We're here!

Well here we are - our first evening in Arusha. Kids bathed, fed (sort of) and asleep, and time to indulge in some Tanzanian chocolate biscuits (essential for acclimatization, and supporting the local economy...), playing with our new mobile phones and a quick spot of blogging.

So far it's hot, confusing, exciting, beautiful, filthy, friendly, over-friendly and faintly surreal.

We arrived mid morning having had about 5 hours of intermittent dozing on the first plane, lost some of the casing on the new laptop in Nairobi airport after a fellow passenger clobbered it off the security table with his own bag, and then had an amazing one hour flight down to Kilimanjaro airport (outside Arusha) with spectacular views of Kili on the left and Mt Meru on the right and a very small and rushed in-flight breakfast eaten with small child draped comatose over me. A taxi met us at the airport and brought us here where we were met by a very friendly young lady who gave us a the 3 minute tour and explanation of the house. It didn't include such obviously frivolous pieces of information such as the location of towels etc, but nevermind.

The kids settled in to explore the garden and I faced the world outside the gate of our temporary shared abode on a shopping expedition. Made it on foot to the nearest supermarket (a really big one apparently....) and managed to spend 86 dollars on various foods, toiletries etc. It turned out I had taken out 87 dollars with me. Colin had said that a taxi back would cost a dollar - perfect (phew!) (I had bought several kilos of water in case you were wondering) . Turned out that fares have gone up since he was last here, but the driver trusted me for the other dollar till we got back to the house so all was well. We all ventured into the city centre this afternoon and got ourselves a couple of mobile phones - hurrah. Having phoned a friend of a friend in the area this evening, we must surely have truly arrived now?! Well, maybe it will be clearer in the morning.

There's a part of me (probably the tired part) that wonders why on earth I have voluntarily come here where everything is unfamliar and just buying groceries seems like a major adventure, but there are mousebirds in the garden and a huge mountain looming as a backdrop - perhaps it will even feel like home one day.

Mama