Christmas in Tanzania

First, I’m happy to say the SWB Uganda staff survived our 2^nd Annual Youth festival. Five six-hour days and over 250 kids each day. Organized chaos at its best. I’ll try and post more on that by the end of this coming week (but let’s be honest all my posts are at least two weeks delayed).

So here’s yet another delayed post. Below you’ll find some pictures from my 12 day trip to Tanzania! I’m currently in Jinja overlooking the great Nile River with the fastest internet connection I have experienced in the U.G. so I think it’s best if I post more pictures and write fewer words.

Tanzania is a country in East Africa and its eastern border is formed by the Indian Ocean.  I don’t think the following pictures will do the beaches/islands I visited justice. We spent about a week on island of Zanzibar and then a few nights on the island of Pemba – the most isolated place I have ever been. I’m not exaggerating when I say there were only a handful of people (read locals) on the beaches we visited. Mile stretches of white sand beaches with no people. It was unbelievable. Not to mention the island had no ATM machine…We literally ran out of money during our stay there. Oops.  Anyways, the trip was unreal and I have nothing except for good things to say about Zanzibar. Well, that’s a lie. The sea urchins there are horrible and extremely painful. I stepped on a few and even though I went to a doctor here in Kampala to remove them my feet are still pretty sore. At least they aren’t poisonous. At least I don’t think they are…Hopefully I return to the states with both my feet.

Cheers! 

One of the hotels we stayed at 

Cows on the beach

3v3 Mzungus (Whites) vs Maasai (tribe of Kenya/Tanzania) on the East coast of Zanzibar. We managed to play soccer with locals almost everyday on the various beaches we stayed/went to.

Our pitch

Stone Town, the main city of Zanzibar

One of the thousand alleys of Stone Town

An ancient door from the 19th century. The city had a lot of Indian, Arab , European and Persian (my people!!!) elements 

Real adults drinking nightly tea 

The beach where I stepped on the darn sea urchins. North coast of Zanzibar

Cory and I practicing our synchronized swimming routine

Cory, Katy, and I

Sea urchins in the foot!

Pemba Island

Pondering life on another beach in Pemba

Shell hunting

We did a secret santa exchange for Christmas. My  Christmas present this year was a squid from the local market. It was actually pretty tasty, but it was a tad cold.

Sunset

Sunset from our room in Pemba