Oswin in the UK, and mullet book raising money for the Hoja Project

Oswin with Steve Cram and the COCO team
last time he was in the UK in 2009

It's quite an exciting couple of weeks for Hoja, so I think it's worth an occasional update.

Oswin is in the UK, and has been spending the last week or so in Newcastle, visiting schools and supporting organisations, and attending COCO events.

At the weekend he'll be coming down to London, where a number of us Hoja UK volunteers are based, and we can't wait to see him!

He'll visit more schools and supporters down here, and attending a Christmas Hoja get-together.

In other news, a friend of mine Simon Varwell has released his second book, The Return Of The Mullet Hunter, into the wild.  It's nothing to do with the haircut or the fish (well, it's slightly to do with both), but about his attempts to visit every place in the world with the word 'mullet' in its name.

His project started off as a little silly challenge that got way out of hand.  So much so that it's required (at least) two books to tell the story.  This is his second book, and it's a fun and engaging read, as you follow him around the world, facing both success and disappointment at different stages of his journey.

A few months ago Simon asked me to design the cover for the book (I talked about that on my own blog), and as part of that deal he has promised to give 10% of the book's proceeds to Hoja.

So you could do worse than pick this book as your Christmas read when the family get a bit too much.  It's available on Kindle from Amazon.

All Change!

You may have noticed that this site has become quieter and quieter in terms of providing news about what Hoja are up to in Songea.  However, this doesn't mean that Hoja has been winding down in any way.  Just that I've been ridiculously busy with other commitments, and haven't been involved in Hoja so much lately.

Hoja continue to produce excellent exam results for their students, give out microfinance loans so local people can start small businesses to create their own income, and help farmers get the most out of their land.

In fact an important change has been made to Hoja recently.  In the UK it's no longer operating as its own charity, but is operating as part of COCO.  Don't worry though, Hoja have in practice been operating as part of COCO for years, so this doesn't represent any change in operations.  Rather, a bit of housekeeping.  It just seemed a bit silly to keep them as separate organisations.

As such, I've done a bit of an edit of some of the content on this site (contact and donation details, mostly).  I'm also going to stop pretending that I have time to keep typing out updates on here, when COCO have their own News Page anyway.

You can find out Hoja's news there, as well as all of the other wonderful projects that COCO run.  If you ask them nicely, I'm sure they'll even add you to their mailing list.

Next time I make it out to Tanzania, however, I may well post some updates on here of what I've learned.  Sadly that won't be all that soon.