Bongoyo & Navratri

This past weekend was certainly an eventful one!
After doing some tour-book research, I planned on going to Bongoyo Island for a day, and ended up going with a bunch of my friends here. We woke up early, and took taxis to the Slipway. The Slipway is an area of City Centre that is very well developed, and many tourists hang around. There are nice, expensive hotels and resorts, good beaches, and a rich neighborhood surrounding. The Slipway itself is basically an outdoor mall, and all of the stores sell their goods in Tanzanian Shillings, US Dollars, and British Pounds. It was very bizarre. We payed for tickets for the ferry, and got a delicious breakfast at one of the restaurants while we waited. The ferry took about half an hour to get us out to the island. Bongoyo Island is a marine island off the coast of Dar es Salaam. It's got beautiful wilderness, a coral reef, and a gorgeous beach on one end. Nobody lives on the island, so it truly is an oasis. We got to do a good hour of snorkeling off the island, and saw all sorts of coral and fish, as well as a shipwreck! It was a very fun activity. We spent the rest of the day swimming in the ocean, eating freshly caught fish, and enjoying the sun. We came back on the afternoon ferry, and went to get dinner.

After dinner, we met up with Amy's friend from University of Chicago, Samira. She was staying with a family friend for the last week before she went home, and they invited us to join them to celebrate Navratri at the Patel Brotherhood in downtown Dar. Navratri is a 9-day Hindu holiday when they celebrate every night from about 10 pm to 1 or 2 am. I didn't get the specifics on the actual background of the holiday, but it had something to do with goddesses and fighting off demons for 9 days or something like that. There are no words to describe this experience, and unfortunately my camera battery ran out that afternoon on the beach, so I'll have to get pictures from my friends who had cameras there. There had to e at least 600 people at this event, all dressed in traditional Indian clothing. Women wearing beautifully colored and adorned Saris, with blasting music and bright lights, and huge circles of people dancing around the center of the venue. I even got up and danced for a good 20 minutes. It was so much fun! There were three parts to the festival: two-step dancing, three-step dancing, and then some sort of stick dance. In between the parts, they serve delicious and spicy Indian food with a rice milkshake. Yum! We stayed until about midnight, and then decided to go home. It was such an inspiring and awesome experience. If we weren't moving into our home-stays this Sunday night, I would definitely go back for the last night of the holiday. I'm thinking I might go downtown to the Indian district tomorrow afternoon to buy myself a Sari for a birthday present to myself!

Sunday we woke up late after a late night out, and went to our Swahili professor's house. We got to learn how to make two types of chapate, a Tanzanian tortilla-type food that is eaten for breakfast, and we got to eat an extremely delicious meal. That evening we went downtown to an Indian restaurant called The Alcove to get dinner to celebrate Julia's 21st birthday. Goodness, it was yummy! I had some really delicious Naan. I've found that the ethnic food in Dar, not only Tanzanian, but Ethiopian, Indian, Lebanese, Chinese, Tai, Malaysian, and so many others, are so good! It's quite a treat to be able to get such good international food in just one city. I feel quite spoiled.

Now we have just two more weeks in Dar to finish up our research proposals before we go on break and then into the field. Time seems to move so much faster here, but it's probably because every day is a little bit of an adventure. This weekend we have a planned field trip to Zanzibar, so I'm looking forward to celebrating my 21st birthday on a tropical island! I don't think it could get much cooler.

The internet in our dorm has mysteriously stopped working, so I won't be able to upload photos unless it gets fixed. At least I can update my blog in the meantime!