I am a blogging maniac

I thought today of something that happened in Zanzibar, because I am wearing a scarf that I bought in Zanzibar. And it is an Africa story, so it fits here. IE and I went to Zanzibar the weekend of her birthday. Other interns went to Zanzibar that weekend, too, but IE and I only had the weekend and the others had an entire week (because they were staying longer or didn't have the ten week work requirement that I did or something, lucky people) and so we left them to their leisurely exploration of the island and went off to see beautiful beaches as quickly as possible. This is when we rented the baby jeep and rambled about getting lost by neglecting to turn when we were supposed to and then ended up driving on the beach and randomly through the bush for about 3 extra hours.

It is hot in Zanzibar, unlike Arusha, and so we were wearing tank tops, but Zanzibar is largely Muslim and we didn't want to be culturally inappropriate so we got out scarves and when we came near people, we covered our shoulders with the scarves. (Meanwhile, in Jambiani, we saw some wazungu tourists walking on the road - relative term, it was basically rocks - and the girl was wearing shorts and we gasped in horror and said, as we always did, "That girl did not get the memo." because we had gotten so many lectures at work about dressing in a culturally appropriate way.)

So we stopped at a little store in Jambiani and IE ran in to get some water. Actually, IE ran in to buy an entire crate of water because now that this being lost thing had started there was no telling where it would end. But we did have snacks. It had started to rain and when IE ran in and then out and then opened the trunk and got back in and we started to move again and she took off her scarf, her arms were covered with bright blue polka dots. It turned out that the bright blue scarf she was wearing leaked dye when it got wet, so when the raindrops hit it, it transferred the dye to her skin in exactly and only those places.

There was also this air freshener in the baby jeep, in the glove compartment, which we hated the smell of, so we wrenched it out of the glove compartment (it was stuck to the bottom) and threw it under the passenger seat, but the smell only got stronger, so we tied it into a plastic bag and put it back in the glove compartment, hoping the two barriers would tone it down, which they did not, but we tried. And Ali Keys was not so happy with us when he found out that we had removed the air freshener. But we had not crashed the baby jeep (I am a good driver, even on the beach) and we had filled it up with gas, so he could not say too much.

The End.