TANZANIA

After almost missing my connecting flight in Doha and 20 hours of traveling (not counting my 20 hour layover in New York) I'd finally arrived in Dar es Salaam.

The first thing I did was explore the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. In the lobby there was a welcome table laid out with fresh coconuts, upstairs there was an infinity pool, a 24 hour gym, free sauna and steam room access, and a beautiful view of the sunset on the rooftop bar.

Immediately after, I knocked out; I was exhausted.

When I woke up, I walked around with my roommate to find some food. Neither of us were too hungry so we stopped for some street food bites. I learned my first food in Kiswahili: chapati, a flatbread. I'd be picking up vocabulary during the whole trip. Fish is samaki, goat is nguzi, chicken is kuku and my roommate and I learned what ugali was the hard way.

The next day we headed over to a restaurant for lunch and before we left we asked out professor what he recommended for vegetarians. He confidently recommended ugali, which he said was a kind of porridge; when I think of porridge, I think of soup or oatmeal. So when my roommate ordered it and a big ball of dough was brought out we were a little confused, we both assumed it would be like a dumpling, something with a filling. It had no filling. We were bamboozled. I'm sure the restaurant staff was laughing at us cutting up the ugali with a fork and knife: stupid tourists (you're supposed to use it to grab and eat your food). To note, while the vegetarians on the trip always got food they could eat, it was not always plentiful.

In short, learn some of the language before you travel to a new country. Some important terms and situations to know are several greeting phrases, please, thank you, you're welcome, basic numbers, bartering phrases, directional phrases, the name of your street, and some foods. Kiswahili is really easy to pick up since it's so phonetic and it will make your trip way better (and likely cheaper).

Part of our scheduling was a brief lecture about the history of Tanzania, a city tour, and a visit to Village Museum. I may add a history section later, after I read Ujamaa by Julius Nyerere. The Village Museum was an experience. They showed us examples of housing that different native nomadic tribes build and informed us of some (likely false) burial practices and how conflicts are resolved by consensus between parties or by elder judgment. At the end there was a traditional dance that all of the students were eventually pulled into.

The next day classes started -- it was more of a conference where different people presented their research on the impacts of climate change (in general and specifically to Tanzania), some proposed solutions, and future research projects. It was an incredibly long day sitting for hours and sometimes, since some of the research was really technical, indecipherable terms would go in one ear and out the other. Some of it was really interesting mainly, I thought, the stuff about flooding, costal resilience, and how it would affect impoverished areas.

I think enough people complained about the super long day enough, that it seemed we were sticking to the time schedule way better. Throughout the trip we visited COSTECH and the TMA (the latter of which was my favorite), had a couple more guest lecturers, and a lot of time dedicated to working on our projects.

We were split up into teams, and the goal was to have a parliamentary budget meeting, where all teams would debate the importance, and thus budgetary allowance, of their goals and needs. The teams were split up into different government sectors such as infrastructure, services, tourism, industry, and agriculture. I think the goal was a bit too lofty; not only for us to become fully knowledgable in our sectors (given the breadth of each), but also to learn realistic budget expansions and which budget to advocate cuts from (which would imply needing to know enough about the other sectors as well). Overall, I enjoyed the experience even though it was a bit inconclusive. We also sang karaoke after. We introduced the Tanzanians to some classic white people songs.

On our off time, we went Tanzanite shopping (which I recommend doing in Dar, it's way cheaper), shopping in general at local markets, swimming in the hotel pool, and to visit the beach and tourist towns of the northern part of Dar es Salaam (Oyster Bay, Coco Beach, and Masaki). We really liked the restaurant/bar Samaki Samaki, Fish and More. The night we went, there was karaoke, and we were going to go up to only realize that the karaoke singers were belting Celine Dion, and hitting all the notes.

To get there you have to take some kind of transportation. Taxi is the safest, but most expensive. You also have the option to take boda bodas, motorcycle taxis, or tuk tuks (or bajajs), a motorized rickshaw. We mostly used the latter after learning we could cram 5 people into them for pretty cheap. You can also take dala dalas, minibuses, but we never figured out how those worked.

So to get to Zanzibar from Dar es Salaam you can fly or take the ferry like we did. Unfortunately, I fell asleep on the ferry but it's supposedly a very pretty trip. We had a very chaotic arrival in Zanzibar since you have to go through something like immigration (even though it's a domestic trip). Afterwards, we got on buses and drove along the entire west coast of the island to arrive to our hotel.

Entering the hotel was magical, we walked through a vibrant green foliage-covered pathway and then the view opened up to a beach bungalow sitting on a beautiful sprawling white sand beach. Some daily activities were talking walks or bike rides along the beach, playing soccer with locals, and kayaking.

The magic wore off on me after a day or two: nested away started to feel more like isolated. Don't get me wrong, the hotel and location was still beautiful and I woke up every morning for the sun to rise over the water, had a yummy breakfast, and then went kayaking. But the island is pretty big, definitely not something you could walk around in a day (unlike some tour guide had previously mentioned). Pretty much the only place we could be was the hotel, and maybe its because I'm from Florida, but there's only so much you can do at the beach. It also just wasn't nearly as cheap as Dar to get around, so it's not like we could just leave ($100 for an hour taxi).

Fortunately there were some excursions included in the trip and we headed to Stone Town, which I loved and would have gotten lost in if not for the guides. It's a labyrinth of alleyways still decorated with a lot of the old Arab and Indian architecture. We spent the day walking around listening to the tour guide explaining how to notice different patterns in the historic doors. We had a bit of free time and bought some more souvenirs, but all in all Dar was the cheapest place to do so.

Later we went to Jozani Forest wandering through mangrove forests and later a jungle where we got to see some cute monkeys and huge trees. I wish the guava had been in season so we could have gotten to try some, I miss my guava tree.

Another day, we had a free day, and I could have opted to stay at the hotel, but obviously I didn't do that. We arranged a (pretty expensive) taxi to pick us up and take us to Nungwi Beach as three of us had arranged to go horseback riding in the ocean. That same day, another group had arranged to go on a spice tour (where they got to buy locally made perfume oils 😭).

While we thought the beach our hotel was on was pretty, Nungwi beach was gorgeous. The water was so blue and so clear and best of all there were people and businesses. Anyhow, my friends and I went to get our horses, we assured the lady that we had all ridden horses before (we had not), and made our way out into the water. I was pretty surprised that we were riding bareback butt we got on the horses anyway and it was pretty damn hard to balance and lead the horse in the water. At one point, I must've done something or my horse, Safari, just got spooked and it started sprinting. I squeezed my legs as hard as possible and leaned forward, and while I was scared I wasn't going to be able to stay on, that was definitely the highlight of my experience (also Safari just pooped in the water while he was walking, that was also an experience).

We hung out at the beach a little while longer, explored a little bit, and bought some souvenirs. We called the taxi back to take us to Mnarani Turtle Conservatory, a natural spring where some native turtles are kept for conservation efforts. We got in the water with turtles of all sizes and some small fish, occasionally employees would throw in some kelp for the turtles and all the turtles would swarm the area. We eventually had to leave because we had to get back to the hotel for a lecture on network theory and transportation system vulnerability to flooding. There was also an effort to do a coding demonstration but none of us had working wifi, so it didn't really work out.

All in all, it was a good day - but tragedy stuck the next. The previous night Aidan had a 103 degree fever (reportedly 106), which freaked me out a lot and I think I went to bed early. I woke up really achey, and kind of chalked it up to the horseback riding and went to breakfast. About half the group was going snorkeling that day but I decided to stay at the hotel and explore the village. I really wasn't feeling good after breakfast so I got back in bed, planning to wake up in an hour.

I did not wake up an hour later. When I woke up and it was light out, I thought I had slept until the next morning - it had been 30 minutes. Enough said that I did not get to explore the village.

I had developed an 103 degree fever and was in and out of sleep all day. I had a cooling towel with ice that I'd placed behind my neck and on my head to try around cool myself down, but my fever just wasn't breaking. There was also a covid scare going around so everyone was taking tests. I took and ibuprofen and later when that did nothing I took a Tylenol. Finally, my fever broke around 6pm and I was covid negative. Apparently all day, people were having stomach issues and I started to have some too after my fever broke. I think about half of us ended up with food poisoning and we're still not really sure from where...

The next day we had to leave. While I can't say that Zanzibar was my favorite experience of all the places we went, I think that the circumstances that I was there under, didn't lead to the best experience for me. I would definitely go back and maybe next time stay in a more populated area, like Stone Town or Nungwi, and learn how to ride the dala dalas which are the cheapest way to get around Zanzibar. Like I said, its such a big island, and I'd love to explore it some more.

Off to Arusha! We took a quick plane ride and arrive at our hotel. I still wasn't feeling great so I wasn't doing much and I definitely wasn't taking pictures, so I have very few pictures of Arusha.

We were supposed to be doing our second war games here but instead of representing national sectors, teams represented different national bodies and interests: such as the IMF, the UN, Tanzanian import partners, export partners, and Tanzania. Instead of debating on budget, we debate on fair and equitable policies for development.

I think this project was way better scoped which led to better debates. The only thing was that people would get confused on what was being debated. Again this happened because if A and B are debating and A wants x and B wants y, then A also has to be knowledgable on y and how itself and vise versa. I think the Dialogue could have benefited from more general lectures, such as on various climate policy solutions (e.g. carbon tax, carbon credits, etc).

Then we left for our safaris! Since most days were the same, I don't have a lot to write about, but I do have a lot of pictures. Most days consisted of getting up pretty early, driving around the parks during the day, and going to a new hotel almost every night.

During the safaris, we'd get so close to the animals. Shout out to both my drivers Godfried and Godwin, we saw some rare twin baby elephants and got to see four of the Big 5 (unless you count hardly seeing rhinos through binoculars, then we saw all five). We went to Tarangire National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, Olduvai, Grumeti Hills, and Serengeti National Park, of course. It was also peak season, so we got to see parts of the great migration.

The hotels we stayed at were so nice. They would greet us with some small welcome drink, usually iced tea or fruit juice, and they were beautifully located. Surprisingly, I never had the feeling that I had in Zanzibar, of being isolated, even though we were literally in the middle of nowhere. I think it was because we were never at the hotels for long enough for me to get antsy.

Our last assignment while we were on the trip was to read an assigned book and give a book report to the class. My book was Rethinking AI, read my thoughts here. I really enjoyed the presentations so much so that I fell back in my seat :)