Zanzibar... Even the name sounds fictional, like the place marked 'X' on an ancient treasure map, some secret wonderland whispered in your ear by a wrinkly wise man who vanishes as soon as you turn around to beg for directions.

As my time in Arusha drew to a close, I lay in bed at night and imagined what Zanzibar, my next destination, might be like. I pictured it to epitomise the exotic: a land of fragrant spices, magic carpets and harem pants; a home to sultans, pirates, genies, shifting sands; abundant in sweet fruits, hookah pipes and gilt surfaces; bejewelled women and turbaned men; a labyrinth of candle-lit alleyways, whitewashed mosques, and crooked palms; a place to sip elixirs from conch shells and rub coconut balm into your skin... Somewhere you could watch purple sea horses bounce over sparkly water, and you might not be hallucinating.

I had clearly been sleepless in the ghetto a bit too much, as by contrast, the fantasy of Zanzibar really spiralled. Reminiscent of that scene in Hook where the Lost Boys teach Peter Pan how to make-believe his dinner (which he manages to do in the form of an extravagant feast followed by a neon food fight- all time), my mind ran wild. Yet in many ways, the island I had conjured-up did not disappoint. Acrobatic sea creatures aside, the natural beauty of Zanzibar is beyond the realms of the ordinary. Besides the boatload of photo opportunities and beatitude, there is excellent potential for tanning and becoming extremely chilled out. Dizzley heaven.

From the chorus of muezzins singing worship from their minarets in Stone Town, to rooftop savasanas after sunset yoga in Nungwi, to feasting on octopus cooked in fresh coconut water and spices in Paje, the kaleidoscope of Zanzibari sights and sounds lends the place an otherworldliness. Perched on a piece of driftwood (cum banana lounge) facing the palest aqua ocean, out of one eye you can be mesmerised by the butterflies of kite surfers in the skies, while out of the other, the seaweed farmers wade slowly through the shallows as they hand-harvest their crop. Kids with dark, twiggy legs run past pushing tyres along the sand with a stick, while Italian honeymooners are hoisted onto pimped out dhows for an afternoon cruise. 

On a slow shutter speed you can really take in a very contrasting image, perhaps reflective of Zanzibar's fat history book of foreign influence and intrigue. For hundreds of years it was a lucrative trade centre for spices, ivory and slaves (and more recently the birthplace of Freddie Mercury), before slowly establishing a tourism industry post-independence in 1963. After a day of sun, swims and exploring, to plonk on the sand away from the hotels and turtle sanctuaries, and watch purple storm clouds roll in, you can feel very small and faraway. To dive back into reality, pulling up a pew at Gerry's Bar on the Nungwi beach and working your way through the cocktail list does the trick. What sort of tropical paradise is replete without a few tonics and Rastafari tunes... Ja man.

I’m not sure how to sign off the Arusha chapter now that I have left. As I flip back through the moments that make up the past three months in Tanzania, I can see that some days I accepted my standard dinner plate of rice and beans with the ebullience of a human Grumpy Cat, and other days I was hoeing in to ugali and stew with my hands, congratulating myself on embracing the African spirit; a poster girl for #yolo. So what do I take from my time in the Tanz? When so much happened in only a few brief months, it’s a tsunami of people and events to compute, impossible to summarise into a one-pager. 

From the highs of Mount Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater rim, to the heartbreaks of holding the hand of a tiny orphan with HIV/AIDS, I certainly depart my volunteering experience with at least a few new competencies, and a great deal of perspective. It would be hard not to. Plonk a gal from the East coast of Australia into the ghetto streets of East Africa; my eyes were wide from dawn to dusk. In 90 days, I encountered topics that had only ever existed in newspapers for me. From the Maasai culture and widespread practice of female genital mutilation, to domestic abuse, rape, murder, corruption, sexually transmitted diseases, maternal and infant mortality, gender inequality, road death, bombings, black magic, prostitution (OK you get the idea). I got the entire smorgasbord of developing country issues. And this was on top of all the predicted but unnoteworthy blackouts, water shortages, medieval technology and below-average bowel health. Each day was an emotional bender, and the tales we would swap over a few sundowners were consistently bewildering.

I'll pluck one story from a fistful of comparable tales. I attended a small gathering one Saturday evening at a friend's place in Njiro, a bunch of volunteers and locals listening to Voice of the Streets (angsty Afro beats) on a small screen. We were sipping on Savannah ciders and chewing on qat with cinnamon flavoured gum (a revolting combination), when we were told that our local friend Simo was in a horrific car accident and pronounced dead at the scene. Only 26 years old, it was a complete tragedy, and his devastated family was called to the morgue. As the body was pulled out for identification, and the sheet peeled back, his parents' grief suddenly turned into shock... They noticed his foot had started to twitch. Simo was alive! The hospital paid his family a sum of money to keep the miracle out of Tanzania's Daily News, and Simon made a quiet recovery, albeit with a hectic scar down one side of his face. After the accident he was renamed Lucifer (although I think the correct Biblical reference should be Lazarus), but hey, T.I.A.

Working with groups of women in microfinance taught me a lot about the female plight, in more ways than expected. In late June, we hosted a Women's Health workshop at a local hospital, where we offered seminars on sexual health and free individual medical consultations. Over lunch, the ladies shared some of the ingenuities for survival as a lesser sex that they have crafted over the generations. Like proper ‘secret women’s business’ that you can’t google or read about in any World Health Organisation report. Like ways to sneak birth control after you've delivered nine children. Or how to fake virginity. It appears that men descending from every tribe - Sukuma, Maasai, Chagga, all of them – want, and expect, to marry a woman whose nether regions remain untouched at the time of marriage. It's a cultural thing, non-virginity is a deal breaker. Yet for many (perhaps the majority of Tanzanian lassies), this is not realistic. Not to say they are overly promiscuous, just that amorous relations tend to be a part of human nature, and by the time the brides-to-be are betrothed, they may have experienced a liaison or two. Or slightly more. Mothers (once young fiancées themselves) are acutely aware of this, and have developed a topical solution to reinstate their daughters’ purity. Yes, it is allegedly common practice for young brides to apply a strong concentrate of lemon juice and special herbs to the affected areas. The desired effect can be translated as a ‘shrivelling’ of the vicinity, which apparently men really go for, and no suspicions are raised.

So I'm clearly struggling to conclude the recent months in any form of meaningful wrap up. And as you can see, a Facebook album would not really fly either. I'll leave it as TBC for now, and follow up with Kwaheri: Part 2 after I've had more time to digest (in Zanzibar).  Baadaye!

RICE AND BEANS, YOU ARE OFFICIALLY ON HIATUS

Tuesday last week was the Day of Eid, the Muslim celebration that breaks the end of the Ramadan fast with a big feast. Due to Tanzania’s large Islamic population, two days of public holidays surround the festival. To be honest, when I heard this, my immediate thoughts were wahoo 2 days off / the pool at the lodgeeeee / I seriously need a bikini wax.

As my furrowed brow debated whether it would be weird to sunbake in a sarong, our volunteer coordinator invited me to help prepare and serve food for Eid to 300 street kids in Arusha’s slum town, Unga Limited.  It’s not a safe place for mzungus, and my host family was a little horrified that I would elect to do this. But it wasn’t an invitation I could really decline: what sort of a-hole sends their regrets to feed starving children in favour of lazing by the pool on a shabby banana lounge. I was going to Unga Limited.

Navigating to the middle of the ghetto is a bit of a mission. Lots of bumping down unpaved roads, then walking through haphazard laneways, dodging scraggy clotheslines, and skipping over slimy puddles. We arrived mid-morning at a concrete clearing that was to be our HQ, and were greeted by a veritable rainbow of women. Dressed in their Eid-y best, around thirty parrot coloured khangas popped against the drab backdrop. Young and old, dadas were draped or crouched into every nook and cranny, busy in their preparations. 

And there was a lot to be done. Over a hundred kilograms of rice, three goats, and innumerable buckets of chicken, beef, vegetables and fruit. Besides one or two crude stoves, the enormous pots and saucepans dotted around the yard smouldered over naked coals. It was a smokey, smelly hive of activity and I wondered how I would be of any use in such a foreign chaos. Hakuna matata I was handed a barrel of tomatoes and a blunt knife to get to work. No cutting board or surface to lean on, I observed the technique was to use your forefinger to pull the blade through the fruit towards your thumb, and let the loosened segment fall free into a container. I’m actually allergic to tomatoes but have limited Swahili and a lot of pride, so just got stuck in. 

About two and a half tomatoes in, I was fired. Despite the language barrier, it became clear that my slices were unsatisfactory, and a small crowd of women gathered to titter at my handiwork. I was moved over to cucumbers: humiliating. Who can’t slice a cucumber round, tsk. Ha. They tolerated my rustic flair for a short while, before I was unceremoniously demoted a second time. Handed a rowboat paddle, I became chief stirrer of a huge pot of beef stew. I’m a vegetarian and really hated this job, so jumped to assist two other women who were struggling to haul piping hot aluminium pots of pilau over to a cooling area. Their grateful smiles made me feel helpful, so I treated myself to a go of flicking bits of lard into a fifteen kilo pan of sautéeing cabbage (an excellent task), before the rowboat paddle I had abandoned came back to haunt me. A witchy looking mama dragged me back to inhale the meaty fumes, and reinstated me at my post. 

Once the bubbling beef was deemed satisfactory, my final chore was to pull out pieces of burning wood out from one fire, and manouvre these to fuel another fire, with my bare hands. I thought this was a joke but apparently not. I cursed my polyester skirt and prayed not to be ignited as I studied how to avoid this happening. 

Before service, the community gathered in another nearby courtyard where blue tarpaulins had been laid. Two young girls were busy sponging down the plastic before the men and local sheik were invited to sit, followed by the women and children. The sheik welcomed the crowd, sang some prayers, and led the group in spoken worship.  

After the formalities, I took a teapot filled with water and helped a pubescent boy in a skull cap to wash everyone’s hands into a plastic pail. At last, it was time to pass around the mounds of paper-plated chakula. We served the men first, before the women and their children, and lastly the few hundred street kids, who were not invited to the VIP tarpaulin area, but served in the classroom of a nearby orphanage. 

Handing a heaving plate of delicious, fragrant food to a ragamuffin who is excited by a small bowl of plain rice is a very humbling experience. When we offered them seconds, their eyes just about popped. I don’t know how such tiny humans ingested so much, but they finished the lot again and again. Later in the day there was some drumming and traditional dance, but nothing beat the big grins and full bellies of those totos. 

Mistaken for Justin Bieber by the Majengo totos...😂

Mood-setting fact: dung beetles spend their days feasting on balls of faeces, yet are the strongest insects in the world.

I have read over my last couple of posts and realised two things. Firstly, I have really bastardised the use of colons and semi colons, and secondly, my depiction of #TZlyf has been a tad too romantic. I’ve been heavy-handed with the lion cubs and Kilimanjaro sunrises, neglecting the tremendous wheelbarrows of shit that also make up the everyday in Arusha. So today, I’d like to scatter some manure to keep the fragrance nice and authentic. Let’s dive in.

This week I was mugged on my way to work, in broad daylight, by eight men. I swear there were 20 guys, but my witness Justine says eight, maybe ten. Nevertheless I was swarmed by a cocoon of hoodlums who fronted as dalla dalla conductors hassling me for business. But no, the phoneys were not just after a 400 shilling fare to Ilboru. They all hollered as they zeroed in on me and my mzungu trappings, crafting the ideal cacophony under which to conduct their thievery. I was reciting my hapana asantes (‘no thank yous’) as I waded through the chaos, when suddenly I felt one arsehole pull at my backpack, while another yanked at my money belt. It all happened very quickly but my money belt is sacred – I don’t endure fugly robber-proof accessories for nothing – so no way was some lowlife taking off with my Korjo fanny pack.

They picked the wrong girl. The dormant Power Ranger inside me kicked in and I flipped out. My arms windmilled, and I shrieked FARRRRKKKKKKKOOOORRRRFFFFFF!!!!!!!! at the very top of my lungs. Deafening and shrill, it worked. The eight-to-ten-or-20 bandits scattered, and my raging red Alf Stewart face drained to a deathly white as the crescendo subsided. Justine looked at me half in fear (#psychopath), before she spent the rest of the morning calming me down, with lots of Kit Kats.

In the same 24-hour period, a hand grenade was thrown into a local Indian restaurant that all our friends had been licking their fingers at only days prior. Although there were no deaths, eight souls were horribly injured. In a separate attack the same week, a bomb blasted a Muslim cleric’s private home, severely wounding two. Apparently both incidents were attributed to local business disputes, but who really knows. The police are terrifically corrupt. When an officer pulls you over on the road, you must sling him a few shillings ‘for lunchy’ in order to keep driving. There is no point becoming overly irate at the traffic cop, as he must pass up the majority of his spoils to the guy above him. And that guy, to the guy above him, and so on. The chain up to the fat cats is long.

But we can keep shovelling here. Today I picked up my third course of antibiotics to treat my latest African malady. And on Monday, we visited the poorest neighbourhood in the city, with the filthiest kids, who often survive on just one bowl of porridge a day. As the tsunami of hopelessness inside me peaked to come crashing down in that slum, I narrowly missed stepping on a human turd. Yep, human. There is not much in this universe that is more revolting.

So in many respects #TZLyf boils down to shits and giggles, but the bad days fertilise the good days. Cheers to the dung beetles for the inspo ✌.

ROFLS: Riding the bus with a chicken in a box
NOT SO ROFLS: Fry Mate is a premium yellow ‘cholesterol free’ vegetable cooking fat enriched with vitamins

Warning: this post may contain an extreme number of adjectives to convey strong, once-in-a-lifetime-style emotions.

WE JUST CLIMBED KILI. I refer to my party-mix of Australian Swedish and Japanese rafikis (Justine, Axel and Kenta); myself; two guides; a cook; nine porters; and Mount Kilimanjaro: all 5895 metres of it. The four mzungus summitted Uhuru Peak at 6.10am on Thursday 3rd July 2014, just as the sun burst above the clouds.

From afar, Kili poses as the quintessential snow-capped knoll. With verdant rainforest at the base, heather in the lower-middle, alpine desert in the upper-middle, and some snowy icing; it is a perfect emoji mountain. Up close, the summit looks a bit like the moon. An old volcano, it sports a big crater, glaciers, and jagged chunks of ice and rock. However this recollection may be distorted, as the ten minutes we spent there are a cosmic blur.

The final ascent, on day four of our six day expedition, was probably the hardest slog of my life. Having hiked all day to reach the Kibo Hut base camp in the afternoon, we took a short rest before departing again at midnight to take on the six hour climb to summit. Clad like Michelin men against the sub zero climes, head torches affixed, we marched into the pitch black. After only a few hours, we began to pass scores of other climbers who had failed, and were cowering in various caves and small clearings. Porters took over their gear and prepared for their descent, and all we could do was block out their wincing faces and push on.

The gurus say that getting to the top is 10% physical and 90% mental. I’ll 100% attest to that. Tired, anxious and freezing, with laboured breath from the scant oxygen, you literally cannot move any faster than a shuffle. Our guides ensured we progressed pole-pole, Swahili for 'slowly, slowly,' as otherwise your body cannot acclimatise. Eg the risk of death by pulmonary or cerebral œdema really skyrockets. The altitude is like an invisible fortress, and the last 400 metres to the Uhuru signpost took a much-anguished eon to reach. 

But we got there. And collapsed and cried in pain and joy. As day broke, the neon bar of light on the horizon cast dramatic shadows across the pebbly panorama. It was effing sublime and I blubbered all over my balaclava. We shook off our mittens to brave the -15°C degrees, and battling emotions and exhaustion, managed some desperate photos before our camera batteries all froze. There was a lot of hugging, and we drank in the euphoriant that comes with arriving at the top a mofo mountain. Not because our water bottles had also frozen, but because reaching summit has a lasting flavour. With a serious fist-pump after-taste. And yep, that's about all I remember. Fatigue and delirium won over as we turned around and descended for another lazy seven hours back to a safe altitude to rest.

Apart from days four to five, conquering Kili was an absolute pleasure. Sure we got sweaty everyday, didn't shower for a week, and our calf muscles have never looked more robust; however the more hardcore mountaineers refer to our Marangu route as the Coca Cola route: there are huts to sleep in, and less vertical scrambling than on other trails. I didn’t exactly bring my ice pick with me to Tanzania, you know, so we went Bear Grylls Lite (still more than tough enough). While there were certainly no refreshing soft drinks or other such luxuries, we did bring music to the mountain (only ACDC's It’s A Long Way To The Top...Of Kilimanjarooo will get you out of your sleeping bag at 6am), and made a point of wearing matching bandanas (Survivor style) for the entire trek. We thought perhaps our guides may be mildly amused by our cheese factor, though when we weren't busy hauling ourselves into the heavens, we would often bust them on ganja breaks. The Kili shrubs are full of crouching porters chilling (Swahili for getting blazed), so you need to be careful when choosing which bush to go and pee behind. 

The perils of Kili may be many... but boy does she deliver. 

SUMMIT READY! #comeatmeKili #GoneClimbing #seeyainaweek

Following my last post, and the supper with the wooden vaginas, Mackrine invited some of the volunteers to join her on a visit to the Engarooji Maasai community. She has been working with the Engarooji people for a number of years to eradicate FGM. Only recently have the Engarooji birth attendants relinquished their circumcision instruments (in exchange for sheep), and our visit provided a reason to celebrate their progressive, brave decision.

I must admit, I was fascinated at the thought of journeying into the bush to visit a traditional Maasai community. As well as having the opportunity to meet some incredible women, I wanted to see the warriors; the jumping; the long hollowed earlobes; the vibrant robes; the big disc necklaces, the bomas (mud huts).

As our mid-last-century minivan hurtled off the main road, and lumbered cross-country over the soil and scrub, I let the dust sting my eyes to really soak up the experience. An hour and a half later, we were still chugging off-piste in our tin truck (sans suspension) in pursuit of the Engarooji village. The romance and mystique had just about worn off when at last some bomas materialised on the horizon.

We could hear their song as we approached, and yes, there was jumping (*squeals*). As we disembarked the vehicle, we were engulfed by a throng of about thirty Maasai women in bright red, blue and purple robes, and swept into the procession. Whistling, singing, dancing, bouncing; there were colours, sounds and tits flapping everywhere. Being a tourist, I was shamelessly videoing the entire reception, and even managed to capture the time I was hit in the face by a rogue Maasai breast on film. Priceless.

The women shepherded us into a clearing where the formalities would take place. Mackrine and the village elders addressed the group, and congratulated the former FGM practitioners on the courage it took to abolish the practice. We then participated in a Q&A exchange on women’s issues, shared some warm sodas, and enjoyed a bit more jumping and singing. The carbonated drinks encouraged a great deal of burping and farting from the Engarooji women, and I had to bite my tongue really hard not to laugh. I am hopeless. It was an insanely great afternoon.