A very happy day!

As many of you know, we were recently back in the UK for the wedding of our friends Mike and Mel. We had a brilliant time back in beautiful England and will put some general photo's up in a day or two. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the wedding.


The groom with his boys outside his house before leaving for the church.


Waiting for his bride with only Rich to entertain him in the meantime - you have to feel sorry for the guy! It was nice to be at a wedding ceremony where both the groom and bride get to be present and participate! The last few weddings we have been to, the bride had to wait for it all to happen without her before she was collected by the man who is now her husband!

Afterwards the VERY happy Mike with his beautiful bride Mel and his best man (who remembered the rings and got everyone to church on time!)

Rich enjoyed practising his arty shots on the classic cars.

A well deserved Peroni after the speeches:)

Building Update

I thought it was about time to post an update on how the building work at the school is progressing. The last couple of months have been very exciting as we have seen the roofing nearly completed, walls plastered and painted, floors laid, toilets being installed, wiring being put in... Here are a few recent-ish photo's of how the school is looking these days.

The big red square to the left of the centre, is the gate at the front of the school. To the right are the offices and classrooms and to the left is the workshop area.

Inside our computer lab - This is our most finished classroom as we had to have it finished in order to qualify for the grant for the equipment.

Here Jason is installing all the new computers in the lab. It's so exciting to see how it's all progressing!

Wazazi wa Richardi (Rich's parents)

Just over a month ago Rich's parents arrived on our little island to see just what it is really like here. They were with us for a very busy two weeks as we showed them our home, our work, introduced them to our friends and did most of the touristy things it is possible to do here. The following photo's are a few, selected from many, highlights of our time with Mr and Mrs O Sr.

As you may have already realised from previous blog entries, all guests are put straigt to work on arrival! Here Val is helping Rich to install an African style toilet in the mens bathroom.

Steve next to the installed toilets.

On their first day here we dragged them around town, showing them the warren of little alleyways that makes up Stone Town.

We also felt that they needed to see, smell and just generally experience the meat and fish markets!

We did allow them a short time to relax over lunch at one of our favourite restaurants here - they serve the most amazing fish and passion fruit juice.

A tourist must - the spice tour! You may remember a similar photo not too long ago on this blog. For some reason the tour guides insist on making you wear silly garments made from Banana plant leaves.

Another must is the outdoor food market - Forodhani gardens. here Val and Steve are trying the sugar cane juice. It's actually quite tasty and they usually add ginger and lime to the juice.

The last couple of days of Steve and Val's visit we headed to the mainland for a safari. This also doubled up as a birthday treat for Rich who turned 27 on our first night at the safari lodge. This photo is taken at one of our favourite restaurants in Dar es Salaam. It is an Ethiopian restaurant and the food and the atmosphere are brilliant. You can see that all the food is served on a communal dish and you eat with your (right) hand.

Our acommodation at the safari lodge. It is basically a tent on a platform, but is actually quite luxurious.

Karibu! Our tent

We arrived at this hippo pool just in time to see these elephants turn up and start playing around in the water. We were the only people there and it really was quite amazing to watch.

The last morning of our safari we were told by another driver that there were two lionesses sitting just by the road, having very recently killed a deer or some other unfortunate animal (it was quite difficult to tell). It really was awesome - they were literally less than 5 meters away from the car and just sat there watching us taking photo's of them! I have to confess to being just a little nervous!

Tumerudi nyumbani!

We have returned home! After a wonderfully mad couple of weeks in England, we are back on our little island. The journey back was relatively easy and we managed to get all our luggage back without too much trouble (other than shaking off some extremely persistent porters in Dar!).
Getting off the plane we immediately noticed how much the climate has changed here in the last couple of weeks. The heat is definitely back and we were sweating at 7.20am... chin up! This is going to be how it is for the next 5 months or so:(
If you are wondering about our month and mourning my lack of blog updates, I will be getting on to it and blogging about the time we had with Rich's parents, the wedding we went to, fish and chips on the pier and much more...

Little Misses

This is a recent picture of all the lovely ladies on our team. Left to right: Doris, Roxanne, me, Julie and Doro

Being English

Over the last few months, many of you will know, we have been insanely busy with visitors. This has been wonderful and a real blessing as it has meant we have seen both sets of parents as well as some friends, all of whom have taken time to come and visit us on our island. Although it has been over a year since we were last in the UK and therefore a year since we saw our parents and friends, it was like the year just melted away and we were able to continue where we left off.
Now, we are back in our home country for a VERY brief visit due to Rich being best man for Mike and Mel's wedding (don't ask me why he keeps on being asked - his track record isn't exactly what you would look for when on the look out for a best man...), and in many ways it feels like we were never away. Granted there are many things that we have forgotton how to do (using a debit card in a shop to buy something, wearing socks) and many things that are HUGELY different here (cars have brake lights that work and don't emit huge clouds of black smoke, you can drink water straight from the tap, it is SO cold here!!!) but we still just about remember how to be English and are really enjoying the change in climate!
It is really lovely to be back, even for such a short time, and we are looking forward to catching up with many family and friends. Please forgive us if we are unable to see you during this short visit. We are only back for two weeks and simply don't have the time to see everyone we would like to.

Stubborn as an ass!

Returning to our car recently we found this donkey standing very close by it. We assumed that at some point the animal would move, maybe when we started the engine or maybe when Rich did a multi point turn narrowly (and I mean narrowly - those of you who know Rich's driving will understand me!) missing the donkey's nose, but no. It merely blinked and watched us drive away.