Today I headed back to the Mara for a few weeks. A friend of Gerard’s gave me a lift down in his little plane. I spent a few hours at the Aeroclub waiting for him – it’s smart!

The Sudanese left at 8 yesterday morning (only an hour late!) so for the rest of the day I did nothing – just chilled out and slept! Kuki invited me to dinner with Philip, Alfie and Preetika and we had a nice evening at Kuti. Around midday I left for Nairobi with Jeff and Abdi and a car full of other staff. Lots had a few days off after the hectic last few weeks. It was the safari car which has open sides and Jeff was determined to make it to Nairobi in th...

It has been a constant battle attempting to stop people walking around at night on their own, especially without a torch. People just aren’t understanding how dangerous it is (lots of elephant and a lone buffalo). Last night we were sitting by the camp fire and I saw these enormous white tusks out of the corner of my eye – a huge bull elephant was between us and centre house. Then I notice a person standing close to it. Assuming it was the askari tryi...

All is going well with the Sudanese. They are having lectures etc so I do get to sit down sometimes this week! They drink a hell of a lot of tea/hot milk though – five times a day with at least 4 sugars per cup. No wonder they have so much energy for singing, dancing and drumming around the fire in the evening! They are a good crowd of people and the Buddhist nuns and monk are so cool!

Most of the artists had left by Tuesday (and so had Tanguy and Constanza unfortunately) and today, 65 people arrived for a Sudanese Peace Conference. Philip was supposed to go on leave yesterday leaving me in charge of them all (my expression of horror on hearing this must have been good), but fortunately for me (not for him) he only got as far as Kinamba and Mama changed her mind and made him come back. There was still lots of work to do – I was up from 6a...