One very important part of my life has been largely missing from these posts. I left a life I love dearly at home to occupy a strange new world here alone, one that oscillates between exotic and absolutely exhausting. And one very important person in that life -- my husband -- can't be here with me. I have joked to my friends here that “When I said ‘I do,’ I didn’t mean I do want to live a year without my husband!” In an absolute sense, Matt’s and my being apart now is voluntary, in that of our own free will one of us could get on a plane anytime and rejoin the other. But the painful calculus that went into making this decision rendered it the most logical option. Staying the course on significant investments of time, money, and effort will hopefully help us gain enough freedom and flexibility to live simpler lives long-term. But that is not to say that every day apart isn’t tremendously painful after putting so much effort these last seven-plus years to build a life together. We are certainly fortunate to have the benefits of multiple forms of fast and affordable daily communication – email, Skype, phone, text messaging – but all of these fall far short of being together, and I would never recommend this arrangement to anyone else.
Thankfully, after a number of trial-related tribulations at work, Matt was able to visit me for the holidays, including miraculously making a 6-minute connection in Zurich after a delayed flight from New York just to get here on time. We stayed in Dar for a few days so he could see my life (meet my friends, visit my office, see where I lived), and thankfully the weather cooperated so he was able to see Dar at its muddiest as well as Dar at its hottest, both of which are endearing characteristics! On Christmas Eve, we escaped to Zanzibar for 8 days, spending Christmas in Stone Town and New Year’s Eve on the beach on the East Coast at Matemwe Beach Village, the same place we stayed when we visited Zanzibar 4 years ago while living in Ethiopia. The beaches, scenery, and architecture on Zanzibar are breathtaking and almost stereotypically an exotic paradise. It’s hard to leave once you get there [the pictures below give a glimpse].
The fusion of Arab, Indian, and mainland African influences, particularly in Stone Town, is fascinating and beautiful.
We had wonderful multi-course dinners each night in Stone Town, one served sitting on pillows at low tables in an atmospheric Zanzibari-style rooftop deck [picture below is me there with the Indian Ocean in the background], and a formal Christmas dinner in a hotel on the beach with the windows open to the seabreeze, candles in hurricanes, and a Swahili gospel choir performing outside. Being a seafood lover I was in heaven. It felt like a true escape from the pressures of both our lives.
In the planning stages, we had had high hopes to go snorkeling or diving, take a tour of Zanzibar’s famous spice plantations (especially cloves, vanilla, and cinnamon bark), see dolphins, or take a forest tour to see monkeys. As it happened we didn’t do any of those things at all, as we were more than content just being together unfettered by schedules or obligations. Our rooms in both places were peaceful, spacious retreats and we rarely ventured out except to eat or walk on the beach, content to spend the days together making up for time apart. Below is a picture of Matt looking more relaxed than he has been in years!
On one occasion when we did venture out, Matt got a very memorable, if injurious, massage in a beach banda (hut) by the hotel masseuse. Having had a startlingly similar experience at a hotel in Ethiopia, he promises to write a guest blog entitled “The Lesser-Known Perils of Massage in Developing Countries.” At Matemwe, we were fortunate to have the run of a huge Swiss Family Robinson-style bungalow suite with a lounge area with swing-beds, and a very imaginative layout including open-air toilet and shower and a complete absence of straight lines, including, as it happened, the posts that held the thatched roof on the whole structure, which torqued rather noticeably after some strong winds one night while we were there [picture below]!
We had a curious monkey come visit one evening, swinging through the posts of our thatched roof and clearly perturbed we were there. Matt promptly ceded control of our suite to the monkey, retreating to the (ceilinged) bedroom. Monkey 1, Matt 0.
I couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas present than to have Matt visit me, and while he is no longer physically here with me in Tanzania, he needn’t be absent from this blog…
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