Jozani Forest and Kizimkazi Bay

Tanzania isn’t the most impoverished African country, yet there is clearly lots of poverty here. Everywhere you turn people are doing what little they can to make a living. I have seen similar poverty in the slums of El Salvador and in the hutong areas/farm areas in China, but it seems that here it is much more widespread rather than in concentrated areas.

The widespread poverty is part of the reason that it is hard to pick scholars based on need, especially for three American girls who come from middle class families. In addition, because a community houses people from every socioeconomic sector, unlike the U.S. where it is more concentrated in certain areas, it is harder to use certain sections of town as an indicator of need. Of course, some sections certainly are worse than others and Stonetown is one of the “ritzier” places where even the poorest are probably better off than the poorest in a less established community. However, school is expensive for any family so almost every student has a certain level of need, and those that are EXTREMELY needy may not even be in school in the first place. There are certain metrics, such as finding out how much meat they eat in a week or how many of their siblings went to university, that we can use to assess who’s need is greater than others. Even the teachers agree that it is hard to assess their own student’s level of need.

Today we went to Jozani Forest and Kizimkazi to swim with dolphins! We could have taken a daladala but it sometimes takes 3 hours for a normal 45 minute trip, so we took a friend’s private hire. In the country there were still brick and stone houses, but there were much more thatched roof huts as well. It would be hard to build a brick or stone house in a rural area because there is much more manual labor involved. The scenery changed to more of a rainforest feel.

Our trip was awesome. At Kizimkazi Bay, we found Captain Abba, who took us out on his wooden motor boat. Because water got in the boat easily, Abba’s friend bailed us out the whole way with a bucket. We got to snorkel with the dolphins and see red colobus monkeys in Jozani Forest. We just walked up under a tree and watched the monkeys swinging above our heads.

We learned from locals that a ferry had drowned in the harbor and more than 200 people died. We almost put Remmy and her friends on the ferry that would have arrived at that time because it was much cheaper. I’m so glad we paid for her to take the fast ferry now. However, according to news reports, it was apparently a cargo ship and 3 people died. This is one of the only news reports I found referencing it, so I’m still not sure what the truth is. http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1009473

Word of the day:
pikipiki - motorcycle
gari - car