When am I too old to be afraid of the dark?

For the first week of my time here, all the volunteers and me are staying in a hostel. They've got dorms and I've got my own room but nevertheless I always sleep lightly when there are volunteers in the house. I'm like an anxious parent, ready to look after my little ones at a moments notice.

Last night I woke up at about 3am and saw a boy sitting in a plastic chair at the end of my bed. I thought he was a volunteer so I said hello but got no reply. Assuming he was asleep, I sat up and moved forwards to touch his arm in order to wake the figure, but when I did, I found that there was no one there. My hand touched air and I couldn't see him any more.

I was so disturbed by this that I couldn't go back to sleep. The room was hot, and the noises of the night in this new country were unfamiliar. I stayed awake imagining shadows until the room started lightening at 5am and I could see there were definitely no unexplained apparitions in it.

At that point, comforted by daylight, I remembered that I was a person with extremely poor eyesight, lying next to my glasses in the dark. It's very easy to imagine a chair is occupied when it isn't. I also remembered that sightings of ghosts are very rarely reported close to, in the day; which reflects the reduced need for over-imaginative fabrication to explain what people like me are seeing. Ultimately, my new Ghanaian home probably isn't haunted.

All the same, I don't want to turn out the lights tonight.

Mosquito nets or me : One of us is ridiculous

It's the first night in Kenya and I'm tucked up in bed under 1 million blankets because as everyone repeatedly tells us, this is a very cold part of Kenya. It doesn't feel it to me. I also dutifully checked between every one of those blankets for extra terrestrial spiders.

I was quite excited about the prospect of sleeping under a mosquito net. I imagined it to be like a 4 poster bed with ornings. The trouble is that there are no posts on the bed and so it is very much like lying under a net. Simply like a caught fish. The novelty has worn off and I haven't even gone to sleep yet.

Note from the first morning: I fidgeted too much in the night and pulled the net off the ceiling. This was a vast improvement. When I woke up I found I wasn't under it any more which is probably how I managed to go to sleep. It's not relaxing to be smothered in netting.

Note from the 7th morning: I eventually learnt how to use a mosquito net. When I moved from hostel to host home the set up was quite different. The net comes down from the ceiling and tucked in around the mattress, to make a cosy den for the sleeper in the middle. It is very much like a 4 poster bed after all.