Sauti za Busara

Sauti za Busara (Sound of Wisdom) Zanzibar music festival……Simply unbelievable.

Wednesday morning I first went to teach English at the primary school. I may have not mentioned this in my last blog, but I am now teaching English at the primary school also. I teach the 7th grade and I love it!!! They are really fun and seem to pick up English fairly well so far. I teach Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. Then I go to continue teaching at the secondary school in the afternoon.

So after my 8am class, I went to my house, got my bag, and headed to town to go to Zanzibar that afternoon! I got to Zanzibar around 5pm. When I got in, I met my friends at the hostel and went out to dinner. There were so many of us, like 20 volunteers on the island. It was so cool!!

That first night we got dinner in the gardens and had Zanzibar pizza and sugarcane juice…so GOOD.

Then around 7pm we went into the Old Fort (really big, really old castle) where the festival was being held. The festival started every day at 5pm, so it was already going when we got in but the first bands are not as good as the ones that follow. When we got in we had so much fun…great music of all types and from all different countries, good company, dancing, drumming, and all sorts of instruments. We had an outstanding time!! That night, we stayed at the festival until the end and left to go to the hostel around 2am.

For the next few days of the festival we pretty much did the same thing every day, which was wake up around 10am, eat free breakfast at the hostel, go to the beach, swim/tan, get dinner, shower, go to the festival around 7pm, have crazy amounts of fun, and then go home around 2a -4a. Seriously tough schedule. Rinse and repeat.

The only deviation to this wonderful schedule was one day I went with a friend to The Slave Museum and the History Museum. Bothe museums were really interesting, especially The Slave Museum because it was so tough to think about what happened there. Later, we also did some shopping and ate Italian for dinner. I got all kinds of great stuff: a super cute ring, hat, paintings, a watercolor painting, Zanzibar spices, a hand-carved Zanzibar chest made out of mahogany wood (so beautiful!), a hand-carved frame made out of ebony wood, and a little hand-carved name plate with my name on it (that was actually a free gift from the designer!).

The last night of the festival was Sunday the 13th. Monday morning I did the usual and slept in and ate breakfast, but then had to pack and leave my wonderful island that afternoon…but we shall meet again :)

Now I am back in my village busy as ever and have already resumed teaching, organizing health clubs, and living village life as usual……

But to come…..
- Mt Kilimanjaro half marathon in less than 2 weeks.
- My dearest Evan is coming to visit in April!!!
- COS (Close of Service) conference is May 3rd. (This is when we will be choosing our COS dates to leave the country, which is going to be crazy because a lot of people want the same dates and only 4 people can COS per day…it’s going to be a battle haha)
- And finally July 18th I will be leaving here for America (if I get the date I want?!?!).

Exciting news!! I got offered an interview with University of Denver!! We will be conducting a phone interview March 26th, YAY. I haven’t heard from University of South Dakota yet, but it’s still really early. More info TBA.

Last thing and it’s random. I am now the new coach for the Secondary School’s Netball team. A bit of an explanation: Netball is similar to Basketball, but different rules and weird. I know what you are thinking; you’re thinking ‘how do you even know the rules are different when you don’t even know the rules of basketball and have never played the sport in your life.’ Haha, very true though. Well, the thing is that there is only one coach and he always coaches the boys (who play soccer) and forgets about the girls. So I am just helping them get in shape, conduct practices, encourage them to stay active in sports, and increase their self esteem. I have watched the sport a lot so I just focus on the moves they make and help them make them better and faster. Fun times.

Happy Valentine’s day, J