more zanzi

stone town is stunnigly beautiful with its narrow, crooked streets (bringing up memories of m'dina in marrakech) with lot's of children playing on the streets. a part of girls' school uniform is a white, well suited hijab. boys wear kofias and kanzus and study hard, until late at night in coranic schools. there're spices everywhere. beit-el-ajaib, a true house of wonders, the main museum of culture is brilliant. i'm even more in love with swahili culture than before...



ok. got to go... here are two photos, but it takes ages to upload them...

dawn on a dhow, sailing from pangani to nungwe (on zanzibar)

train nairobi-mombasa

on the way

first, i'll add a couple more impressions from mombasa. but stay tuned: some really interesting stuff is coming after that:)

did i tell you that we lived at barabara mwembe tayari ('ready' mango tree road)? it's definately a good name. the street is full of merchants having enormous baskets of mango...

mombasa IS a melting pot. also when it comes to religion. in one day, you can visit a couple of mosques, an anglical cathedral, a catholic church, a parsee temple, a jeenist temple (is the spelling right?), a sikh temple (anouncing the turban year ;)), a couple of different hinuist temples and probably many many more. and noone seems to fight another...

so many temples makes me feel religious. but even more the fact, that i'm travelling with two jesuses. really.... a couple of times cyprian was called 'jesus' by different people. blazej as well, though less frequently. so i'm travelling with a god squad :) could anything go wrong?


and now: TANZANIA....

you can see a difference right after a 5km-long no-man's-land between kenya and tanzania. the paved road is over. much less private cars, much more bikes. most of the houses made of wood and clay. stunnigly beautiful landscape. everything in swahili. little people speak little english. beautiful!!!

i have 5 min left, so just briefly - tanga (an almost abandonded city), pangani (lovely little town)

and... absolutely wonderful sailing on a dhow with local fisherman to zanzibar. 7 hr on a rather small boat on indian ocean... ahhh.... zanzibar is beautiful...

mombasa

the train was late, as you know already. people were squatting on the platform until midnight when the train slowly came to the station. we weren't allowed to enter straight away - it needed another hour or so to be cleaned. it left the platform. after some time it came back. we knew it was time to go. so did other people. they started jumping on board before even the train came to a halt. so did we. in the 3rd class, there are no numbered seats so you have to fight hard for a place to sit on. fortunately, most of the crowd that was waiting for the train must have given up so it wasn't that crowded in the end.

the ride took 16 hours. first at night, freezing, then during the daytime watching the beautiful savannah of Tsavo. train kept stopping every now and then, in the middle of nowhere to let some people out or take some more in. how does the train operator know where to stop?
the new people often joked a bit about the three wazungu that ride with them.

then we arrived in mombasa... it's not at all as i imagined it. i thought it would be collonial, white, considerably rich and touristic. none of this turned out to be true. it's a crowded, busy, dirty city with some beautiful but run down portugese and british buildings and lots of provisor shacks. people are a mixture of africans, arabs, hindus and swahilis wearing colorful khangas, white kanzus, black burquas (here called 'buibui' - swahili for 'spider'). it's beautiful.

apparently there's quite a lot of european and american young volunteers teaching at schools and in orphanages, but we don't get to see them at all...

peope really do speak swahili!!! we don't understand much, but we're making an effort :)

the project is going well. we have quite a few interviews and photos. this morning we got a great interview with a great-great-grandson of a founder of the biggest company trading khangas in kenya :) we'll have a lovely article based on that interview!

funny, i rarely miss people when i travel. but now, i miss warsaw, phila and benin a lot... sitting and watching the indian ocean in the evening puts me in a really melancholic mood :)

safe and sound

just a quick note. actually, i didn't plan to write that soon, but our train narobi-mombasa will be late at least 4 hours, cause it crashed against a truck (that's what people say...), so i have a moment to write:)

nairobi looks good. it's just a very big city and in comparison to cotonou (i cannot refrain from comparing everthing to benin right now, but i'll get over it) it's almost europe... kenya lives now in the pre-election fever. in september they'll have to choose between the actual president mr. Kibaki and mr Odinga (Moi's sucessor, I think...). it's going to be really interesting!!! www.kenyaelection2007.com

we're also getting into politics ;) we had a dinner today with his excelency the embassador of poland in kenya :) wery nice man. helped us a lot! only, he got really scared that we're going to mombasa on a train in 3rd class....

time to go

in a couple of hours i'm leaving again

warsaw-brussels-bujumbura-nairobi (tomorrow @ midnight!)

naturally, i'll keep all you posted :)

keep your fingers crossed so that they don't arrest me for trafficking a bomb in parts (i'm carrying some cables and wires in my backpack for some friends)....

i should be back in warsaw in mid-september!

daily picts

the bikes of me and simo, my messy room and a new toy that made it all possible :) there's a good chance for better picts this time. atleast, i'll be able to upload the photos while I'm there so you won't have to wait for them until I'm back!

from summer to winter

destination information

Brussels, Belgium close details

Averages High: 22 Low: 12.0 Rainfall: 70.0 " Average

Nairobi, Kenya close details

Averages High: 21 Low: 11.0 Rainfall: 17.0 " Average

Warsaw, Poland close details Averages
High: 18
Low: 9.0
Rainfall: 39.0 "

Average

too open

the open space was just too open.... i'm just getting old and grumpy i guess. still, i had some fun...
now i'm having much more fun struggling with grant proposals :)

tanzania coundown has started!! 8 days to go :)

the space was quite open :)

how to make education sexy?
that was THE question!

the three musketeers. marco and andrejs

no surprise

it was easy to guess that i won't spend much time at home, even though warsaw's beautiful and they've finally fixed my favourite fake palm tree at rondo de gaulle... :)

i'm going to wroclaw tomorrow for a couple of days for UNESCO opens the space

then i have some time in warsaw and on July 21 st i'm flying to Nairobi in Kenya!!! (and then crossing the border with Tanzania asap!!) we'll be researching local art and learning colloquial swahili!!! 1,5 months of fun! :)


but right now i'm in warsaw. over the last couple of days, when i was recovering from physical fatigue, i've put some order in all my pictures and i've found some old fun ones :)


who would guess that they'll be married in 4 weeks and 3 days ? (dobrze liczę, Julciu?:)) Uwielbiam was!!! / in mexico. of you could only see my face better....


we love you karol. zawsze :) / why is pyzia trying to lick me ???

pyzia and my paper-mache "man who cares about the world". i made him for a anti-war rally, but he never made it there... he still lives in spiral-Q in philly and cares about the world / my favorite view of warsaw. at a distance, rondo de gaulle and my beloved fake palm tree :)