This week is my very last week as a volunteer at Kilimanjaro Young Girls in Need. It has yet to sink in that I have just another three days left until the end of term and the end of my time here in Moshi. I've had an incredible time teaching at KYGN and will be so sorry to leave such intelligent, kind and fun-loving young girls. I will also be very sad to say goodbye to two truly inspirational women; charity director AnnaMariah and teacher Rahabu. However, I fe...

I'm sat in the Dot Cafe in Moshi town feeling absolutely shattered after an amazing weekend at Lake Chala. Lake Chala is a crater lake on the border of Tanzania and Kenya which is hardly touched by travellers. It is absolutely stunning and supposedly the deepest crater lake in Africa but it doesn't even make the East Africa Lonely Planet guide. However, Lake Chala is infamous in Hostel Hoff as the setting of a vicious crocodile attack in 2002. Undeterred, we set...

Tuesday was my twenty third birthday and I arrived at school to find six beautiful birthday cards from my six beautiful students. They had peeled out all of the stickers from their exercise books to decorate my cards with which, considering how much they treasure those stickers, is a bit of an honour. They said that they couldn't afford a cake so they'd brought in bananas (excellent) and four little fried fish wrapped in newspaper (not quite so excellent). I thin...

Despite being out last Friday night for JT's leaving party, we decided nonetheless to power on through and wake up early the following morning to hike up the Marangu waterfalls. We made our way to the bus station and met up with our friend Ignus (probably the nicest Tanzanian/human I've ever met) before jumping on a dalla dalla. We got amazingly lucky with the dalla; not only did I have a seat, I didn't even have a single armpit or crotch in my face (this is noth...

So much has changed in one week at KYGN. Anna Mariah, the charity's director, has returned after giving birth to a baby boy and together we are working to steer the charity in a brand new direction. Two new volunteers, Lizzie and Naomi have arrived to help at the KYGN Centre in Mabogini and so I have given up my post as assistant to the kindergarten to become a full time teacher to the teenage girls. We set the girls an English and Maths test to work out their c...