Holiday Rewind

Thanks to our awesome field director who happens to have handy connections in Zanzibar I got to spend Christmas in a tropical paradise with the other volunteers for our mid-service conference.

Zanzibar is actually a group of islands including the main island called Unguja and Pemba, a smaller island to the north. Zanzibar is the birthplace of Swahili language and culture. It has many cultural influences from Eastern Africa as well as from the Middle East due to its location. The island was an important part of the slave trade and you can visit caves where slaves were hidden after slavery became illegal but the slave trade continued. Zanzibar is also sometime called "The Spice Island" due to the many spice plantations located in the islands interior.

On Christmas Eve I took the ferry from Dar es Salaam into Stone Town, the capital city of Zanzibar. The trip only takes 2-3 hours depending on the speed of the ferry you are on. Here is the view from the ferry as you are approaching Stone Town:


One of Stone Town's charms is its maze of streets and alleyways that you can wander through for hours. It reminded me a lot of Venice (minus the canals). And I found that as long as I kept heading in the direction of wherever I was trying to go I eventually got there.



Another charm are the beautifully carved wooden doorways that you will see as you are wandering through the streets.

Stay tuned for more stories about Zanzibar...

Debate Club

A new addition to the English Club starting in January this year is the weekly debates. In an effort to create a medium for all students (science and art) to improve their English communication skills the headmaster would like to see all of the Form V classes participating in a weekly debate. Every Saturday two classes debate a motion given to them by their debate team secretary. So far they have been very interesting to listen to and the debates give the students a great platform for practicing their English and presentation skills.


The motions so far have been:

Africa's people are the cause of its own underdevelopment.

and

Co-educational schools are better than single sex schools.

Congratulations Form VI!

Our Form VI students just had their graduation ceremony last week and it was a pretty big event. Family members from all over the country came to congratulate the graduates on completing their secondary education. After a four hour ceremony everyone got to enjoy a delicious meal of pilau, chicken, beef, rice, kachumbari, bananas and soda.


On Monday and for the next several weeks the students will start taking their National Exams on their class subjects. Good luck Form VI!

Books!

Thanks to everyone who donated to our Library Project! So far we have raised $2,620.00 -- but its not too late if you would still like to donate to the Library at Kibiti Secondary School just visit our website: http://www.firstgiving.com/kibiti

On Tuesday last week we went with the headmaster of the school to make our first book purchase at Tanzania Book Support Trust - a local NGO.