The last few weeks have been pretty crazy. With moving out of my residence hall in Lyon, saying sad goodbyes, taking a train to Geneva, flying to London, catching up with friends and whanau in the UK…. All before flying to Africa once more.

This is my 4th visit to Africa now, the 3rd to East Africa. And I now remember why I love it here. I took a shuttle bus from Nairobi airport to Arusha, along an extremely bumpy and dusty road. I seem to have developed some serious allergies to the dust here and spent the whole time eyes watering, sneezing etc. Not a good first sign! Luckily I seem to have gotten used to it once more and the sneezing has stopped now. Phew!

I spent a few days in Arusha recovering from lack of sleep and flying induced nerves. I can't say it is somewhere I would like to stay for a long period. The gorgeous view of Mt Kilimanjaro is as stunning as ever (and much less intimidating when not there to climb it!) but the amount of hassle that comes with being a mzungu in such a tourist centred place is exhausting. The amount of safaris, hiking trips, useful wooden carvings I was offered was immense.

A 10 hour bus ride from Arusha to Tanga was quite an experience. I discovered that that road seems to be insanely gluten filled and failed to find anything with the exception of 2 cooked and very dry bananas for the whole trip… interesting. I sat by a man who worked in solar energy for the first few hours and than a Maasai man for the next hour or so. The rest of the journey was spent with 2 kids who summoned up their courage to sit next to the mzungu after a while spent gazing unblinkingly at me. Gorgeous kids, as usual, who seemed to find anything I said in English absolutely hilarious. We had many conversations that involved them speaking Swahili and me replying in English. Worked quite well, or at least seemed to be pretty amusing.

I have been in Tanga since Friday now and I love it here. Living next to the ocean again is something I had been missing insanely since leaving NZ. I really liked Lyon as a city but have to say its inland location would possibly be its greatest fault. And the view out to sea here is pretty amazing, watching the dhows sailing in, people swimming, the sun setting in the horizon. Love it!

On Monday I started lessons in Swahili and am really enjoying it. The language is different in structure than anything I have ever learnt before. On the first day I learnt the past, present and future tenses… something that took me a year at uni to learn in French! For each very one word, or 2 letters to be more exact, are changed depending on tense used. Very practical!

I am living at Meeting Point Tanga, a community centre and soon to be NGO. Its an amazing place, large grounds with conference rooms, rooms, the cleanest bathrooms in Africa I am sure, Maasai who work as security guards, incredibly friendly staff and an insanely inspiring Norwegian couple who set it up. They work towards improving education, health, enterprise and cooperation on a regional and sometimes national scale.

I feel that being here seems somewhat unreal. In the mornings I go for a swim in the inlet, then have mangos, papaya and pineapple for breakfast, Swahili lessons, practice my Swahili with the lovely and very patient staff… and in the afternoons I will be helping out with whatever I can be useful in. No complaints here… except that the end of August might come much sooner than I want!