I appear to have taken leave of my senses, and have signed for the “Challenge Bahrain Half Ironman Triathlon", involving a 1.9km swim and a 90km bike ride, rounded off with a 21km run, to support the Kindergarten on Chole Island.  As I have never run further than 10km or cycled further than 40km (and that was when I was twelve!) it's quite a step up.  My training programme has included getting up at 4am at weekends and training pretty much every evening.  This is very taxing on the family, and without Olivia's support would be impossible.

Chole Island is in the Mafia Marine Reserve of the coast of Tanzania and is the home to a community of about 1200 people.  Olivia and I stayed at Chole Mjini, an amazing eco lodge, where we slept in a treehouse built into giant baobab trees, which Jean and Anne de Villiers set up by with the explicit aim of supporting the local community.  A vital element of that is the kindergarten, which not only gives small children an excellent educational start to life, but also guarantees them one nourishing meal a day and regular health checks.

Anne used to work for DFID, seeing at first hand how aid programmes can work (and also how they so often fail).  She took those lessons, and used them to set up this fantastic charity …...

There are more details, especially about the kindergarten, at www.choletrust.org.