Apparently, I have "legs of beer"

This has been such a great week. I have been enjoying here more and more, and this week so many good things happened that, with a touch of my old London pessimism and anxiety, I found myself thinking “Do I deserve all this? Will something bad happen to cancel it out?”. Possible candidates are:

Malaria
Being mugged
Having my bag stolen on the dalla dalla
Someone in the UK getting ill

However, none of these have happened! Despite my arms looking like someone had put a whole bagful of frozen peas under the skin, because I had so many bites earlier this week, the moskweets responsible were not Evil Killer Mosweets but Slightly More Benign But Still Annoying Moskweets. And after an ex-pat party last night (Scottish dancing practice for Burns Night) I “rashly” walked 300 metres along a well-lit road in a posh area to the taxi rank. This meant many texts and phone calls from all the rich people who have forgotten how to manage risk and don’t understand probability, and were convinced that one mugging recently the other side of the Peninsula meant everyone would be mugged from now on. Tsk, tsk. This is about the safest place I’ve ever lived: the thought of needing an escort from a private house to a taxi is ridiculous.

And I like dalla dallas more and more. Last night there was a near-miss between two dalla dallas, one of them mine. I was so terrified that when it was over, I found that I was holding the conductor’s hand. NB I had grabbed him, rather than him taking advantage of my fear. No-one likes the dalla dalla conductors, so I felt that I had made a breakthrough. I am the People’s Management Consultant.

Here is a list of great things that happened this week:

I saw a peacock cross the road. Twice. Like it had all the time in the world and this was really normal.

My new friend Shoma made me goat curry and taught me how to eat the bones.

I have finally got my hair cut, by someone staying here with the nuns who is a German hairdresser on a year out. It was only £2 and I look great. You can see it happening here. Note my studenty room, with a map blu-tacked to the wall.

I presented to the Rotary Club about the school, and they lapped it up! It was extraordinary. You may remember from last week that I’d been copied in on an email – I thought by mistake – from a Rotarian saying “if she isn’t young, beautiful, tall and intelligent, there’ll be hell to pay”. Well, I had planned an amusing little opener to my presentation, hilariously revealing that I knew about it . But I was utterly thrown when they introduced me using exactly those words. How nice to have a brief glimpse of a world where it is a good thing to flatter ladies, and where my enormous sucking-up-to-old-men ability can be put to good use. Not only did I get a glowing introduction, but afterwards they made a speech THANKING me, and gave me a certificate headed “Service above Self”. You may be amused to hear that the speech particularly thanked me “for being audible”. But most importantly, they are going to cough up some cash for the school and help us with our water supply and disgusting lavvies.

I got THREE presents in the post! My mum sent me Gorillas in the Mist, which is super although not very well written. It is homework before I go gorilla tracking (NB not to be confused with elephant tracking, which is a completely separate but also ludicrously over-priced holiday) and I think I have just about grasped that you are not allowed to go and take a baby gorilla from its mother and put clothes and sunglasses on it and plait its fur and cuddle it. My lovely friend Elin sent me, amongst other things, some Christmas pants and an autumn leaf. And Sandra, my Official Best Friend, sent a lovely new Lancome mascara. Thank God. It was taking about half an hour every day to build up the requisite level of sooty black enhancement, time which I could have spent sleeping. Or helping the poor little deafs, I suppose. So thank you thank you thank you. Here are the Christmas pants. I hope you can see the little robin on the front.

The Choir Christmas concert is coming up and they have lost the details of the local school they normally have a charity collection for. Hurrah! Their loss is my gain, and I was like there a rat up a pipe suggesting my school’s band instead. The band is so sweet – it’s percussion and they feel the vibration and follow someone beating time at the front. They are surprisingly good. My favourite taxi driver once dropped me off at school as the band were playing after we took my mother to the airport, and said afterwards “Bandi! Lakini nilifikiri watoto ni viziwi!” (A band! But I thought they were deaf!). So they are going to play as part of the concert and then, I hope, we will rake in loads of hard cash from people with twisted heartstrings. They had better not arse up. I am going to hide their hearing aids if they do.

My final highlights are 1) going to the beach again today. I had a lovely snooze and a therapeutic gaze at the bright blue water. A little crab scuttled past me and gazed at me for ages with eyes on top of its head. And I didn't get burned - I cunningly chose a banda more like a house, with proper sides for extra shade.

And 2) seeing Sister Teddy and Grace, domestic lady here, laughing hysterically last night when I told them that the typical ideal of a Western woman has big boobs, a small bottom, and slim legs. They absolutely couldn’t believe it and thought it was ridiculous. For me, extra comedy touches were that the proper, non-slang Swahili word for breast is “titi”, pronounced “titty” and also that they spent a long time telling me that I had lovely big legs. They mistook my look of horror for amusement and went on to explain gleefully that I had “mguu ya bia” (legs of beer) ie legs like those short squat beer bottles. Here is Grace laughing. And a picture of my beer legs.

So apart from the ego-pounding legs comment, I am absolutely full of beans, although there was a sad moment when I finished the box of chocolates my sister sent me. I actually licked the inside of the box briefly before I realised that I looked like one of the baboons I saw on safari, stealing lunchboxes.

Next week school will be much easier, as it’s winding down for the long summer holiday. And then there are three choir concerts and two dress rehearsals, which will be great. And then on the 14th my holidays start, with four lovely pals who are making it over here. Off to Rwanda and Zanzibar and safari again, to gaze at Hot Guide once more. I gather it’s very cold in England – I feel slightly jealous and I also think oh, pole sana – lovely blue skies and sun and a breeze here…