Tanzania-the home of the Serengeti, the Ngorongoro Crater, endless stretches of beautiful white beaches and also the Mtui Family….based in Arusha (the safari Mecca of Tanzania) your hosts on your Tanzanian Leap! Traveling all the way to Africa to stay in a tourist hotel is all good and well, but what were offering is so much more than that, a truly authentic experience living on a plot with a local family, allowing you to really immerse yourself in to the Tanzanian culture and Polle Polle way of life (meaning slowly slowly in Swahili)!

Mathias Mtui is the big daddy of the family, who runs our projects for us on the ground in Tanzania and he is just brilliant! Mathias was head boy at his school in Tanzania and bagged himself a scolership to a University in the United States, before moving back to this home land of Tanzania to raise a family! He also owns his own Safari business and therefore gets all the best deals for our volunteers and was involved in many volunteering projects in Tanzania whilst he was growing up, such as the roots and shoots project, which our volunteers still work on today! He also has an impressive amount of travel experience under his belt.

Me and Mathias (AKA your African daddy for 6 or 10 weeks).

Mama JoJo is the ever patient wife of Mathias, very beautiful and as well as looking after their two gorgeous girls, Joanne (JoJo) and Joaquina, she has a very respectable job of her own! If you decide to Leap over to Tanzania and do some volunteering, expect these 2 to be running around and causing mischief!

Mischevious Jo Jo with Olivia (one of our lovely leapers from our January 2010 team)!

Little Joaquina...the cutest baby in the world!

Also on site is Adam, the project co-ordinator, on hand to organize the projects and equipment for you etc and of course Jimmy the driver who will make sure that you get to all of of your volunteering projects safe, sound and on time as well as to all of your party venues safely in the evenings!

Adam the project co-ordination and Jimmy the driver!

If your thinking of volunteering in beautiful Tanzania and want a truly authentic African experience…..here it is: http://www.theleap.co.uk/africa/tanzania-gap-year-team.html

I was out in Tanzania in January, staying with the Mtui family and its the best thing ive ever done!