Before coming to Mayotte...

• Before coming to Mayotte, I didn't know that temperatures could be so constantly hot, never going lower than 27°C even at night. From the first rays of sunlight to the last, the temperature is between 28°C (dry season) and 34°C (rainy season), and it's hot straight away. It doesn't start off cool and get there slowly. At 8 o'clock this morning, the temperature in the sun on the balcony was 48°C.

• Before coming to Mayotte, I didn't know that you could get sunburned at six o'clock in the morning. 

• Before coming to Mayotte, I didn't know that you could sweat from quite so many places, including your stomach and your ears. I knew theoretically that we have sweat glands everywhere. I just didn't expect it. You don't, really. 

• Before coming to Mayotte, I didn't know that skin could be so many different shades of colour. I hadn't travelled very much, never outside of Europe, and apart from various shades of suntan, I hadn't met an awful lot of people from different origins. Not enough to put them all mentally side by side and compare. Now, white isn't just white and black isn't just black. There are all the in-betweens. Out of eighty teachers in the staffroom, there are about fifty different nationalities, forty different languages and eighty different skin colours.

• Before coming to Mayotte, I didn't know that you could get hot and sticky from doing quite so little, be it marking papers, playing music or vacuuming the flat. You don't actually have to do anything, just stay for five minutes in one spot without fans or air conditioning. It's a permanent sauna. The result is probably wonderful for your skin - getting rid of all those toxins, etc. - but unfortunately means you have to change clothes all the time and that you never achieve that polished, professional look because you're always half soaked.

• Before coming to Mayotte, I didn't know that mosquitoes couldn't care less about long clothes, mosquito nets and mosquito repellent, they'll get in anyway. They're very small. And they whine.

• Before coming to Mayotte, I hadn't really thought about living on a tropical island. It's not the sort of thing you think about properly, just few vague one-day-I'll-go-there-too posters in a travel agency. When you do think about it, you imagine that sort of life to be wonderful, soaking up the sun all day while doing a few effortless tasks to rake in lots of money each month. Once there, that image doesn't last long. Paradise Island ceases to exist when you get a flat and a job.