the faces of 'watu wa kazi'

a new greeting i heard today: mzima? (answered affirmatively as mzima! - "i am fine/well")
oh there's so much still to share - i don't know where to take you next: the colours of the markets, the busy fishing port, the wildlife and all the many faces of people in their daily lives - working, walking, waiting...

i think i'll move on by sharing with you some of the people:

the ladies at work collecting seaweed on the eastern coast of zanzibar (jambiyani);other ladies looking for work (henna, hair braids and massages on offer) in jambiyani;
the men preparing their boats and their catches from their boats in stone town (also zanzibar);
children swimming in stone town;people gathering, by the "big tree" (mti kubwa) in stone town, and in the central square in kisarawe;

the orange-peeler (kisarawe) - we bought an orange in thanks for the picture;
michael's friend bonifast, at work and at play with his family (kisarawe);

moja, mbili, tatu... "cheese"

I begin somewhere in the middle of the beginning...

while I write this currently from my home in Arusha, the stories and photos begin south and east of that in and around Dar es Saalam. So I will try to tell a bit about that journey before continuing with life here...
the photos collected here are all from Kisarawe, specifically the home of Baba Idi, a good friend of Michael's - we had a lively discussion in broken english/kiswahili about how "mchizi" is a crazy person, and that telling one to "say cheese" may be understood incorrectly to mean insultingly calling that person crazy. Well, we clarified what "cheese" meant to us, and a good amount of laughter was had all round.

we brought a set of dominoes with us for the family:
after giving a brief description of how to play, faces all suddenly lit up when we showed them the "fun" way to play with dominoes, lining them up in a snaking fashion across the small table and then nudging one until it created a chain reaction sending all of the dominoes crashing down - what exhileration and laughter!

...then the requisite photo with the whole family & friends with whom we had been sitting (note the "cheese-ing" faces)