It’s Sunday morning in Stone Town, Zanzibar. Breakfast consists of mini bananas, Kilimanjaro Earl Grey tea, freshly squeezed orange juice and toast with mango jam. Spent a whole day looking for a squeezy-thingy for oranges and was successful even though it was very expensive (£5). That’s not expensive in my London life of course – but it’s very expensive for my African lifestyle… same as a whole week of lunches at the local restaurant to give you some context.
Spending time over breakfast to reflect and freak out a little. Teaching starts here tomorrow. I am still working on the course design, I don’t know the exact number of students, need to print their workbooks and I am also trying to find a good solution for avoiding inner thigh chafing… For those of you who have fat thighs like me and have worn skirts in a humid environment, you know exactly what I mean – for the rest of you, this probably doesn’t seem like a real problem. But believe me, it hurts! So if anyone has other ideas than baby powder or wearing running tights under the skirt, feel free to message me!
I arrived in Zanzibar on Thursday this week, was supposed to have been Wednesday, but flight was moved… and the travels from Iringa were unsurprisingly a little chaotic and very slow because of an 8 hour wait at Dar Es Salaam airport. That’s the trouble with Iringa, the transport connections are not great to that part of Tanzania yet…
I did however have a wonderful time in Iringa. Was so nice to catch up with my friends there. We enjoyed picnics, sunsets and long chats about our experiences and plans. I especially loved quality time with Carelynn; she’s my sister in Africa, she keeps me ‘real’ and motivates me to be a better person every day.
My friends in Iringa often refer to me as a workaholic, and I am sure many of you would agree, so it was not a shock to anyone that the 5-6 days of training that I had originally planned to do, turned into more like 10 days.
This was the third time that I did some training at the Iringa Sunset Hotel in the past 18 months. It’s always lovely to be there. The team is interested in learning and this time it was super rewarding to see some of the improvements they have made because of my recommendations. Made me feel like a real consultant for the first time – haha!
Seriously though, it gives me immense pleasure and a sense of achievement to do what I do. They all welcomed me with open arms because they knew I was there to help them, what a feeling. As usual, I went through some service and housekeeping training. We made job descriptions for key roles and looked at the overall vision for the hotel.
I wasn’t supposed to do any work with the kitchen this time, but because of my delayed flight I offered to run the pass for an evening since they were really struggling to get orders out on time… some meals taking up to 45 mins to get to the guests. I had three chefs on shift that night and together with the girl who is learning to run the pass in the kitchen, they did an amazing job. Goes to show what people and teams can achieve with organised leadership.
On average the food went out within 23 minutes of order placed including a buffet for 12 people. I was so proud of them all. They really worked as a team and listened to what I said without having any egos (the chef with the huge ego was not there!). It was so much fun and they had a real sense of achievement and big smiles when I shared that stat upon closing the kitchen at 10pm. No complaints, all guests were happy, we were all happy! And I had so much fun! It actually made me even more determined to have my own place to run one day…
So it was quite emotional to say goodbye to everyone there, but I’ll be back there next year for sure. This is one of the volunteer jobs I want to continue with on a regular basis, the hands-on nature of it, is something I really enjoy.
But now it’s time to get my mind switched to a more formal teaching setting at Kawa Training Center. I’m excited and very nervous (which is the cause of the aforementioned freaking out), these students will be relying on me to be able to get the skills and knowledge to get a job at the end of the course… eeek!
Will update you more on how and where I live here in Zanzibar when I have settled in a little more over the next week. I miss you all.
BETINA IN AFRICA 