Mosquito Net Dreams

White sand beaches...tuquoise waters...sultry sunsets that turn the narrow white washed walls of Stone Town pink and blue. Zanzibar.

Ok enough of that crap. Yes Zanzibar is pretty, but poke your head outside of the lacy hotel curtains for one second, or peek out from behind your martini, and you will see Sadye, sweaty and crouching over a wet toilet in a concrete room splashing water onto her bum in an effort to clean it.

Lefties don't fare so well here.

What is about tourist resorts? Why can the select few come here and take all the fresh water for a pool they don't even use? My homestay family seems to be pretty well to do, cosidering they have a car, a TV, a 19 year old maid and 4 children...yet they still don't have access to clean water? And I am not even going to tackle the issue of a flush toilet. Oh ye with flush toilets. They are both a luxury and a curse, for they keep you connected via your feces to the beaurocratic system that wants to hold you down!!! Unite! Ideals! Save the peguins!

To be serious, I feel a little cut off from the world out there. To those who feel bad that I have not called or written to you personally, I am sorry. I really try, but it just isn't easy. When you pick up the phone, think of me, wandering the streets in my khanga wondering if I will ever speak to my mother again!? I am being dramatic, but it is frustrating. This is what we take for granted, this is what it is like in Zanzibar, the far away place of dreams and spices. I cannot even imagine what it will be like in India.

But of course, life is what you make it: when I am given a concrete bathroom and a mosquito net, I turn myself into a princess, gracfully pouring water over my glistening skin, singing along to a finch that has alighted upon my finger. Then, under the Zanzibari sky I lay out beneath my netted canopy and sigh...to those I love so far away: mapenzi.