Life in Stone Town

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I decided that I needed in include some details about my daily life in stone town. First all, I have been asked a lot about clothes and laundry. Yea, about that...I wear the same clothes for about 3 or 4 days usually before even consider washing them. I am getting really good at wearing FILTHY clothes. Like absolutely disgusting actually. We wear long skirts, and I have recently adopted wrapping a kanga over mine when I go out. Getting clothes made has been a favorite activity here, so many of the girls are wearing tons of dresses that they have had made here. We wash our clothes in the sink, good thing I have the sink stopper. At the Mauwani we can pay to have them wash our clothes. I usually have a few pieces washed by them, but I do most of it myself. I am leaving pretty much all my brought clothes here...underwear especially. Everything is so gross. I am going to have a serious shopping excursion when I get home. I have not really been wearing the skirts I bought all that much. This week has been an exception. I have been wearing mostly these huge mumu bag dresses that I love and are super cheap...like $5 here. They are super unflattering but totally acceptable here. I love them! I stopped wearing my headscarf after Ramadan was over. Now it is so hot I cannot even imagine wearing one. In the evenings I typically wear long pants (the Victoria secret ones are amazing!) with a long sleeved shirt and a scarf around my shoulders...even though it is usually about 80 degrees still.

Days here usually consist of us working either at IMS, in an internet cafe, or the office doing ISP prep, or this week we were writing our massive final essays. Mine was 10 pages single spaced on legal paper with no margins. My hand was in so much pain after that. We have no real schedule most of the time, so we can shop, go take a nap, or study whenever we want. We are all in a frantic rush this week to get everything tied together for four weeks of total independence, and that is a long intense process!

Being in Stone Town has been a lot of fun because we are able to eat at all these different places for lunch and dinner. My new favorite is this little shop owned by a tiny Indian lady called Luis Yoghurt Palace. She and her husband opened it 15 years ago and it was a favorite place for expats and students. However, after her husband died she closed for 6 years and went back to India, and just reopened recently. Her shop is no longer in the tour books and there is so much big tourism here (paying hasslers to bring tourists to their restaurants) that her business is really suffering. I have been there for lunch everyday this week almost! She has amazing food: I love the vegetarian thali. It is about $4 for a huge plate of food and a milkshake. She makes all her yogurt by hand daily. It is so good! I have also discovered another restaurant that has sticky date pudding...so good! Last night I finally tracked down the basic recipe and I cannot wait to try to make it.

We leave for Misali on Monday, assuming that we are granted permission to be there by then. We are currently caught up in African red tape. Nothing moves fast. The other three gals and I are trying to plan out all the things we need to buy for food and our camp, and really need to get moving on taking tent inventory. There are some holes that we need to repair before we go. I am also putting the finishing touches on my ISP proposal. I have been spending a lot of time pouring over books about coral reef communities, and am so excited to actually get in the water! Research on the reef for three weeks is going to be so cool.

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Photos

view from the Chavda
I would go here for dinner alone and watch the sunset from the rooftop restraunt

hanging out
me and Eshe...and a random security guard

stony tangawezi!!!
we were all additcted to this amazing ginger soda

cats
we passed them everyday on the way to IMS