I decided yesterday that I would cook dinner for the family. Partly an altruistic act, since Caren works so hard cooking every day for me, and partly because I fancied something different to eat! I had already brought with me a recipe I thought they would like, so I set off for Central Market in Arusha.

The market is a bustling mini-labyrinth of stalls selling everything from fresh fruit and veg, to dried fish, household items and plastic bags. It is also full of fly-catchers. A fly-catcher, in Tanzanian parlance, is a young man who hangs around a tourist location waiting to "catch" a tourist - and then show them around or do some other service at an extortionate price. They are invariably persistent, pestering and non-apologetic. Knowing this was what awaited me, I braced myself and went in...

First on my list was a butternut squash, which I had been informed was available at the market. I wandered along a few of the narrow aisles, passing shelves laden high with produce and women hawking their wares at me. Many stall-holders sell just one food-stuff, and they are determined that you SHALL eat it today, regardless of what you had in mind to buy! Ignoring the fly-catchers, whose mission today was to name every single vegetable I passed, showing off their knowledge of English vegetable words, and with the help of a few friendlier women, I came across a stall selling butternut squash. The  man's first asking price for 2 of them was initially 6500 (approx £3). I haggled away and got him down to 4000,which I was quite pleased with. A little boy at the stall placed the squash in a plastic bag, I paid up and walked off. The little boy then followed me, on my heels, extremely pesteringly saying something in Swahili. I said the usual "toka" (go away) several times but he didn't. I finally caught the word "bag" and realised that the bag did not come free with the purchase; instead, the little boy was completely independent of the stall-holder, and was there to sell plastic bags... Once I realised this, I felt a little foolish as it had looked like I had tried to diddle him out of a bag. So I placed the squash into my own shopping bag and returned his. He was happy with that, and wandered off. Lesson learnt!

I managed to buy most of what I was after: tomatoes, carrots, powdered ginger and a tin-opener. I also haggled a man down from 7000 to 3000 for a dustpan that the school needed. Again, I felt quite proud of my achievements!

The whole process took several hours, largely because of the inability to walk at any speed through the crowded market without treading on someone or something. A lot of the women don't have their own stall, and simply place their meagre pile of tomatoes or beans on a piece of cloth on the ground, and hope you will notice them out of the hundreds of others like them.

Admittedly, once I had bought the vegetables I needed, I headed off to ShopRite, a large, overpriced Western supermarket to buy the other ingredients (meat - I still can't bring myself to buy from the unrefrigerated butcher stalls that are frequented more by flies than customers; and some red curry paste, which they actually had!). So I felt a little bad at spending my money in a consumerist establishment,but since I had bought at least half my ingredients at the market, I felt quite pleased with myself,and its definitely something I'd recommend.