Zanzibar!!

Shikamooni Rafikis (Respectful Greetings Friends)

This past weekend I travelled to the glorious island of Zanzibar, just off the coast of Tanzania. Zanzibar is the birthplace of Freddie Mercury from Queen and has a big tourism trade. Stonetown, the capital of Zanzibar, was a big slave trading port and spice market way back when and today it has this strange mix of Arabic and African architecture that results in twisty narrow streets perfect for getting totally and completely lost in. Especially at night when there is no moon.

We had great fun despite the rain and the choppy ferry ride there and back (good bye sunglasses!). Stonetown actually reminded me a lot of Venice with it's old buildings and twisty streets and the strange smell of wet yet burning garbage around every corner, which is funny because rumour has it that most of the big resorts on the island are owned by the mafia. This Italian influence has the added benefit of a spin off trade in quality Italian food, which is fine by me.

The hot season is officially here on the mainland and we are starting to cook. We have started quantifying the temperature in terms of what setting you put your fan on at night. Last night we moved up another notch to 4 out of 5. I have no idea what we are going to do when the heat peaks in another three weeks or so. One of the reasons I liked Zanzibar so much was that our hotel had A/C which is decidedly lacking in my room at home.

A lot of people keep asking what it is exactly that I do here so let me try to explain that now.

MEDA (the NGO I work for) is contracted by the Tanzanian government to run a programme that provides subsidies (through a voucher) for mosquito nets to the most at risk populations: pregnant women, infants and children under five. The programme runs in every community in Tanzania, and as such is quite complicated in terms of logistics. This year the programme is expanding to include an equity voucher that covers the top-up price associated with the original voucher for those people who cannot afford even the highly subsidized price.

My internship has so far focused on capturing the operations of the new voucher schemes (the Infant, Child and Equity Vouchers) for the operations manual, and in creating a communications unit for the program. Creating better awareness of the program and giving it a higher profile helps not in terms of getting funding but also assists operations because high level officials and leaders are more aware of the programs benefits and are therefore more likely to throw their support behind it.

I am looking forward to another trip to Morogoro this week to try and launch our infant voucher yet again, and to possible future trips to help set up our Equity voucher. MEDA and my bosses in particular I feel is really good at providing opportunities for growth and capacity building. Despite how frustrated I get with things every now and then I am very lucky to be here and to have this opportunity. It may take three months to get a printing job done here that would take a day in Canada, and we may not have power or water but in the end it all works itself out somehow.