I have discovered a new side of shopping; bartering! It is the most fun thing ever! If you want to buy something, you ask how much for one, then for two, then for three. If you think it's too much, or you just want a better price you tell them how much you want it for. In Tanzania, they use shillings; 1500 shillings=1 Canadian dollar. So, let's say you're buying a shirt at the market. You're blue, the vendor is pink. "How much for 1?" "15,000 shillings." "For two?" "22,000 shillings" then you say, "too much." "How much you want for? ask!" "Two for 20,000 or 1 for 9,000." If they say no, you just turn your back, and then they give it to you for about 1,000 more than you asked. It is so fun! I wish it was like that at Thrifty's. "$4 for oreos?! That's too much. How about 2$?" "Okay, $2.50" "No, $2, or else I'm not buying it." "Okay, $2." That would be great. Any ways, the day before yesterday, we visited our sponsor child, Leila, about two hours with traffic out of Dar Es Salaam. First we picked up 10 kilos each of sugar, beans, rice, and laundry soap, and some oil at the local market for a gift for her family. We stopped at Leila's school, and the class always recites a song/chant/shout when visitors come, but it was in kiswahili, so I don't know what it was. We gave the teacher a big bag of lollipops for the kids, and then we took Leila to show us her house and family. On the way to her house, we picked up her little brother who was with a big group of kids who tried to start the car by pushing it and running after it. We arrived at their house, which was mud walls and banana leaf roof with no electricity or toilet, and we met a lot of neighbour kids, her grandmother, her mother, her father, the neighbours father, her brothers etc. Leila, we found out after her mom looked it up in her book, was born on exactly the same day as Kali, and the same year. We asked Leila what she liked to do, and she said soccer( whig is good, because I gave a soccer ball to her PE teacher), skip rope, and drawing, which is like Kali also. We decided when we get home we are going to send her skip ropes, a dress, and some pencil crayons. Leila was very shy and she was so cute, just like Kali (Well, people tell me that, I'm not sure, but Leila was definitely cute) and she kept handing out the suckers we gave her to the little kids. She lived on a kasava farm, which is sort of like a potato, and it tastes really good raw. After we had met with her family, we went for a long ride back to Dar Es Salaam. It was a really fun day, and I'm glad we met our sponsor child, because it's really an eye-opener.
Hello, everybody, We came back from safari about three days ago, and a lot has happened since then, but I will fill you in on that later... We went on safari for five days, with our amazing guide, Godfrey, a few articles of clothing, and a Toyota land cruiser. We stayed at some amazing places; on coffee plantations, in the middle of the Serengeti with hyenas and zebras outside our tent, and in lush tropical forests with elephants coming to eat the vegetables from the organic gardens. Enough of that, here is what we saw and did... This is a family of elephants we saw three times in Lake Manyara park. There were two babies in the family, and the smaller one was only two months old. They were so beautiful, and they were all protecting the babies. Me outside the Serengeti An old cape Buffalo A baby baboon on mama's back Three of 10 cheetas we saw. Two lion cubs One of many giraffes we saw This mother has two cubs. A rare serval cat One of three leopards we saw A yawning hippo! Baby baboons playing A rare black rhino An old elephant-maybe 60 years?
We have been so lucky to go and see animals such as the leopards, the serval cat, the cheeta, and many more. Our guide was amazing, so thanks to him, we have seen these awesome animals. If anyone has questions, or would like to see photos of anything else we may have seen, afeard (I'm reading Tom Sawyer) to ask. We have thousands of photos, so seriously, just ask and I will post them for you. Any questions really... This morning at 6:30 we got up to go snorkelling. We got wetsuits and fins( and we had our own snorkels) at our fancy dancy hotel and then headed off to the West garden reef. Our guides name was Seif, pronounced "safe," so I figured we were gonna be fine. We saw some incredible fish, squid, dolphins, and moray eels. Seif was not being so safe when ha started diving down to poke the moray eel and telling us to jump on to wild dolphins. It was amazing, and they were so close. Our guide We asked him if moray eels were dangerous, and he laughed and said they only bite if their life is being threatened! Then we saw dolphins and he said jump, jump! So we panicked and just jumped off the boat to see dolphins. It was sooooooo cool and they were really close, but they were also very fast, so Seif kept picking us up on to the boat and catching up to them and then jumped in with us. It was really really awesome. We went snorkelling at a different spot, and there were tons and tons of fish; pufferfish, box fish, trumpet fish, parrot fish, sea snakes, trigger fish, clown fish, moray eels, Dori fish, etc. It was amazing. Unfortunately my camera battery wore out and I couldn't take photos of the second spot, where there were more fish than the first spot, but oh well. I also got stung like a zillion times by bluebottle jellyfish, and my arms and legs are all red and puffy, but it was so worth it, even if it hurt a ton. Moray eel sea snake view from the boat underwater with dolphins Trumpet fish
The airport in Zanzibar was one room, so you couldn't get lost, which was fine by me. We got our luggage and went outside in the heat. There, we met my Mom's good friend/colleague Caroline who had been living there for a year. We stayed with her for 5 nights, and it happened to be her last 6 nights before she went home to Victoria. She fought us how to speak engliswahili... When local people talk to us in english, they add i to a lot of words, and we are not sure if they are doing that for us, or if thats just how they speak english. For example; You walk by a little shop and they say..."You're welcome! You have a free looki in my shopi! Free looki! Anyways, its not too hard to communicate, you just add an i. Caroline showed us around stone town, her favourite taxi driver, her favourite shops, etc... It is a very different world from Canada. You are never ever not sweaty and sticky, and you can't even brush your teeth or wash your toothbrush with tap water, so its sort of akward to brush your teeth or cook. Here are some of the things we did with Caroline's advice: Stone TownThe doors of Stone Town are spiky so that elephants couldn't Outside a shop playing with a little girl. get in during the time of the Sultan There are tons of kids in the narrow alleys playing with plastic bottles and such. This girl had an old ball. Prison IslandI don't know why.... Just for the photo, I don't know why... Toirtoises on Prison Island. We went over to the island on a dhow, an old wooden boat handmade by locals, like the ones in the photos. Our's was named Jambo. We also went snorkelling off the dhow, and I need to download the photos, so I will put them up in a bit. The tortoises were up to 180 years old. Soccer!!!!
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