Zanzigap - Tgon's Travels

This week I have been settling in to my routine which will continue for the next month or so. I get some breakfast and ride down to the beach by bicycle, I take my laptop so that I can use the internet in the hotel. I teach the staff in the hotel at 12 each day, English Monday to Wednesday and IT on Thursdays and Fridays, then just after 1pm I get a free meal with the staff. I ride back into the village ready to teach from 3pm while 5, these lessons are with students from Makunduchi Secondary school. I have three classes to teach during the afternoons, two of them are IT classes and one is English. After 5pm my time is my own, I usually relax in the house then cook my evening meal.

I also met my best friend from when I lived here before, Mussa Kiongo, he is now a teacher and he asked me to go into his school to speak to his class. So one morning, on my way to the beach, I called in to his school. I answered a few questions and then ended up drawing maps of Europe and Africa on the board, asking the students to name each country I have visited. My house mate Mohammed has spent the last week or so travelling around Zanzibar with his brother, he had already paid for his food to be delivered to the house and decided not to cancel it, so that I could eat it. Luckily they didn’t bring his food, the food he has been getting is not good, sometimes it seems like they have intentionally brought him the worst of the available food. The lack of this bad food forced me to start cooking for myself, I wanted to eat well as I had not eaten properly for a week or so while I was ill. So I have been cooking tuna pasta and my favourite meal at the moment, potatoes sautéed with onions and garlic, served with scrambled eggs with onion, tomato and sausage inside. The food seems to be working well as I am feeling much stronger and full of energy.

The only problem in my daily routine is the power goes off at around 8:15 until 9:30 most evenings which has caught me in the middle of boiling potatoes once or twice. As for my other side projects, I haven’t found a definite buyer for the motorbike yet, although there are a few people who have shown an interest. I also still need to find a job in India, I have a little over a month until I am supposed to leave Tanzania but I already have a contact for one job in the North of India but I am still looking for something in Delhi or Varanasi. Happy 18th Birthday to my brother Connor!

I started week 51 by moving out of the hotel and back into my old house in the village. There was also a guy called Mohammed arriving from England on the same day, he will be here for two months to teach in the school, his time here was organised through Zanzigap. We spent the first week travelling to the neighbouring villages and looking around the school. Mohammed was observing classes in preparation for his own lessons, I was waiting for confirmation of my own teaching job. About half way through the week my job was confirmed and I was asked to start as soon as possible. Unfortunately I started to feel ill towards the end of the week, at first it was just stomach cramps which I ignored thinking it was the normal kind of stomach issues people have from time to time when travelling. At the end of the week Mohammed’s brother arrived for a holiday, the first night he stayed in town, then the next day we went to Jambiani.

By the time we got back from Jambiani I was feeling worse, the stomach cramps were now joined by headaches and fever. As I’m not taking any anti-malaria medication I have been on the look out for fever as this is one of the symptoms of malaria. I decided to go to the hospital and get a malaria test, it was negative, but I told them that I had been to Malawi recently and could possibly have got Bilharzia while I was there. Luckily I had already bought the medication in Malawi and was planning on taking it soon anyway. They told me to take the pills and see how I felt after a few days. The Bilharzia treatment is a one time dose, the size of which depends on your weight, the pills flood your bloodstream and kill the parasites, but can also cause stomach cramps and headaches. Luckily I didn’t get the stomach cramps but I did get a terrible headache, I spent the day in bed trying to sleep through it.

It has been a few days since I took the pills and I am feeling better, now the only problem is that I haven’t eaten properly for a week and have lost weight. I just need to cook myself some nutritious meals and I should be fine. Obviously I haven’t started teaching yet because I have been ill, but I should start teaching this week. As for my other arrangements, the Namibian government have transferred my money and I have had a couple of offers on the bike. The offers were a little lower than I am looking for (about £200 lower) but I’m in no hurry yet. As for making arrangements for India, I met a girl who spent some time working for an organisation in northern India, she sent an email to one of her friends there who has offered a job. We haven’t talked about wages yet but I have time to look for other jobs if this one doesn’t work out, at least it’s a start.

Tag: Zanzigap

Week 53: Settling in to Makunduchi life

Weeks 51 & 52: A Year on the road