A quick update to let people know how we spent the money that you generously gave before we left for Tanzania. It wasn't easy to find the best way to be sure that the money would benefit the children! But in the end, we spent it like this: Finishing off painting the orphanage (it was half done): 245,000 Tanzanian Shillings or about £100 Revarnishing the floor in the children's main living area - it was really dirty, and will be much easier to keep clean and ...

Dear friends We returned safely to the UK last Tuesday, carrying a large quantity of smelly washing and one or two items purchased from the Maasai market. Remarkably, our big day of flights (Zanzibar to Dar-es-Salaam to Kilimanjaro to Nairobi to London) went off without a hitch, and we collected our bags at Heathrow no problem - even the ones containing the washing, unfortunately... Emma and I were back to work on Wednesday, and we have just about struggled th...

Hi all We had an unbelievable safari to Serengeti and Ngorongoro. Saw 2 lions bring down a young buffalo. Wawtched a lion walk past the jeep, and gazed at a beautiful cheetah. We saw a rhino ... but it was quite a long way off! Lots of elephants, giraffes, wildebeest, buffalo, warthog - including 2 warthogs having a big fight... Now in Zanzibar which is completely different! Stonetown is full of narrow winding streets, and we've come up to Kendwa Rocks. T...

Greetings from the Impala Hotel, Arusha! We've been here a week now and had a pretty amazing time though it's certainly had some tricky moments. We think we've learned the names of most of the younger babies and toddlers but are probably saying them in a pretty unrecognisable way! we've started to find out how they like to be entertained, and their daily routine (well sort of - there's plenty of guesswork involved). But when we found ourselves more or less in c...

Well we made it, as did our bags 24 hours later! Lots of welcoming faces, which is good as things are different here to Shrewsbury. We've spent some time at the orphanage, meeting some of the characters there - mopping up, playing, looking at the chickens, and (in Emma's case) changing nappies. We sang "Our God is so Big" to some of the older (3-4 year old) children, and now we have to sing the Big song again ... and again ... and again... Tran...