Well we're here

We're here. It's hot. And the people are very welcoming. We have spent the last two days with a mixed group of Dutch, Kenyan and British volunteers, learning more about Tanzania - one minute the strategic plan and the MDGs, the next, how to use a dalalala safely. All very useful, some of it more interesting than others.

I'm trying very hard to eat only cooked food - peel, cook it or forget it, some friend advised before we left and I'm trying to adhere to that MO. No problems so far, but the rats looking over us, as we ate last night and the long, long hair in Caroline's rice and fish today, make every mouthful a new adventure.

We've worked out already that we will not live well on the allowance we have, but everyone - absolutely everyone - speaks so warmly of Mtwara, the College, the accommodation, the beach and the people that I can't wait to get there. We fly down in two and half weeks and our luggage goes by bus ahead of us.

We leave for Morogorro on Saturday to learn swahili. Already, I feel a huge deficiency in my understanding of Tanzanian culture becuase I have no knowledge whatsoever of the language. The simplest greeting leaves me baffled. Im reading about the skirmishes and conquests of the European in Africa in the nineteenth century and it helps, but to be able to say "ujambo" in precisely the right tone would help a lot more.