Josh's Post about Tanzania Day 1

[Written by Josh Shabel]

There's a few things you should know about Tanzania. For one thing, Tanzania has constant blackouts. They only last a few seconds though, but happen often. Sometimes, the lights just dim for a little, before they come back to normal light. It's kind of weird. Another thing is the water. Their water system isn't as safe as ours. It's fine if you swallow a little, but gulping it down will make you sick. For brushing our teeth, we have to use bottled water. Also, the population isn't as poor as you might think. I haven't actually seen any homeless people yet, as everyone seems very well clothed and fed, but they still have dirt roads and makeshift-looking housing.

For some reason, there are also TONS of coca-cola ads, way more than there are back home. Even on peoples housing and shops. I suppose they need the money. In fact, one of the weirdest things is the money. Although Tanzanian Shillings are the country's official currency, US dollars are accepted by almost everybody. The conversion of US Dollars to shillings is very weird also. One dollar gets you 1,500 shillings, but if you were converting, say, 100 dollars, the ratio of shillings er dollar would increase from 1500:1 to about 2000:1, sometimes even 2300:1.

I woke up at about 8 am, in my little "alcove" in our little room. The room looked like a hut from the outside, but was very nice on the inside, still keeping the cultural appearance of Tanzania from much older times, as the rest of the grounds did. After getting up, we went to breakfast. I had an omelette, with delicious mango juice and chai. Their chai tasted funny to me, so I didn't taste much of it. After breakfast, we went back to our room... and slept. That morning was very uneventful. Somewhere around 11, we toured the local town. Seeing as I've already told you about it, I'll skip the small stuff. The first main thing we did was go to the tanzanite museum. Tanzinite, being almost exclusive to Tanzania (with a 1 in a million chance of being found elsewhere in the world) is also 1000 times rarer than diamonds. It can be colorless, gray, yellow, brown, and green, but mainly comes in blue, violet, red, and pink. When it is one of the 3 main colors, you can rotate it in light, and see red, blue, and violet. It can be found in veins of burgundy, a more common type of rock. This material is so rare, that in 7-15 years, it will be considered extinct. I wanted to buy some as an investment, (cheapest was $350, in a silver ring) but mom said something like "if I can't get one, you can't either". She also told me the one I was looking at was imperfect, (the flawless, unset ones went at well over $10,000) and collectors looked for perfect ones. Collectors also prefer them unset. As we were driving to lunch, we passed by a ton of civilians selling various items. The driver explained to us that it was market day for them. I saw everything from fruit to even flip-flops. I saw a wide array of colors as we drove by.

The place we ate lunch at was called The Swahili Canteen. There, we had our first authentic African food, with everything there grown and farmed locally. Some of the food included beef stew, chapati bread, mixes of local vegetables, and peas with a sauce so good that mom ate AND liked them! It was a pretty good lunch.

Our last place was the cultural heritage center. They had local art, sculptures, and many other things. It turns out that the guy who owns the Tanzinite museum has a gem shop (mostly Tanzinite) there. I found a dark blue, pillow-cut, flawless, unset Tanzinite gem that weighed about 0.62 karats and cost $94.

The way to check the quality of Tanzinite is to shine a bright light on it, so you can see through it. If you see scratches inside, it has flaws. But if it shines right through, and you see nothing inside, it's flawless. But this time, I got the gem. Because mom found one she wanted-and bought it! She did not go back on her word. In the cultural heritage center, there were local wooden, authentic little statues and carvings, along with African beads and such. One of the best things there, though, in a huge, fancy gallery, were sculptures and beautiful paintings made by African tribes, worth thousands of dollars.

After that, we went back to the place we were staying at. We were sitting outside, when I saw two monkeys in the trees. I went to go take a picture. After I did, one of the monkeys started following me, even batting my leg.

It left after about 15 seconds, though. But after that, I found out tat there was a whole family. A mom and dad, five or six kids, and a tiny newborn that the mom carried around. I got some great pictures of the newborn hanging on to the mom too. But that was it.

And so ends another day!