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Published: August 20th 2010
Hello hello!
DENTIST TRIP:
Well we are on the island of Zanzibar currently and I am recovering from lasts nights emergency dental work. As it turns out my last filling somehow came loose when eating some caramels. I had managed to eat an astonishing 12 of them at the same time but I lost my filling in the mean time. Additionally I had another cavity near the first infected tooth, so at 9pm (after the dentist ate his evening meal as it is Ramadan now and everyone here is fasting all day long) we arrived to a rural dental clinic on Zanzibar.
The dentist, speaking only a little English, sat me down and I opened my mouth. In about 5 seconds with no anesthetic he started drilling out my tooth. I was like WHOA and convinced him to use a small bit of anesthetic which after some wrangling he gave me. It didnt help much though as he was drilling away about 10 seconds later, the anesthetic not setting in until after we had left anyhow. As he drilled into my mouth the cold tingling went all thru my body. Interestingly he did not even have glasses or magnifyers and the lighting was poor. I had to bring my own water to rinse and spit with and the drill was run by a generator. To dry my mouth and remove the excess saliva he crammed my mouth full of cotton.
In the end my filling seems okay and I am only in mild pain now. The total charge was less than US 30 dollars (6 times the rate that the locals pay). This morning during breakfast I realized my tongue wasn't as swollen as I first thought.. It was a last cotton ball that was still under my tongue!
ZANZIBAR: This island is fascinating! Until 1964 it was an Omani territory. The revolutionaries overthrew that govt then and established Zanzibar as an independent country that year but less than 12 months later it joined mainland Tanginyiku to form the new country of TanZanIYA. Yesterday we went to a spice tour seeing everything growing from cloves, to cinamon to cardomon and tumeric. We also ate a ton of different fruits including the a Jack fruit which is like a banana-pineapple combo and a custard apple which is like apple custard, literally! We also went to the former slave house.
SLAVE HOUSE: this is really a terrible story. The Arabs living here collected slaves from deep in East Africa. While chained together they were marched out to the sea carrying ivory, skins and other things of value. If they couldnt make it they were left chained to a tree to be eaten by lions and other wild life. Then they made the journey over to Zanzibar on a ship crammed in there. Then in rooms about 5 feet by 10 or so, they were crammed in 50 men to a room and left isolated for 2-3 days with no water or food. Then they were taking to the whipping post and whipped to determine their price. The ones who cried the least were the bravest/strongest and fetched the best price. Those who survived the 2-3 day isolation crammed in the small cellar were the ones whipped for the pricing. If they cried a lot they were not purchased and slaughtered directly. There was amazingly enough nearly a 50% survival rate from capture in Africa until their sale.. A very sad history ending only in 1873.
Today we went out to prison island, (never actually used as a prison) and saw some amazingly old tortoises; some as old as 200 years! We fed them greenery which they happily munched on. I'll try to post pix at some point but my computer is back in Dar el Salaam so perhaps in a few days. Soon we go to Arusha (Mt Kilamanjaro) and the Serengedi! Hope everyone is doing well!
-Adam and Laura
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Amy
non-member comment
oy - a dental nightmare
Adam, For future reference add a temporary dental filling kit to your medicine bag. It's available at the drugs stores in the US and will hold you till you reach somewhere more civilized to get a more permanent filling. That sounded like a nightmare and I hope his sanitation was ok and that is the end of the story.