"The Returnee"

Coooooold!!!

2012-02-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

We are finally having to face some winter weather. We have been spoiled so far with a very mild December and January, but now the temperature is dropping.... This morning it was minus 8 Centigrade which is about 17 degrees Fahrenheit. This evening it has warmed up to minus 4 (c 24 F) Brr. I have bought myself a purple bobble hat... very fetching... in fact I feel like an elf in it. Another discovery is that leggings worn under jeans really makes a difference.

The worst part about the frozen mornings is scraping the car... Means leaving the house five minutes earlier to allow the time for it. Cold flakes of ice flicking up inside your coatsleeves... Stretching across the bonnet to reach the middle of the windscreen... Getting in the car only to have to stop again because it has now fogged up on the inside... Abby and Alex are loving it all, even scraping the car. Jack Frost, which I grew up with often on the inside of my bedroom windows (!) is a novelty to them and they rush to the car every morning to see how it looks today. It is always different, and always pretty, I must agree. Today it looked like pointy starry flowers all over our windowscreen.

I am not especially enjoying being cold! But it is refreshing when the air is really dry and cold, and your breath rushes out of you in clouds.

Abby and Alex are desperately hoping it will snow, and it may yet, but we will see...

Giving and receiving

2012-01-27T09:22:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday night Dan and I went to the homegroup of the community church we are (so far) kind of half involved in. Normally one of us goes and the other stays home with Abby and Alex. But this week one of the husbands in the group offered to babysit our children so that we could both go together. This in itself was an out-playing of something we then discussed at the bible study - how as a kingdom community, we should be giving to each other and, also, receiving.

Each Wednesday one of the couples cooks supper for everybody - for about six other couples and two single guys. We cram around their dining tables for dinner, with wine, and then have some lovely singing and a bible study.

This week as I looked around the crowded room, it struck me how these people are so determined to serve each other, to be there for each other, and they really do it. It is a great testimony. We have been helped so much by many of them. We have been to all their homes for meals, and to some more than once. And after a short bout of inviting people back (we managed three meals!), I haven't really felt up to it in the last couple of months. So I looked around feeling as though all I have done is receive receive receive since moving here. It is humbling to be the one who is new and not feeling all that confident. And also not feeling very known. It is a reversal from by the time we left Uganda, where I felt like quite a seasoned Africa person. I knew how to cook there and have people over for meals, we would have entertained new people who arrived on campus and hopefully helped them feel settled (although Abby Bartels deserves the crown for that ministry!), shown people around Kampala, lent people books... Now it is all turned around and I have to ask people where to buy things. I don't really mind that side of it though. Probably the thing I am feeling most bad about is not having people over for meals, when Dan and I love doing that. I just don't feel like I can get my head around it at the moment.

But the point being made in the study was that in God's kingdom, we need to receive from each other as well as give. If there weren't people who need to receive, who would the givers give to? For now, just for a bit longer, I have to accept that I am in need of receiving. I do really appreciate the way our new friends have encircled us and been so generous to us. One of my new women friends who is a obstetrician and who worked in Bangladesh as missionaries until a few years ago, asked me if I wanted to be her prayer partner last week. It felt like a life-line was being thrown to me, I am sure she didn't expect such an enthusiastic, OK maybe even desperate, response! Yes please!!!!!

It is so good to be part of God's family.

Food...

2012-01-24T14:36:00.000-08:00

I haven't yet said anything about enjoying all the variety and availability of food on offer back in the west (apart from the challenge of buying it from massive supermarkets, one of my early rants.)

I think we have done pretty well at adjusting to the plenty here, without going overboard. Dan and I have been loving the variety of cheeses, and above even that the availability of good chocolate. We do miss Ugandan pineapples, bananas, and watermelons. But we have been relishing cheap tangerines, apples, plums, grapes, and berries when in season.

Living on a limited budget here, so far, has meant that we still eat simply, and don't eat out much. I think we have gone out for pizza twice, and Subway twice... literally.

But I have to confess to yesterday. Yesterday I ate badly... It started with not feeling like eating breakfast, but being hungry on the way to work, so I breakfasted on a Snickers bar bought on the high street near my office. Then a guy brought a tin of candies to work, and with not much encouragement I joined the fray and spent most of the morning popping strawberry creams interspersed with orange creams.... At lunchtime it was someone's birthday so we went out for Pizza Hut buffet (OK, my third pizza restaurant since being here). Later I stopped in to buy supplies for Alex's packed lunches, and on the strength of finding a deal - 24 bags of crisps for the price of 12 -, I treated myself to just one bag when I got home. Then felt the urge, and gave into said urge, to make brownies!

I must have gained about a kilo.

Oh well, so long as I don't make a habit of it. I was really good today, honest.

Something I learned today...

2012-01-20T11:32:00.000-08:00

Today Dan and I were in the car, driving across the Cotswolds to visit my godmother, who is suddenly very ill. In spite of the circumstances, it was also good to have a chance to be going away somewhere together, just the two of us.

But I learned something I should have realised before, about Dan. He is actually immune to stress. I did kind of know that before. But today, I was trying to explain to him why the anxiety feelings I have been getting are unbearable rather than just a nuisance. I compared it to having, nearly all the time, the tingling sensation that shoots through your body when you nearly have a car crash, for example, or when you have a near miss of any kind. I assume most of you know what I mean - that feeling of a sudden rush of adrenalin zooming through your veins, bursting though your chest and along your limbs. Some mornings recently I have been getting that whenever the phone rings, whenever the children told me they were hungry, whenever anything was asked of me. Which is why I am now trying to get it dealt with. But when I described that to Dan he told me that, No, he never gets that feeling. Never. He has never had that burst of tingling through his veins. This explains a lot... No wonder he could stand on top of the bunjee jump at the Jinja Nile Resort, looking around happily and waving his arms over his head - unlike my brother who had his eyes closed and was praying! No wonder he can jump off eighty foot cliffs into a rolling river, and encourage our ten year old son that in a couple of years he can do the same. No wonder he can wait until eleven o clock the night before preaching a sermon to start preparing. He never feels nervous!

I am simply amazed that Dan is being so kind and patient with me when he has NO CLUE how I have been feeling. I mean, he understands, he sympathises, but he has no experience of it himself. Wow. Lucky him. But I do wonder how he is still alive.

Not so different...

2012-01-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

On Saturday evening Dan and I took part in the family village hall service at my own village church. This is the village we moved to when I was eighteen, so my family have attended the church there for the last 22 years. In that time there have been a lot of comings and goings, including no less than five different vicars. But some of the people there I have known since I was a teenager. And my parents have virtually run the church for much of the time, being church wardens, on the PCC, running family services, Alpha courses and Lent courses, doing readings, intercessions, flowers, cleaning, graveyard tidying, grass mowing... It is a tiny congregation - twenty people there on a good day, but it can go up to forty for a special occasion. Normally the service is held in the ancient granite church, which is beautiful, and usually very cold.

But the monthly family service is in the village hall and is very casual and low key, with a view to drawing in non-church people. Which does work.

There were about forty there on Saturday, and we were given the sermon time to show our power point and talk about the work of UCU in Uganda.

It was good to be able to pass on a big thank you for the twenty years of regular prayer and financial support. It has not always been brilliant, but we have had a very good connection with our link co-ordinator, who has been very faithful at sending us all lovely birthday cards and presents, and putting our monthly prayer bulletin in the parish magazine. And of course my parents have done their bit to keep the link alive and kicking.

But what struck me the most as we told our Uganda stories on Saturday and showed our pictures, was this: as I talked about a Ugandan friend who died leaving behind his wife and five children, my eyes met those of a family friend whose wife died last year, leaving him with two college-age daughters. As we mentioned Dismas being chaplain of Butabika, there was another friend trying to shush their teenage son with cerebral palsy. As I asked for prayer for a Ugandan friend with a disabled daughter, I looked over and caught the eyes of a couple whose son has a progressive disease, as does the husband. I could go on. The problems, struggles and prayer requests of our Ugandan friends are known by the people here, even in this small congregation. Whilst the names of the illnesses may be different, and the resources here for healing and treating them may be more plentiful, even so sickness, loss, miscarriage, marriage difficulties, unemployment and yes even financial worries, are common to the human experience. We all need the hope of better things to come, we all need the help of the people around us, friends and family, we all need God's comfort and sustenance. We are not so very different.

A Dose of Peace from c 1650

2012-01-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

I came across this poem by chance yesterday. One or two of the lines are a bit "twee" for my taste. But, whenever I read something written hundreds of years ago, it makes me wonder at how people so long ago knew so much of the same things we know, and had the same feelings we have. Amazing.

Any dose of peace is a good thing in my book.

My soul, there is a country
Far beyond the stars,
Where stands the winged sentry
All skilful in the wars:
There, above noise and danger,
Sweet Peace sits crown'd with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious Friend,
And - O my soul, awake!-
Did in pure love descend
To die here for thy sake,
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of Peace,
The Rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then they foolish ranges;
For none can thee secure
But One who never changes -
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.

Henry Vaughan 1621 - 1695.

The No 94 bus

2012-01-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

So these days I get the No 94 bus to work, three mornings a week, ... and I love it. The bus part that is: work is still a bit scary, but definitely getting better.

It took me a while to figure out that the No 94 bus goes from just around the corner, and ends up a three minute walk from my workplace. Fantastic.

The first time, I automatically walked halfway towards the back and sat without any thought somewhere on the left. When I told Abby and Alex later about the bus, their question was: "Was it a doubledecker?" "Yes..." "Did you sit upstairs?" "No..." "WHAT??? You went on a doubledecker bus and didn't sit upstairs??! What a waste of a chance!!!"

So now, every day I go on the bus, I head straight for the curly stairs, turn to the front, and sit in the seat right in the window, surrounded by glass, sailing along above the hedges and garden fences, watching the sky and the trees - and it is a lot more fun... I hope to take this as a life lesson - Don't Waste "Chances"!

The whole bus experience is the opposite of how it would be in Uganda. For one thing, it is totally safe. Yes it picks up speed at times, but basically it chunters steadily along, keeping in the right lane, never over-taking, pulling out slowly, stopping in the yellow boxes exactly where it is meant to stop...

For another thing, the bus leaves at the time it is scheduled to leave, every ten minutes in this case, on the dot. You don't wait for it to fill up, for more people to come, for the driver to go and pee or buy a coke...

For a third thing, you sit alone, rarely even sharing a double seat with anybody - in fact so far I have never shared my double seat. Nobody's shoulder or thigh pressing into yours, nobody's breath across your face, nobody pushing themselves past you to squeeze into an impossibly small space next to you. I did actually talk to someone on the bus sitting across from me, once, and heard his sad story of how his lady friend died and her family then rejected him. But normally I stick my earphones in, switch my brain off, look out the windows, and have thirty minutes of peace and quiet and try to draw in peace from the trees and fields. And pray... (but not that I'll survive the journey.)

For a fourth thing, the bus is a green option and therefore you can feel really good about it. It saves me adding my car's emissions to the atmosphere, and it doesn't puff out black clouds like many African buses do.

I love going to work by bus and choose it any day over driving, whereas in Uganda, OK I admit it, I only went by matatu about three times, ever. I had done more of my share of going by "public" in Zimbabwe, and I did not feel like exposing myself to the discomfort and risk of the buses in Uganda.

Here you never get this...

It doesn't start or end like this...

You never get this...

Hmm.... my version might seem pretty dull, predictable, and overly "safe" now I come to think of it. But, I am ready for safe, and for peaceful, for now. African buses will still be there when we come back for a visit, and I probably still won't ride them...

Quiet pastures and still waters...

2012-01-09T08:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday after church I was longing to "get out" - to go off into the countryside, explore something of our beautiful new region, and just to get out, into the open spaces and fields. I had given Dan a book for his birthday entitled "50 Walks in Gloucestershire", so I grabbed this up and more or less randomly picked a walk, virtually threw Abby and Alex into the car, and off we went, leaving Dan behind working on a paper...

The walk started at an ancient chapel called Odda's Chapel, which was built by the Saxon Earl, Odda, in 1056 AD (think Beowulf, or King Arthur) while shaggy haired English people were living in wood and mud walled thatched huts, and wearing roughly woven canvas and skins, and fighting each other in various kingdoms over the land. Odda's Chapel is one of only a handful of complete Saxon buildings left standing in England - many parts of Saxon buildings remain, incorporated into cathedrals, castles, and churches, but this stands complete as it was, with a medieval wing added onto one side.

Maybe what Saxons looked like...

After a while pretending to be Saxons, we set off on what turned out to be a beautiful walk along the wide River Severn, up through a valley, past a village and some farms and back again. It was a glowing crisp wintery afternoon, the very air a tonic to the soul. It was so peaceful. Abby and Alex romped ahead like a pair of dogs out for a run in the fields.

It was just what I needed...

He makes me lie down in quiet pastures... he leads me beside the still waters... he restores my soul.

Birds

2012-01-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

Here in England we do not have the incredible array of bright and colourful birds, that we enjoyed so much in Uganda. But we do have our own little range of winged visitors, and we have put a bird house in our garden and do enjoy watching the little lot who come. Apart from the first one, which shows a great fat wood pigeon squeezing himself into our birdfeeder, these photos were not taken by me I must admit, but they show you the different kinds of birds we have seen here, and you must admit, they are not bad. Don't Knock British Birds.

A bluetit

An English Robin

A Great Tit

A Nuthatch

A Blackbird

A Magpie

A Fruitbowl minus the F...

2012-01-06T07:01:00.000-08:00

Now it is definite, I must be losing my marbles. Oh well. This bowl of roots is doing my heart good. I do come from farming stock - my mother was a farmer's daughter and they lived on the farm which was in the family for many generations, although sadly sold on her father's retirement. Not that I grew these roots, I just like the look of them, all earthy and rounded, and going in tonight's stew...

Heeelp!

2012-01-03T12:58:00.000-08:00

Well after a few Christmas days of eating, drinking, enjoying friends, family, games, and cosy log fires... that early morning worrying, that seems to be focussed on my new job, came back with a vengeance. Without going into detail, I now know what a real panic attack feels like, and have rapidly become a firm fan of beta blockers! So far the conclusion of those I have talked to seems to be that it is most likely an accumulation of all the stress of the last year, finally bursting out, after all the uncertainties have been slotted into place. Honestly we have so much to be thankful for, so many answered prayers, yet at times I am more tense now than I have ever felt in my life before.

I started back at work today and it went fine. I am off tomorrow. But come Thursday morning the nerves will be back, if the pattern continues. I would appreciate prayers that we can sort it out properly, and for me to get enough routine and rest and exercise and alone time so that I can get my balance back, and know God's peace and joy.

Not a great start to 2012. Let's pray it will end up being a fruitful and amazing year, for you and for us too as we continue to find our feet here in Gloucester.

A Happy Christmas

2011-12-26T17:26:00.000-08:00

The thing I have enjoyed most about Christmas this year has been being with my family. All my three brothers with my sisters-in-law and their children, gathered at my parents' in Devon, our family home since I was 18. Great fun, if a little bit crazy. Probably what I missed the most Christmassing in Uganda...

But as well as that, I have loved...

Driving down a tiny country lane on Christmas morning to an ancient stone church stuffed to the brim with people young and old, for a short, child-friendly service, with carols, a simple talk and a candle stuck in an orange for each child to take away, and sweets given out at the door on the way out... driving back past sheep-filled fields and waving at a few people out walking their dogs...

Coming home to the log fire, and being all cosy and warm inside, then venturing out for a blast of fresh air, only to return to the fireside...

(my Dad and my oldest brother, Nigel)

A traditional English Christmas lunch, including turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, bread sauce, roast potatoes, carrots, brussels sprouts, Christmas pudding, raspberries and meringue, mince pies, cheese and biscuits, ending with coffee and a selection of truffles, Turkish Delight, nuts and raisins, and of course a chocolate orange...

A tree stacked with presents, not particularly for me (!) but for all the family...

Seeing all the cousins together

... the freedom to drink alcohol (only little and often, as the doctor ordered, right?) - especially red wine, gin and tonic, sweet sherry, Baileys...

Down time with my family...

Watching the Queen's speech - an annual event at 3.00 pm on BBC 1 - and loving hearing her give a truly Christian message about Jesus coming into our lives at Christmas, about the need to forgive one another and help and support one another, it was really good...

And tomorrow we still have to fit in our Christmas hike on Dartmoor, carol singing around the piano, our annual game of charades... still a lot more fun to come!

I have also thought a lot about our friends in Uganda and wondered how all the families there have been, and whether they have had enough gas to cook on, and whether they killed their turkeys in time - and fed them enough first -, and hoping and praying that, even though far from home and extended family, and even in the heat and sunshine, they have been able to know the tingling excitement of remembering the Baby born in the stable all those years ago...

Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter, Day in night,
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little one whose all-embracing birth
Brings earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.
Richard Crashaw, 1613-1649

I hope this post doesn't serve to make those far from home homesick, but rather to pass on from my experience the encouragement that there will be traditional, home Christmases in the future for you too! And that the tradition, and the luxury, of a family Christmas (especially when it is laid on by a Mum and Dad!) is all the more lovely when one has missed it for a few years. And also the caveat that I have had to search for the meaning of Christmas, to cling to the story of the stable and all it held, all the more in the midst of the food and drink, talking, planning, reuniting and game-playing... And without the meaning (by my observation), it all seems so empty, extravagant, and, even, reckless...

Happy Christmas everyone!

Much Talking about Uganda...

2011-12-22T14:47:00.000-08:00

Today Dan and I had the chance to share with a group of fifteen or so young people who are going out to Uganda for a short term "gap year" experience, teaching in schools and working alongside Crosslinks mission partners in Kabale.

They were having their Orientation at a big old chilly conference centre in Norfolk, and so we were able to combine this speaking engagement with a few days staying with some good friends in their home near Norwich (they were in Uganda for several years and we spent a lot of time with them.) A few days of holiday bliss for Alex playing and laughing non-stop with his mate Mattie, and Abby with her friend Sienna, and so lovely for us to spend hours chatting and eating with Andy and Rosie. Conversation ranged around moving back to England, Uganda friends and happenings, Zimbabwe (as they also lived in Zim before Uganda), families, jobs, money, the cold and dark, shopping, church, Christmas... It was all great fun and so good to be with people who know us in both our contexts and have made the adjustment about a year ahead of us but are still dealing with some of it themselves. A lovely bonus was that Rosie's cousin Lizzie whom we also knew well from Uganda was there too, visiting from Uganda for Christmas. All nine of us sleeping in a small three-bedroom cottage - it was fun, and cosy! And the talking was therapeutic, as well as all the laughter. A very welcome, relaxing few days.

Speaking to the team going out to Uganda in January was also a lot of fun. Describing the greetings, hand-shaking, food, family life, roads, appropriate dress, church, and traditional religion, and telling some of our store of stories, brought it all back again so vividly. It was great to feel that our experience was helping prepare other people to go out there. I hope we get the opportunity to do it again.

Now looking forward to Christmas in Devon...

Hope

2011-12-19T08:31:00.000-08:00

On Sunday morning we had to set out for church at 6.30 am. We were on our way to one of our last link church visits, to St Peters in Harold Wood. This church incidentally was the one I worshipped at for the three years before I first went to Zambia back in 1992, so this was my original main sending church. They gave me a big commissioning in church back then, and my home group had a great party. But in the nineteen years since those farewells, several of the older, prayerful people who were interested in Africa and in me have died, and most of the younger people who I really knew have moved on to other jobs and churches. But there are a handful of people I still know well including the leaders of my home group, and it was lovely to see them again. And I experienced the same bitter-sweet feelings of the sadness of ending a long-standing relationship, of perhaps never seeing some of these people again (since it is pretty far away from Gloucester), but also the relief of putting aside everything that goes with being on support - the guilt feelings of splashing out on a pastry with that cup of coffee at La Patisserie (again), the self-doubt when writing the monthly prayer-letter - have I done enough this month to justify all the money people have given out of their own pockets to support me? But it was real pleasure to catch up with old friends at St Peters, and as always, we left feeling so pleased we had made it, and so thankful for the warmth and prayer and kindness of people.

Anyway, we set out early that morning, in the dark, having had to scrape the ice off the windscreen and warm up the car before we got in, all feeling still sleepy and cold and over-bundled in hats and scarves in the car. Half an hour later it was still dark and the roads were empty, and the bare trees were looming from the road-sides, stripped branches with twigs for crooked fingers poking out, and black clouds were moving ragged against the dark sky, and I thought about what it would be like if we knew that it was never going to get light, if there was no thought that the sunrise was coming. I imagined myself in some apocalyptic world, like in the movie "The Road", where it was never going to get properly light again. And I thought how horrifying it would be, and how hopeless. In fact I don't think I could go on, if I didn't know the light was coming.

Gradually, thankfully, the sky lightened at the edges, the clouds stood out more starkly against the pale, the silhouetted trees looked less scarey, and at last, directly ahead of us, the intensely bright, orange-rind rim of the Sun slipped up above a hillside, and light poured into all the sky.

Jesus being born into the world 2000 years ago was like the sun rising after years of darkness.

But the darkness is still here in many ways. And today, hearing the news, looking back at the events of 2011, it feels as though this year the darkness was as grim and perhaps hopeless as it has ever been. So many natural disasters, tsunamis and floods, financial recession returning for a "double dip", leaders losing popularity, an Arab Spring bringing with it persecution of Christians, rising prices all over the world, cuts and riots in England, no power in Uganda, Zimbabwe still suffering under the grip of evil... But knowing that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and knowing that he is coming again, is the promise of the Sunrise that will certainly come, and is the promise that gives us hope and enables us to keep going, even at the end of 2011.

Nativity in art

2011-12-12T12:59:00.000-08:00

Since my last post I have been trying to find an image which I seem to remember, but can't find, of a manger with the light pouring onto it as if it is the focal point of all of earth and heaven. In hunting for it I realised how much I was enjoying all the multitude of interpretations of the nativity scene, and I thought I would put a few here for you also to enjoy. If you know another amazing one which you love, tell me about it! I'm afraid my comments are not those of an art critic - I probably should read up about these paintings - but I am just airing my reactions to them.

I love this one (by Duccio) because of the tiny ox and ass peeking over. But more because of the ranks of angels, gazing down, gazing up to God, and having a chat about what they are seeing.

I like Chagall's because the cross is also there, and you can almost feel Mary's heart hurting.

Rembrandt's shows the atmosphere of the stable so well - if it was a stable - although it definitely looks like a Dutch barn here - which is to be expected. But I love how the light glows out from Jesus and how the faces are all turned on him, and the atmosphere is hushed.

I love this style of Rennaissance painting, with the beautiful city in the background. I love the angels on the roof of the stable. This painting seems full of peace to me. Everyone seems to be waiting quietly for events to unfold.

This one was (apparently) painted by Gari Melchers, in 1891. It conveys the exhaustion of both Mary and Joseph, but especially Mary. It is a much more human telling of the story, but the mystery is retained in the light emanating from the baby.

You just do not find many African depictions of the Nativity, apart from the beautiful wooden and stone carved sets. This one is by a British artist called Brian Whelan, painted "in a Uganda setting." Spot the crowned crane, fish eagle, palms, and geckos. I do like it.

Um, this one I included because of its strangeness, to me at least. Can anyone enlighten me?

Advent in England...

2011-12-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

As I read friends' thoughts as Christmas in Uganda approaches, I remember how I always found it strange to be in a hot place for Christmas, even after eighteen years of it (bar the ones when I went back to England). Christmas, in the psyche of northern-hemisphere westerners, is cold, and dark, and involves frost or snow, log fires, pretty lights, and hot drinks. The imagery of the Light coming into the darkness feels vivid and apt. No doubt about that. So to prepare for Christmas in bright hot sunshine was always weird, and to go swimming on Christmas Day was weird, and to eat a hot roast turkey lunch with as many of the trimmings as we could manage to drum up from Shoprite, Uchumi, and packages from home, was also definitely weird. Photos of us standing by the Christmas tree in summer clothes never seemed right.

On the other hand, because the externals felt all wrong, and because we didn't have our families around, and because we knew parcels and cards might not arrive on time, if at all, we really made the most of what we did have. We made an effort to decorate our houses, to have a tree No Matter What, to get together with friends and neighbours, to sing carols, to have children's parties, gift exchanges, do a nativity ourselves if we had to, and we made it work. As Kris said in her recent post, we had to think about the real reason for Christmas because we weren't really being distracted from it by anything else, unless it was our own efforts to reproduce the western trappings!

Here, I suppose I kind of expected Christmas to be laid out on a plate. Here it would be celebrated in the way I was used to, I wouldn't have to make it happen by getting together with the other mums and saying, "What shall we do to make Christmas Chrismassy?"

Here yes there is a lot of talk about Christmas. Yes it is cold and dark (!) and the town centres and some houses are bedecked with beautiful lights. The children have carol services coming up at both their schools, and Christmas Fairs and Abby had a "Jingle Ball".

But, I am struck, and a bit depressed, by how secular all the hype is. Here you do not ever walk into a supermarket and hear carols being played. The shops are loud with pop music, but nothing remotely carolly. The television is wall to wall with ads for Christmas shopping, but they mainly revolve around half-price sofas, and half-price alcohol. It seems as though the most fun anyone is expecting to have this Christmas is to sit on their new amazing sofa drinking and watching television! I have not heard a single mention of Jesus or of anything meaningful behind Christmas on television so far.

Today Abigail and I went clothes shopping, because apart from her uniform we had not bought the poor cold girl any winter clothes since we arrived! Gloucester High Street was awash with people doing their Christmas shopping, all shoulders sloping down towards bulging bags. But looking around at the faces, I saw that nobody looked remotely happy. They more looked determined, and grim.

Even me (to use a Ugandan phrase) - a few days ago, when I realised that this new job is more time consuming than I had anticipated, I was fretting about when I would manage to get all our Christmas shopping done and cards written. Then I pulled myself up short, because I saw that I was no better than anyone else - making Christmas all about those things. What about, how was I going to find time to meditate on the birth of the Saviour? And to be honest, I have not done that. I have been really taken up with the new job, and with getting the children through all their end of term activities. I want to spend time thinking about Jesus coming into the world but I have been distracted from it. I have not had time for it. And so far, nothing much has called my attention to that omission.

Tomorrow we are going back again to the local Baptist Church, which Abby and Alex have declared their favourite, and which we also like - hopefully God will push and pull my heart and spirit back on track. Hopefully I will feel His peace which I need, and His joy which I long for, and the rest of Advent will be a turning towards Him, away from the world, away from the worry and the material demands. The baby in the manger will be from now on the focal point, the anchor I will cling to. In Him, in the Saviour he grew up to be, is my source of hope. That is my prayer tonight, a bit late but not too late, half way through our first Advent in England.

Ostriches!

2011-12-03T11:57:00.000-08:00

On a lighter note, today Abby had a schoolfriend, Charlotte, over for the day. We went to a favourite place of ours outside Gloucester, Over Farm, which is a huge farm with a beautiful farm shop, as well as a collection of exotic and not-so-exotic animals which you can feed with packets of animal nuts bought in the shop. They have ponies, donkeys, sheep of course and goats, pigs, a buffalo, and... ostriches. The ostriches have managed to hatch a baby this year, which is quite an achievement here. It was a lovely sunny cold December day, and great to be outdoors. And to warm up with hot chocolate afterwards!

All work and no play...

2011-12-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

So I have been working at my new job as Librarian for the Westminster Theological College, for three weeks now. It is more like being a virtual librarian than a real one, in that, the libraries I have to manage and order books for are in nine study centres all over the UK. So I don't actually see the books - I have to order them for the nine centres, who are all at different stages of acquiring the required books (so there are some scary spreadsheets involved, including the master-plan and then multiple stages of record- keeping. Once books have been ordered they have to be entered on the online catalogue system - which I don't know how to do yet. Bar codes and Dewey numbers have to be printed and sent out by post to the nine different centres for them to stick onto the books when they arrive. Once books have been paid for there is a monthly tracking record to be produced, which I also don't know how to do yet.... Part of it is that the old librarian is too busy (hence handing on the job) to spend enough time with me to show me - although he has spent a lot of time with me -, so we are doing it in stages, and I am doing my best to keep up with what I do know how to do. But meanwhile, the directors of the nine Hubs (teaching centres) are emailing me about particular books the catalogue says they have, which they don't have, books which they do have which don't appear on the system, books which have the wrong barcodes on, barcodes which are peeling off, barcode scanners which are not working... Heeeeelp!!!

But I am now at the stage of feeling that I understand the stages of what I have to do, and I know I can do them. But there is this sizeable backlog of small issues, books which are missing and have to be replaced, books which were ordered a year ago, paid for and never arrived, problems which need solving, and I just don't see how I can do it all in 7 - 10 hours a week.

On the other hand, I love the organisation, it is pretty cool - all the study centres have lectures on Monday and Tuesday evenings, some recorded on dvds, and some given via live skype links with the lecturer, who might be in Canada, north of England, London... There are also some "live" lectures and there are also seminars via skype where the lecturer appears as a huge head on the screen and can see all the students, and he speaks to them by name - it is really space-age - like Star Trek as someone put it.

Before the evening sessions begin, there is lovely worship and prayer. The college came out of New Wine which is a charismatic Anglican movement, and so that is the genre of the whole set-up. My colleagues are lovely people who are kind and helpful, and I really enjoy being with them.

I am thankful to God for this job. We needed me to have an income. And in the current climate, jobs are not easy to come by. I feel that it is God-given. And there are all these really good things about it.

But it is stretching me, which is probably good for me. I haven't been stretched in this way, to doing something new and challenging, that I am actually being paid for and with responsibility attached, - with a lot of people depending on me to sort this all out, and get it right, fast - for a long time.

But I have been feeling pretty stressed about it, to the extent that I have been waking up in the early hours feeling tense, tearful, wondering if I have made a mistake... Yet rationally I know I'll be OK, and that I can do it, and once I have got to grips with all the elements of the job I am pretty convinced I will love it. And every single day, when I come back from work I feel completely fine and sure that it is going to be great. But the next morning I wake up a nervous wreck again.

So this nervousness might be my anxiety working over-time, it might be thyroid related, - or it might be that with all the changes and uncertainties we have gone through in the last five months I am more strung out than I realised. Or it might be spiritual.

Anyway, I would appreciate your prayers for me as I deal with this, and as I learn the last few bits I need to learn - and that I'll be able to get the book order I am working on done in time for the new module which is starting soon!!

Grey skies...

2011-11-29T09:43:00.000-08:00

This morning we woke up to rain lashing on the windows. The sky had a grey lid on it, with trailing edges allowing in a faint gleam of pale light. The wind was buffeting around the house, yanking the remaining orangey-brown leaves off our apple tree and discarding them onto the sodden grass below. No biking to school today...

This is the weather that people meant when they said, "Moving back to England? But the weather is so awful..."

Today I wore my brand new (!!) long black belted coat, feeling a bit glam. But, as I walked along the pavement to where I was meeting a friend, the wind blew my hair straight upwards in a hilarious cloud around my head. You know, when you walk into the wind, it blows your hair back off your face, and you feel all strong and pioneer-like and as if it is making you beautiful. But when you walk with the wind behind you, it blows your hair forward so that a) you can't see where you're going, and b) you look like an idiot. The wind always seems to be blowing from behind me... (And of course I do have the wrong sort of hair for it.)

It got dark at four-thirty today, and we drove home from school in the drizzle, under the street lights.

I remember many of my ex-pat friends in Uganda talking about missing the seasons. Well, I've got the seasons, all right.

I am not sure I love the seasons. My problem is, I just want to be comfortable. A friend noticed that in me when I was a student. He said I was like a cat who just wanted to find somewhere to be comfortable and sleep all day. I think there is some truth in that. I do like a challenge, but not too hard of a challenge. I don't like change. I hate having to do things that makes me nervous, - but not so much that I turn them down - I just usually find myself muttering at some point "I really wish I wasn't doing this." And, to the point here, I do not like being cold...

On the other hand, I do like getting out all my woolly jumpers and scarves and wrapping up warm. I love sitting by a cosy fire - who doesn't. I love the current trend for everything knitted. And I like the feeling of putting away t-shirts and flip-flops, letting those clothes have a rest for the winter, and wearing something different.

But I lived without the four-season cycle for so many years, I must have long lost that sense of the year passing through a beautiful and predictable cycle. When I went to Zambia in 1992, the year was utterly divided into two - October to April, it rained every day for about twenty minutes. May to September, it never rained. Not once, ever. Zimbabwe also had two seasons, hot and wet (summer), cold and dry (winter). But it did vary much more and could be wet for days at a time. Uganda I found so random - whilst there were gradual progressions from warmer to hotter, windy to still, rainy to dry, it was never really predictable. I concluded that when it rained "it is the wet season" and when it didn't rain "it is the dry season", or after two weeks of no rain, "now it is a drought."

I don't know how long it will take me to come to love the turning of the seasons here, but I imagine I will be pretty happy when spring comes! I do love spring, I think it might be my favourite.

Two things...

2011-11-26T06:28:00.000-08:00

Two things I am having fun with back here in England...

1. The Local Library!
I am SO relishing being a member of the Longlevens Library (part of Gloucestershire Libraries). I signed up our whole family a few weeks ago. On receiving our four cards I asked how many books I could borrow at a time, and the answer was twenty! "Which means,"she added, "you could technically leave here with eighty books today." A speculative gleam came into my eyes... Hmm, wish I'd brought a bigger bag...

I love that feeling of having a pile of books beside my bed which are all waiting to be read. Books that I might not have actually bought but am happy to have a go at. And the Library has audiobooks which we've borrowed for some of our long car journeys to our churches.

2. Coupons!
I am new to the whole world of coupons... and am rapidly becoming the Coupon Queen. I have signed up to something called "Groupon" which sends a daily email with coupons for everything from haircuts to toys to hotel stays. So far I've only paid up for a half-price haircut and highlights - but it was something I really needed... I am learning fast. When we wanted to go out for a meal for Thanksgiving (since we failed to manage to plan a special meal at home...) I looked up the restaurant we had in mind, online, and found "Ten Pounds Off" vouchers for that particular restaurant - score! Dan took the children to see the new Tintin movie with two free children's tickets - earned in Tesco reward points (Tesco being the supermarket I use where you gain reward points when you spend money.) I'm really enjoying finding all these "bargains" - but aware you can spend money to "save" money so it may not be such a good thing...

However, Alex is getting a bit frustrated with our scrimping ways. "Mum," he said, "Why does everything we do have to be with a voucher? It's cheating!" (He is also fed up with second-hand everything and so I make sure I tell him whenever I buy something brand new... which admittedly isn't very often!) Much as he'd like us to be able to buy everything he wants, he is really good about not having all the stuff that others have. I expected a lot more complaining. But I think he realises (perhaps subconsciously at this point) that he wouldn't exchange his Ugandan childhood for all the Wii's and X-boxes a different life might have given him.

Family

2011-11-21T06:23:00.000-08:00

I am thinking back to a time BA (Before Africa) when I was one of a group of about fifteen twenty-somethings staying in a youth hostel in the Lake District, on an Orientation week preparing us to go out to live and work in different parts of Africa. It was such a fun group of people, and we were all excited about what lay ahead. I remember my stomach was full, constantly, of those good kind of butterflies, the pre-Christmas kind. (My good friend Linda Carpenter was also in that group.) We were under the kind and avuncular instruction of various AEF elders like Robin and Val Wells, a lovely lady called Juliet, and a less aunt-like, more scary headmistress-like, Dorothy. In amongst the Bible Studies, learn-how-to-cook-with-pumpkin sessions, eat-your-first-mealie-meal sessions (left me with a leaden gut for days...), and cultural insights and discussions, the issue of leaving family behind came up, and somebody reassured us with Jesus' words in Mark 10:29: "I tell you the truth, no-one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much, in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields - and with them, persecution), and in the age to come, eternal life."

I must admit, as I threw myself into my new, fascinating life in Zambia, well-looked after by new Zambian friends who were used to having young western short-termers around, helped out and often fed by older long-term missionaries, hanging out with other newbies in the evenings, I didn't really miss my family all that much. At Christmas I did, and once in a while I would have a pang, but not really. I loved their visits and it was very hard saying goodbye when they left again. But I do think especially in the case of short-termers, it is much harder on the family left behind, missing a family member who has always been around, than on the one out on the mission field having a fantastic new exciting experience.

When I went to work in Zimbabwe, I was newly engaged to Dan and probably thought more about missing him than my family!

It was when our children came along, and then when my three brothers started having their children, that I began to wish more that I could be nearer my family. I felt sorry that my babies were so far away from their adoring grandparents, and sorry that I was depriving them both of each other. As more and more time went by, I began to wish that I could see my family more. The list of gatherings I was missing grew longer: various baptisms and dedications, parties, and Christmas get-togethers, and the desire to be able to participate in all these grew stronger. I was fortunate that my parents and at different times my brothers did come out to visit, they all came at different stages along the way. But by the last two or three years of living in Uganda, wanting to be nearer my family became a major reason for feeling ready to leave.

One friend in Uganda warned me, "Being nearer family may not turn out to be all its cracked up to be!"

But I am writing this post partly to say how much I am enjoying my family right now! I live roughly a two hour drive from my parents and from all my three brothers. So it isn't as though we hang out at weekends all the time, or feel any pressure to do so. But already this autumn I have been able to go to my new niece Lucia's baptism, Aunt Elisabeth's 75th birthday bash, to visit Mark and co in their new home in Guildford twice, visit Nigel and family and stay overnight, to spend a week at my parents' in August and a few weekends since then while doing our Devon church visits, to meet them at a shopping mall half-way between Gloucester and their home for a Christmas shopping day.... Also they came and stayed for a weekend to look after Abby and Alex while Dan and I went on a retreat in October. I have loved it all.

All my family have also offered us financial help during these months, for which we are so grateful.

I have less contact with my brothers by skype now, but it feels normal and good to see them once in a while, and for it not to be the once-in-two years visit or whatever it used to be. It feels good, and right. I love how Abby and Alex love their relations even though they have lived far away from them all their lives. Is that just inborn into us?

I do bear witness, though, that God gave me family while I lived in Africa. The close community at UCU especially was like family, I had sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers there, and my children had them too. And just a few in Kampala as well. Since you are mainly who are reading this blog (because I haven't told many other people about it!) let me say here that your friendships were supportive and sustaining, and I frequently miss being able to wander up the mud path to one of your houses or other for a coffee, brownie, chat, vent, prayer, moan-and-groan fest, movie-night, game-night (!), Tae Bo session (OK not so much after Louise left...), movie-borrowing, egg-borrowing... Thank you for being my family as well, and the fulfilment of God's promise in Mark 10:29. And, keep being that for each other!

Harriet Nalugo

2011-11-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

I saw on facebook today the terribly sad news that Harriet Nalugo died yesterday. She was assistant class teacher in earlier years for both Abigail and Alex at Ambrosoli, and was a friend to them ever since. She exchanged emails with them a few times.

Harriet was fun, vivacious, bright, and smart. She was one of those teachers the children always wanted to invite to their birthday parties, and she always came, arriving on the back of a boda boda, legs sticking out, smart high heels dangling jauntily down. She had left Ambrosoli a few years ago to work in another school, but would visit her former school fairly often, so we still saw her from time to time. I was really pleased that she happened to be at Ambrosoli one day not long before we left, so that I was able to say goodbye.

Unbelievable to see that she has died. It has brought our Ugandan life suddenly close to me again. I wish I could be there to mourn with others who knew her.

Does God really take the brightest and the best? Today it surely seems like it.

From Cathedral to Kabutwitwi Local Church...

2011-11-14T09:31:00.000-08:00

Reading through my last post, about Gloucester Cathedral, I remembered a piece I wrote a couple of years ago at UCU in Jason Mehl's Creative Writing class, - although it was a memory, not fiction - on being in a service in another cathedral and suddenly being transported back in my mind to the tiny mud-brick church I worshipped in when I lived in Zambia. I thought I might include it here, as this is after all about processing my present and past, comparing the life I live in England with the myriad African images with which my brain is stuffed!

So here it is...

"My hands rest each side of me, fingertips feeling the smooth mahogany pew. I am in the chancel of Exeter Cathedral, with two of my family and just a few well-dressed others. We are sitting smartly, upright, politely spaced apart, waiting for the service to begin. The air is cool and bright, light pouring in from the clear tall windows and reflecting off the pale golden-grey stonework which soars up above. Looking down through gaps in the ornate screen, through the length of the cathedral you can see tourists wandering, and on out through the distant arched west door, a framed glimpse of the green grass scattered with people in miniature sitting in the sunshine, tiny pigeons pecking about, a dog running. The pew is smooth and hard, and the pew ends are beautifully carved, and the wood gives off a scent of sweet polish, but behind it is the peppery hint of aged hymn books. Soft organ music is playing, mellow breathy chords flowing and melding. You can hear the tourists whisper to each other, their murmurs are amplified somehow and rise through the music until a verger approaches them gesturing towards the chancel.

Then you hear rustling of robes, the brushing of soft footsteps on ancient stones, and the choir enters the nave. Quiet still faces above gathered white cloth. The organ crescendos and the boys begin to sing, pure notes which cut the air. A broad ray of sunlight just then flows in through the windows, dust motes flickering, golden. It is all beautiful, controlled, choreographed, beautiful, and holy.

I am newly back from Zambia, from worshipping in a small dimsy mud church, squashed on a low bench with hundreds of others squeezed in there, our knees pressed against the backs of the people in front of us, smelling each others sweat from the hot dusty walk, but all wearing our best cotton worn-out clothes. You looked out through roughly square holes for windows and could see bright green bush, vibrant blue sky, red mud houses with tawny thatched roofs. We sang low African hymns accompanied by home-made dried-grass shakers, a choir of thin brown ladies with bright scarves over their hair, swaying their hips and elbows in time to the music, to and fro. Beside me a grandmother, wrinkled skin stretched over high cheekbones, carried in a printed cloth on her back her sick daughter’s tiny baby. She used to sling the baby round to her front to suckle it only for comfort – no milk. It was dim in the church, the walls were mud with a low tin roof above, so hot, and in the front was a lumpy blackboard chalked with the numbers of people who had congregated last week, how many had been late, what little money had been collected. The music was rhythmic, repetitive, beautiful. I felt so uplifted there.

I feel uplifted and holy in both settings. I am trying to understand why two such opposite sensory experiences can both overwhelm me with God. In the cathedral God is glorified in the perfection of the architecture, the brilliance of the choral music, the talent of the daily-rehearsed choir boys selected for the purity of their voices. The cathedral is kept polished, clean, light pours in, visitors show respect and reverence.

In Kabutwitwi local church, yes the dirt floor is swept, and so is the dusty ground outside. People come dressed in their best, even carrying their shoes on their heads to church and putting them on at the door, so as not to muddy them on the way. Although the building is simple and rough, the sheer brightness and colour of nature all about and of the printed clothes, and on the faces of all those who come and squeeze in there together, make the brown mud walls and floor and rough wooden benches irrelevant, out of sight.

I feel privileged to be a worshipper at Kabutwitwi, to share afterwards in the sour maize drink from an orange plastic beaker even though I can’t bear its taste. Equally but differently I feel privileged in the cathedral to share in the hundreds of years of history of perfection of worship.

Which does God prefer? I believe the externals which play upon my senses and stir my spirituality don’t mean much to Him, if anything at all. I am there, and so are the others, and that is what He is pleased about."

Remembrance Day

2011-11-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

11th November is Remembrance Day in England, just like the American Veterans Day. For years this day has passed me by, living in Africa. But before, when I was a child, I remember it always being an important day. On the morning of 11th, there are ceremonies at war memorials all around the country, and usually, at 11.00 am, a two minute silence - in shops, schools, businesses, anywhere. Everybody buys a small paper poppy in the days before, and wears it in their lapels: the poppy became a symbol for the thousands who died in the battlefields of Europe - because after the war, nothing but poppies grew in those fields. (The poppies are sold by the Royal British Legion, an organisation which provides care for war widows and any retired or disabled soldiers who need their help.)

So this year it was quite a throw-back for me to have a chance to participate in a grand Remembrance Day service with Abigail's school, in Gloucester Cathedral. There were traditional hymns, prayers of thankfulness for those who have given their lives in war to protect our country and freedom, prayers for those in combat zones now, prayers for peace in the world. Flags of various army, airforce and navy regiments were carried up and laid on the altar. A lone trumpeter played the Last Post from the very back of the cathedral, so that the solemn notes floated to us as if from a great distance.

I mainly just enjoyed soaking in the feeling of being in a service in the ancient stone Cathedral, the main body of which was built in Norman times, one thousand years ago. Over the intervening years portions have been added, stained glass windows, huge carved tombs, statues and inscriptions. But it is all truly old. Huge round pillars hold the massive building up, solid and circular, wider in girth than any tree. But the impression is of being in a huge spacious forest, stone branches fanning out and spreading to meet each other over our heads. The size and majesty, the feeling of strength, even indestructibility, in the stone, and the space and light, all speak of God, and give a sense of peace. If I need reassuring that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well," I will step inside Gloucester Cathedral for a few moments in my day, and be reminded.

A Tale of Two Fires

2011-11-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

As you may know, Saturday was Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night, or, Fireworks Night. The night when we British celebrate how back in 1605 a man called Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up with dynamite the Houses of Parliament, and failed, and was killed and his friends hung drawn and quartered. Lovely. They wanted to kill King James I (of the King James Bible) and replace him with a Catholic king. Every Nov 5th, or the nearest Saturday to it, most towns and villages have a huge bonfire, accompanied by a fireworks display (to commemorate the dynamite). In the olden days, and still sometimes today, someone will make a stuffed effigy of Guy Fawkes (which is then called "the guy"), and walk it around the village asking for money - "a penny for the guy!" - and then the figure is put on top of the bonfire to burn. Hmm, lovely.

We used to have handheld wire sparklers which you lit and then whipped around in circles, scattering sparks and enscribing green spirals on the backs of your eyelids when you shut your eyes. You could also write your name in the air with them, and they smelled of rich metallic burning. Sometimes people carved pumpkins into Jack-o-Lanterns and carried them around with a light inside. Bonfire night was a night for mulled wine or hot cider, and hot dogs. It nearly always involved a muddy field, wellington boots, - and the best part as a young child, staying up way after dark, trying not to lose Dad's hand in the crowds and darkness.

This year we were staying with my parents in Devon, and they took us to a perfect Fireworks Night with all the trimmings, muddy field, mulled wine and all. Sadly "glowsticks" have replaced the "dangerous" sparklers... The outstanding thing about this display was that the organisers had built a great wooden model of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, and made the fire inside it - and a person dressed up as an Elizabethan Guy Fawkes ran down to it with a huge blazing torch and lit it up - and we all got to witness how it might have been if the plot had not been foiled all those years ago. I had to laugh at us British, all thoroughly enjoying the spectacle of our precious Houses of Parliament burning gloriously down, Big Ben blazing and finally keeling over. What a strange breed we are.

The fireworks were brilliant, unlike the display I read about in Oban, where all 6,000 pounds worth of fireworks accidentally went off, all at once, in 50 seconds!! You can see it on youtube...

But, we were sobered to watch the television news when we got home later that evening, to see that there had been a huge crash on the motorway the night before, in a spot which Dan, Abby, Alex and I had driven right through on our way down to my parents, only five minutes prior to the accident. They called it the worst accident on the motorway in this generation. 37 vehicles were involved, many burning completely to nothing. Seven people died, and over 50 were injured. It was on the opposite carriageway to us, but even so, if we had driven past there just five minutes later we might have been involved, and we would have witnessed a huge fireball with six lorries jack-knifing across the road, and people running into the oncoming traffic to escape their burning vehicles.

We felt so thankful to God for protecting us, for allowing us to be ready to leave only twenty minutes later than our scheduled time, rather than thirty. For keeping us safe on these roads as He did in Uganda.

I can't help comparing this accident with the many that we witnessed, or saw the debris of, in Uganda. In this accident, only seven people died, compared to the forty-seven who died in a bus crash in Mabira Forest during our first week in Uganda. Here the road was closed from Friday until Sunday evening, while the police and forensic experts dismantled the wreckage and tried to find out the causes. There will be an investigation lasting several months, they say, and probably after that an "enquiry." There was no suggestion of "These things happen... such is life". On the contrary, something will have to change, somebody will almost certainly be blamed, and sacked, and there will almost certainly be a new law introduced. Here there were no photographs in the papers of dead bodies (unlike the coverage of a crash on the Owen Falls Dam also when we first arrived in Uganda, where the front page of the newspaper had a photograph of a distraught young mother, who happened to be a UCU student, watching her dead baby being dragged out of the river on a hook.)

In the west, death is unacceptable - unless the deceased is very elderly and has lived a good and fulfilled life. In the west we think we can control life and death. In the west we know everything has a material cause and explanation, and therefore we feel we can prevent a disaster from repeating itself. But I am not convinced our attitudes are correct. Who knows why we left home last Friday evening at 6.50 instead of 7.00? And why the family of four who died were not supernaturally hastened on their way as we might think we were? In our rational way of thinking, we tend to ignore that there is also a layer of mystery, of divine control, of divine reasoning which we will probably never understand. We may be able to avert road deaths in more effective ways (which is a good thing), and to prevent what we regard as unnecessary deaths more and more as time goes on (which is also a good thing), but we should not forget that it is God who is sovereign over life and death. People will die and we will not understand why. It is not wholly in our hands, much as we think it is or should be. Whilst the African fatalism and therefore failure to bring change, for example in the area of road safety, does seem to be wrong, and even lax, yet the acceptance of God's sovereignty and of the inevitability of death shows a deeper understanding of life and death, and of our reliance on God than we with all our controlling ways tend to have.

But I must admit I am glad to live now in a country where fatalities are not normally paraded on the cover of newspapers. I appreciate that respect towards the dead and their families which is important in this culture. (I was shocked that the body of Gadaffi was counted as an exception and I bought the only paper that day which did not show his blood-covered corpse.)

So Saturday was a day to remember God's protection of the Protestant monarchy and parliament four hundred years ago (although I doubt many of our fellow- revellers were considering God's part in it!), and of the Button family 24 hours ago, and to contemplate how little I understand really any of it, or how and why God acts, - but perhaps I don't need to, perhaps I just need to Trust Him More...

Let the games begin...

2011-11-04T17:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a full and colourful day. I feel as though the integration of my different worlds is beginning. Do you remember those diagrams where three circles of different colours are superimposed so that the middle, curvy triangle section is a combination of all three colours. It has felt to me as if the circles in my life have been almost completely separate, with the overlapping triangle in the middle a tiny dot. But I can see now how the integrated middle section can and will grow bigger and bigger, as the separate sections, almost untouched by each other before, slowly but surely overlap more and more. I am still thinking through why this integration is so important. I know it is making me feel better. Maybe partly just not having to explain everything to everyone. But more than that it is going to help me in making the transition from my missionary life in Africa without having just to put it behind me, as something that happened before and is not happening now... I have been operating with two main circles of bright and vibrant yellow and red: Uganda life with its friends, English life with family and friends - and for the sake of the diagram illustration, the new life in Gloucester as a, so far, rather pale blue.

Yesterday the three circles began to creep over each other.

In the morning I was surprised in my kitchen by the bubbly Skype ringing tone: Peace Kwikiriza, skyping in from the Foundations Studies office! I loved just looking at her beaming face. We asked about each other's children, about work, she commented on things in our house she could see, so then I tried to show her round our house by webcam... Then two other of the tutors came along and crammed their faces into the frame as well - Kevin Kezabu and Faith, and then Dan arrived - and we were five faces just laughing into the camera, chatting. "Did you know I had a baby boy?" "When are you coming to see us?" "How are the Abigails?" It was like being beamed back into UCU for twenty minutes. Or having friends from Uganda drop right into our kitchen.

Soon after that a school friend of mine came for lunch. Jo and I used to sit together on the school bus when we were thirteen years old, ride our ponies together, go trying on crazy clothes in the shops, and our families went on all kinds of trips together. She is the first of my old friends (of the red circle) to come to our new house (in the blue circle), and also, to say, "Can I see some pictures of Uganda?" (red blue yellow!!!!) As you can imagine I could hardly contain myself.

In the evening we had our first new Gloucester friends in for a meal - and... drum roll... our first game of Settlers since leaving Uganda! As one friend has already pointed out, you can see in the picture below only one unfamiliar element... everything else down to the cake tin is as it always was. So fun.

Colin and Chris were missionary doctors in Bangladesh, Chris is an obstetrician and does fistula surgeries, and has been in touch with Jean Chamberlain in the past about her work. Colin now teaches part time at Redcliffe.

I think I can see it all beginning to come together.

Saying goodbye to the Mother Ship...

2011-10-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

Last Monday we made our last trip to the Crosslinks office, in Lewisham in East London.

I joined Crosslinks (an Anglican evangelical mission agency) in 1996. Since then there have been many changes, including almost all new personnel and new leadership, new ethos and new fundraising methods... but the office is still in a rambling old grey stone Victorian house in a somewhat grotty, but developing part of London. For the past fifteen years, whenever I have been in England, I have had to make the trek at least once to "251" as it is affectionately known (or was at least by my first Regional Co-ordinator, Moira who first interviewed me). "251" always made me think of it as a spy centre...

Lewisham is not the easiest place to get to, involving a couple of train rides and then a hike along about a mile of pavement, past an Aladdin's Den junk shop/antique market, several "greasy spoon" cafes, and the Lewisham College. As we made this kind of pilgrimage last Monday morning, something inside me was mourning loudly the fact that this was the last time we would be doing this.

We were going there for our day of debrief, mainly with Jo Sayer, the HR person, who is also an old friend of ours. Dan and I got to know Jo as a fellow student at All Nations Christian College, the other main mission training college in England ("other" because our allegiance now is with the "first" missions training college, Redcliffe College in Gloucester, where Dan will be working...) Jo went out as a Crosslinks mission partner to Tanzania at the same time as we went to Zimbabwe. For the last four or five years she has been working in the Crosslinks office which has been lovely for us as she is our main contact person in the mission.

We were asked to show our powerpoint during the staff morning prayers, and then we spent some hours talking to Jo about leaving the mission field, followed by lunch in the next door Turkish restaurant, followed by meetings with the finance person to tie up loose ends, and with the Church Mission Team about our church visits and links.

Meanwhile Abby and Alex got to spend the day with a wonderful lady called Janet who specializes in Third Culture Kids (TCKs, Missionary Kids), who spent the day making timelines with them and talking through the whole moving to another culture issue with them. I believe the day was beneficial to them, and Alex especially really enjoyed the activities and conversation. But when I asked Abby afterwards how she had enjoyed it, her answer was, "Mum, I've told you before, Alex and me are not having any problems. It was just something for us to do while you were in your meetings." !

Leaving Crosslinks at the end of the day, saying goodbye to Jo, Chris, Giles, Alan, and others, felt a bit like walking off the end of a plank, or like being cut loose and sent off, to fend for myself. I felt as though it should have been heralded with a party and a cake, and speeches, Uganda style. But in fact it was all slightly anticlimactic. This was the end of an era for me (although we are still on Crosslinks support until the end of December and will be speaking at an orientation for them on Uganda customs and culture in December). Crosslinks has been a Mother Ship, my employer and my safety net during my years working in Zimbabwe and Uganda.

Honestly, there are some ways in which I am relieved to be finishing "the missionary life," and in particular living on missionary support, feeling so accountable to the churches and old ladies who give so kindly from their little, to enable us to live our amazing life serving God in Africa. But I am also realising how important the prayer support which accompanied that was, how privileged we were to have it. And how Crosslinks was there for us, if we needed them.

Dan and I appreciated how Crosslinks allowed us to function at UCU under the guidance of the university leadership and under the local church, as is their policy. We appreciated their hands-off-ness. It suited us to be able to find our niche, to say yes or no to all the various roles and work that we were asked to do by UCU as we felt was right, without having to pass everything through them. But we knew they were praying for us and would back us up at any time. We are also grateful for all their work on our behalf, finding us new churches and helping us raise our support levels when needed, sending out our prayer letters, handling our finances, and praying for us.

We would like to say a huge Thank You to Crosslinks. And maybe we will come back for the party and the cake another time!

Rollercoaster

2011-10-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

I feel as though I have been whizzed around, up and over one of Six Flag's most enormous terrifying rollercoasters this past two weeks. And I hate rollercoasters. It has been good, stretching, scary, disappointing, cheering, relieving, difficult and comforting in turns. I am pretty exhausted now.

Too complicated to give all the details... But, it started on Monday morning two weeks ago when the Headmaster of Abigail's school phoned me, all unexpecting as I was, and asked me if I could cover for one of their Latin teachers who had fallen ill. Instant panic. At first I said no, and then I said yes. I felt unprepared, and yet, what an opportunity. This could turn into the job I need and have been praying for. But can I do it? Haven't taught Latin for about 20 years. Haven't taught in an English school ditto. But I know I can do it. OK, I'll do it. In I go to meet the Deputy Head, and Head of Classics. It is all agreed. Then, a phone call. In order to do any work with children here now, a thing called a CRB check is required (Criminal Records Bureau check ie police clearance) - so it looks as though it is all off. But no! They say I can still teach but with another adult in the room to cover the legal requirements! Help! This is worse! ... What if I am a disaster and Abigail's friends tell her that her Mum is a rubbish teacher? What am I going to wear?! OK, maybe you do not want to read all the predictable thoughts that proceeded to flow very freely, from that time on until the first teaching day arrived...

Needless to say, I found out that I could teach, but, I was surprised how informally the children behaved towards me, how talkative they were from the get-go, how often I had to quieten them down. Not teaching respectful, grateful, adult Ugandan students any more. It was hard work. But, it went OK.
After three lessons, I felt good about it and back on top of things.

In the midst of psyching myself up for all of this, I received another unexpected phone call - that I was being invited for an interview for a very interesting job that I had applied for a couple of weeks earlier. Instant panic again! Can I even do this job? What was I thinking? Whatever can I wear for the interview? This job was in a really smart school, much posher than Abigail's school. And the job was for an assistant chaplain - mainly doing pastoral work with children aged 4 - 18. I loved the idea of it. But really surprised they called me for the interview.

The interview was on Monday morning. But... between teaching on the Friday morning, and interviewing on Monday morning, Dan and I were booked to go to a retreat for returning missionaries, at a beautiful remote retreat centre, a five hour drive away! My parents were due to arrive on Friday lunchtime to take over care of Abby and Alex, and Dan and I were to drive off towards the southeast, to a village called Battle, just near Hastings, as in, the Battle of...

Do you think I was in the right frame of mind for a retreat?? It was honestly the last thing I felt like that particular Friday of my life. I LOVE retreats, but this was not a good weekend! We got held up in terrible traffic on the way, took a detour, got lost, arrived late for supper, and I walked into the retreat centre virtually fuming.

However... the place was peaceful and comfortable, the people were kind, the bed was soft... and in the morning, I felt better. It was great to meet the other people who were all recently returned from China, India, Ghana and Malawi. All in the same stage of returnee-ism as we are - still trying to get settled, still in survival mode, still wondering if we should have left, still missing "home", still wondering what we are going to do next, still sorting out how to pay the gas bills, still a bit fragile. So it was lovely to just talk about all those things and realise that we are not cracking up, nor silly to be feeling fragile. We had thoughtful prayer times and a walk in the fields, and individual meetings with the leader/counsellor. God managed to beat his way through my layers of stress and carve out a space for some peace. For which I thank Him!

I talked with the counsellor at some length about my getting so nervous, and that was very interesting and helpful. I won't say any more about it. As I have read elsewhere - "I am not that kind of blogger"!

So... we drove back to Gloucester on Sunday night, and on Monday morning I screwed up my courage, saw Mum and Dad off, dressed up in my new smart dress, and set off for my interview. It went well I felt but... I didn't get the job. No need to go into details, but they ended up not making an appointment. They didn't seem to know quite what they wanted of the role, and they clearly did not want an evangelical in there trying to influence the children even though they had said they wanted an "evangelistic" person in the advertisement. Anyway, it was obviously not meant to be. It would have been lovely to have the job and income sorted out... So, it was disappointing but I think it would have been tough.

I am just about now coming down off the flurry and blur of all these events. I did Tae Bo for the first time on Tuesday morning! It was very strange not having Florence peeking out at me from the kitchen (Kris!) And having her say to me when I finished, "Ah you have really exercised. You have sweated. That is good exercise." Florence! I want her back.

I have an interview for another job next Tuesday. Before that, we are driving all the way to Kent for the weekend, to our church in a town there, preceded by lunch with an old college friend Nick and family, followed by overnight stay with my old prayer partner friend Deborah from my 20s, followed by our debrief day at Crosslinks in London, followed by a visit to us here in Gloucester with friends we knew well in Uganda, Rosie and Andy Sexton. Please if you are praying for us, pray for stamina. And pray I will find the peace again, and the joy in the reunions and friendships. Because mainly it feels as though I am just surviving.

Getting there...

2011-10-03T01:34:00.000-07:00

We have been in our new home for three weeks now, and we are still in the process of setting it up. We have only just got our bedroom sorted – I at last felt brave enough to buy a crisp white duvet cover – now we no longer have toddlers and no longer live in a country with bare floors and red dust… - and I think the room looks fresh and lovely. But we are still trying to work out the living room – fitting a well-known DAYBED in as well as a double futon (the only place for guests to sleep) and our new comfy sofa is just not working too well. There are several large book cases in there which we have not yet put books on, and we haven’t yet put up pictures in there. That room still looks frankly a mess, as does the hall, which has an empty bookcase strewn with wooden African objects, a light bulb, a pile of files… I don’t really know why it is all taking so long… We still don’t have internet but it should be installed on Tuesday. The waiting, and the mess, is driving me a bit crazy.

When I think of the wooden shacks we used to pass every day on our journey to school, perched high up on the mud banks beside the road, with just a curtain hanging in the doorway, and big-tummied toddlers being bathed in plastic basins outside the door, I have to wonder why we can justify spending several weeks getting comfortable in this home, moving our possessions round, wanting it all to look perfect, putting the right pictures in the right rooms… hunting round the second-hand furniture shops for just the right bookshelf… But I know from living on the UCU campus that there is a whole range of décor and number of possessions even from one Ugandan lecturer’s house to another, it is not purely a matter of the haves and the have-nots. It is partly a matter of choices and priorities. But the inequality and unfairness of it remains. And the truth is that we do not live in a shack on a mud bank, we live in a typical three-bedroomed, carpeted, English house. Why this should be, though, is a question all of us have doubtless asked at some point in our lives. Why was I born into a comfortably-off British family instead of to a woman in a refugee camp? No-one knows the answer do they? Predestination? God’s grace? Sheer luck? I don’t know, I am just grateful, and I know that I have to live the best way I can, live as I believe God wants me to live, in the life God has given me. And be thankful. As English people go, we are not rich nor are we particularly poor… (at this point…)

When we first arrived in Gloucester we heard a very good sermon in one of the local churches on John 1, about Jesus being the Word incarnate, and how we should strive to be incarnational Christians who witness to neighbours and friends here by being alongside them and being involved in their lives. We have since met a group of couples who do just that, befriending their neighbours and opening their homes to them, having a crowd of people over for breakfast on a Sunday morning, owning a big van that anyone can borrow, and so on. Through their example and friendship, several neighbours have become Christians already. Which is so encouraging to hear about in this very post-Christian society. We moved to England very aware that there is a desperate need here for Christian witness, for people to be willing to stand up for their faith and actually, practically, bear witness to Jesus by their lives and words. Christianity is seen as so out-dated and irrelevant here, and is almost seen as something to be trodden down if it raises its head. But we feel so encouraged by the friendly, out-going Christians we have met here in Gloucester, and by the warm churches we have gone into.

We definitely want to make an impression here for God's Kingdom. But at the moment we are still in the process of getting incarnated. We are still finding our feet and ordering our home, learning how to shop and cook with a whole different range of ingredients, fixing up phones and bill payments… Jesus himself took the full nine months in the womb, and thirty years in Nazareth, right? So maybe I shouldn’t get stressed about taking a couple more weeks… We are getting there.

Not in Kansas Any More...

2011-09-23T15:59:00.000-07:00

It has struck me over the last couple of days, that this housework business is not a temporary nuisance, to be borne for a short while. No, this is a day in day out, eternal mountain of jobs, varying from easy and vaguely interesting to tiring and down right boring. Like Sysiphus who has to push the great heavy boulder up the hill every night only for it to roll back down in the morning, so that he has to repeat the labour again and again never-endingly… It is not going away. What actually hit me today as I was standing in the bathroom pondering over our cornflower blue bath and sink, a relic of the sixties (and only mildly better than the avocado baths which followed in the seventies…), was that the blue sink and bath in question are never ever going to get clean, unless I clean it, and that the heap of clothes in the hamper are there for good unless I wash them, hang them out and iron them, that the kitchen floor is never going to get mopped – and yet it will continue to get dirtier and germier – unless I mop it (I or Dan of course who does do some of these things…) Making sure the children’s uniforms are washed and ironed regularly so they can go to school looking decent is my task and mine alone…

For the last eighteen years, I have had someone coming in to clean my house every weekday. I have, all my adult life, been able to say to myself, “Oh well, Florence/Martha/Judith will get that on Monday morning.” Not to say I have never wielded a mop or a broom, that I have never washed a dish or cleaned an oven – I have done so pretty often (!), but, on those days when it could wait, it definitely waited…

It is not so much that this is all rather annoying and takes rather a lot of my time which I could be using for other things… (agreed)… but it is, I am finding, a pressure. I HAVE to clean the kitchen floor before someone comes round! I HAVE to keep up with dishes or we will simply sink. At the moment our lives are still completely irregular, - out sofa-hunting one day, off to see old friends another, off to a meeting today - but I am hoping that we will in the next short while manage to get into some kind of routine so that I find that I can fit in the jobs, and share them with the rest of my family, so that it just becomes part of normal life and not an issue…

Last Sunday we visited the second of our link churches. Again it was a warm and friendly experience. We had worked on our power point so that it flowed better and told a story rather than being a random set of photos, and a good crowd stayed after church to watch it, followed by a great discussion.

I was amazed going through our recent Uganda photos – but how could I have forgotten so soon? – how bright and incredible all the colours are - the birds outrageously blue or scarlet or yellow, the sky so blue, the grass SO green, people’s clothing, the bougainvilleaea and the hibiscus, the market stalls covered in a rainbow of fruit, - all made more glowing by the intense sunlight. Here in England we are entering autumn, where the sun is lower in the sky (yes we have actually had a lot of sunshine…!), and the colours are gentle and muted, the trees already turning from green to tawny browns, golds and reds. We do have flowering bushes in our garden, and roses, pansies, sweet purple wood cyclamen and primroses, and the two big old apple trees which are dripping with large red and green fruit, but, it looks nothing like those vividly colourful photos of Uganda.

Sometimes we miss sitting on our verandah watching the birds pecking around in our crazy flowering trees and hopping around the pottery bird bath. Sometimes I see a movement in a tree here and think, Monkey? and then realise that never in this dispensation will a monkey be seen swinging and jumping through the trees in this garden. Sometimes a memory or a thought makes me flash back to Uganda and our home there, and I miss it so much it hurts.

But there are things I am also very relieved to have left behind, like the ants gathering on plates by the sink, and the cockroaches, the dust lurking on and under the bottom shelves of everything, and the heat, and the traffic. It is a mixture of relief and sadness. I badly want to see all my friends there (you who are reading this!), but I am loving meeting up again with even older friends here. Feeling kind of stretched between two worlds. Ah well, time to do the dishes…

Moving again...

2011-09-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

This week I have definitely been on the roller coaster, with amazingly happy moments bursting up against a few unpredicted downturns.

The great things that have made me feel up up up include how well Abby and Alex are getting on at their new schools, with making friends especially, and coping with the work well; also, our move last Saturday into a bigger, light and sunny house with a garden on both sides full of apples and autumn colours; our container arriving on Saturday morning, and the ensuing reunion with familiar things; most especially, Sunday lunch with our new neighbours, who happen to be a wonderful Kenyan family called the Itumus. John is the rector of the church just a few hundred yards up the road. We went there on Sunday morning and all enjoyed their informal family service. Strangely enough, we already knew John because he used to be on the team at my brother’s church in London! We spent hours with them on Sunday talking about Kenya, Uganda, the church there and in England, bishops, Zimbabwe, our pasts, our possible futures, food, work… it was such good fun and we are deeply heartened to have lovely African friends living right next door, who have said we can come over to borrow salt any time. In addition to all that we also had another meal out at more new friends’, a couple whose son, James, is in Alex’s year group at school, and the boys have really hit it off and become great friends already. They were missionaries in Bangladesh a few years ago.

In addition to all of that, we have also had visits from TWO English friends we know from Uganda! Fishy, who works in Jinja, has been here for a short working visit and came for lunch, and Isabel came to collect the boxes that they had put on our container. It was so lovely to talk about Uganda with them and about resettling particularly with Isabel.

In the face of all these great things happening in the space of five days, my emotions have several times suddenly swung down and I have felt overwhelmingly tired. Things that trigger it have included: moving again so soon, but, unavoidably we feel; seeing friends from Uganda was a high but then left a low feeling afterward; yes unwrapping familiar china, furniture, books, curtains etc was like Christmas all over again – but finding it all so dusty and dirty from the container – everything needs either washing (though we did wash most things before we packed them), serious dusting, or throwing away. Towels that looked pretty white and clean there look brown and dirty here compared to newly bought ones. (Note to future returnees – do not bring old towels back with you…) Incidentally we had a chance to say hello and goodbye to those small shiny brown fast-running creatures once more, - for the last time, we sincerely hope! I was hoping the unpacking guys didn't notice them! There were also a lot of small spiders in the container, hence cobwebs everywhere… Then trying to decide where to put furniture which involves hefting it all around several times in each room to try it out, disagreeing with Dan about how many bookshelves we can tolerate in the living room, disagreeing about putting bookshelves at the ends of people’s beds, and about putting the headboards of beds in the middle of the room instead of against the wall… you get the picture…

Also Abby has been hit with her first true English head cold, caught from class-mates. Poor thing, but she is getting better day by day.

We are in a hurry to get the house in order because are in a hurry to feel settled and at home. But maybe I just need another measure of patience, to allow this transition to unroll at the right pace. One day at a time.

New schools...

2011-09-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

It is very early to say much, but I thought I would just write something short about our children's experience in their new schools.

Alex is going to a big primary school in our part of Gloucester. He looks smart in a dark green sweatshirt and grey trousers. I asked him how school here compares with school in Uganda (where they went to a lovely small friendly international primary school.) Alex had two things to say: 1. his school in England is much bigger - there are 120 in each year group, divided into four classes of thirty. So even though the playground and field are way bigger than at the school in Kampala, it is also way more crowded. At playtimes they play crazy games of football, with fifty children on each side, ending up beating on each other and then all being banned from the football field - which is really great fun!
2. Here in England, all the children look the same - they all have freckles and short hair. That is Alex's perspective. It is true that in his school in Uganda, there were children from 30 different countries, and only ever one other English child at most. At least two thirds of the school were African children from Uganda or elsewhere. In his school here, all the children seem to be English, although there are different ethnic backgrounds represented - but way in the minority.

Alex is loving his school. We were very fortunate to have lunch with a former missionary family the day before school started, who invited round another family, whose twin children are in Alex's year group. James, the boy twin, has been a good friend to Alex already, and showed him around on the first day, and plays with him every break time. Alex said on the first evening, "If it wasn't for James, I would be dead!" Meaning that James had helped him so much. Alex is really happy, is doing well already and had a piece of writing read out in class today. So far so good!!!

Abigail is going to a school in the middle of Gloucester. It is the cathedral school, so the Gloucester cathedral choristers go there. So every morning the children get to have their school assembly right in the cathedral. How amazing. Not only is it an ancient, Norman cathedral ie at least a thousand years old, it is also the place where some of the Harry Potter scenes have been filmed - if you remember where the cat, Mrs Norris, is found petrified in a corridor... that corridor is in Gloucester cathedral. Abby wears a gorgeous, old-fashioned uniform, tie, blazer and all, and fortunately she loves it. She is in a class of sixteen children of whom only four are girls! We think this is good as it means that the four girls have immediately bonded and spend all the playtimes together. As Abby is usually shy at first, I am so so happy to hear her talk about these new friends already and what they have done together. (Today she said they played in the garden, "and we had a gravel fight. We tried to put it in each others' hair." Hmm, great!) Apparently the boys in her class are gross, and talk about exploding guinea pigs etc. Thank goodness she is used to that having Alex as her brother.

When I asked Abby how school here compares with Uganda, she just said, "It is a whole different world." Which it is, of course, - she is at the epitome of a traditional English school beset with rules, uniform, homework timetables, sports (referred to as "games") like hockey, and traditional names for everything, such as "the Michaelmas Term" (meaning this Sept-Dec term). Abby was scared going in on the first day, and I think I was even more scared than she - but, she has loved it so far and already asked me if she can stay there next year! We do hope so!

I am so relieved and thankful to be at this point, that the children are finding their way round their new schools, making friends, and seem happy. I can only praise God for it.

The "stuff" is coming!

2011-09-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

I am waiting for Abigail to return from her first day at school, which is tomorrow, before I say anything about the whole school adjustment thing...

In the meantime, we were told last week that our container had cleared (so the zebra and warthog skulls made it through!!)

So this coming Saturday, we are moving to our new rental house in the morning, and the container is being delivered in the afternoon.

My first reaction at the prospect was one of great relief - the various hazards and possibilities have all been avoided - container going off course to India, container sinking, container being intercepted by Somali pirates... - neither did it arrive far too early, nor has it kept us waiting for two months after our arrival... all pretty perfect. When we waved it off back then it seemed very unlikely we would really see it ever again...

My second reaction was an unexpected, but definite, sinking feeling. When we packed everything into that huge iron box, on 14th June (my birthday), thankfully I was out all day as it was my Kampala school trip day. So I got home that afternoon to find our house bare - red cement floors completely exposed, cracks and all. Each bedroom had a corner full of suitcases, and there was the small cane sofa and a table and chairs - but otherwise, bare walls, no books, no pictures, no curtains... The kitchen cupboards only had a set of plates I had borrowed, one saucepan, one sharp knife, and not much else. Instead of being awful and difficult, it was freeing! So much open, undemanding space! White clear walls - it was like opening up your head and clearing out all the rubbish! You might remember the last scene in Out of Africa, when Karen Blixen, about to leave Kenya, is sitting elegantly in her jodhpurs by her fireplace with just a few roped-up boxes around, saying, "We could have lived like thees olways" or something. I had the same sensation.

When we were moving around the US of course it was different, but still, living out of a suitcase with only two pairs of shoes and, OK, quite a lot of clothes. Then we moved into our little Gloucester house in mid August, but still only with our suitcases. Since we knew that we wouldn't be here for very long, we did not furnish the house more than with bare essentials - or with stuff I knew we would definitely take to a bigger house. I got beds for the children, a cupboard for their clothes, a washing machine and a fridge, a table and four chairs, and a TV (yes, essential - for watching the news, of course!) - and a futon for Dan and me to sleep on (all the above second-hand let it be noted!)

So the house still looks pretty bare, apart from the children's bedroom. Every evening Dan and I turn the futon in the sitting room from sofa to bed (we need it to function as both), climb in and watch the news and late-night TV, drinking sherry (yay!!), and we feel as though we are on holiday, staying in a hotel room! It is actually so nice. Living without all our stuff has been a good kind of limbo, a break from it all. Do we really want it all back?

But then again... My third reaction has been "bring it bring it bring it!" - I can't wait to have a cafetiere (French press) again and make real coffee. And my own comfy bed after the very firm futon mattress. My long mirror so that I can actually check my appearance before going out.
The toaster! No more toasting bread under the grill! My whisk and masher and cake tins! My watercolours!

So it turns out that I am not an ascetic after all. But I really haven't minded playing at it for a couple of months.

"Oh Florence..." OR "Seeing is believing..." - photos by Abigail Button

2011-09-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

Stones or Bread?

2011-09-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

In the last two days we have had two great breakthroughs, but oh so slowly in the materialising… One unavoidable aspect of this resettling business is definitely the patience required, which has been sorely tested, especially over the last few days.

I was definitely beginning to feel the strain yesterday lunchtime, as we still didn’t know for sure which school Alex was going to, today being the last possible day to buy his uniform. We were also waiting to hear if we had been accepted by a letting agent to be tenants in a bigger house, a house which we had visited and really liked, and was available for a very reasonable rent, within walking distance of the college where Dan will be working. We needed to know because… we have just been contacted by our container company that our container has cleared and has to be delivered in the next few days – where to? If we are still in our current house, we wouldn’t have room for more than an eighth of what is in that container! Help! I felt yesterday as if I was juggling a hundred balls, they were all up in the air and all about to fall on my head in the very near future and I had no conrol over any of them!

Yesterday lunchtime, this was the position with Alex’s school… We had been offered our third choice of school, which was OK but about a 15 minute drive away in rush hour. So, not ideal. But we had gone in person to both our first two choices. School number one said they were definitely full so there was nothing they could do. School number two said that they could possibly take him, but only if we made an appeal to the Local Education Authority, which is a bit of a long procedure and can take a few weeks… So, we were deciding to settle for school number three – with the longer drive. But, with a lovely Christian head teacher, so that was encouraging.

But I was feeling a bit disappointed as I had set my heart on school number one. Sitting in the garden with Dan, drinking a coffee, perched on some bricks – nothing else to sit on – I wondered why God would not have answered our prayers for Alex’s school, why it had to be such a complicated procedure which is so pedantic and yet the results then seem so random – and feeling that maybe our prayers, like our school applications, get ignored and we just get given what someone above deems to be right – in fact, beginning to feel sorry for myself about the whole thing… when I remembered the words of Jesus, “Which of you fathers, if his son asks him for bread, would give him a stone instead?” Thinking on this I realised, that if Alex was given a place at our school number three, this would be a good gift for us, not a stone. I need to trust God that he is giving us bread, not stones – I need to acknowledge that God knows infinitely more than I do about it all.

As this was sinking in and I was beginning to feel more confident about Alex going to the school, the phone rang… Not any of the schools – but, the Letting Agent! Telling us our credit history check had gone through OK (amazingly considering we have been living abroad for eight years), and we were accepted as tenants at the house we wanted. Great news! Hooray hooray! We can move in on the 10^th September (only just over a week away!) and our container can be delivered straight to that address – and it has room for all our stuff – and two big sunny downstairs rooms, and three bedrooms so Abigail can have her purple room and Alex his red white and blue… And two old apple trees in the garden. So much to be thankful for.

Went to bed still not sure where Alex was going to school. But it was the last day to buy uniform, so, we went along to the uniform shop, and decided to just buy the standard grey trousers and white shirt, but wait on the school-specific sweatshirt. I was actually at the till, paying for these, when the phone call came from our School Number One! Telling us that someone had withdrawn, so they could give Alex a place! All we had to do is turn up on Monday morning. She said, “I’m not sure what you should do about getting the uniform” and I said, “Don’t worry – I’m in the shop now!” She was rather surprised!

I am disproportionately happy about this outcome. Dan says my emotional state shouldn’t depend so much on things like this. What can I say? I have spent almost the entire twelve months trying to get Abby and Alex places in English schools, going through plans A, B, C, D and back again. For Abby we knew eventually in May, for Alex we had to wait until two days before term starts… but they are both in wonderful schools, and that is huge as far as I am concerned! I have known for a long time that God acts in his own time, and he teaches us along the way. And I have learned through this, that God is the giver of good gifts to his children and that I shouldn’t second-guess him.

So Alex starts on Monday morning at 8.40 am. Abby starts on Wednesday morning at 8.30. It will be interesting to see how they settle in, and how they find school different here from their lovely experience of school in Uganda. They have already discovered one difference – having to wear black shoes, and socks! What was wrong with wearing broken crocs to school anyway?

One church visit down, eleven to go...

2011-08-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

This Sunday Dan and I wended our way for an hour through narrow, high-hedged lanes, deep into the Devonshire countryside, to visit one of the churches which has been supporting us and praying for us during our years in Zimbabwe and then Uganda.

I first visited this church in 1997, before Dan and I were even engaged. So they have been praying for me - and then us - for fourteen years, through our marriage, the birth of our children, being ejected from Zimbabwe, moving to Uganda, and all the ups and downs since (at least the ones which made it into our monthly prayer updates.)

We have twelve link churches, spread all over Devon and the rest of England, so it is a daunting prospect that we will be visiting them all between now and January...

I must admit that I do not really look forward to these visits. There are always so many people I don't know, and people who approach you whom you know you should know... and various awkward conversations because people often don't know what to talk to you about. Often I end up hearing all about their lives instead of talking about our Ugandan life, since I find it easier to ask the questions!

But then again, almost always I end up loving the visits and feeling really glad we went. Same again this Sunday. We arrived at St Edmond's in Dolton half an hour early, to find a group of women singing choruses in the front of the church (a new development in this rather traditional Anglican country parish.)
Two women were setting things up, who reminded me that I had met them and been in their homes on my first visit fourteen years ago. The service was formal but the people were so friendly. Dan and I were given ten minutes to talk about our recent work in Uganda and our future plans. After the service we showed pictures on my laptop and chatted with several people who seemed really interested. It was so fun! Of course there were various people who had joined the church since our last visit, and also many who had left. And it was a bit sad that, being an All Age service, we saw only all ages over about sixty there... But the overwhelming feeling was that we had been prayed for faithfully there, so that even the new people knew exactly who we were, and many were interested in Uganda and the work being done there.

One old chap said to me, "Do you know I see your face every day?" He explained that his wife, Gwen, has my picture up on their fridge from my first visit, (therefore the thirty year old version of me, minus wrinkles and grey streaks - he didn't say that though!) Gwen had written underneath "Married to Dan, Abigail born, Alex born and the dates. I was touched to realise that this lovely couple had been praying for us and thinking of us daily. Gwen said she would miss my monthly prayer letters! If you are someone who writes prayer letters, you will know what a huge boost that was to me, as you often feel, sitting at your desk in Africa, wondering what to write this month, that they anyway are being written into a vacuum and surely sit at the back of churches gathering dust...

So our first church visit of twelve was really encouraging and positive. Having been admittedly glad to put the days of being on missionary support behind me, the visit made me actually feel sorry that we are saying goodbye to all these relationships, and to all this prayer for us. Knowing there are so many more last visits to come, and that they will all be similarly sad, the image came to mind of pulling off a well stuck-down bandaid when it is no longer needed - slow and painful, - but possibly a relief when it is off...

Good Old British Beaurocracy...

2011-08-22T03:52:00.000-07:00

British beaurocracy is irritating, reassuring, and impressive in turns. Registering at the doctor was simple and I have been able to order my thryoxine by phone and can pick it up tomorrow afternoon straight from the surgery – no effort required at all! Bingo! Compare that to an hour’s drive to Kampala, to find one pharmacy has it for one pound per tablet, two others have run out, ring a friend to ask where she got hers recently (you know who you are!), go back and buy a small amount from the first, wait and hope to find it cheaper somewhere else another day… Life in England is so much easier… Until…

… trying to get a landline and internet into our house, which is a Nightmare – you can now get it in “bundles” of internet, cable TV, landline plus a mobile phone package, in any combination of the above, from three different companies, offering twelve month or eighteen month deals for different prices, differing amounts of broadband at differing speeds… AND special offers! But they didn’t mention the cost of line rental which doubles the special offer! But THEY take three weeks to intall while WE can do it instantly. But if you’re moving soon, you MIGHT be able to take the package with you. IF the house you move into has our cable in the street. Do we even need a landline? Mobiles might work out cheaper (depending on what mobile package we go for…) Do we need cable – there are lots of free stations anyway. As long as we swim around in this huge sticky bowl of molasses, trying to make a decision one way or the other, we don’t have internet in our house so we have to drive to friends to get in our emails. Somebody help!!! Now Uganda seems so simple!

Meanwhile, we installed the television which my parents kindly gave us, a few days before we actually moved in. We turned it on to see if the freeview channels did come in. Abby and Alex were over the moon that their favourite channel CBBC (Childrens BBC) does work. Hooray! Two days later a letter lands on the mat. “To The Occupier…” The letter goes on to say that whatever we are watching, however we are watching it, it is illegal until we get a Television License!! Wow, they really have it covered. Amazing. It only took ten minutes on the internet to become legal again – phew!

I must say that being able to do everything by internet is very easy, (so long as you are computer literate, have internet, and speak English,) compared to the time-consuming system used in Uganda for things like immigration and driving licenses: the long, familiar ordeal, of going to a particular office one day, back to office number two another day, followed by going to the bank to pay, then going back to the bank later or another day to collect your receipt, taking that receipt back to office number two, and back again in five more days to collect the document you were after. People blame the British for all of that. Perhaps it was like that in England in Victorian times, when important documents were written with quill pens on scrolls, and badly stored or lost (as in Bleak House). Not so any more. Now, no-one wants you to come into their office. Quite the opposite. In fact, bizarrely, if you go to the Schools Admissions team at the Local Authority building in Gloucester, they don’t speak to you face to face, but instead you go into a booth, where there is an intercom phone, and they speak to you from their office via the intercom! The irony…

At home...?

2011-08-22T03:50:00.001-07:00

At the beginning of week three, things are beginning to feel a bit more organised…We are in our own home, essential furniture has been acquired, and a few proper meals have been cooked… But it still feels as though I am making my way through a forest of thick bushes – we keep pushing past one thick bush only to find another in our way, and still not sure where you are going. The bushes vary – some you need to bend and climb under, some you push through, others you have to try to chop down altogether… It feels a bit like an obstacle course, as though there might be a huge prize at the end if we succeed. Of course there is – a happy fulfilled life for all the family here in Gloucester! But I need the cheering crowds!

The obstacles at the moment mainly consist of our housing, furnishing our home, the container which is arriving in port on 25^th August and in particular, where to put all the stuff that is in it. The problem is that the house we own, which we are now living in as of two days ago, is just a bit too small for us. It is manageable, but, for example, Abby and Alex share a room (she has chosen purple and he has chosen red white and blue, hmm) and there is no guest room; when we all sit at the little dining table no-one can go in and out of the room, since one chair has to block the door. There is nowhere to put wet shoes on entering the house as the front door opens onto a tiny hallway and the stairs go straight up from it. We bought the house as an investment, to let, and never intended to live in it, and it is a real blessing to be able to be here just now – but we don’t think we want to stay in it for very long. However, the alternatives are all very sketchy at this point. If we can let it out again, we could rent another bigger place ourselves. One great place is available so that could work, IF the agent will accept us as tenants even though we don’t have a definite income this year. Our savings might be enough to convince them, we shall see. If I can get a job, we could definitely rent or MAYBE get a mortgage. If we could sell this house, we could buy a bigger house – that is if we could realistically get a mortgage, which is unlikely at this time both because of the recession and because we don’t have a definite income. If we end up staying in this house, we shall have to store most of our container-full of stuff. If our friends buy the house they hope to, they have offered to let us use their garage, if it isn’t too damp. If we stay in this house, we need small furniture to make the most of the space, but if we move to the bigger rental place, we can wait and buy some bigger chests of drawers etc. Every decision starts with an if. Grrr!! Let the metaphor change from hacking through a dense forest, to playing a huge game of dominoes…

Whilst all the uncertainties are tricky, we are grateful for what we have, a warm roof over our heads, a great park at the end of the road, very friendly neighbours up and down this street… Two invitations out for meals with new friends already… many gifts of furniture and small household items from people we barely know, including the family who have just left from here for Uganda, giving us their duvet and sheets, a printer, dishes and certain kitchen things as they walked out the door! All things we specifically needed since we didn’t bring them from Uganda. So we do feel blessed.

We have had various conversations along the lines of: “what shall we do if we don’t feel happy here…” “how shall we manage if we end up having to stay in this house…” and finally, inevitably, from Alex today, “Why can’t we go back to Uganda where everything was perfect?”

"Stuff"

2011-08-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

Two brief thoughts on "stuff."

When we had been in America (visiting Dan's family) just a few days, we were offered a house to stay in which was furnished and equipped, but not being lived in at that time. My 11 year old daughter and I opened cupboards in the laundry room and were amazed that they were fully stocked with varieties of liquids, stain removers, chlorine bleach, fabric softeners, all brands which I had never heard of - in fact I said to Abby, "Which one do you think just washes the clothes?" We picked the one called "All" and it seemed to do the trick!

Then we found the kitchen cupboards equally full, with gadgets and supplies. Abby's comment was: "To think, we have lived for eight years happily in Uganda, not missing anything, doing everything we wanted, and then, we come here, and the cupboards are full of things we have never seen before, and yet people tell us we can't live without them."

(We had actually seen washing powder in Uganda..., just in case you were wondering, but, our cupboards were not full of a whole range ... one box usually did it.)

Today I thought about "stuff," or rather, "wanting stuff," when the Sunday Times newspaper came through the door. We are still house-sitting for friends, so it was their paper being delivered, and so, free for us! That paper has sat unread all day. Dan will read it later but I don't think I will get to it. But, only a matter of weeks ago, I was living in Uganda, where, the most recent Sunday Times was surprisingly available in a petrol station shop in Bugolobi - for 24,000 Ug shillings which is eight pounds! Needless to say, I never bought it. But, I often stood and gazed at it longingly, thinking how much I would love to browse through that paper if only I could afford it.

Is it just human nature - to want the things we can't have, and not to want the things that are easily available? I've still only bought one chocolate bar since being back in England...

Feelings of Uselessness...

2011-08-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

In spite of having visited England almost every year (although not quite) since we moved to Uganda in 2003, now that we are living here we find that "things have changed" and most days there is something that I do not quite know how to do... Or, a new road junction which confuses me. For example, a few days ago, I found myself in the wrong lane on a roundabout (driving in Uganda, no-one knew what was the right lane anyway), and so made a nifty manoeuvre to get off on the exit I needed - only to find a moment later, an enormous throbbing motorbike pulled up alongside my driver window: the driver's knee was at my eye level, and his visor was bent towards me, beard bristling our underneath, and he was scathingly asking me what kind of driving I thought that was, or words to that effect... "Sorry!" I muttered, bright red in the face, and he was gone. I felt small as an ant, and ashamed to realise that lack of recent experience driving on these roads would not be a great excuse if I caused an accident... but then again, I could also see the funny side of it... and shot up a prayer that God would keep me safe as I drove and protect all those around me, just as he always did on the crazy Ugandan roads.

Today I faced not for the first time the problem of having to buy a car parking ticket at an incomprehensible machine. The sign said, "To pay by credit card, phone this number: (XXX) No ticket needed to be displayed." Help, this is new! I didn't really want to use up my (newly acquired) Orange airtime in a long confusing conversation with no doubt multiple security questions, standing around in the cold windy carpark, and give out my credit card number INCLUDING the "security code" which surely can't be very secure any more to yet another stranger (although probably a stranger in Delhi...) But there was also an option for paying with coins, but the coin slot was unidentified and not very easy to see, and there was a green button near it, but no labelling on that either. I was pretty sure if I put in some coins and pushed the green button, a ticket would come out, and thank goodness it did. But for a few minutes in front of that machine I had that feeling, which is becoming all too familiar, of uselessness, as I had felt when I messed up on the roundabout. Yet another thing I don't know how to do, how thick must I be, can't live in my own country any more, out of date...

But I realise that these are typical "re-entry" problems, and feelings. Things do always change, and lots of people get lost, or need to have something explained to them, and soon I shall be breezing around Gloucester knowing exactly where to go and how to do things. I just have to get through this time...

A friend recently said she was praying for the grace and humour needed to get through the transition, and those are certainly needed. Grace, humility, a certain amount of concentration, and a big dollop of humour.

A nice epilogue to my short struggle in the car park... as we were walking away from our car, a group of Chinese visitors were seen to be standing in front of the same ticket machine. Bravely the tall thin man asked me in fairly good English if I could help them understand the machine. "Oh yes, of course" I said, and asked if they had any coins... Having shown them what to do, I jokily reminded them not to be more than one hour so they wouldn't be fined... They were so grateful, and as we waved and turned to walk away, the man gave me a beautiful Chinese bow. That was the grace...

Shopping...

2011-08-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

Among many other jobs yesterday I managed to fit in my first trip into a Tesco's Superstore (think Walmart...). I had actually been looking forward to Tesco's... but, in the event, I HATED it!

Armed with a capacious, shiny trolley that rolled along in a straight line (wow), and an expectant happy face, in I went, and was immediately overwhelmed by aisles stretching off in every direction. So, I thought I would start in one corner, and work my way around. I immediately got stuck in picnic stuff, then clothes, then flowers - hadn't even found the food yet. All of a sudden I came to the meat section, and it was so cold! I truly could not stand it. I decided not to buy meat that day, but would come back another day with a jumper on... The cold extended into the vegetable section as well, so I skipped that too. I spent a few happy minutes in the crisps and snacks section, and found some Tesco's brand tortillas - yay! - so stocked up on them (my trolley still being horribly empty). I then spent at least ten minutes if not more comparing sizes of ketchup bottles - the bigger ones were better value per 100 gram, but then should I buy glass or plastic bottles - which is better environmentally? Then again, the plastic ones which stand upside down are a good medium size, but, the lids do get so messy. I ended up buying a HUGE, plastic, normal-way-up bottle which will probably last us a year... The bread section also got me stumped - every type of bread, from white to wheatmeal to wholemeal to granary to seedy ... AND in thin, medium, or thick slices - goodness. How to choose? Milk came next, and then ice cream, but I never made it to yoghurts or cheese... The frozen vegetables were easy as I only wanted frozen peas - incredibly expensive in Uganda, so I was happy to find them here at an eighth of the price.

Moving on, feeling a bit more successful, I found myself in the land of pre-prepared food - aisles and aisles of it. You could live off these aisles without needing the rest of the shop, if you didn't want to actually cook. I skipped all of them.

Cereal was another whole mine-field, but I was surprised at how expensive it was here - I had thought paying 5 pounds for a box in Uganda was an extravagance, but it isn't much less than that here. I bought two boxes on special offer... I still had to get through butter, spreads, biscuits, juice - but I had already run out of steam so I skipped most of that too. Then I realised, I ought to buy ingredients for one real meal, as the family can't really live on ice cream and tortilla chips, so, I dragged myself back to the arctic meat section and bought a packet of sausages and some bacon (the "cooking bacon," which is a third of the price of the rest just because it isn't sliced into perfectly shaped rashers - who cares?!)

My hour in Tesco's was exhausting, confusing, and very cold, and I had only managed to get around about a half of the shop... I may have try Sainsburys next time...

A Good Day...

2011-08-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

After feeling all adrift last night, I have had a great day - what a relief.

Things I have accomplished today:
Set up electricity and water supply, via lengthy phone calls...
Had table and chairs and washing machine delivered to the house...
Had washing machine connected by a kind friend who also helped me assemble an incredibly heavy futon...
Did first big grocery shop for when the rest of the family arrives...
Figured out how to work our boiler and water heater (thanks to same useful friend!)
Read the local Gloucester newspaper, called "The Citizen..."
Visited Redcliffe College, where we hope to work, and reconnected with several old friends on staff there.
Skyped with Dan and the children... missing them
Chatted on FB with Karen Scully in Mukono... missing them too!

Things I am undoubtedly loving about being back in England:
Speaking on the phone with my parents and friends without having to be as brief as possible...
Having power on the whole time - STILL a treat!! I hear it is awful in Uganda at the moment and I do really feel for you all there.
Driving along past smooth green fields, in a smooth car, on a smooth road, with a selection of radio channels which all work...
Seeing blackbirds and swallows swooping in and out of the hedges, and watching a wild bunny hopping along a lane ahead of me yesterday...
Going to church in jeans on Sunday!! It felt so naughty, but in fact it is normal here! Met a lady at church who was a Crosslinks missionary for 31 yrs in East Africa - I knew of her but had never met before.
Walking down the alcohol aisle in the supermarket, deciding whether or not to buy a bottle of sherry. As it happens, I didn't, but... I am allowed to!
Maybe these novelties will wear off, but for now, they are good.

Thank you Lord for a good day.

One Week In...

2011-08-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

So after one week, how are things going? Hmmm.... Maybe I should make two lists: things I am thankful for, and other things...

Thankful...

I am glad to be here a few days before my family, so that I can concentrate on getting jobs done without having to cook for them and entertain the children... It is good to be a "free agent" for a few days. Missing them but... It has been beautiful weather and the English countryside looks green and peaceful. I have been well looked after by my parents who came up to help me clean up the house, and tidy up the (albeit titchy)garden, and by Rob and Sarah Hay who I am staying with. Haven't had to do any cooking yet...! I LOVE our new car, which we were able to purchase before we moved back - a bright blue Renault Meghane which has grreat acceleration, is smooth, has a good radio and air-conditioning which works!! I am SO thankful that Deon and Beth GAVE me furniture including a fridge-freezer and two single beds from their furniture business. The washing machine is being delivered tomorrow...

Adrift...

With still so much to do before I can relax... like phone all the utilities companies, get Alex's school sorted, send out my cv, sign up for child benefit, etc... I still feel more nervous and detached from reality, than happy. It feels as though I am playing an elaborate game of "setting up house". But at times it feels like a really bad idea and I want to run to the airport and escape! I feel detached, and somehow like a boat adrift trying to throw out a few mooring lines at random. I am looking forward to feeling a sense of stability but it hasn't arrived yet... I went this weekend to visit my middle brother and his family in their new home near Guildford - they only moved in three weeks ago. It is a beautiful house with amazing gardens. But I realised that their being in a new house and new area which they don't know very well yet, added to my sense of being lost at sea. I haven't cried yet but I feel as though I am running on adrenalin, and I am getting really tired. I did buy my first bar of Cadbury's chocolate earlier - sounds like it is time to crack it open, - that and a cup of tea...

Leaving...

2011-08-05T14:44:00.000-07:00

We are in the middle of the roller-coaster of transition. We left Uganda on 1^st July, and we have travelled to visit friends in Botswana and then America, bouncing from Dallas to Madison to Lake Geneva to Minneapolis. Now I arrive in England, where I have not lived on a permanent basis since 1992, nineteen years ago. Back then, young free and single, just 25 yrs old, I signed up with Africa Evangelical Fellowship (AEF) and flew without a backward glance to a corner of rural Zambia to teach in a mission school for Zambian girls. Cutting a long story short, after two fascinating and happy years there, I went to missions college (All Nations Christian College) in England, married an American fellow-missionary, worked with him in Zimbabwe for five years, had two children there, watched and experienced Zimbabwe hurling itself into chaos, left in a hurry, spent a year teaching at Redliffe College in England, and then moved to Uganda in 2003.

In Uganda Dan and I were working at Uganda Christian University, which had been the Church of Uganda (Anglican) theological training college since about 1913, and in 1997 became a university. The goal of the university is to train Christian professionals in every walk of life for Uganda and the surrounding East African countries. Their vision statement is: a complete education for a complete person. It is a great place. We loved working there, but for the past two to three years I had begun to feel that I wanted to move back to England, to be nearer my family, and so that our two children, Abigail and Alex, would have time as teenagers to put down roots in their own culture. I began to feel tired of the heat and dust of Uganda, the traffic and related hazards on our hour-long commute to the children’s school, and to long for a life less ordinary, back home in England.

LEAVING…

However, when the time to leave Uganda finally came, I found it quite a wrench. More than I expected. As I put it to various friends, it is only when you pull a plant up that you realise how deep the roots go. I found saying goodbye to all the various groups of people we had been involved with, and our friends both Ugandan and ex-pat, very poignant. Living away from your own family, ex-pats tend to make close friendships very quickly, and to depend on them for all the support, morale-boosting, venting, and recreation that they might, back home, derive from siblings, or regular phone calls with parents. Leaving those friends in Uganda was hard. I shall miss them. I also realised how many people I had made connections with, as I walked around the university campus in the last few weeks before leaving: various students, colleagues, university staff and our Ugandan neighbours from the part of campus where we lived, would stop for a chat, shaking me by the hand and not letting go of that hand until the conversation was over. We had been at UCU longer than some of them and so we were often told, “We thought you would be here for ever. We are really going to miss you.”

So, leaving was sad. But, we were sure it was the right time to leave. I knew how much I would miss the beauty and green-ness of Uganda, the splashy flowers, the daily sunshine, the birds (which Dan and I loved watching and identifying) and even the red-tailed monkeys visiting our garden, entertaining us by doing a balancing act along the single electricity wire that crossed in front of our house - as well as the friends, the nights of playing Settlers and Carcassonne, and Scrabble, with various neighbours. But, when Dan suggested on one of our last evenings that maybe in five years time he would try for another job at UCU, my immediate reaction was, “No, no, no….!!” That brought it home to me: sad to leave, but, wanting to leave…