As it was the first time in Stonetown for all of us and the festival doesn’t kick off until the late afternoon, we took the opportunity to expore the city, starting off with the market. Once we found it (got lost so many times until finally a nice Zanzibari woman guided us out of the little side streets), we were quite disappointed. The smell from fish and meat was revolting. I also had pictured spice stalls like on Middle Eastern markets. Zanzibar is called the ‘Spice Island’ and it produces large amounts of clove, lemongrass and so on. But that was for sale were little plastic bags and little souvenir boats filled with five different spices. Then a proper tropical thunderstorm started and transformed the town centre into a second Venice - the little alleys become ... read more

There is a serious shortage of places to go outside Dar, that are less than at least four hours drive, if you discount the beaches. I know, it’s a great privilege to have some amazing beaches right outside the city. But with being in a different country for a limited time, you want to go and explore places and it gets a little boring just going to the beach every weekend. The various guide books mentioned the nearby Pugu Hills as a destination for some hikes and a nice place to hang out. It didn’t sound amazing, but as we couldn’t think of anything better and Ane-Kristine, my Danish colleague had recommended it as well, we wanted to give it a try. We booked ahead, as they won’t let you just turn up at the gate. ... read more

Time to write something about my placement again! Like the print editorial team, the TV team has an annual two day workshop to reflect on the previous year and to plan for the next. While they had an outside facilitator the previous year, this time it was up to me to set-up and conduct it. I’ve taken part in countless workshops before, but I never conducted one myself before, so this was my chance to put the facilitation techniques we practiced at the VSO training back in Harbourne Hall into action. I invited about 15 people - the TV team, the Matatizo Production team, the Executive Director, department heads. We went to Coral Beach Hotel like for the senior management retreat the previous month. It started off well with us getting their nicer conference room. I ... read more

With the usual 24-hour entry rule we planned for a game drive in the early morning and a second one in the late afternoon. With the camp only 10min from the gate, we didn’t have far to go to get started. But our joyful mood was dented, when we bumped into Katie and Kenny, who were scanning the forest with other people for dead animals - it turned out the monkeys we saw the previous evening weren’t drunk, they had been poisoned! We offered to help them search, but Katie assured us, they had enough people, so we were not needed. With the huge size of Selous in mind and a friend from work telling me of people getting lost, we hired a guide to come in the car with us. After endless paperwork and formularities ... read more

The last few days before Christmas the office and Dar altogether started getting more and more quiet. Christian or not, as Christmas means public holidays Tanzanians and expats alike take the opportunity to leave the city. I found it hard to get into Christmas mood, it had been getting continuously hotter and more unbearably humid, so Christmas was really the last thing that crossed my mind. I keep on forgetting it’s winter in the Northern half of the world and wonder when watching the news why people in London or Rome are dressed in thick coats, then it hits me again… It’s hard to keep track of the seasons here, as I haven’t seen much of a difference, well it was either hot and humid or very hot and humid. Originally I hadn’t planned to go ... read more