We have been here for four days and it feels both like one day and a month and like the strangest place on the planet and like home.


It is beautifully cool so we have not yet had to acclimatise to great heat but everything else is new and I'm told the heat is coming soon. We are 1000 meters above the sea which could explain the sudden random exhaustion or maybe that was the long flight which was mind boggling.


Most of what I have to write about is the diffusion into a new place. For the first few days everything was so strange that I could not process it, just a blaze of sights and sounds and smells. But slowly it has risen up around me like soft water or a dream and now I am inside it.


Yesterday was my first day of driving so the map of the town is settling into my brain for the first time and I realise that the streets actually stay in the same place and can be relied on to be there the next time I drive around the same corner.


Traffic in the town is made up of cars, lorries, pici pici motorbikes, bicycles, big square hand barrel carts on bicycle wheels, shallow wheel barrows made of hand beaten metal and many, many pedestrians.


The main roads of the town are lined by traders with their wares neatly arranged on the ground in a continuous strip but women also walk around carrying their wares for sale with an example placed on their heads so you know what they are selling. This makes sense to me now but for the first few days seeing people walking around with one shoe sitting on their heads was another example of the upside down world I had found myself in.


For the homoeopaths amongst you I'll say that regular doses of mercurious have calmed my insect bites, mended my toothache and my ability to understand the exchange rate and turned my world right side up again.


The up hill road from Moshi back out to Shanti Town where we live is wide and tree lined and shady and long and straight. All day there are women walking down the dusty strip beside this road carrying bananas on their heads from out of town. And at our corner Rosie's fruit and vegetable stall. Up here the houses are big and hidden behind high hedges and gates which are locked at night.


Yesterday we drove out of town in the other direction to make a home visit to a young patient of Marina's. The roads in this direction are very different, a bit like the road from Allihies up by the mines and over into Urhan only flat and made of hard baked red dust. The fact that the road is on the level makes the constant climbing into ruts and over bumps easier but the bumps and ruts are huge. Turning into a side road may involve a steep descent into a three foot ditch and climb up the other side again. Here the road is narrow and we are driving right through people's lives, almost through their kitchens.


Marina's patient Pendo is 14 and very, very ill and Marina is making a visit today because she is afraid that this little girl might not make it to Monday if she continues with vomiting and diarrhoea but when we arrive we find that the remedy Marina gave yesterday has helped and the vomiting and diarrhoea have stopped. She still may not make it but she has a better chance. This evening anyway she will eat green banana and meat soup, Marina has given her mother some money for the meat.


Yesterday, trying to get a smile from Pendo, Marina brought bubbles. She got her smile and has put a video of the joyful bubble game on face book.


Tomorrow we actually go to work.


With love,


Sandy








Rosie at the corner of our road