is planning on digging some more in order to find artifacts, remains, or other clues that there may have been a tunnel.  After seeing the archaeology site, we all broke off into smaller groups and were given free reign in Bagamoyo.  A group of us went art shopping, as Bagamoyo is known for its old art market where many painters sell their artwork.  I bought a beautiful African painting for 30,000 Tsh ($20) that is about 2ftx3ft.  I was so proud of myself because I got the price down to 30,000 Tsh from 60,000 Tsh!  A couple of the other girls bought art as well and many also bought kangas (traditional piece of cloth worn by the women in Africa).  We returned to the hotel exhausted (we had been walking and standing all day!) and had the best meal EVER.  Now most of you may know that I am not usually a huge fan of pizza back home, but I had chicken pizza and it was delicious.  SO GOOD!  We also got mashed potatoes, just because we could!  It was nice to have some good old comfort food.  We hung out and played some bananagrams before heading off to bed.  Colleen and I shared a banda (think mud hut with a palm roof, concrete floor).  It was adorable!  In the morning we got up and ate breakfast which consisted of the best fruit salad I have ever eaten, passionfruit juice, omelettes, toast, and of course, hot dogs.  Hah, I have no idea what it is about Tanzanians and hot dogs, but they have them for the weirdest meals!  We picked up our bikes (we rented them for the day) and biked to the Kaole ruins, which are ruins from a 13^th century Arab settlement.  Next, we biked to the crocodile farm (yes they have those here!) where we got to hold baby crocs and watch them devour their lunch.  It was very intimidating to see the crocodiles jump at their meat.  We biked to the Millenium Hotel for lunch and had a spectacular buffet.  You will never guess what I had.  Broccoli! And to think that I used to hate broccoli.  They had mushroom soup, fresh rolls, butter, cold salad, sautéed vegetables, spinach, fish, lamb, meat, potatoes, and even some tortes for dessert.  It was fabulous.  After that, we headed back to Dar and made it back in time for the evening.  I ate dinner at the cafeteria as usual and worked on homework.  We have our first ecology exam this Thursday and we aren’t quite sure what to expect.  Both ecology and human evolution are a bit dull, no one really looks forward to sitting through either of those classes.  Basically, they both involve powerpoint lectures in which the teacher literally reads the words off of the slide.  I’ve come to realize that the professors here don’t really feel the need to engage the class.  Learning here is more of a privilege I think, and if you have the money to go to school, then you had better be interested yourself rather than have the professor make the class interesting.  Anyway, Swahili is going well.  We just had our second exam and we did pretty well considering that the things he told us were going to be on the exam, definitely were not on it.  I just learned today that my small group Swahili professor (her name is Sauda) has relatives in Zanzibar, and her nephew actually died in the ferry accident last weekend.  She was quite sad today but managed to still teach us.  Overall, things here are going really well.  Someone told me yesterday that we are officially ¼ of the way done with our program.  That’s crazy! It makes me so sad to think about leaving!  Sorry for the lag in the blog posts, but I have had limited access to the internet, especially since my computer’s charger no longer works.  Cross your fingers that the new charger comes soon!  Talk to you all later!

Erin