Catching up... again.

Saturday, July 5th to Wednesday, July 9th

In the morning I took a little tour of downtown Dar, driving down the busy streets while my driver pointed out various important buildings that I’ll probably never recognize again. Then I went to the National Museum which was actually really cool. Tanzania has a pretty crazy history and it was a lot of fun to learn more about it. There was even a special exhibit of Julius Nyerere’s important cars!

In the afternoon I headed to the airport because I was off to Zanzibar! I don’t know why I have so much fun saying that name. I met up with Jake and Levi, two other MIT students working in Tanzania, and we had a great time exploring Stonetown, especially the crazy nighttime fish market. It’s basically a long street with barbeques on both sides, and big tables in front of each one with skewers of every kind of fish. You pick your skewers and they barbeque them right there for you! Then you move to the next stand and try something else.

On Sunday we headed out to Nungwi which is a beach village on the northernmost tip of the island. It’s about an hour drive on some bumpy roads, but definitely worth it. I spent the next few days catching up on some reading, playing Frisbee on the beach, eating tons of seafood, and doing a lot of floating in the Indian Ocean.

Now I’m back in Moshi and totally rested and recharged to finish out my project. I’m looking forward to catching up with the new small-business owners to see how things have moved along while I was gone.