Thursday 27th March

Gosh - it's been a couple of weeks of tough and very emotional decisions. I have handed in my notice at work, and am slightly anxious about working for myself, although I'm sure it will be fine - the agency even asked me if I would do some interviewing for them (for a fee - obviously !). I have a Skype interview for a job in South Sudan (well paid) next week, my application for MSF is done, and I have a confirmed (not paid) job in Zanzibar at the end of the year. I have organised someone to come and make my flat rentable  and have found a cheaper place to live, in a village I love. It's all a bit real now.
The toughest decision, by far, was the one to re-home my dog. I can barely type it without weeping. It's just not fair to him, with the life I intend to live. I have spent the last 2 days feeling like a traitor every time I look at him. If only someone would have him part time and give him back to me when I'm home ! But that's just me being selfish. I won't go into any more detail as it is just too painful.
My excitement is tempered with an overwhelming feeling of "eeeeeeeeek!" at what I'm doing. But it's adventure, it's exciting, and it's a million times better than what lay ahead a year ago.
The world is all of a sudden an exciting place to be again.

Monday 18Th March.

It was with a heavy heart, and a slight wince, that the Captain's "The weather at Heathrow" speech was received, not just by me, but by the nice lady sitting next to me, who almost wept. " The weather at Heathrow is as follows....7 degrees centigrade, and raining ". Groan. No socks, my coat still in a flat in London, where I had left it, expecting not to need it mid-March, in Spring, when I had several sweatshirts that I had thought would suffice. It was freezing, grey, and wet. Great. Climbing on the bus to Brighton shivering, I was met by a very cheerful, smiling, Barbadian bus driver, who, as it turned out, was to be my only company on the journey home. Sensing my depression settling in, he very kindly lent me his coat, encouraged me to sit at the front with him, and regaled me with stories of  Barbados,  happy times, and his anxiety at missing any of the stops in Brighton, as this was his first run on this route. I promised to help him with the stops, and he fended off  my impending misery - it could have been a lot worse.
Once home, and reunited with my boys (my dog and my cat - who has doubled in size - immediate diet !) I turned the heating up to maximum, had a very hot bath, and thought about the future.
Doing the job I do, you see a very condensed version of life, and it's difficult not to imagine that every life-changing personal disaster that happens to your patients, will happen to you. Although we know the odds are better than that which we see every day, it still makes you think that life is shorter, often, than you expect, and every day is important . It is so easy to suddenly find yourself 20 years down the line, doing the same thing, without ever having really grabbed life with both hands. This has always been my inspiration for adventure,although with age comes the very real sense that time passes much faster, while the responsibilities seem to multiply.
I'm going to spend the next few months trying to work out a financial plan that will allow me to try and have the best of both worlds - maintaining my flat and mortgage, supporting my animals, and somehow managing to take 2-3 month trips doing what I now know I want to do - working in places with minimal resources, using my common sense and my experience, and exploring more of the world.
This is therefore my last post for a while, while I try and work out exactly how I am going to do that - but hey, nothing is impossible - right ?
Thanks for reading folks, and thanks for all the positive comments,emails, and FB messages.
Until the next adventure........ 

Thursday 14th March.
My last day here, and of my trip, before I set off on what will probably amount to just under 24 hours travel. I will be very sad to leave Demani Lodge (my backpackers) and the friends I have made here. Turns out the Gangsta Rap is a very rare occurrence, and mostly I have been lulled ever deeper into a relaxed torpor with lovely reggae music (I couldn't even really hear the music from the party last week in my new lovely hut). Africa, or the small pieces of it I have seen, is wonderful. It somehow gets under your skin, and falling in love with it is very easy. People are curious, kind, (mainly) happy, and very funny. The wildlife and the countryside are amazing, and it's a little bit addictive. There are stark contrasts here, the most obvious being between the rich and the poor. I can't count how many times we have been stopped at roadblocks by police, looking for a bribe to be allowed to pass, or how the helicopter flew in a politician to Maasai land, where small children have one dress to wear. People are surprisingly optimistic though, and there is always a new plan to improve their lives - whether it ever gets done is another matter, but there always seems to be A Plan.
I wrote in an email to a friend the other day, that although I have been completely out of my comfort zone, working as a "doctor" for small children and babies, with a culture completely alien to my own, I felt more at home than I have done anywhere for a long time. If I needed a catalyst to prove that I need to change direction then this certainly served as one. Thank-you, London School Of Tropical Medicine, for giving me the inspiration to decide how that change comes about.
Now the tricky stuff begins - trying to rearrange my life so I can actually do this full time. As I said in my very first post - Bring It On.

Wednesday 13th March
Popped up to the north of the island for a day and a night. Drove through a village called "Bambi", which delighted me, but resulted in a protracted explanation of Walt Disney films with my driver. Delighted me so much in fact, that we took a little detour on the way back to have a look, finding a beautiful village surrounded by palm and mango trees,with women, conspicuous by the lack of muslim dress, sitting about by their mud huts, sharing food and childcare. We popped in to buy some mangoes, and played a game of peek-a-boo with one of the kids (a game that translates into any culture), bought mangoes that tasted of sunshine, and left with smiles on our faces. Driving about here takes time and patience - a one hour trip is likely to take three hours, as you stop every few kilometres to buy some bananas, fresh coconuts to drink from, just to pull up for a chat. It is a mark of how swiftly I have acclimatised to African timekeeping that I thouroughly enjoyed myself and didn't worry about the time once.
Day of sorting things out and paying for things tomorrow, then home Friday. Boo.

Monday 11th March
My last week - heralded in by more tropical downpours, thunder, lightning, and clear skies and sun in the afternoon. 6 weeks has flown by as usual, except this time I think it will be more difficult to return to "normal" life. Having adjusted to the heat and humidity, I'm certainly going to be cold. I have resisted the urge to check the weather at home until now, to find it is expected to reach the dizzy heights of 4 degrees centigrade tomorrow in England. 4 degrees. That is about 32 degrees colder than I am now. Nothing in comparison to one Canadian woman I met,from Winnipeg, where the temperature, with wind chill added, was an ear bitingly cold minus 40 degrees centigrade. On arrival in Kenya, we calculated that she had undergone an 80 degree centigrade change in temperature. Jeepers.
Dived again today, where the visibility was a disappointing 15 or so metres, due to the sediment having been whipped up by the storms. It was still a nice way to pass the time however, if it had not been for The Selfish Diver. There is always one. This particular Selfish Diver was having difficulty with the concept of the ocean being a very big place indeed, and there was no need to be in my little bit of it. If you thought it was impossible to barge past someone in the middle of the sea, when there are only 5 of you in a very big space - well, this chap would have dispelled that notion fairly swiftly. " Look " I gestured, doing the sign for a lionfish - having managed to catch the eye of most of my fellow group, imagine my surprise when I was firmly pushed out of the way so he could take a (bad) photograph of it, startling it so that it swam off fairly sharpish. "Look" I gestured again, "big octopus under this rock", as he charged past me once again, nearly knocking my breathing gear out of my mouth with his flappy fins, to lift the rock up, sending the poor octopus white with fear, under the next big rock, before anyone else had a chance to see it. First rule of diving - DON'T TOUCH. Leave everything as it was, do not upset the animals. That includes the other divers. Grr. And, Selfish Diver, do not go in the opposite direction to everyone else with your wretched camera, when the visibility is poor, and we all have to go back and find you, against the current, wasting our precious air in the process. There are some gestures, when demonstrated underwater, or above it for that matter,that are perfectly clear, and the rest of the group was communicating their feelings perfectly adequately by the end of the second dive....
Just needed to get that little rant out of my system - back to calmness and serenity now. Phew.

Saturday 9th March
So today was moving day - and move I did, to a bigger bungalow at the very back of the same place . I'm going to put up with the Gangsta Rap tonight, in favour of liking this place so much now. When it's a choice between Gangsta Rap, or, in the other lodge, bad orchestral renditions of Whitney Houstons's "I will always love you"...it's a close run thing to be honest.... I now have a lovely big bungalow with my own shower and toilet  - I'm either just going to have to join in tonight, or put two sets of earplugs in.
And the sun is out (although there are ominous rumbles of thunder in the distance....). Mr Bond has been doing his job.

Friday 8th March

The thunderstorm to end all thunderstorms happened last night. The electric crackles of lightning started about midnight, with the distant rolls of thunder following minutes later - by the morning I was woken by an enormous clap of thunder that sounded as if it was somewhere between the ceiling of my room, and my head. The rain that followed was a typical tropical downpour, sheets of warm, hard rain, almost so dense you could not see past it. Just a short run to the bar for breakfast left me soaked to the skin . It continued to rain all day, tailing off by the evening - if my weather forecast is to be believed it will be sunny tomorrow, but after that it is not looking so good. My tolerance levels with continuous rain when it is not expected "for another month" are reasonably low, after 10 days of downpour in the Philippines last year " which hadn't happened for ten years". I'm beginning to wonder if there is some sort of weather vendetta being waged against me by an evil mastermind buried in a secret James Bond style hideout...Bit dramatic maybe, but when everything to do is outside, it is all a bit dramatic . When the rain stopped, however, I took a wander along the beach, which was completely transformed. It was deserted, except for local children playing in the wet sand, and fishermen dragging their nets in. There was an abundance of butterflies, of all colours, and bright yellow birds that I have never seen before. All the sound was somehow muted, as if it had snowed - the sounds somehow gentler - even the sea seemed quieter .
Here's hoping the evil weather genius has been foiled by Mr Bond .

Tuesday 5th March
So started diving yesterday - booked a group of ten dives as a package. Now, you never really know what to expect when booking lots of dives somewhere you've never been before, but according to my research, the diving is not at all bad here. It's completely dependent on the tides as to the times you leave, as the tide is WAY out by midday, so we started really early, at 0700 for our first dive. After throwing a tiny...well, a bit bigger than tiny, but not as big as huge, tantrum, about not being able to find any fins to fit my peculiar feet, but being assured by the next day a lovely set of fins would arrive that my boots would actually go beyond the toes in, I nervously waded out to the tiny fishing boat, weighed down by a huge , heavy, bag of gear, joined by the usual group of Danes and Germans (divers are always Danish or German...). I say nervously, as every time I haven't dived for a while, the first time I get in the water it's like I have never dived before, I flap about like a beginner (although I now have 70 dives to my name), panic a bit, and promise myself that I won't ever dive again. Five minutes after I have failed to descend due to breathing like an idiot, I eventually get down, recover my buoyancy  and my composure, and remember why I love it so much.....
Today we went to Mnebma Island, some 2 hour drive to the north of the island. For some reason I could not quite fathom, you are not allowed on the island, something to do with German prisoners??? No idea, but it was a shame as the island looked perfect, palm trees, white sand....picture postcard. (edit - I have just discovered that I completely misunderstood our guide, and actually the island is privately owned by Germans, and there is a hefty fine if you set foot on it, unless you need the services of the clinic they own too, to administer help to stricken divers).
Our first dive my regulator (breathing apparatus) had a wet valve, so on every intake of breath it sounded like I was an old man with emphysema - once I had reminded myself that it was the valve,and I was unlikely to end up on home oxygen for the rest of my life, all was ok, we battled fierce currents to get to the coral garden, which was beautiful, although with the speed of the current, we whisked by at almost too fast a pace to inspect any nooks and crannies for anything interesting. Now the whole reason I am posting this, is that my second dive was simply ...well, I'm a bit lost for words - and that doesn't happen very often. While we were bobbing along, no current, bouyancy restored, we heard a persistent high pitched beeping sound. I looked to our guide with what I hoped was a questioning gesture ( it's really easy to be misunderstood under water, I probably looked as if I was asking him what time it was). He indicated something passing above (or he could have been saying how lovely it was that the visibility was good), and I looked up, to humour him mostly, to see a pod of about 35 dolphins passing about 10 metres above our heads !!!! I think I used up about half a tank of air squeaking with delight - my nose filled up with seawater, and I didn't care. There were mothers with babies, and one curious youngster came for a quick peek at us, before deciding we were not worth playing with, and rejoined the pod. Smiling so hard is not the most water resistant thing you can do in a mask, but I really didn't care.  Just as we finished the rest of the dive, we passed the biggest green turtle I have ever seen, he must have been at least 5 feet across, just chilling out, being old and lovely. What an amazing day.
 The drive there was also very beautiful. We drove through a forest with the infamous Red Colobus monkeys peering at us through palm fronds, through increasingly poorer and poorer villages. The huts are made of mud, cow manure and sticks, and have holes in the walls that serve as windows. The men are dressed in the traditional " Thawbs", a white robe that reaches to the floor, covering, surprisingly, a full set of Western clothes underneath. The women are uniformly in long black dresses, with headdresses that reach to their elbows - like Russian dolls. The further we went, the more sparse the living became, with chickens and goats scratching around in the dust and inevitable rubbish that lies further away from the tourist areas. The privilege that we are afforded, being able to dive with dolphins, is starkly contrasted by the poverty in which these people eke out their existence. The only consoling thought is that the young lads of the village have at least some income, carrying our oxygen tanks from the boat. It's not a lot, but it's something....
Reminding myself how very lucky I am again, I will sign off and have a cold beer.

Sunday 3rd March
Arrived at lovely backpackers yesterday - stone huts, with thatched roofs, sandy paths (the sand so fine it is like walking on coffee-mate), and my tiny, single, bathroom-less room with a fan. Started off being perfect...I've never really needed air-conditioning before, preferring a fan, as air-con tends to give me a cold - a disaster if I am going to dive a lot. What I hadn't accounted for was how incredibly humid it is here - it feels like I'm in a Turkish bath in my room it's so tiny. After several tries, I eventually got the fan to the end of my bed, pointing directly at me, and had a little relief. Now, there are lots of things that are lovely about this place. The manager, Linn, who is Norwegian, is lovely, and nothing is too much trouble for the staff. The rooms are entered every evening by a statuesque lady, bearing a can of mosquito repellant, who sprays, and lowers your mosquito net for you, tucking it in firmly to keep the beasties out. The shared showers are cleaned after every single use, as are the bathrooms (which are only a very short sandy walk from my room ). The rooms are cleaned and swept every day, with fresh sheets, adorned with a hibiscus flower laid out.There are hammocks in the shade - which is practically my favourite thing about beach holidays, and it is lovely and peaceful during the day, with quiet music playing at the bar and internet access for two pounds a day. And it is ten pounds a night. Ten pounds. Pretty good.
The downsides are that it is not on the beach, being on the other side of the road, but that is not really too much of a problem, as it is only a 10 minute walk to the glorious, deserted, white powder-fine beach, which stretches for miles and miles. It stretches so far , in fact, that it took me half an hour to get to the dive centre, by which time I looked like a peeled tomato. The major factor, however, that has made me decide to leave here on Friday, is the Saturday night party they have here every week.
Not being one to shirk a good party, I had been warned that the music was loud, and went on until 0200hrs. Not a problem - I've had nights that have lasted much much longer than that, although I was rather enjoying the peace and quiet, reading my book, feet up on cushions...... Then the music started. Not too bad to start with, although in the little space it was very very very loud - we slipped (not always seamlessly) from rave, straight into pop, to rock...... By about 11 pm I had had enough ( I know !! Me !!) and retired to bed. Trying to ignore the bass throbbing through my whole room - I swear the bed was dancing - I popped my earplugs in and lay star-shaped on the bed to make the most of the fan. Then the Gangsta Rap started. For those of you who have no idea what this is, I envy you - I really do. For one who knows little about it myself, it appears to be a lot of very angry shouting American men, threatening to kill their girlfriends, and anyone who steals their drugs. It makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out with a blunt apple corer. It makes me angry - which I can only assume is the point of the music, and I did not come here to feel angry.It's played a lot here, I've heard it on local buses (where I was wincing at the amount of swearing, seeing as there were very respectable middle aged ladies who clearly understood english sharing the bus with me ), I've heard young, sweet-faced canadian girls singing every horrible word, and, good lord, I suddenly feel old. If I was a parent, I would be that one who says " Music wasn't like this in MY day" - and I can't believe I am actually saying it !  In my day, people smiled as they danced, with their hands in the air... It appears to be endemic now though - the days of listening to some chilled out music at the end of the night on a beach before bed, seem to have gone. Instead it's this horrible, violent nastiness at 0200 hrs. I think I may have made myself clear - I'll stop now......
So, after a long chat with a nice South African lady who owns a lodge directly on the beach, with a swimming pool, air con, and no gangsta rap, I'm moving there next Saturday, before my ears are subjected to any more ghastliness. Somehow, after telling me the rooms were $100 a night, which led into a discussion about how , as a poor volunteer nurse, I just couldn't afford that, she has given me the week for $300. I am going to enjoy my week here though, diving at 0700 tomorrow morning - here's holding out for dolphins (they saw some yesterday !)
Hakuna Matata !

Friday 1st march 2013
Due to a little bit of peer pressure (it didn't take much, to be honest), I am going back on my word and will continue to post a few times while I'm in Zanzibar. There's no nursing involved, but it's really beautiful here, and it deserves a mention.
True to my nature (I will clearly never learn) I spent my last night in Nairobi having dinner out with fellow volunteers, before going back to the house , and, very sensibly, considering I had to leave at 0500, staying up to the wee small hours, chatting with my room-mates. when Django (the owner of the house's son) came down and invited us to watch a horror film with him at about 0200.Of course, being all grown up and sensible, I agreed. This led to me waiting outside the gate to the compound at silly o'clock, not having slept a wink. Thank goodness for airport lounge passes. It really makes a whole world of difference to sit on comfortable sofas in what counts as a "VIP" lounge (when the airport is pretty awful) sipping  free G&T, eating a rather suspicious kebab, using free internet, while your fellow travellers are perched on iron seats in what appears to be a departure area based on a carousel, trying to unstick their feet from the carpet.
As we flew in to Zanzibar, we passed Mount Kilimanjaro on our right ( I had booked a seat on the left - grr!) and landed in the land of spice. Now normally I love that rush of humid air as you exit the plane, the feeling that you are really somewhere exotic, but in my sleepless state, all I felt was a bit faint and very very hot - Kenya is very dry heat, with the evenings cool, so I will need to acclimatise all over again...
Everything was made immediately brilliant though, the moment I arrived at my very posh, very expensive hotel. It is the most wonderful place, the rooms decked out in antique Zanzibarian artifacts ( I have a framed kimono on my wall that looks a bit like a dementor from Harry Potter), and run by a chap called Emerson ( hence " Emerson Spice Hotel") . Now as my internet is currently down, I have no idea if he really looks like Ernest Hemmingway, but in my imagination, he is the spitting image of Mr Hemmingway, down to the Fedora, the rheumy eyes, and the complete ease with which he greets all his patrons.
My room is the smallest, and called " Turandot", all the rooms being named after operas. My balcony however, is huge, and boasts an outside shower and bath, with curtains to pull across for modesty. There is, of course, an indoor bath and shower, the former the size of a small swimming pool. My goodness - it was heaven. After washing out of a bucket of cold water for a month, next to a "long drop" latrine (hole in the ground), I really couldn't have been any happier.I honestly do not feel I wasted my first day in Zanzibar, having a bath, ordering divine spicy fish cakes to be delivered to my room for lunch, and sleeping until five pm in my huge four poster bed with a mosquito net that reaches to the 20 foot ceiling
Today I wandered off for an explore . Now those of you that know me, will be well aware that I am not known for my sense of direction. In fact, I can hear some of you laughing now. Take that, coupled with tiny, winding streets, none of them going in a direction that makes any sense, and you will see how I spent several hours pleasantly lost. I'm not sure who said " You're never lost, you're just somewhere you've never been before", but he was clearly not in my shoes this afternoon. I was lost, good and proper, for hours. The heat being so oppressive, I never got much beyond an amble however, and turned corners that led to surprisingly beautiful courtyards that I never would have found had I had any idea where I was going. At one point I stumbled upon the fish market, no mzungos in sight, a mass of fishy shouting craziness, then to find myself surprisingly on the beach, with what should have been a beautiful view, had it not been marred by a huge crane on the docks. My direction detractors would have been very impressed with me though, I somehow found my way back to where I had started, hot, tired, and really very happy.
I passed women in hajibs, women in full purdah, and young girls in school uniform that made them look like little eggs - long black skirts and an almost nun-like head-dress that surrounds their face, and comes down to their elbows. Everyone, but everyone, once they see you're a mzungo, greets you with "Jambo" (Hi), and says " Karibu" (welcome) Everyone smiles. Big overweight men, lounging in doorways, ask you if you are lost, for no other reason that to help you with your directions. ( There is a lot of lolling about done during the day, mainly by men, who are uniformly polite). Of course there are the persistent touts, wanting your business, following you for a little way, trying to sell their trip/spices/hotel, but a firm, polite "No" just works. I wonder if India and places like it, harden you - I certainly have had to put my suspicions aside here more than I have ever done (although a healthy dose of street awareness stands you in good stead). Had a wonderful 5 course meal on the roof terrace this evening, where a very kind American lady, quite apologetically, asked me if I would like to join them, as her husband felt sorry for me being alone. She very quickly added that she didn't, and thought I looked quite happy - but I appreciated her kindness. I declined - I was having a lovely time.
Off back to basic living tomorrow, to a beach called Paje, where I will be living in a room with sand on the floor and a fan - lovely as this is, the people you meet in these nice hotels....well, I just don't have  great deal in common with them. Looking forward to diving, hammock time, and reading.

Goodnight all.