Back in Europe what I long for is the African way of doing business. I get frustrated with the bureaucracy, the lack of the personal touch, the incompetent person on the other end of the phone. Africa made me feel as if I had some control of what was going on in my life. Need a stamp for your work permit or want to avoid paying taxes? Then nip off for half an hour and come back to warm greetings for your two bottles of vodka. Want your passport taken over to Tanzania by the passport official as you have no time to leave the country? A good hearty breakfast will send him off with his bellyaching and his smile wide.

The beer truck passed the lodge once a week and involved a posse of crate bearers setting off on an expedition that sometimes involved a camp-over at the side of the road. A regular present of banana bread stopped that truck in the morning and the posse were back sat waiting for their cokes in the bar before they had had chance to fill their stomachs with Nsima.

There was the travelling minstrel who tramped the lakeshore looking for an audience. He cared for two orphaned girls because there was no one else to. One shook cans of stones whilst the other dropped water onto the withered, one string, wooden guitar come violin. He accompanied this three-note drone with a beautiful wailing voice that echoed the hardship and desperation of his life but bursting through with his simple joy of living. He made up songs on the spot including the reassuring folk song entitled 'If you harm my Mzungu (white) friends I will cut your head off with my trusty machete'.

Best of all, though, was the 'selling log'. You had something to sell, be it aubergines, milk, fish or a service, then you sat on the log. Every day there was someone sitting there, swapping stories with one of our workers, baskets of goodies at their feet, a monkey in their hand, a bag of charcoal on the women's heads. The bartering was good for our soul. It's how shopping should be done, with a shake of the hands at the end of a grin-inducing discussion.

There were of course some awful times. The constant visit of death was always an unwanted guest. Almost every day one of our workers was missing because they were attending a funeral. At night as we relaxed on the deck on the rocks looking on at the reflective sunset, licking our lips after a succulent fish supper; our guests remarked on how the wonderful melodic singing and tribal drumbeats added to the beautiful setting and that they felt at one with Africa. Their feelings changed through the night as the funeral rejoicing entered into them as they tried to sleep. We saw babies dropped and bodies left out in the sun to wait for the disease to finish them off. After getting a mild dose of malaria for the first time, I visited the under-funded hospital and met the amazing doctor who was responsible for caring for all the people within a hundred miles. He ushered me past the waiting pregnant women and sat me down for a consultation. An orderly plonked down a package on the desk interrupting us. "I think this baby is dead", he said. I took my leave, telling him not to worry about me; I'd check the lab and administer the drugs myself. He wouldn't hear of it and checked that the baby was dead and shouted orders and followed me out discussing the treatment of malaria as if nothing had happened. I realised he had to be like this and after many visits for myself and our villagers, I grew to admire him, his unaffected air of arrogance was his only defence against the hopelessness that surrounded him. After my studies and chats with the Doc, we became local doctors ourselves, the villagers seeing us as a cheap and easy way to get help. Axes in feet, tuberculosis and horrific burns were brought to us, with their victims in terrible pain and in need of urgent hospital treatment, not just some white guy's scrounged, read or passed on knowledge and meagre medical supplies. Then we were robbed.

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