So I started the next few weeks expecting the arrival of Matt on the 10th June... Seems I was the absolute last person to know he was swinging by two days earlier!
After the initial shock of the surprise (I mainly blame Connor) and a few days bumming around Jinja - mainly visiting ASCO, Sonrise and watching the first of the terrible England matches at Martin's pub - we set off for a week's holiday in ZANZIBARRRR!
We got a night bus to Nairobi - we were plonked at the back with the worst seats on pothole filled roads, a swear I nearly got whiplash we were thrown out of our seats so much! After a night being surrounded by the most white people than I have been in 5 months in a backpackers hostel (it was really quite surreal!), we got a taxi to the airport at stupid o'clock in the morning. Being in Nairobi felt like being in London, including London prices (grrr...). We went past Windsor House, Oxford Gardens, and other such aptly names places.
We flew with a local East African airline, Fly 540, and there were definate T.I.A. moments! We were the only airline desk in the airport without a computer so our boarding cards were filled out manually, and our names ticked off a list on a piece of paper to show we'd arrived.
Coming back flying from Zanzibar was just surreal - our hold bags were weighed on giant scales that you used for cooking twenty years ago, we had to then walk around the desk, collect our bags again and take them to the x-ray machine. Once they were cleared we were sent to immigration to get our exit stamps but there was no one there so the security guard just told us to carry on through. Once we got our hand luggage checked (my bag got searched containing mainly books and Matt's bag didn't when it contained mainly liquids), we were called back to immigration to get our stamps and had to be checked all over again. Finally the total ten passengers were shouted at the board the plane to Nairobi via Mombasa. We touched down in Mombasa and we were all asked to leave the plane in order to get our new visas. After a big muddle trying to find out which forms to fill in and which queue to get in then a wait of ten minutes for the immigration officer to find the book with transit visas, we collected our hold bags and were sent to Customs. We put the bags on the Customs table and pretty much as they touched the table we were told they were cleared. They were then taken away from us to go back on the plane and we were asked to get back on the plane...naturally going back through immigration we had just passed. Then we took off for Nairobi and everything went back to a normal plane journey!
I apologise if that last paragraph is a big muddle and doesn't make too much sense but the whole journey didn't make sense, although it seemed completely logical to the airline.
So Zanzibar itself!
We arrived in Stone Town and it's like Africa meets India, it was amazing! As a muslim country I saw very few women showing their hair so i felt even more like a prostitute than usual even when I had covered my legs and shoulders. Every where you go there are masala spice smells coming from all the restaurants and shops, and the architecture is what I'd imagine in India - I've never seen anywhere in Africa like it! There's no point in having a car because very few streets can fit a car down them, some I could touch both sides of the street at the same time! The story goes that at one time it was THE place for the Indian slave and spice market and was one of the most profitable towns in Africa and so built these magnificent houses and mosques and gardens. When the exporting stopped so did the development, businesses slowed down and all the huge buildings stopped being maintained and have now started the crumble. Literally. Having said that, there are some areas which are still quite rich and the gardens are still well exploited as tourist areas. So we stayed two nights in Stone Town discovering the maze of streets and shops, visiting the worst museum in the history of the world and relaxing on the beach looking over to Tanzania mainland.
After Stone Town we headed to Pongwe, described in Lonely Planet as 'quintessential tropical paradise'. Which it most certainly was, but would explain why it's more of a honeymoon destination as opposed to a backpackers spot. We saw a lodge advertised on a few walls in Stone Town so we briefly checked it out on the website and booked for two nights. We got two dalla-dallas (the Tanzanian version of a matatu) which are open sided trucks with a roof and benches inside, and we got off in the middle of nowhere. We were the only two people in our lodge/resort and the only two people we could see on the whole beach...until we discovered the $200 a night resort for the honeymooners next to us. This meant that there was ever only one table set in the 'restaurant', one pair of footprints around the resort and complete and utter silence the rest of the time. But the beach was absolutely amazing - there were your typical paradise wooden boats out at sea, bright blue/turquoise shallow water, white sandy beach and rolling waves...heaven.
NEXT STOP - Kendwa. He headed up to the north of the island for the weekend as it's where all the travellers go for a bit more atmosphere. We stayed at Kendwa Rocks, the place where they hold the biggest beach parties and Full Moon parties in Tanzania. Here the weather was pants and drizzling for two days, but hakuna matata as we went SCUBA DIVING! That was honestly one of the most incredible things I've ever seen, I felt like I was in Finding Nemo! We had a two hour boat trip in the pouring rain to Mnemba Island - the best coral around Zanzibar - and anchored on a sandy patch where my breakfast swiftly made reappearance from all the rocking... But as soon as we got in the water it was so calm the sea sickness went away. We'd practised some skills like getting rid of water out of your equipment on the boat, and did a real practice down on the sandy patch. I was doing a dive with another English girl, Catherine, and an English instructor, Darren. We then swam to the coral which was just incredible. We saw sting rays, giant catfish bigger than me (!),
we got about ten cm close to about twenty yellow fish pecking away at some eggs completely oblivious to our presence there, luckily no sharks, but unfortunately no turtles. A little stupidly, I didn't have enough weights on my belt so even though my jacket was deflated I spent so much energy trying to swim down all the time. This meant that when we got back up I was absolutely exhausted and missed out on swimming with about forty dolphins...lame. However, after stomaching some sugar biscuits I was ready for our second dive. I was so much more relaxed on the second dive, I wasn't swimming so much because I had more weights and I was used to the weird feeling of breathing underwater. I've literally spent my free time ever since working out how to get enough money to go diving relatively soon!
So after Kendwa, we started our long journey back to Jinja. But if I'm honest, Matt's last few days were spent still on holiday, mainly chilling out by the pool :)
But as a Jinja update, Sonrise is now renting a second house only a few hundred metres away from the babies home where the toddlers now stay which allows for more babies to join the main house. The newest addition is a two year old girl called Sonyu, who is smaller than some of the three month old babies. She's absolutely tiny, her skin is pretty much hanging off her bones but she's got almost a full set of teeth and her smile it gorgeous! She was found in the Kampala slums, some ten year old street kids were found looking after her as her teenage mother went to work in the days - she gets very excited when you put food in front of her and she'll stuff herself until her little belly is about to explode, but as soon as you take food away from her, or you eat in front of her she gets really worried and upset as before, she never knew when her next meal was going to come!
ASCO is still doing well, however a lot of the boys are suffering from malaria despite having the nets and a few of them have typhoid. So the next priority when more donation money comes in is to buy equipment and coal to all them to boil large batches of water for safe drinking.
SO THAT'S ABOUT IT. I think. Everyone in the Guest house leaves in the next two weeks apart from me and Connor so we're making the most of having everyone around.
Loveee x
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