The reason Laura and I love Africa and made us want to come back and bring up Oscar here is coz it's quirky as hell and forces you to think and demand more of yourself. This has been true in every day life as well as our work life running multiple projects. The water tower picture was completed on the first day we arrived. The scene sadly looks very much the same now except the lush green grass has made way for the dry barren cracked land you may have seen on the newsreels- it last rained months ago. What should be there is a water tank sitting on top of the structure that would irrigate the land all year round. But alas that has not materialised sadly due to the contractor doing a runner and not finishing the job. In Africa a lot of the time you have to pay cash up front to get things moving, not ideal, so when you get screwed over you haven't got a pot to piss in. So in the 9 months we have been here and numerous management meetings to try get this resolved we are still looking at the same unfinished tower. It's very frustrating but demanded us to be creative - buying a solar pump that can be fed into the borehole and has allowed us to irrigate a very small amount of crops.

In the same breath of finalising a plan things can often change, meaning you start back from the beginning. I'm not gonna lie I do get a real rush from this but over time it has worn us out and can be demotivating. It would just be nice to do the work intended instead of seems like firefighting all the time. But we continue to move forward. The second picture is us having to use our fridge as a safe. 1000 Kwacha is one British Pound and the highest denomination is 2000 Kwacha so things can get real funky when you want to buy anything sexy. The picture of Oscar and I on a tractor is one of my favs, there was a time when it's all he would say. There's so many things here from times of old and being in Africa there's a different sense of ownership. He played all day on it and had a blast, no one came to tell us to get off. This was just one of many times whereby we have been allowed to explore and have a real adventure that feels raw and uninhibited. This is exactly why we wanted to come here. Oscar may not remember a lot of this trip, but this real sense of freedom to play and discover will set him up for life. Lastly the pic of me on the bike is instead of my ability to usea real a ladder with the additional child labour to make sure I don't break my neck - they would have broken my fall for sure. It feels refreshing to be here rather than the UK where we seem obsessive in mitigating the smallest of risks, here that doesn't exist. I find it refreshing that Africa remains stubborn, don't get me wrong safety has its place but I feel back home it's reached a critical point whereby we can't accept the slightest of dangers without getting our knickers in a twist. Every day here there is potential for things to go wrong- wait to you see the crocodile pic. I'm outdoors everyday in nature, meeting and greeting and being creative. A lot of the time I don't recognise this but just writing this has allowed me to check in and acknowledge the good work we are doing and serves as a reminder why I don't want to be anywhere else for the time being.