A Title is nowhere to be found

Off for Holiday

sleepalot — Fri, 13 May 2011 11:01:03 +0000

Mambo?! Not a lot happened during this week. We closed down the hotel on Monday moved our office since there are some renovations going on. Michel and I had our usual Wednesday except that we decided to spend the night at the club since they also rent rooms there. Next day we woke up we were pretty hung over and rode home in the pouring rain…what can you do. Rainy season is over now and I will leave to the mainland on Sunday and spend a week in Tanzania with Fidel. Unfortunately Michel cant come with us since he has to work. So I will write about my holiday when I get back so until then I wish everybody a relaxing week and not too much stress.

After Week 6 up to Now (as much as I remember)

sleepalot — Fri, 06 May 2011 05:11:15 +0000

Pole sana to those who were waiting/expecting new blog entries but during the last 3or4 weeks I just didn’t feel like writing so the entries would not have been exciting. So here Iam back again trying to summarize/remember the last weeks. First thing I wanna talk about is a new friend of Mike and me who is called Ulrich. Ulrich was a guest at Blue Oyster and on his first day I started speaking to him which ended up in an discussion lasting about 3hours in which we covered germans and their problem with national pride, passion of music, peoples inability to connect to other ones, hitlers influence on world politics and much more. Another day Ulrich Mike and I had a discussion about hope, trying, different perspectives, right or wrong and life as a whole which was quite amazing since there are not a lot of people with whom you can have a serious and at the same time fun talk about stuff like that. During this week I also read the Alchemist which was supporting our whole week of debating about life. To make one thing clear: There were no drugs involved except the quietness of the island. At the end of the week I felt a lot wiser, met a new friend and have a place to stay in South Africa since Ulrich owns a small hotel 2hours away from Cape Town. He also introduced us to Pandu some guy here in the village who tried to help us with finding a property for our basketball project. The project got kind of stuck at some point since we are desperately looking for a property but there are now village owned properties here so we would have to buy a property. Spending 12000$ just on a property without having built anything is kind of pointless in my opinion. I would like to help people here but I don’t wanna buy a property just to invest even more money to build a house and a basketball court on it. This would increase the cost to a level where it doesn’t make sense to spend it just for a basketball court. In addition to that we are also trying to figure out how to establish a club based in Germany which can issue donation slips. That’s about everything new about our project idea so right now we keep looking for properties and try to figure out what and how much time we need to make this whole thing work right.

The week after Ulrich left I was just working, teaching and on the weekend I went snorkeling in the south of the island. On the weekend my dad arrived here in Zanzibar to enjoy on week of his easter break here. Despite working I still found some time to spend with him. One day we went to Stonetown, another we went fishing(not being lucky……) and he experienced my normal week. So we had our ordinary Wednesday on which we added another tradition. Now every Wednesday we go first to Dhow INN in Paje where we eat dinner à Surf and Turf (FINALLY a STEAK which tastes like a STEAK). At Dhow INN we first order then go in their pool where we get picked up when our dinner is ready. After dinner we go to jambo Bar (local bar in Paje) have a beer and then ride our bicycle to Teddys Place where we party. So Party Wednesday became now Steak/Pool/Party Wednesday. I love the Wednesday and having a good steak here makes life close to perfect right now (even if it is kind of expensive Surf and Turf=11Euro and a Beer 2euro…….believe me for Zanzibar it is expensive).

On Thursday Mike my dad and I went to Queen Nati a lady from Jambiani who I met when Ulrich was here. We convinced her that she should start a local restaurant so we were here first guests. It was a very nice dinner in her living room with such great cinnamon tea so that mike and I will try once the tourists are back to send people over to her house.

Once my dad was gone I had to work a lot since Anwar uncle came this week and we reorganized our bookkeeping system so that it is more comprehensible for everyone. So this week was all about working with Uli (anwars uncle) which I enjoyed a lot since he used to be (before he retired) a financial auditor for Toshiba so I actually learned a lot this week by working together with him. Yesterday we had a staff meeting since beginning from next week we will close up to the 6^th June in order to do renovations and to give our staff a month of holiday.

Uhh and my Kiswahili is picking up since Mike and I decided 2weeks ago to take classes so now we have kiswahili classes 3 times a week.

Ok I believe that’s everything new about me and I promise I will write more frequently again since it is a pain in the ass to think about what happened 3weeks ago. So sorry if this entry was too confusing or boring but I was just too lazy during the last weeks. Complaints can be posted under comments and as always I uploaded some pictures. Enjoy

week 5/6

sleepalot — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 14:36:33 +0000

Life is still good!

So last week I was just too lazy to write so now I can summarize the last 2weeks. Starting with the first week Michel and I went out partying for the first time here on the island so we found that one place where we can go to every Wednesday and there are actually a few more than a hundred people. It was good to finally be around some people of our age who also feel like partying since that was if at all the only thing I missed during the first three weeks. After the party I decided to sleep on the beach and I kept on doing that for the next 2nights since we had power outages and sleeping without a fan is close to impossible. A couple a days later Norbert and Gudrun (used to be my neighbors back in my hometown) arrived here in Jambiani. It was quite nice to have some home around here. On Saturday we went on a Spice Tour where they showed us all different spices and walked us through their farms. The best thing about that was the food. We had lunch in a little shed where they served us Pilao Rice (Spice Rice) which was so amazingly good that I ate almost 3full plates. So after having a good meal and finally enjoy a good rain shower we went to stonetown and walked around the market, went to the house of wonder and enjoyed some afternoon drinks. All in all it was a great day just being a tourist and not working. Then on Monday the day before my neighbors left Michel, Norbert and I (I was just playing stupid washed dishes and translated a little) were cooking a dinner for the six of us including anwar and fatma. Norbert is a chef in germany so he wanted to do that since he could also teach some things to our kitchen staff. The next day they left but promised Anwar that they will be coming back since they had such a relaxing time here. And after being here now for 6 weeks even I start seeing what makes people come over here. It’s different since there is not a lot of tourist its quiet without entertainment programs far away from the western society. So it could be considered one of the last paradises but then this will probably change during the next years when there are more tourist coming including bigger hotel chains. So then this Wednesday we went partying again but this time Michel Fidel and I got some bicycles to ride to the party since we didn’t feel like spending money on a cab. It turned out to be a good choice we had a nice party and left there at 4:30 in the morning. Unfortunately Michels chain broke right after we started from paje so my drunken self decided that I will be able to run home to the hotel. So I ran home but my flashlight stopped working so I ran too far cause I couldn’t see our hotel sign. Luckily after a 2 more kilometers some guys stopped with car and asked me where I’m running to at 5 in the morning. So they then brought me back to the hotel. Running barefoot on the street turned out to be not that smart since I totally destroyed my feet and today (Saturday) my calf’s are still paining. On Thursday Michel and I met some guy of another organization here called African impact to talk about our idea of a basketball court. So on Monday we’ll go to the school and if they agree we’ll probably be done building the first basketball court in Jambiani during the next weeks. I and Michel are both very excited to work on that project and I just hope that I can’t start soon to teach some basketball to the kids out here. Since last week my daily agenda changed a little bit since almost every day I will work up to 3pm and the go to the tourism school and teach accounting, math and some basic excel. That is also very enjoyable to the school there which is run by Canadian women who tries to get the people here start thinking. They teach them basic business plans, accounting, cooking and encourage them to think out of the box by solving Sudoku’s or giving them other logic games. This again shows me that I can’t hide my family background I enjoy teaching a lot so by doing this now it makes me sure that at some time in my life I will become a teacher. Not in Germany since I don’t wanna study for it for another six years but somewhere else where it is easier to get a teacher certificate.

So now it’s Saturday it rained today the first time in Jambiani for more than 2minutes and I’m recovering from an enjoyable Friday night. Concerning work I still do the same I visit hotel with fatma, I work on the website and I did the financial statements for the tour operator for this month. I’m now at that point where I understand their accounting system and I can actually work on this by myself and even make it a little better or easier to handle for the other ones in the office.

That’s about it so enjoy the pictures I uploaded and I hope everybody is feeling alright and enjoys life as much as I do right now. If not “staple it together and call it bad weather”.

Badai

Basketball, swimming, site visits and an idea for a bachelor thesis

sleepalot — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:45:24 +0000

Time is running but just because it’s not getting boring at all. The week started out like any other week. Some working, some swimming, eating , a couple of bar visits and then sleeping. My work was basically about setting up the new homepage for our Tour Operator and creating a feedback form for the upcoming site visits of hotels. On Wednesday I took my off day and drove to Stone town to meet up with Kassim (one of the staff members). He showed me around and we went to the House of Wonders where I could learn some basics about the culture and history of the island. Aftwerwards we walked around town looking for a place which sells basketballs. After asking about 10 people we finally found a store and went straight to the basketball court. Despite the fact that it was frakin hot outside I enjoyed playing basketball again and I could teach Kassim some basics. That was also the day where my idea was born to built a basketball court in our village Jambiani since I don’t like to go to Stone town every time I want to play and it would give the kids here something else to do besides playing soccer. So after having our regular “business meeting” at the bar Michel and I decided that we will try working on that. A couple beers later the idea was now more elaborate so we came up with the plan to set up a non profit organization where people from the states and Germany can do social work here with teaching a the schools in the morning and teaching basketball and soccer in the afternoon. We worked more on this idea during the week and thought that it would also be a good topic for our bachelor thesis. So lets see how this idea will develop during the next weeks. On Thursday I taught Rhachma and Linda (two of ou kitchen staff) swimming and afterwards we built some sandcastles. Sounds childish but I enjoyed a lot even though we didn’t get too far with the swimming part but we built an empire of sand. Friday was my first day of working more than 10 hours. Fatma and I left in the morning to do our site visits in the north east of the island. It was quite interesting to see all the hotels but also tiring to go from hotel to hotel and ask the same questions over and over again. We visited 6hotels but some of them were huge resorts where we spend around 2hours to see all the rooms and facilities. After coming back I talked to our other manager Peter about our basketball court idea so that he could ask the village leaders if we would get some land within the village to built it. Saturday and Sunday was again two usual work days with two trips to the bar and a horrible sleep since the power went off every night and without a fan it’s a pain in the ass to sleep at night. Today I was again visiting 5hotels so we proceeded with our site visits. When I came back my old neighbors (Norbert and Gudrun) from my hometown already arrived and in a half an hour I will get some dinner together with them. Ooh and this week I learned more Swahili than ever. I expanded my vocabulary up to about 30words so slowly I’m getting there. I uploaded some pictures on week 3/4 so enjoy and u all have an enjoyable week.

Week 3

sleepalot — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 16:20:34 +0000

No more Konjagi and thanks to Aloe Vera

Mambo everybody! So another week passed by and I’m still alive and happy to be here. The week started very normal I went to the office looked for some design ideas for the website, did some bookkeeping and created a list of hotels I want to visit next week in order to set up a database of hotels which we can recommend to our guest when we are fully booked. So until Wednesday nothing special happened. On Wednesday night Michel (friend of mine who is also doing an internship her on Zanzibar) and I went out to find our usual bar to go to.

We said that we will start walking at the same time and meet up on the beach so luckily I was late as always so we met like 1200feet away from my hotel and found the Bahari Bar with the two owners Ali and Musah. Actually we also went there last Sunday but I don’t want to leave the impression of us always drinking. Anyway Wednesday night was really fun we brought some german music , had some beers and a few Konjagi (schnaps from Tanzania). After a while we were all dancing in the sand (all means Michel, I, Fidel and Ali so those were the only people at the bar). We had a really fun night except that it was 4:30am when I got home which put me to sleep until 2pm the next day. Wouldn’t be a problem if the people know me but here nobody sleeps longer than 7am so some of the staff was checkin on me if I’m still alive and when they saw that I turned in my bed they were finally relieved. So after that night Michel and I decided to stay with beer since Konjagi at least for me left gave me a little headache the next morning. Then I worked until Friday and on Saturday Me, Anwar, Fatma, Michel and two guests went snorkeling at Mmemba Island in the north of the Island. This was quite an experience we were swimming with dolphins and saw tons of fish at the coral reef there. So we were snorkeling at the coast of Mmemba Island since it is a private Island where you pay a 1500$ fee if you just walk on there. Maybe I’ll even upload some videos (depends if our internet connection is fast enough to upload them) of our trip since Michel used his underwater camera for the first time. After being 4hours on the water and driving 1 ½ back to Jambiani we were actually pretty tired but Michel and I still decided to have a couple of beers yesterday night together with Musah and Ali. This brings us today which is my day of pain I worked a little bit but snorkeling also left a visible impression – a serious sunburn but thanks to aloe Vera which I put on my back every 2hours I’ll probably be fine by tomorrow. Yes that was week 3 so I added some more pictures and you’ll hear from me next week.

Badai

Week 1+2

sleepalot — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 09:16:21 +0000

Hello Everybody!

Since I don’t like uploading tons of pictures on facebook I’ll try to write every week at least every two weeks a new blog entry with some impressions of my internship in Zanzibar. For reasons of convenience I’ll write in english so I’m sorry for the germans who cannot speak a word of english (but there are still pictures to see) and I appologize to all native speaking ones for grammar errors and spelling mistakes.

So what happened? –> Not a lot since the motto of the island with everything is polepole which tanslates to “slow slow”

I arrived almost 2 weeks ago and from that point I fell in love with the people and their character over here.

I’ve never seen that many smiling people so Europe and the states should take a slice of that cake cuz it makes life a lot more enjoyable. My boss Anwar (27) is originally from germany and for the last 3 years he’s the manager of the Blue Oyster Hotel. He’s met his wife Fatma (22) over here and since that there living in an house right next to the hotel. Hanging around with those two is just like having a small family. We’re having dinner together at the house and afterwards we’re watching a movie or just sit together talking. My home is a few feet outside of the hotel in the hotels staff house. I got a room with a bed, a fen and a little nightstand thats about it but it is more than enough for a good night sleep. My bathroom is a pit latrine if that’s the right translation (Plumbsklo for all germans).

My daily plan: I wake somewhere between 8 and 11am put a white shirt and some shorts on and walk over to the hotel. Then I sit in the office until me and Anwar get breakfast together. Breakfast starts out with a plate of fresh fruits and afterwards some cake and bread with scrambled egg and cheese. For drinks I always have fresh juice and a coffee. Then I go back in the office until about 3to6pm when I will go in the ocean for a swim. After that I read a little until I go over to Anwars house where we are having dinner.

My jobs to do at the office include: daily bookkeeping, setting up a website for our tour operator, setting up a donation program, getting informations about a POS (Point of sale) system for our restaurant, site visits to other hotels, in general marketing for the tour operator, creating a honeymoonoffer, making our inventory more efficient, new online payment system and to work on the reception desk once in a while. So as you can see I have enough to do for all the people who still think that calling this trip an internship is a bunch of bullshit.

Ok then I think that’s enough for the start, so I’ll leave you with some impressions of my working place and the island of Zanzibar.