We arrived in Dar es Salaam yesterday at 3pm. We stayed in a hostel for the night to break the journey up (not least for the chidlers) and were treated to a good night’s sleep with air-conditioning (acclimatisation I called it!). It is 28-34°C here during the day, dropping to 22-24°C at night. That’s pretty hot for someone (me) not great with heat?! What am I doing?!?!? We then made our journey to Muheza today with Juma (the hospitals ‘go to’ meet and greet driver), arriving at our new home for the next 5 months just before dark at 6pm. A long journey – just over 48hrs all in - but what a lovely welcome.

Lows of the past 48hrs – 1) One child stabbing another in the hand with a pencil at the airport. 2) Arriving in Muheza with emotions that are difficult to determine between pure excitement and horror at what we are doing here. 3) discovering that only two of the bedrooms have working fans (no a/c here – too expensive to run).

Highs of the past 48hrs – 1) Calming the stabbed child down surprisingly quickly. 2) The children being otherwise totally amazing for our whole journey - sometimes kids really do rise to the challenge. 3) Being told “Unasema Kiswahili vizuri sana” by more than one local person (that means all my efforts to learn a bit of the local lingo has been worthwhile – literally “you speak Swahili very well”). 4) Fixing a fan by cutting off a broken plug with a pair of kitchen scissors and rewiring it with another plug I found using the electrical screwdriver that I brought (all my years of tinkering may also be justified) meaning we now all have a working fan in each bedroom making our first night here hopefully a pleasant one.