Hakuna Ma-Cliché

Jens is off to Tanzania for conferences/workshops.  I'll be following him on Friday, arriving Saturday at 1:45 am, so we can have a weekend to explore Dar and probably a couple of areas nearby on the weekend, then I'll take a scuba course right at our hotel while he wraps up the conferences during the next week.  Finally, on Thursday we take a ferry to Zanzibar for four days of cool sunshine, beaches, spices and World Heritage Sites.  Time to brush up my Swahili- who can help me with a few phrases?  I remember how to count from one to ten and how to say slow (pole pole) and fast (haraka haraka).  Plus "I want" - mimi nataka - and thank you, asante sana!  Cool, too, that the Swahili word for water, maji, is so close to Hebrew, mayim.

I was giving some travel recommendations to a person on Yelp who's visiting Ireland and started to miss it; the fresh-smelling air, the recycling systems, the drinkable tap water and my friend's lovely baby, who's now 19 months old and starting to talk and I'm missing her development!  Though I'm sure Tanzania will be fun, I don't anticipate it being such a huge change from Ghana; traffic, hassling by locals, warm weather, and I think beach holidays are gonna get old pretty soon.  At least in Dublin you could fly cheaply all over Europe.  Flying in Africa, it ain't cheap by any means.  A plus side is that good Indian and Ethiopian food are available in Dar -- though I suppose they are available in Accra as well, just here there's only really one option for each.

Tomorrow I'm giving a women's health training to a local ladies' community.  A CEPEHRG colleague is coming over when she's finished with today's counseling so we can prepare practically everything at the last minute.  Such is life in Africa 96 percent of the time.  The other four percent is arriving unprepared and announcing plans have changed!  Meanwhile, I continue to study the scuba e-learning course, taken at home to avoid classroom time at the dive site.  All I'll have to do once I get to the hotel is a couple of pool "dives" and some instructed dives in the ocean and then I'll be able to head out with Jens any time I want!  He took his course in 2007.

On our way back from Zanzibar we're spending a night in Addis to avoid some crazy layover time and/or a middle-of-the-night flight, to eat some real Ethiopian food and to restock on fabulous coffee.  That's exciting.  I do believe the first thing I'll do in the airport is ask for a sprees (layered multiple fruit juice drink).  We're meeting some of Jens's friends who are either still there or have gone back since he lived there.  All this fun means I have to work hard this week to earn it!  That, and use the spa gift certificate Jens gave me for my birthday as it expires just a month after being issued.  I'm sure the scuba instructors will thoroughly appreciate my mani/pedi when I jump into wetsuit and fins.

Sprees in Bole airport, Addis.  Pineapple, guava, mango, avocado, orange, a lime to squeeze on top... Bliss!

Next post: the batik saga.... cross your fingers it'll be over by the time I post the story.