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Tabitha is our cleaner and washer woman. She looks after us very well. We don’t have to worry about washing our clothes. She washes the floor everyday. More than we ask of her. She likes Japanese dried seaweed very much.

I gave Idi my old safari jacket that I used to wear all through college, and during many of my travels. It has buttons I sewed on in Ethiopia when it got too chilly to wear it open necked. It has snap shuts my dad sewed on to thwart pickpockets in India. Now it is going to retire in Tanzania. Farewell faithful jacket. I hope you serve Idi well.

Idi is feeding Mary’s cows. I never learnt how to milk them.

This is Idi, who works in the garden but isn’t in charge.

The last day picture taking. Sniff.

This is Ali, our guard. Small, but moves silently and invisibly in the dark, creeping up on you with a poisoned bow and arrow.

Looks such a quiet chap. You’d never guess he is a potential killer!

We are almost ready to leave. Some stuff is already being cargoed back to the UK at great expense, leaving us to concentrate on sad farewells and some last minute indulgences.

One and a half days left. I can’t believe it.

Had arranged to meet Atish from Cybernet with the Headmaster and Bursar of Uru School, along with the Rimmers. Typically we arrived in Arusha to find that Atish had gone to Moshi where we had just come from. Bugger!

So I ran round to A&A Computers and talked the proprietor into sharing his experiences of getting schools in the area online. Alex really pulled something and talked to us for over an hour, convincing all of us that Uru School wasn’t ready to commit funds to an internet connection and would be better off spending the money on more computers. Yes, he is a computer salesman, but the fact is, Uru School needs to get teachers up to speed with basic computer use before it can set kids loose on the machines. The school could dedicate a year to getting staff trained up and using computers on a day to day basis, then in a years time lessons could begin for students. It does seem like a much more sustainable plan to me. We had been just hoping that the internet would be instantly useful to the school, when of course we in the UK had been exposed to computers for ten years before the internet came along and could just see the applications when it did. Not so in Uru. It would be kind of sad to invest £3,000 and have teachers at Uru just staring blankly at the keys.

It seems that this year may be the year when Uru gets its working computers. A year later than I had hoped for, but at the end of the day they probably will get them and benefit. It just needs careful planning with Uru School, not just our wishful thinking. Otherwise we risk leading old ladies across the street who hadn’t wanted to cross in the first place…

Stratton with someone under the knife.

This guy I know at least is the shop keeper at the shop.

Someone else at the shop in Uru

I don’t know who this is.