Thai Massage Novice and Zanzibari Beaches

I completed 60 hours of ancient Thai massage training a little over a week ago. Ok, so I did 30 hours of Level 1 in 1999, but my memory was pretty good after a rusty first day back at it. Of course, now I need people to practice on and for some reason, I never have anyone refuse. I still need to refer to my book, and a few of the cartoons and notes give me pause, but my rhythm and confidence are improving. In case you've never had Thai massage, it's like yoga for lazy people. So learning Thai massage is like learning how to physically choreograph and manipulate another person's body into hundreds of different stretching positions. I made some pretty good friends in Mark (Filipino) and Yumiko (Japanese), two fellow students. But I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand for just five short days while taking the course.

Then I flew to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania via Ethiopia, met my good friend Jay at the airport and scrambled to catch a flight to Stonetown, Zanzibar. We met his cousin Leigh Ann, an old Peace Corps buddy, and his best friend Rich. We caught the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF to Seattle's SIFF), saw an outrageous Ugandan band with 11 dancers doing various takes on the stripper dance - you know the one where the butt goes up and down in ways you know is not possible by 90% of the world's population, and soaked in the crumbling concrete, gorgeous carved doors, and white sand beaches of this Muslim island. Leigh Ann is here doing research on men who have sex with men and sex workers' behavior as she earns her doctorate in public health from Tulane. So we've been able to meet an interesting mix of expats with swank pads and locals who work with her on the research study. She had big drama recently (shagela bagela in swahili, my new favorite expression when a situation is a mess) where the sex workers wanted more money for reimbursement, because they said "time is money!" Even for the oldest profession, this is true. So today she met them at a brothel and worked out a deal for money up front rather than for each step in the study.

Otherwise, we took a spice island tour where we saw vanilla, pepper, cardamom, taro, bananas, nutmeg (the funny looking red spider webby thing covering it in the picture is mace, another spice that grows on top of nutmeg inside an inedible fruit!). We chilled out at a guesthouse called Mwamba Garden run by a Rastafarian and his Czech girlfriend, rode bikes on the beach, read, ate crab masala, grilled lobster, and amazing local fish, and "ran the jumbo gauntlet." Jambo is Swahili for hello, and the town nearby had over a hundred kids just waiting to say hello to any mzungu walking by (that's white outsider in Swahili). So any errand in town was quite a chore because of having to say hello at least a hundred times. Many toddlers have the word on repeat like a skipping record. The people here are mostly Muslim, but the culture is a mix of all the conquerers, colonizers and immigrants like Portuguese, British, Indians, Maasai, Tanzanians, natives, Omanis, and various expat mzungu. Everyone has been very welcoming, friendly, and warm. Zanzibar is really a magical island and I highly recommend it to everyone.



Tomorrow we head off on our safari of the Serengeti, Mt. Killimanjaro, and the Ngorongoro crater. We are all very excited for that. Details to follow...