Fraser's blog

Just back from seeing this film with an audience of NGO and UN people. The story is well known and this film tells it well - it would be a draining experience at the best of times, but given where I am working, how Burundi and Rwanda’s problems share common roots and how the repercussions of the genocide are still being felt today, its effect is magnified. Even then it can’t convey the enormity of what happened only 11 years ago. One not to miss.

In what appears to be an amazingly short length of time, I reached the one third point of my current mission and so headed off for a much needed break. Unfortunately, due to the way flights work, I elected to have only a short break, flying out on Monday and coming back on Saturday. To avoid having to make decisions I headed directly to a beach recommended by some of my colleagues and was immediately faced with a choice: Do I spend my precious four days sleeping in and lazing on the pure white beach, occasionally dipping into the emerald crystal clear water? Or do I do what I have no got round to doing yet and doing my open water dive qualification? With only four days it was tight, but the nice people at the scuba-do dive centre said it was possible, given that it was low season and things were fairly quiet. So I did it... in three intensive days, and still managed to get a much-needed lie-in on the Friday.

The waters were amazing - although we had to fit in all the exercises into the dives, there was still time to enjoy the abundant underwater life and the near-30m visibility. I can’t imagine there are many better places to learn to dive.

On Friday afternoon I headed to Stone Town - very much worth a visit... very arabic and un-african. In fact I can thoroughly recommend Zanzibar as a holiday destination. Off-season it is quiet, and I believe currently only about 650 euro return from Europe.