Early mornings are tricky here for me because I seem to still have the loveliest blood in Africa and I must hide under my mosquito net until the sun is well up. But I have the problem sorted now. I hung a second net over a chair and small table in my room and with a certain amount of running to dodge the very few mosquitoes I can get out from under one net, make myself a cup of hot water and back under the other net and ready to write without much ado. I noticed this morning that my swift, imaginary mosquito dodging was actually creating a cool breeze and I realised how warm it is. The last few mornings have been like this and I'm told the hot weather is beginning.


Every week has had a different flavour here as circumstances change and people come and go. Before Rebecca and Brett went off to teach in Kenya last weekend we had a lovely week of delicious evening meals with interesting discussions and poker games every night. This week Jane and Davy and I have rattled around more loosely and there has been a certain amount of vomiting and diarrhoea involved but you don't want to hear about that.


Jane and I have been mostly working together this week and we have more or less hit our stride. I am seeing people now for a second time so instead of endless strangers every day there are people I have met before who smile in greeting. I am also seeing the before and after. There was one little HIV positive girl who came last month with pneumonia. She has been on my mind and I was delighted to meet her again at last on Thursday looking like a completely different child, smiling and well.


Work is becoming easier as I understand a little about people's lives. It is as though I begin to see more in three dimensions. It is less difficult to see what the different remedies look like when I am able to differentiate the person from their surroundings. Homoeopathy is all about individualisation but in my first panic of being here everybody seemed the same. In fact they often have the same symptoms; swollen knees, waist pain, vertigo, weakness but each person needs their own remedy and it is up to me to find it so learning how to see is vital.


The landscape is also changing around me as I relax and I realise that I was too shocked to actually see at all when I first came here. The implacable sky which is hiding Kili again all this week has withdrawn from the foothills and I can feel, now that I can see the the hills, how we are enclosed in the folds of the land. Roads that I perceived as flat and straight when I first came now undulate and gently turn. Everything is softer; the people and the place and I wonder at the change in me that I am able to see the softness.


Saturday today and we must brave the market again and see if we can get ourselves some food at less than the mzungu price. Tomorrow we are driving to the waterfall which will be our first tourist trip. And back to work on Monday.