"Oops..." mixed with a little "Oh Yeah!"

Last Sunday I woke up very early, took my "shower" and then headed off to Church for 8:00am Mass, which is the English Mass. Now I had already walked past the church before and the location was where everyone told me the Catholic Church was located. It only took me about 5 minutes to walk there. But when I arrived the 7:00am Swahili Mass was still going on, so I just wandered around the courtyard looking at different things when I ran into this little old lady who could tell I did not know where I should be. So she directed me to this very small chapel off the side of the church. A few other people trickled in and before Mass started, the priest came up to me and asked if I wanted to read the first reading. Having previous experience with reading at Mass at home, I of course said yes. He showed me where in the Bible the reading was and after reading it, I felt pretty confident in my ability to read it well for Mass.

So Mass started and I noticed that several things were different. For example, the parts that the entire congregation said were different and I did not know them from memory. Having gone to Mass almost every weekend in my life, I thought this was rather odd. Also, the chapel was not very decorative--there were no pictures or statues of Mary or Saints. But instead of worrying about it, I just blamed the differences on being in a very different country that could have different customs. So the time came for my reading and I think I did a pretty good job because there were a lot of names and places in the reading (of course). But when the time came for the homily, the priest said that we professed the wrong first reading at which point he read the correct one. HA! But this is where things get interesting. For the entity of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the priest had his back to the congregation?? And for communion, you were given the Body and then you had to dip it into the chalice to receive the Blood. I thought we changed these things decades ago?? But again, maybe they are just really behind in Zanzibar?

Well later that day I was reading my Tanzanian guide book, looking at Zanzibar, and I realized that the Church I went to that morning was not the Catholic Church but the Anglican Church. HAHA! The Catholic Church was a little bit farther away and I guess that the locals, being almost entirely Muslim, do not know the difference between a Catholic and an Anglican Church. So basically, my first time at a non-Catholic Church was in another country where I was a part of the service and read the wrong reading! haha...oops!

So that was an exciting start to my week, and I did go find the real Catholic Church later that day but they unfortunately had no more Masses on Sunday. I think God will understand my situation.

On Wednesday of this week, I got to check of one of the things off on my Zanzibar "to do" list. With the my school, we went on a field trip to the Josani National Park, home to the famous Colombus Monkey, very rare and only found on Zanzibar! It was really exciting to be feet away from beautiful, red monkeys in their natural habitat! Our guide however wasn't overly knowledgeable because he would speak English really well and rather quickly when we would stop in the Forrest, but when asked a question, he had a very difficult time understanding. So he basically memorized an English script of the Forrest to tell the visitors. But over all it was a really nice trip and I got to see some really interesting things!

But the highlight of my week was yesterday afternoon. Hafith who is my homestay dad took me to a spice farm on the island! And in case you didn't know, Zanzibar is well known for their spices and they used to be the number 1 producer of cloves. The farm that we went to was owned by someone in Hafith's family so it was very personal. I got to see pretty much every spice you can imagine in its natural habitat. Ranging from cadamon to cocoa to curry to Cinnamon right off the tree! It was great! At the end, the young boy of about 16 who was showing us around gave me a ring and a bracelet made from palm frons and he also made me a "crown" all from palm frons! It was really exciting and very nice of them to take me around the farm like they did. And I learned a pretty interesting fact about Zanzibar. In the 70s, Zanzibar counted all the palm trees on the island and at the time there were enough palm trees for every citizen to have 15! And at the time the population was about 700,000. Now that is a lot of palm trees!

So as you can see there are so many exciting things to do in Zanzibar and I am still having a really great time! I have put some pictures up on my Snapfish account, but they take a very long time to upload, so be patient!