wednesday

oh, relief, how you freely flood my brain this hot afternoon.

today has been awesome so far. i have just completed my oral swahili exam and believe i did relatively well. earlier today we walked in our bui buis to one of zanzibar's private schools for a bit of a tour. it was interesting to see how the number of girls gradually decreased with the grade level, so that there were more girls in the first year class than boys, but a ratio of 2:1 men to women in the pre-college class. they say it is related to poverty, which i do not doubt, but i won't accept it as the sole reason. i gave one of the pre-college women my e-mail address, so we can hopefully keep in touch to discuss the academic life of us women-folk in two starkly different worlds. after the school, we were given a new assignment by our professor david-- we were to cross over, while wearing our bui buis, from the tourist-y section of zanzibar to the local section, which is divided by train tracks. we were to stay in small three or four person groups and explore the streets and shops and try to see how we'd be received. the biggest benefit of this trip ended up being how much cheaper everything was in the area, since there were no tourists around. my friend bought a casio watch for two thousand tanzanian shillings ($1.50, about), though it was probably a fake. i bought this beautiful piece of cloth that can be used as decoration or a dress or skirt for two thousand shillings, as well. also bought black, blue, and white glass beads as a gift to give to the maasai when i stay with them. this is because the maasai are renowned for their beaded jewelry, and it's a sure fire way to receive a bracelet or necklace in return. also bought a cheap lunch of chapati and soda for about fifty cents, then had a mango later. people certainly treated us differently on the other side of the tracks, but there was a huge variety of behaviors. some still yelled mzungu at us, others told us we were beautiful, some asked if we were muslim, and most just tried to test us to see if we spoke swahili, either calling out 'saalam a leku' or 'hamjambo' (to which we would reply, respectively 'a leku saalam' and 'hatujambo'). sometimes it went on for a while, since there are so many greetings. example conversation: jambo: jambo / mambo?: poa / hamjambo?: hatujambo / habari za leo?: salaama (or) nzuri sana / unatoka wapi: ninatoka nchi ya amerika, jimbo la oregon / unafanya nini hapa?: mimi ni mwanafunzi na ninajifunza kiswahili na historia ya afrika / karibu: asante, kwaherini

in all of that, i am basically saying that i am doing well, come from america, and am studying swahili and history. now imagine having to have this conversation fifty times daily with all the strangers and shopkeepers curious as to why you are wearing the local garb. also, as it turns out, henna is something done on the arms of women after they have just been wed, so my parting gift from my homestay family in tumbe actually tells all the men on the streets i have a new husband. you'd think this would be useful in warding off unwanted potential suitors, but because i am white, it actually makes them very curious, because they doubt that i know what it means. it is also a very local thing, not something many tourists usually have, so that illicits a lot of questions as well.

anyways, after walking through that market, we eventually came back to the touristy part, where our hotel is. i was with two other students and we started talking about maybe working our collective bargaining powers to get some reduced prices on trinkets and jewelry. it just so happens that i, unexpectedly, am really good at bargaining, and find it rather fun. one of the other people i was with, heather, is the one other person in our travel group who i would say is better than me at bargaining. so we were a pretty intense team. there are these really cool beaded bracelets that the shopkeepers try to sell for five dollars a piece. you can usually get them down to three dollars a piece, but not more unless you are buying multiple things. so what the three of us decided to do was collectively buy 15 bracelets and then split them three ways, five each. so we went into the shop and our first move was for me to tell the shop keeper that i had bought one of the bracelets for only 2000 shillings the other day from a different person, which he believed. so then we told him, if i had bought one bracelet for 2000 shillings, we should be able to get a discount and buy 15 bracelets for only 1500 shillings a piece, which he didn't like the sound of. he asked us to buy the 15 for a total of 30,000 shillings, while we wanted 22,000. so then he said 28,000 and we said 25,000, after which we refused to go any higher. we then pulled the "don't have enough money" move and pulled out exactly 25,000 shillings. when he still asked us for 28,000, we said it was okay, we could just go somewhere else, which is the winning move, because no shopkeeper lets 25,000 shillings walk away, so they gave us the bracelets at 25 and then let us get three of the larger bracelets instead of small like the rest. the whole shabang took about 15 minutes, and as we have learned, no shopkeeper will sell at a loss, so it was a win-win for all. translated into dollars, we paid about $1.25 per bracelet. i am excited to give them away as gifts, they're so beautiful-- an inch thick with colorful beads.

tonight i will work on my last essay, the subject of which is: east africa, change and continuity.

on friday we leave for the coast to start our snorkeling sessions.

hope you're all well.