Has it really been two weeks?!

My last bit of time in Tanzania was a blur.  My last full week in Arusha was cut short due to some visa issues.  Turns out that because of an internal problem in the Tanzanian Government, the visas that the AAI were issued were fake.  Someone along the line was pocketing our visa money($450/person!) and distributing fake visas.  The Tanzanian Gov was aware of the problem but could not address it from Arusha, so to Dar Es Salaam we went!  Molly and I left Arusha three days early on a 12 hour (!!!) bus ride to Dar with 9 passports in hand to take care of the situation.  Luckily we had the owner of our hostel with us and he helped us get everything solved.  We quickly got all 9 passports stamped with a proper stamp and were free to leave the country.

It was Wednesday when we left and since we were planning to take the bus to Dar on Friday we just stayed in Dar and waited for the rest of the group to get there.  Thursday we got our visas taken care of and had a celebratory drink by the sea.

Enough with the boring, let's get to the good stuff. 

Serena Hotels, a luxury hotel chain with locations throughout East Africa, offered AAI three nights in any of their hotels in exchange for a performance.  It was their way of thanking us for our work in East Africa, and it provided their guests with entertainment for a night.  This exchange is what brought us to Dar at the end of our trip.  We spent two lovely nights in their Dar hotel.  Molly and I arrived at the hotel before the rest of the group, as they were still on the bus from Arusha, and spent the afternoon sipping mojitos by the pool.  We then went our seperate ways to our own rooms and spent our first few hours alone in five weeks.  I might have taken a bubble bath that ended with bubbles on my head in the shape of hair, singing alone to Micheal Jackson....
The rest of the group arrived Friday night and we had a big dinner with everyone.
Saturday we spent the day by the pool, mojito-less this time, and performed at night.  While our audience wasn't big, it was enthusiastic.

Sunday morning we left the Dar hotel early and caught the 9:30 ferry to Zanzibar.   After going through immigration in Zanzibar and doing quite a bit of explaining about all of the writing in our passports, the Serena Hotel in Zanzibar car pulled up and carried us away.  We were greeted with ice cold towels and fresh juice upon our arrival to the hotel.  We got paired up in our rooms and spent the rest of the day by the pool, which was on the beach.  That night we performed, for a slightly bigger, yet less enthusiastic bunch.  A lot of AAI people were heading home early the next day so it was an early night for everyone.

My friend, Marcus, and I arranged to stay in Zanzibar for an extra night, so we were able to spend a lot of Monday at the pool.  It was actually Marcus' birthday, so in the afternoon we went on a walking tour of Zanzibar.  Our guide couldn't say much in English besides his memorized speach, but he was sweet and tried to answer our questions.  After that we went to our other hotel, the Flamingo Guest House, and then made our way to the Sunset Bar for birthday drinks.

Zanzibar is a really amazing place.  We stayed in Stonetown, which is rich in history.  It is populated with a lot of Indians and Arabians who moved there long ago to ship spices to Eastern Asia.  Stonetown is a historial site so no one can build new buildings or change the buildings that are already there.  Restoration can take place, but if a building was yellow, it has to stay the same color yellow.  Because of the strict rules, all of the buildings are very distinctive.  There is also a lot of culture behind the different types of arcitecture in the city.  Arabian buildings can be identified by their square door frames with very decorative borders.  Indian buildings, however, have arched doors with big brass horns poking out.  These horns were used in India to keep the elephants away and the style was kept when making doors in Stonetown. 
Religion is another big part of Stonetown's history.  They are very proud of the peace that exists between different religions.  There are masques built right next to churches, and there is no conflict about this.
The most interesting part of our tour was about the slave trade.  Because the Arabians had their spice trade set up very well, it was a very good business for them to trade slaves as well.  People from Central and Eastern Africa would take Africans to Stonetown to be sold as slaves throughout Easern Asia.  There was a famous tree where the bidding took place for the slaves.  They would first be whipped to show their strength and then auctioned off.  Before being sold they were packed into tiny underground rooms with little air to wait for their auction.  Many people died before even getting auctioned off due to suffocation and rampant disease.  When the Africans were brought up to street level they were chained in groups with people from other tribes so that they could not communicate and try to escape.  When the slave market was closed in 1873 the whipping tree was cut down and a church was built in its place.

Our stay in Zanzibar was filled with culture, but not necessarily Tanzanian culture.  It was cool to see Indians, Tanzanians, and Arabians all speaking Swahili, but running very different lives in such a small place.

Tuesday morning Marcus and I spent the morning taking a last stroll along the beach.  We then caught the afternoon ferry back to Dar to head to the airport.  We got the airport at 1am for my 3:45am flight, but of course the airport was closed.  When they finally opened, just an hour before my flight, I was issued a ticket for seat 28a.  Were there 28 rows on the plane? Nope.  This is the perfect time to bring up a little phrase that we used many times on our trip: TIT, or This Is Tanzania.  There are somethings that could happen no other place than Tanzania, and getting on a plane just before it takes off, with a ticket for a seat that doesn't exist, is the a great example of when one would say TIT.  The wonderful Turkish Airlines flight attendents worked everything out and I even had a row to myself in the end.

I had a quick layover in Istabul and boarded my plane to Isreal in hopes that my friend, Talia, whom I had not spoken to for over a week, was still planning to pick me up from the airport.  After getting off the place, going through immigration, and gathering my luggage, I exited the lobby and entered Talia's warm embrace.  Talia is a first year bassist at Juilliard, and when she heard I was coming to Israel she made plans to have me over.  Her father took my luggage and we drove all the to her house that is just over an hour outside of Tel Aviv.  It is from her computer that I am currently typing.

Yesterday Talia and I woke up at 5:30 to head into town with her father.  From there we hopped on a bus to Jerusalem.  We spent the day at the Shuk and in the old part of Jerusalem.  We went to the Western Wall and several of the churches in the Christian quarter.  The old town is a magical place with a very lively, distinctive energy.

Today the whole family was home and prepping for tonight's dinner.  We took a long trip the grocery store to get food, and then came home to setting tables, chopping vegetables, and whipping up sauces.  Once the rest of the extended family arrived I was surrounded by laughs and loud conversations in Hebrew.  It is actually amazing how easily I was able to keep up with the conversation due to body language and intonation.  Most of her family speaks English, but they prefer to speak in Hebrew.  Her grandmother speaks no English, but speaks Spanish fluently, so I sifted through the jumble of Swahili and Hebrew in my head to find a couple Spanish words that were burried deeply.

Speaking of speaking, Swahili keeps slipping out of my mouth.  Talia also keeps making fun of me because my English isn't the best.  My brain is so confused from going from one language to another that all of them are swirling together.  It is great to be to immersed in a culture, however, because I think I am beginning to learn Hebrew pretty quickly.  We will see if I still say that when I am on my own in Tel Aviv trying to buy food.

Tomorrow we are waking up early again to go to a crater in the south of Israel.  I will hopefully have better access to internet here in Israel, so it won't be another two weeks before I write.
Goodnight!