8 October we took the bus (‘Happy Nation Express') to Morogoro. This is a town 200 km west of Dar, beautifully located and surrounded by green mountains. We stayed in a colourful convent with laughing sisters, and guess what they serve for both lunch and dinner? Rice and spinach. Did I tell you yet that the sisters laughed? All the time!

We came to Morogoro to learn Swahili. Our three language teachers did their best to learn us as much as possible in one week (which was way too short to even grasp a little of it). Sitting there with a notebook, pen, small classes (5 persons) and play games, it was like going back to school.

Swahili is a language derived from Bantu (a native East African language), Arabic and English. Swahili is spoken widely in East Africa: they say it was born in Tanzania, corrupted in Kenya, died in Uganda and buried in Rwanda (which means that we're learning the 'true' Swahili...). Unlike English, Swahili is a very phonetic language: bia is beer, picha is picture, benki is bank, roundabout is keepi lefti. Some Swahili words have more than one meaning and all words do look like another, so it's very easy to make mistakes. It's very awkward when, instead of saying ‘pole, ninachelewa' (sorry, I'm late), you say ‘pole, ninalewa' (sorry, I'm drunk). Many short verbs do lookalike - kula, kuja, kupa, kuna, kuwa, kufa - but have meanings that differ from eat to die. There is no simple word for denial, like no or not, just remove a couple of letters at the front, a couple at the back, add ‘si' and an ‘i', and sometimes put a subject in the middle of the verb: ninakula (I'm eating) becomes sili (I'm not eating). A word like wameishamsikiliza is common. To make it more complicated, there seems to be a lack of preposition words. Often used is ‘kwa', which is either to, by, with, for, towards, by means of or in. Often you don't use a word like this at all. For example, ruka is jump, mferenji is stream. ‘Ruka mferenji' is translated as ‘jump stream', where you can decide for yourself whether you want to jump into the river or over the river.

One day we practised at the market, walking around screaming names of fruits and vegetables without buying any. Hii ni nini? = What is this?, so please picture us running around yelling hii ni nini! and shaking different items in people's faces... The market people liked it though, because we studied greetings extensively. How are you, how is your day, how is your family, how is your shop? Reply with one of the many many Swahili words for ‘good'. Negative answers are not appreciated. If you want to say ‘bad', just say ‘a little bit good', when you want to say ‘no', use ‘maybe' or ‘later'.

Enough about Swahili.

Remember the bedbugs described earlier? After one week in this beautiful country, I developed red bumps on my arms and legs, very very itchy, growing when I rubbed. No worms coming out so far. I cursed the bedbugs, didn't sleep at all, and got all the psychological effects that are described on the internet. As it was spreading, I assumed mosquitos were co-visitors. No idea why Tim didn't suffer any bites. Bedbugs followed me, I saw traces them in my new bed in the clean convent, in my luggage, even in my coffee. Combined with lariam, paranoia guaranteed. Then, the general practitioner in our group noticed my condition, he diagnosed: chickenpox. OMG. I came to Africa to see and treat interesting diseases, not to get them myself, and I should have grown over childhood diseases. In any case, it's an atypical presentation, all of the diagnoses can't be 100% confirmed and all will itch for a week. I tried to avoid more mosquitos, I used some Chinese menthol powder and tried not to be contagious. Since we work for VSO, no pregnant woman around.

No complaints, our week in Morogoro was absolutely grand! Thursday we went on a safari (which means journey in Swahili) in Mikumi National Park, which was amazing! (with Tim heading back as a red lobster) See our photo's on the ‘Foto'-page and http://white-blank-page.org/. Today we headed back to Dar, tomorrow (Monday 17^th) we'll fly to Mtwara!