Writer, EFL teacher, trainer, and translator, I was born in Tanzania, have lived in a dozen countries over three continents, and describe myself as an ‘expatriate sin patria’. Wherever I go I make it my business to learn the language, get to know the local people and customs, and discover the country’s remotest corners. I became interested in writing in mid-2006, did a short Open University creative writing course and a Writers’ Bureau course, and began getting articles published in 2007.

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The Uruguayans like partying – and they hook their parties onto Días – special days. El Día de la Mama, el Día del Papa… Okay, those are pretty ordinary. But then you get Child’s Day, Grandparents’ Day, No Smoking Day, Holy Innocents’ Day – even the Light of the Nights in December, when the sky is ablaze with fireworks for the official opening of the beaches. And in the middle of winter, on 24 August, there is Nostalgia Night.

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It’s six-o’clock in the evening in the Old City: an Indian summer has hit Montevideo in the middle of the fall, and it’s almost ninety degrees. I stroll through the artisans who line Sarandí, the newly restored pedestrian street which stretches from the port to Plaza Independenzia, where I catch the 105 bus which will take me the twelve miles east to my home. The bus looks as though it dates from the seventies, with rickety plastic seats, but spotlessly clean. My ticket costs me sixteen pesos, which is equivalent to sixty cents.

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