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...

Today was my first day as a volunteer here in Tanzania. I woke up at 6:45 to get showered and have some peanut butter and jam on toast (this is what happens when you live with Americans) before starting the journey to a village called Mabogini. Mabogini is quite a way outside of Moshi and so we take the public buses called dalla dallas. If you thought the underground was bad then you should try getting a dalla dalla to work. I was lucky enough to get a seat on th...