Sarah is in Kinshasa, visiting our Congo office on their first anniversary.
I write from our office in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In some ways it's very like any other Greenpeace office. There are pictures of the Rainbow Warrior on the wall, people on phones rush from room to room, journalists and cameramen walk in and out. There's a shout and we all crowd round the TV to watch one of our colleagues, Rene Ngongo, who won the alternative livelihood award a few weeks ago for his work in the DRC, giving an interview.
But then, there is also the heavy heat, the roar of the electricity generator, the occasional lizard darting here and there, and the high walls surrounding our office. Outside of these walls there are people that live a very different life to me.
The DRC is one of the poorest countries in the world. Even if you've prepared yourself for that fact, the extremes of wealth and poverty on display here are startling. But despite the very obvious poverty there's also plenty to make you smile: bright colours, friendly people, hustle and bustle on the streets. Last night I managed to learn Congolese dancing, and also that sticking to a vegetarian diet demands constant concentration - it took a bit of careful investigation to figure out that the dried caterpillars were not in fact vegetarian.
Greenpeace set up an office in Kinshasa about a year ago. We had been working in Africa for some time but felt that we needed to have a permanent presence here in the DRC, at the frontier of the second largest rainforest in the world, and in Johannesburg, where our team focus on clean energy provision.
One year on, the Kinshasa office has four permanent members of staff. Rene (father figure and aforementioned prize winner), Raoul (dynamic forest campaigner who visited London earlier this year) and two new recruits - Angelique and Charles - who are constantly laughing and smiling (usually at my broken French) despite having to spend a great deal of time sorting out our technical problems in the never-ending battle to download emails, make the phones work, and get to where we are supposed to be.
For me, tomorrow brings real adventure. We're setting out into the Congolese rainforest - the second largest in the world, after the Amazon. Deforestation currently contributes to about one-fifth of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. So this rainforest is a front line defence against climate change, as well as a hub for biodiversity.
Uniquely, two-thirds of the people in the DRC depend on the rainforest for their daily needs. It is home, hospital, supermarket and church in one. In the next few days I will be helping with workshops organised with local people and local decision-makers. We will be hearing about the challenges that people face and asking them what they think the future holds for them and for the rainforest.
As Greenpeace we work across the world to protect large intact areas of forest. Right now it's becoming clear to me that we can't do that here unless we work with local people to help them be the guardians of their own forests in the long term. It's not just about fairness, it's also about practicality.
