There I was, so focused on the spiders, snakes, cheetahs, leopards, tigers, lions, elephants, hippos, crocodiles and scorpions and I never even thought to ask about the caterpillars…

All those big things simply divert your attention away from the real beasties that'll hurt you. Meet the hairy caterpillar. These look just like caterpillars but with, um…well. They dangle from trees on web, yes webs, and if you happen to brush past one it'll flop onto your shirt and start wiggling its way all over you. It started as I was walking and talking to the Chairwomen of the NGO we're working with over here, after a few minutes what I thought was a midgey bite just under my arm which scratching through the shirt just wasn't curing. After waiting until she was just looking in the other direction I rammed my hand up and started vigorously itching my burning right armpit. Then she looked at me, quizzically, clearly assuming it was a Mzungu (white man) thing to do. Just then Eleanor calmly asked about whether the fluffy thing (now) on my shoulder was ok to pick off. No, Eleanor, it was not. These little nasties are like walking nettles x 50 and I'd been squashing it under my right pit before its heroic escape to my shoulder. At least an hour away from home I had to put up with my right side swelling up into little hives which felt like cigarette burns as I tried to look impressed with some tea we'd just been invited inside someone's house to share. Actually, the tea was great, mixed with lots of fresh cinnamon bark and leaf and sugar, so that's ok then.

Getting to the point, we've been here ten days so far. The first week we spent lots of time in the office of Malezi, the local NGO we're helping here. The charity we're with provides volunteers who select women who have been impacted by HIV and help develop ideas for small businesses, providing the initial funding to get things off the ground. That meant we spent much of the first week going through folders full of details around past grant recipients from the last four funding rounds, looking at the type of businesses supported and the results. It was pretty clear that while the women are meant to bring in their results every week, this was being done African style - which means not very often and even then not very right. We've also been making some presentations on business training and HIV which we're giving next week.

Having looked at the previous rounds we've decided that the whole grants process needs to be looked at, these have been getting doled out for the last few years but there's been very little continuity between volunteers and we can't see that the process has developed or learnt from its past mistakes. But before then we've started tracking down the ladies whose numbers we don't have, that means we've been doing plenty of walking through, up and around the Pare mountains to the kiosks and stalls where the ladies now sell their goods. Most keep the simple records with good regularity and its interesting to visit these local homes in the middle of nowhere, places that you simply wouldn't normally see. Having Mama Halima with us helps with the translation and also means we get an insight into people's lives that we wouldn't be able to.

That also means some very sad stories, many of the ladies have HIV themselves and all are widows with children to support. Their location helps in that they have plentiful resources for growing their own food but they do need to pay for school uniforms and secondary school fees (primary is state run), if you have six kids it all adds up. One lady we were on our way to see appeared in front of us coming down a big hill with a load of wooden branches balanced on her head, flanked by two little girls of about 5 who each had their own tub of products balanced on their heads. She stopped when she saw us and gave us a really warm welcome and so we explained we were just coming to visit her. She was on her way to market, she explained, she hadn't been working for the last two weeks so needed to get going. She'd been sick and then she'd had news that her daughter had been shot in Arusha along with her granddaughter and her husband. They'd had an argument with a neighbour who had just gone back into his house and called in the local heavies. Amazingly they all survived but were in hospital. We let her off the lateness of the numbers…following that we heard another story of the daughter of another of the ladies who was shot a few years ago in Arusha. Her husband had been secretly seeing a girl who was still in school (very common here) and had arranged to meet his wife one day in a shop near a local market. When she got there, he had arranged a hitman to shoot her so that he could get her out of the way and take all of her money (she was from a more wealthy family). He shot her but again, she survived (we are getting the impression that African guns have the same levels of workmanship of everything else here). She had no idea what he he had been up to, but was obviously broken to find out the truth. What happened to her husband? He ran for a position in the government of course where he now works and is using his salary to pay his girlfriend's school fees. Someone like him sounds very suited to government here, a government that charges $120 if you want to come and volunteer to help.

On one of our walks we visited a local house high up in the mountains where we had heard that the father of the family was unwell and needed Mama Halima to go into Moshi (the nearest town) to collect some drugs for him. When we got to the house we were ushered into the family's living room where the dad, his two late twenty something sons and his wife were sitting eating spiced tea and chappatis. Their children were sitting in a separate outhouse eating their food. After a few minutes one of the little girls came around with a jug and a basin where she poured water to allow us to wash our hands before they brought us some chappatis, mixed with onions and a cup of tea. Meanwhile, the dad was explaining what was wrong but as he did it was pretty clear something wasn't right. We stayed for about forty minutes and I asked a few questions via translation which were answered by his sons. He seemed confused and agitated, at one point it was obvious that he was asking for a new shirt and his son had to point out he had one on. Unfortunately, it was clear to me that he had quite developed Alzheimers but mental health care is simply not very accessible here. After we left and as we walked back down the hill, through fields of beans and bananas, I asked a few more questions. The sons, both university educated, had believed that their father was cursed as he had sold all of his cattle. Their first port of call was a local witch doctor who put together a ceremony involving the slaughter of a goat to help banish the curse. Obviously this hadn't worked. The people from our NGO had explained that this wasn't the case and the family seems now to have accepted that but even the NGO, don't have much understanding of mental illness. There just isn't any support for him and as in the UK, nothing that can be done to help him. It's sad and difficult because there wasn't even anything to be gained from explaining what was likely to be wrong and what would happen in the future. I decided not to tell them what I knew.

It's been an interesting week, the village has seven local schools so there are kids everywhere and all the locals say hi to us as we go past. It's a very pretty place but it's also very quiet. There are no real restaurants or bars so we're not going out in the evenings and the pace of life is very slow.

People here will say 'Pole Sana' (I'm very sorry) if they see you working. People rank themselves and their families far above work commitments so it is normal for people to turn up four hours late for a meeting or to not come at all. There is a very un-enterprising attitude as people simply want enough to live, not to be rich. Life goes on, maybe they have their priorities right but after years of aid we are also starting to sense an expectation of hand outs and it would seem to us that if people do have ideas of venture they want to undertake they wont take action from their own volition, not until they get the inevitable grant. It's tricky, the grants from our organization and others such as the US Peace Corp have undoubtedly helped people desperately in need but they can also damage if done incorrectly. We've decided to do a review of alternative ways of helping people here and already have some good options.

It's slow here, it's interesting too. We're looking forwards to see what else comes up.