Day 1, Project Zanzibar

From left, Gustav, Clara, Catrin, Sandra, Olle and Jimmy (me).

Upon arrival on Zanzibar, we met our contact, Sheha Amin, who drove us to the hotel from the airport. The following day we first met with the project group that we would spend our whole week with. Their project group was chosen from Forodhani school (I think) and we were meant to bond with them during the week.

This is a few members of the project group of Zanzibar.

Our first presentation was to be held at Forodhani school.

Forodhani School

Because we had heard from our contact about the lack of electricity in the schools we had in advance printed our PowerPoint in A3 format. We also plasticized one copy which we used every presentation. We also gave the schools a copy of our presentation and PowerPoint. Now they at least have the option to teach other pupils about the global warming issue. What amazed us was that when we asked the question "Has anyone heard of Global Warming?", there was no answer. No one had heard of the expression which we hear about almost every day here in Sweden. I'm not sure if all of the teachers even knew what it was. Now we can safely say that a lot more kids on Zanzibar know about Global warming, because they could evidently answer correct answers on our Quiz.

Presentation

Our listeners

After the presentation we gave them some of the things we had with us to the trip. (I can safely say that we had over 100 kg stuff that we gave away.) They were extremely happy for anything they got and we tried to organize it so that everyone received the same amount of things. This was hard because we had no clue how many pupils there were in each class or how easily we could get hold on all the things that was packed in our bags. An average of pupils per class I would estimate to about 35-40. Imagine the classrooms with 35-40 pupils with one teacher in a room with no glass in the windows or doors that can be closed... and multiply it with 10, and you have a school on Zanzibar. The noise was extremely high, which made it hard for us to be heard. We had to talk very slowly and with a high volume.

On the afternoons we had our "Cleanliness Campaign". We and the other project group went out on the streets of Stone Town, with plastic bags and plastic gloves, and collected paper/plastic. There was too much litter for us to make a big difference, although we were a fair number of people. The idea is to make us seen by the inhabitants and try to make them understand that we need to clean their city. We wished to make them feel ashamed that we had to come there and clean their town. One thing that I noticed which bugged me, was all the organic waste that was thrown on the streets. It could easily have been used for a good and easily made compost.

Adjacent to the cleanliness campaign we handed out brochures about recycling. One copy in Swahili (native language) and one in English. This was highly appreciated and everyone wanted one. We had a lot of questions every day from people when they saw us and we were drawn into various discussions about the environment, which was very interesting.

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After our cleanliness campaign we had our second part of the project, Culture. The first day we had Gotlandic Games. The idea with the culture-part is that we should spend time with the other project group and bond with them. We had very fun with each other, every day. I have made a movie-clip of the afternoon, which can be found on YouTube.