Life as a Postgrad Scholar

on the girls' side of the classroom

For me, one of the most exciting events of our stay in Zanzibar has been the visit on Saturday to a little school in the countryside, where a colleague of mine will be running a family literacy project, funded by his successful grant proposal to the International Reading Association.

The project is designed to give kids a solid start toward lifelong literacy by encouraging them and their families to read for fun. That’s challenge enough in the United States, where there are plenty of books and most adults can read well. Here, where there are so few books and where fewer parents can read, it’s a daunting task, indeed.

notice the beautiful handwritten checklist for materials available in the USAID-funded resource room

But the project is terrific. It will provide books to kids and it will help teachers and parents to develop low- and no-cost learning opportunities (things like making books out of cardboard and writing down stories—the kinds of things my own children have been playing with since we’ve been in Zanzibar). And low-cost is definitely important; the kids who showed up to school for the information meeting (on a Saturday, no less) were interested and excited, but neither they nor the school had writing utensils for them to fill out paperwork. So we scraped together pens from purses and bags and managed to get the job done.

I had a fantastic time on Saturday—not least of which because I was able to talk and listen successfully in Kiswahili for almost 5 hours. I’m so excited about participating in this project, in whatever way I can, and I hope to write more soon about my work there and about my own developing research on adult basic literacy.

This coming week, we’re going on safari on mainland Tanzania, and we’re looking forward to it for many reasons. Aside from our excitement about seeing large African mammals in the wild, we’re also looking forward to meeting up with family who are coming to visit for the holidays and getting new supplies from America (never has Santa’s pack been met with such anticipation as we have for our suitcase of goodies from America). We’re also excited about having electricity, reliable water, and cooler weather; Unguja (the island in the Zanzibar archipelago where we’re living) just began what is predicted to be a three or more week power outage because of either a transformer exploding or an undersea cable being damaged (accounts on the street differ, and it’s hard to get accurate news when the power is down). While my laptop battery is temporarily charged now, though (thank you Zanzibar Coffee House’s generator!), I’ll share some pictures from a trip we took a few weeks ago to see Jozani Forest and Zanzibar’s famed red colobus monkeys.

Like the Spice Tour, a trip to Jozani Forest Reserve to see the monkeys is de rigueur for visitors to Zanzibar, and we found it well worth our while. We enjoyed getting out to see Zanzibar’s largest section of mature indigenous forest, and we especially enjoyed seeing the mangrove swamp. There are lots of mangrove swamps at the coast, but we had never seen a mangrove stand in an inlet. The ecosystem was pretty amazing. There is a boardwalk that goes through the mangroves so that you can look down and see the water and the crabs and fish swimming around by the roots. We were surprised to see trumpet fish, which we’ve seen much farther out in the ocean when we’ve gone snorkeling—it’s a surreal experience to see ocean fish swimming among tree roots. My sons found other uses for the roots and branches, as you can see here.

We loved the mangroves, but the real showstopper at Jozani is the monkeys, which you can see up much closer than at many zoos and far closer than in most wild settings. These Kirk’s red colobus monkeys are endangered and are endemic to Zanzibar. Luckily for visitors, there are several large family groups that stay fairly predictably in several trees that are near to walking paths. We walked right up near them and couldn’t help but gawk and act like total tourists, snapping pictures

left and right. The monkeys are by no means tame, but they seemed unfazed by our gawking and went right on grooming each other, eating, napping, and swinging about in the trees.

Like the Spice Tour, the Jozani Forest Reserve gives back to the local community. When the reserve was created in the 1960s, the forest was starting to be logged and the monkeys were being killed for encroaching on farmland. Now, part of the proceeds from the reserve go back to the local community, so that protecting the ecosystem is in everyone’s best interests. All in all, it was a great trip and much more fun to think about than my laptop’s dwindling power level! More soon on our upcoming adventures, Insha’Allah.