Askari

The Askari, guards at the entrance of each hotel, continue to bother me /to give me laughing, it depends on how you see it.
The Mapenzi hotel is leader for these situations. Very often they change their guards, so every time I have to explain who I am and what I am doing.
About a month ago, after a long ride during which I had been listening to a Flemish podcast, I arrive at the gate.
There is a new askari:
He: Jambo!
I: Jambo!
He: Jina lako ni gani?
I: In English? 
The man begins to write "inenglish ".
Hey no, my name is not "in English" but Ilse.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah ...

This week, Tuesday morning, I come to the gate, another new one.
He: Jambo!
I: Jambo!
He: Yes?
I: Yes!
He: I need to know eh how eh what...
I: I know what you need to know. My name. That is Ilse. And also the company I work for, that is Thomas Cook.
He: Thanks!; and he moves to open the gate. Suddenly he comes back: Why are you here?
I am getting nerved: "To swim!"
Apparently it is a satisfactory answer as he opens the gate. I could not suppress a smile.

When I leave the hotel, I must sign the log book. All data (date, time, name, company ...) are entered correctly but at "Purpose of visit" is effectively written: Swimming.
I correct and change it in " visiting the guests".

Wednesday, normal visiting time in this hotel, the askari is there again.
He greets me and asks "To swim, just like yesterday?"
I explode with laughter ...

Emergency First Response

In preparation of the Rescue Diver course, I had to get some kind of first aid certificate, Emergency First Response.

Appointment is on Saturday morning in the Water Sports Centre.

The instructor waits me and introduces himself: I am Abdul Karim, but you can call me Abdul. And what's your name?

I'm Ilse.

Ah, du kommst aus Deutschland!

No, I'm not from Germany.

But Ilse is a German name.

Could be, but do all the people named Abdulkarim from Zanzibar?

He hesitates before he says "eeh, yes!" . But, despite his answer, he understands.

And with this tension the lesson starts. It starts with a movie, as always with PADI courses.

This is followed by a quiz, I answer correctly on about all the questions.

Follows the practice. Abdul begins to explain again what I actually just have seen in the movie, but sometimes in he uses his own interpretation. If I ask a questions, he is annoyed. He is the teacher, I am the student, I just have to accept what he says, no questions. It's that simple.

Actually I am not surprised about his behaviour. I have experienced the opposite in Kenya: when I was teaching, no one dared to ask me a question spontaneously, I had to push to my listeners to speak and to be critical. So I keep myself to the most urgent and important questions ...

Practice. Mouth to mouth breathing and chest compressions. To exercise this, Abdul has brought a doll along, or at least the upper body of a first aid doll.

I ask him what her name is. He looks around and then suddenly says "little Anne".

Hmm, I have my doubts: Little Anne has no breasts. I make him aware of, "It can not be a  woman, she has no breasts."

In his eyes I see again that irritation: no questions!

The bag of pop says "little Anne", breasts or no breasts, her name is “little Anne”.

The lips of little Anne get disinfected for mouth-to-mouth breathing and for the chest compression I have to put my hands between the non-breast of Anne. These things can not practiced on living persons.

The last part of the course consists of a few other First Aid tricks: staunching of a bleeding wound, splinting a broken leg or arm, saving someone from suffocation death by choking. Practical exercise this time is don on living people: ourselves.

And especially the latter - choking -  is again sensitive. You have to push up the diaphragm.

Abdul is Muslim, and he cannot touch me, being a woman. So he explains me the exercise first in a theoretical way, than I apply the practice on him.

At the end of the day I get my certificate. But I do wonder what will happen if something happens to me, and I start asking questions to my "saviour" ... would he dare to touch me?

Dove

As usual, I was in a hurry to go from one hotel to the other. Fortunately, the hotels ly in "my street", a long, straight, wide road. Here I can smoothly drive 70Km per hour.

But as always when you're in a hurry - Murphy's Law, right? – there were some obstacles: some goats, a dala dala.

Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic, so I  can overtake the dala dala: I accelerate and... suddenly I see in the middle of the road a dove. I think quickly:  will I braking? Will I dodge more? Or maybe she will fly when she sees me coming?

I opt for the last solution but slightly dodge anyway. I pass the dala dala but I don’t see the pigeon fly.

When I look in my mirror, I see the pigeon on the pavement waving with her wing. A sense of guilt overwhelms me.

Suddenly a boy of about nine years comes from the roadside and runs to the doves.

My guilt fades ... Tonight one family will have meat for dinner...

Africa, you love it or you hate it.

For those who want to know how it is to work in Africa, for those who want to know what it is to work in a place where people have a completely different culture… this is a real, but daily story, of how I work in Zanzibar.

I have written it before: people àre very nice and friendly here. But friendliness has not always much to do with working and knowledge.

As an (over-organised) European, you just have to be patient… and don’t loose your smile in such situations…

So this morning… I arrived at hotel “La Gemma dell’Est”, a 5 star resort in the Nord of the island. As all hotels, they have security at the gate checking who comes in and who goes out of the hotel. As I wear a uniform and I drive always the same car, most hotel guards already know me by now and let me in.

In La Gemma dell’Est it is a bit different. I was stopped by the guard.

Guard: “Good morning. How are you?”

Me: “I am fine thank you.”

I never ask “And how are you?” which is actually a bit rude. But if I ask, another question from his side  will follow (And how is the work today?) and then another (And how is your family?) and another… and there will be no end. And most of the time I am in a hurry.

Guard: “How can I help you?”

Me: “Well, you could help me by opening the barrier.”

Guard: “Where are you going?”

You should realise now that the gate of La Gemma is already 100 inside the territory of the hotel, so there is no other possibility than going to the hotel.

Me: “I am going to ‘The Royal Zanzibar’.”

That is the hotel nearby…

Guard: “Why do you come here?”

Me: “For fun, I just come here for fun.”

It is clear the guard has not understood anything. He looks at me.
I tell him: “Ask me a ‘good’ questions (I cannot use the word ‘intelligent’, that is too difficult for him) and I will give you a good answer.”

And the guard: “Yes madam, so how can I help you?”

Me: “Well, you could help me by opening the barrier.”

Guard: “Where are you going?”

And of course, I do it again: “I am going to ‘The Royal Zanzibar’!”

Guard: “But this is La Gemma dell’Est. Why do you come here? “

Me: “As I told you, I come here for fun.”

All this time I have my uniform, my name tag and behind the front window of my car there is a board with the Thomas Cook and the Neckermann logo.

Fortunately, the guards colleague comes to the gate, he sees me and asks the other guard to open the gate.

He opens the gate, but in his eyes I can still see the questions:” Can I help you? Where are you going? Why do you come here?”

When I leave the hotel, about 45 minutes later, he opens the barrier spontaneously. But the question marks… they are still in his eyes…

Education

We have an animated conversation at the table. Taking about the slowliness of the Zanzibarin people, their stupidity (or maybe this is difference in culture).

It depends all on their education that they are not willing to leanr.

Education? They don’t even receive any education. They are running freely in their villages, educated by everyone and by nobody. They don’t know what discipline is.

Maybe something of this is true.

And than suddenly a young girl passes at the reception of this 5*hotel, wearing only a bikini.

Who is now not well-educated?

I found this picture on facebook. It tells a lot on education, culture,…

Ndimu.

7:30, the restaurant is open since half an hour. I take a place at the managers table and one of the waiters notices that I don’t have a cup. He walks – a walk that is something between the walk of a penguin and a Jamaican musician – towards another table, takes a cup, gives it to me and disappears.

Oh, I get a cup but I don’t get anything to drink.

Some time later a trainee comes to ask if I want coffee.
No, but I would like to have a bottle of water, wìth a glass.

He looks surprised: a glass?

Sic… most of the guests take their bottle of water away, but I want to drink water.

After breakfast I would like to have a cup of tea. I ask another trainee, this time it is a girl, to bring me tea with lemon please.

She disappears and comes back with tea and… milk

What’s this?

Milk!

Did I ask for milk?

No!

So please take away the milk and bring me what I asked for.

She disappears again and I see at her behaviour that she has no intention to return to bring me something else.

When I see her after some minutes I tell her: I’m still waiting for the lemon.  She answers with the typical “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah” and leaves again.

This time she disappears completely and does not return at all.

The other trainee comes by and asks me if I want some more water.

No I don’t, thank you, but maybe you could look for your colleague who is looking for lemon for me.

Are you still waiting for your lemon? The chef, who has joined me, asks me

Eh... yes.

Most probably she doesn’t now what lemon is and she has disappeared for not admitting it.

Starting from tomorrow I will ask for “ndimu”.

                                                                                                          

Many greetings from Zanzibar

Dear all,

After almost three weeks in Zanzibar, here an update of the situation.

Sorry for the impersonal character, but I'm provisionally quite busy making it rather difficult to give everyone a personal message.

How have those almost-three-weeks run?

I spent 2 weeks shadowing Peter, the tour guide that I know from Kenya. It was nice to see him again and since we know each other, the cooperation went very smoothly. In between I also have gone on safari to Tanzania and made some other trips on the island: a spice garden, Stone Town and red colobus monkeys in Jozani National Park. Again some pleasant experiences.

Concerning the work: that seems to be quite a lot. Thomas Cook has save money and instead of 2 tour guides ... there is only 1. And that’s me. This means that I do not only assist the Belgian, Dutch, French and German guests but also the Polish, Czech and Hungarian. Of course I do not speak those languages, but in theory these guests know that they will be assisted only in English, German or French. In practice, it is true that especially the Polish guests do not speak much more than Polish. And me I thought that Polish people are gifted for languages ​​...

In addition, guests do not only com with the Thomas Cook (Condor) flight from Frankfurt on Monday, but they come every day of the week, at any hour of the day with flights from national airlines like Ethiopian or Oman Airlines. That means that every day I have to go somewhere for a welcome meeting.

But not worries: I drive around here with a nice jeep of which the radio only functions when he is willing to function. And that willing is quite often associated with the flatness of the surface. Not so much.
Cattle lies at the leash, the danger of riding down a cow is fairly small. Different situation with the chicken, so I constantly feel like I'm somewhere in the middle of a "chicken run".

Zanzibar is very vast, highways are not available so I am quite a lot of time “on the way”. The furthest hotel is 85 km from the hotel where I live, that is about 1h30 driving. But the scenery is beautiful, especially the palms and banana trees. And lots of crossing wild: goats!

I live in Neptune Pwani hotel, is owned by the same family as the Sentido Neptune hotels which I have worked for in Kenya. That's nice: some colleagues here know colleagues over there. Yet again a small family.

Nice, spacious room, with a clumsy desk and  no BVN (or Rai) on TV. Good food and sea view from my spacious terrace. What do you want to have more in life?

Zanzibar  is Africa, the same and yet different from Kenya.

The same as the people are of the same tribes (mainly Maasai) but different because they are islanders. They are actually even slower than the Kenyans ... But friendly and helpful they are. In this sense no difference.

But to be honest ... I miss the enthusiasm of Kenyans the have for mzungu’s. No children who exuberantly  yel "jambo mama" and wave their hands till they got tired and also the sense of humour is not like in Kenya.

But as this is Africa, so because of their hospitality and cheerfulness it remains a nice destination. You'll also do not see the extreme poverty like in Kenya, there is enough food for everyone, and the vast majority are respectable (clean) dressed, the veiled Muslim women are sometimes tied with coloured scarves.
But: no supermarket on this island. My Thomas Cook boss (a man!) will occasionally come from Kenya and offered me to bring what I need. But how can I explain to him what shampoo and face cream he should buy for me :-)

But ... actually I have all what I need, just like the other Zanzibarians (or how they may be called).  I just had a nice "4 ladies only " dinner at the restaurant of the hotel, in a mix of English, Italian, Swahili, German and French.

Zanzibar is OK!

Many greetings and ...

Ilse