Lifelong learning, the mantra of numerous philosophies, none of which I am familiar with, and also a mantra of my wife, who I am very familiar with and who I am always keen to impress. To that end a list of things I have learned in my short volunteer career.

1. How to gut fish

If this fish isn’t gutted it is at the very least, upset.

2. How to grow pumpkins.

From this . . .

. . . to this, and . . .

. . .via this, a spot of artificial insemination

. . .to this little cutie

. . .and this! Drum roll. Round of applause. Thank you.

I really should be hosting my own gardening programme. Everything you need to know about pumpkins, with a 10 minute slot at the end on gutting fish.

3. How to remove weevils and then keep them at bay. With a bay leaf, of course. Yes? Never mind.

Or you can sit in the backyard in a pair of alluring boxer shorts and sieve them out.

4. Ride a motorbike. Not something so impressive you might say, however, the complete sentence should read, ‘ride a motorbike that has no 1st gear and doesn’t like turning left’. That, is a skill.

5. How to use water and your left hand instead of paper in the toilet – I know, yuck. However, once you’ve mastered water pressure, nozzle direction and wrist flexing, this is a surprisingly contemplative, almost meditative experience.

Your gateway to another state of mind

6. How to hand bake bread, tea cakes, croissants and stottie cake (Google it. You don’t know what you’re missing).

One of the North East’s finest exports

She ate the lot.

7. How to cure a wood termite infestation. During a full moon, coat the infected area with cow saliva. A dose of varnish thinned with spirits seems to work too.

8. Speak Kiswahili – Baby Kiswahili. Nadine is much better than me. However, I can barter and haggle for fish at the local market. Last week I managed to knock the price of meat down at the local market from 6000 shillings for one kilo to 4000 shillings for half a kilo. I play hard.

9. Speak dolphin – Kakaa! Kakaa! Perhaps not. I’d like to though. There are huge pods of them, up to 20 or 30 all around the island. Very cool animals. Why? Well, apart from primates, they’re the only animal known to have sex for pleasure. What the scientific experiment to work that one out is I have no idea. (Dolphin researcher to Dolphin: You little minx! Did you enjoy that Flipper? Flipper: Kakaa Kakaa!’) They also have bigger brains than us. Admittedly no proof they’re more intelligent than us, however, males apparently use their penis as a navigational aid and to pick up small objects. Clearly, a higher sentient being.

If you could do what he can do, you’d also have a permanent grin.

10. Put to work every, and I mean every, single blade in a standard 8 blade Swiss army knife (Steve, my lad, that was an inspired leaving gift). It’s been used to mend the washing machine, make clothes line, saw through 2 inch planks and plastic piping for the gutter, gut and clean dolphin (just kidding, I could never eat something with a multi-jointed GPS penis) gut and clean squid, repair punctures on dodgy Chinese bicycles, open bottles of even dodgier African wine, cut the tops off coconuts, spear passing ants crossing my path in moments of boredom, dib holes for pumpkin seeds, throw at the wall during moments of frustration (Nadine has forbidden me to use the sharp end on my work colleagues), the list goes on and on …     and bugger. I’ve just found what the blurb describes as a horse shoe toe nail cleaner. There are no horses on Zanzibar.

Apparently this is a horse toenail fluff remover. Recommendations on how I could best put it to use. Most creative suggestion gets put to the test.

An impressive learning list? Yes, I think so too.