Pemba!

So leaving Mombasa was awesome. Woke up at 6 am to watch the sunrise over the Indian Ocean (awesome). Then, after that, Ian and I played soccer on a dirt pitch between a 500 year old Portuguese fort and the beach, also awesome. THEN. We were off. And by off, I mean a small plane filled with LC students down the coast on a beautiful Swahili day. After arriving in Zanzabar, we spent a good amount of time attempting to get visas to actually be allowed into the country (we eventually ended up paying probably double the amount, oh well...) Our next flight was even smaller and more and probably the coolest thing ever. Each plane only fit 13 and Devin got to sit next to the fucking CAPTAIN. SO JEALOUS. But I still had an amazing time watching the plane fly over Zanzibar, then across the ocean over to Pemba island. Absolutely the most beautiful flight I've ever been on.

Finally, after that awesome day, we arrived in Pemba, all very unaware of the next portion of our adventure. We soon arrived at the guest house close to sunset. I wish the internet was fast enough to upload pictures (or the pictures even did justice) to the most incredible view from a hotel I've ever seen. Picture: Indian Ocean, traditional dhows (Swahili sailing boats), sunset, and (I kid you not) literally 1000's of flying foxes emerging from a tree. Flying foxes, if you don't already know, are the worlds largest species of bats and native only to the island of Pemba. SO COOL. Then, after a talk with our professor, Dave, and a visit from the local woman's representative of parliament for northern Pemba, we were off to bed and off to our homestay's in the morning. We were really only given a few warnings such as that we might not eat for the next few days as well as that we were probably going to be more uncomfortable than we've ever been before. They were pretty right...

I'll preface this section of the blog with the note that you might have heard about the ferry incident off the coast of East Africa a few weeks ago. Yeah, that was this Pemba island. A couple of weeks ago, a week after the end of Ramadan, a ferry carrying almost exclusively people of Pemba island, all coming home after a week of celebration, capsized and killed over 300 people. The ferry was licensed to hold around 600 people and was said to have sank carrying close to 800, but estimates from both survivors and guards on this ship estimate that there could have been up to 1200 with over 500 lives lost. Needless to say, this incident effected the island and tremendous amount. The representative who we talked not only lost her sister in the accident, but 14 members of her family. The communities and families on the island are so close knit that no one wasn't effected by the tragedy.

Because of this, we all went into our homestays with a vibe probably a tad different than years past. We were taught by David the phrase “pole qua msiba” which literally translates to “sorry for your tragedy” and were told to say that upon greeting our families and other members of the village. This was often tough when you could tell someone has lost someone very close, but I feel like this small gesture helped a lot of us integrate into the communities easier and with much more respect than if we hadn't.

Anyyyyyway, all of us were split into 4 villages across the island. Mine happened to be the farthest, most remote, and one that has never hosted students before. This became fairly apparent when most of the younger people had ever seen many white people, let alone interacted with them and I was greeted mainly with stares of confusion for the following 48 hours. The community in itself seemed to be 100 years in the past (aside from my brothers cell phone..) with no electricity or any modern item of the sort. A majority of the time was spent with my host brother who spoke a fair amount of broken English, though, that still didn't seem to help much... In other news, the town of Makangale was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Picture rural tropical setting with palm trees, shamba fields, grass huts, and the Indian Ocean and you've got a vague idea of where I spent those two days.

There was not a moment in Pemba where I had any idea what was going on. Constantly I was in a state of utter confusion as to what was going on, where I was going, when/if I was going to eat, and what everyone was trying to say to me (no one spoke a word of English for the most part). The first night I was told that I was to go fishing with my host brother, which I was SO excited for. As we were going to bed, he told me that we would be fishing at 1. Now, Swahili time is weird, seeing that 1 can either mean 1 or 7 (there days start at sunrise at our 6 am as their 12 am). So, being told that time I still had no idea when we were going fishing. The next morning, after eating an early breakfast, I assumed we were to be off. Instead though, we sat on the beach from a good few hours as we waited for the tide to rise to push the dhow into the ocean. Dhows, by the way, are the most gorgeous boats ever made and I was getting so exited to sail in one around the Indian ocean in a fishing extravaganza. Thennnn, just as I thought we were going to go fishing finally, we went back home to eat lunch. As we got back into the cow cart (the main form of transportation on Pemba) we began to ride towards the other side of the peninsula to apparently meet my host father to go fishing with him. To make a long story short, my promised experience of night fishing turned out to be me sitting in a small canoe as my host dad spear fished hundreds of yards away from the boat. Not. Chill.

I was fairly mad that my Pemba experience turned out to be dull and not all too eventful for myself, especially after I heard some of the cool fishing stories of the guys in the other villages. But, even with that, my sitting on the beach waiting for the tide to rise experience was something any of the girls would have dreamed of doing. For the women in the homes, they are constantly on their toes to mend to the house, mend to the fields, and cook the food. All while wearing ridiculously hot head scarfs and similar full body coverings. Many of the girls got sick from heat exhaustion and had one of the most uncomfortable experiences of their lives. Some only were fed once the whole time, and the another took a shower outside as the whole village watched in awe. Katie's family was even the head of a major drug cartel for our village. So she spent a good amount of her days harvesting, packaging, and selling pot to the villages (they're not sending students back to that home next year...).

All and all a lot more is going on in Pemba but it's really too hard to put it all down. It's an amazing place that has a done a great job of not having much if any influence from western culture for hundreds of years. They people there are some of the most odd and confusing people I've ever met, but I'm sure I can say that they thought the same about us. Anyway, after 2 days and 2 nights sleeping on beds made out of rope and not knowing what was going on ever, we were picked up from our homestays and reunited to discuss heavily about how odd our experiences were. We were then dropped off at the most beautiful beach I've ever seen to relax and enjoy ourselves in the ocean as a group for the first time since we arrived on the coast. We ended our 4^th day and our time in Pemba at a small hotel on the southern tip of the island. After watching the sun set behind the ocean we were off to bed for an early ferry ride to Zanzibar!