Day 1 - “One learn more by walking 100 steps than reading 100 pages.”

As the above saying goes the team from ICM 11 learnt quite a lot by reaching Zanzibar than staying in Gothenburg and...........(you know guys what we do in Gothenburg).

Well,it was the day when 9 membered team from ICM 11 left rainy Gothenburg and reached sunny Zanzibar.And I would say the day was all about dealing with Uncertenies. It started right from when we were checking in at Landvetter Airport. I was the only one with non"Red passport" among the group of nine and we had our booking in groups i.e. some guys were tagged together. While checking in, when the lady at counter saw my passport she freaked out and said “you cant go like this” without stating clear reason...Finally she left all of confused by saying “you know what you are doing”. And then everyone got worried finally making me worried as well.All of a sudden I saw lot things happening in imaginary world.Then started the process of googling and calling...Everyone had a big quetion mark on their faces.

Finally, we got some positive info and we boarded on flight. We took our place as per the tickets, except Daniel.It took like 3 different arrangements for him to finally settle down. But after all this panic situation we had a nice session of photography.

Flight took off.......and landed in Stockholm where we had some snacks and then we headed to get on board to our flight to Adiss Ababa via Rome. But then there was a clash of Indian and Swedish understanding. It was 35 mins to flight and I thought we had enough time, for me start time and end time is a time window,which allows you to get in anytime in between but for my other friends it wasn't so. I went to Duty free shop to buy mankinds' two most tempting things....Rest all were waiting,looking for me and finally worring about me.But i was back in 10 mins and after that we all settled down in our places.But when I say "we" it exludes Daniel as he had to do a lot of permutation combinations again to settle down.

Well,there were lot of other incidences but key highlight is that when we landed on Zanzibar,only four of us didn't manage to get their luggages rest five got them right at the airport.Apperently, we were in a 8 by 10 room and working with a guy who was trying to help us.After one and half hour of paper work and chaos we left for the hotel.But this wasn't the end of uncertainities,Viktor came up with an idea of buying handy shorts and tshirt, cab driver was bit hesitant but he agreed to stop by a streat market for 2 mins. And biggest surpise broke in for some of the guys when had to buy things in such a manner,nothing organized. As per Sabastein there were people who were pretending to be your friend and trying push their prices on you. Well everyone who intented to by something bought something except me. For me it was hard...it is always hard to buy something that it is definately a bad deal.Though I managed to find the right deal but driver wasn't ready to stop for me so that i can even pay.I finally jumped into the running van.Anders was amazingly surprised as he was first time out of Europe.As per him it was a another planet.

Finally we reached the place where we were supposed to stay at around 5 p.m.We again did lot of shuffling and moving from one room to another. The reason was quite different,there were a lot of rats who had already occupied the places.Only when Marcus came us with a philosophy that If you havent stayed with rats then u havent seen Africa.So we settled in there.

Then we decided to take a bath in vast blue ocean in front of our house and that was the most relaxing time in past 24 hrs. We took quick shower after that and set ourself for Seaweed center.We had plans to start the process of soap production(planned time was 2.30 p.m) but due to some reasons we plan to start on Sunday morning instead.But we inspected the seaweed center and everyone was so overwhelmed by seeing it. We have been talking about seaweed center for past one and half year now but seeing it live was amazing.We were seeing reflections of our work in some things here and there.Due to darkness we had to leave for dinner.We had a nice dinner but that was not the end of uncertainities.There was no vegetarian food, so me being only vegitarian had to prepare my dish on the dinner table,I had rice with salt,pepper and ketchup.Though as per Ida it was too nice than she had expected....It is 9.23 p.m now,we are sitting aound a nice wooden table on sofas and some are one down some are two(you know what I mean).We have also planned our day for tomorrow and we hope that after this tireness dissolved into sleep we will carry out our planned activities tomorrow with mautifold enthusiasm.

Moral Of the day : “No matter how well you plan , always remeber to keep a room for uncertanities and pratical aspects”.

Hakunamatata !!!

//Harish from Seaweed Center,Zanzibar