... why I married him

Dan gave me a new oval blue Le Creuset enamelled caste iron pot for my birthday. One of the joys of this pot is that it is large enough to do a good pot roast in. Another joy is that it has a new, clean, unscratched, unburnt, shiny inside. Well, it did... Today I burnt it well and good. I put the olive oil in it, set it on the hob to heat up before putting some meat in, went upstairs... and forgot.

Fifteen minutes later the aroma of burning oil wafted up the stairs. Followed by the crashing of my feet running down the stairs, along with some wailing, and gnashing of teeth. There in the middle of my beautiful pot, - a round dark brown circle, with smoke billowing out. Oh oh oh!!!!!

I grabbed it up with some oven-gloves, rushed it towards the patio doors to get it outside before the smoke alarm went off, set it down on the mat in order to open the patio doors, picked it up, and found a perfect oval melted bit in the middle of the mat, one blackened ragged section now hanging down from the bottom of my pot ...

At this point Dan came home. I hung my head and told him that something bad had happened, and that, no, the mat wasn't the bad part, and then, he saw the pot.

Silence. Yes, a disappointed look, but, a sympathetic one.

A few minutes later, Dan was to be found bending his head over the sink, scraping away at the inside of the pot, while I started cooking with another pan. I leaned over the sink to put some water in a saucepan for the peas. I reached over to twist the mixer tap over the pan, and caught Dan smack in the middle of the forehead with the tap. So hard that I heard it. Dan looked at me, dried off his hands, rubbed his head, and did not emit a sound. He did go out to the garage though and started sorting out his books...

I knew I should marry Dan when I was visiting him in the US, early days, and I slept at a friend's house, so I had to drive his car from the trailer park where he lived to that house. In the morning I was getting his car out of the driveway and I managed to reverse it into a ditch. I wasn't at all sure how he would react, back then, so I phoned him with some trepidation to tell him he now had a puncture and a stuck car. He was so calm and cheerful about the whole thing, with not one word of criticism of me - and I knew right then.

Flashback

This morning we went to the lovely church we have finally all agreed upon - this has been a long story... - and in the middle of the service I was suddenly back in Uganda, transported by a song.

We normally sing up-to-the-minute songs at our church, songs I have mostly never heard before since our Uganda fare was so South Africa based, or else traditional hymns. But today we had a baptism and so a couple of better-known songs had been chosen. The band started us off on "Oh Lord My God, when I in awesome wonder...." and suddenly I was back in Uganda, in Nkoyoyo Hall, standing in a long row of Ugandan students, lecturers and my family - usually with the Fountains somewhere nearby - if I looked to the back past hundreds of singing swaying students I would see Brian Dennison and the kids up in the higher rows at the back - usually a smattering of American USP students somewhere - often a few other muzungu visitors - but mostly hundreds of African students, staff, nurses, children, Mukono people, singing at the tops of their voices, some arms up in the air, some eyes closed, a group up on the stage in long lines smiling and dancing, making dust rise from the floor with their shifting feet, one student singing over-loud, enthusiastically and pretty often off-key into the mike... The overall emotions evident all around were love for Jesus, love of singing, love of movement, and love of being together. My own mind would enjoy those feelings and enter into them, I was almost always glad I was there, but I would also be aware of the heat, aware that we were singing for a very long time, and knowing that a long sermon was to come...

Church in Uganda was one place where I could feel homesick for my familiar church in Exeter, where we had comfortable seats and carpet, sang songs once or twice through only, had tweny-five minute, orderly, exegetical sermons, and where you knew the service wouldn't suddenly extend to two and a half hours for some function or extra special number... But church in Uganda was also where I sometimes specially felt excited to be living in Africa, when the students rushed onto the stage to dance with abandon to a song from their part of Uganda, or when students did hilarious sketches acted brilliantly (not always...), and when John Senyonyi or Fred Baalwa preached so brilliantly it made me proud to be there hearing them.

I haven't often time-warped back to Mukono so it caught me unawares this morning, but I liked it!

Happy St Bartholomew's Day, by the way.

Second time around

As our second year living in England begins, I have definitely noticed a sea-change in my state of mind. Doing things for the second time makes me realise we have been here a while now, and it is beginning to sink in that there is a long while still ahead. Subconsciously for the whole last year I think I was living in a "temporary" state of mind - I knew we were here for a long time, but my mind didn't really know it.

We are still in the summer holiday, but next week we have to buy new school shoes and replace a few bits of uniform. Thinking about doing that again, I realise that this time I know which shops to go to, I know roughly how much things will cost, I know how long they might last, I know whether we need to get one or two of each thing (or more) - hey, I even know what schools the children will be in in two weeks time... that is a lot more "knowing" than I possessed this time last year. It feels a lot more comfortable, and I feel much more settled.

Up to the Hills...

I lift up my eyes to the hills - 

where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord,

the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip - 

He who watches over you will not slumber;

indeed he who watches over Israel 

will neither slumber or sleep

The Lord watches over you - 

the Lord is your shade at your right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all harm - 

he will watch over your life;

the Lord will watch over your coming and going

both now and for evermore.

Chocolate coca cola cake... Because you can...

This is a recipe I took off the internet (BBC Food) - because we were looking for a rich, sticky choc cake recipe for Abby's birthday ... I have really wanted to recommend it to my friends in Uganda because it doesn't need much chocolate and it has coca cola in it - which as we all know is widely available there! And, it tastes amazingly chocolatey and moist! So, it should be a useful recipe...

For the topping, it tells you to melt a Cadburys Caramel bar with a little cream... well, it is delicious, but I thought you might be able to use any toffee/caramel sauce and you can make one easily...

Ingredients:

250 g self-raising flour (in ShopRite but you can also use plain and add some baking powder)
300 g caster sugar (any sugar will do!!!)
3 heaped T cocoa
pinch baking soda
250g butter (= one packet)
250 ml coca cola
125 ml milk
2 eggs beaten
1 t vanilla

Topping:
caramel chocolate bar and
a little pouring/double cream  melted together
mini marshmallows (optional)

Method:
1. Heat the oven to 180
2. Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, and baking soda into a bowl. Melt the butter and cola drink gently and add to the dry ingredients.
3. Add the milk, eggs and vanilla.
4. Mix gently but thoroughly, and pour into a buttered tin (it says to use a round 9 1/2 inch loose-based tin but a 9 x 13 tin should work - it may cook a bit quicker then.)
5. Bake for about 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
6. Serve with the melted caramel bar and cream mixture poured over it, with the mini marshmallows stirred in if using.

If you want this recipe in cups instead of grams, there are conversion charts in some cookery books or look online, or I could post one if anyone wants me to.

This cake is definitely worth a try...

Chinua Achebe

Hope Amazon doesn't mind...and, you can't look inside....
but there I've given them some much-needed advertising I guess...

Abby Bartels sent me a book for my birthday, "The Education of a British-Protected Child" by Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer of the famous "Things Fall Apart" and much more. This book is a collection of talks and pieces he has written on Nigeria, Africa, and colonialism. It is so interesting and well written, a very easy read but full of insights. I love his voice as much as anything; it is like sitting down with a John Senyonyi or an Eliphaz Maari - wise, critical but not hostile, humble, and both exasperated by and hopeful for Africa.

But, the book is making me feel a bit depressed for Africa at the same time, as I read about incidents from Achebe's childhood and early adulthood. And how the search for an African identity is still in process and is still needed. I didn't use to understand why so many of my colleagues' PhDs were on the lines of "In search of an African identity, an African theology, etc." As if it hadn't been found already. But reading this book has made me understand a bit more. Achebe describes how over the four hundred years since Europeans arrived in Africa, they have written and spoken stereotypes, in order to justify or rationalise  their treatment of Africa. In the second half of the last century, with independence, new images of Africa are arising, but there is still a lot of the old as well. And it takes a long time to emerge out of that, like a person who has been told for years and years that they are second-best, or not very clever, or ugly, or won't succeed.

Another new understanding for me came in a paragraph introducing his family:

"All my life I have had to take account of the million differences - some little, others quite big - between the Nigerian culture into which I was born, and the domineering Western style that infiltrated and then invaded it. Nowhere is the difference more stark and startling than in the ability to ask a parent: "How many children do you have?" The right answer should be a rebuke: "Children are not livestock!" Or better still, silence, and carry on as if the question was never asked." (p68)

I have asked that question so so many times, because I thought it was polite in Africa to be interested in a person's family! I remember being tickled once when the reply came: "...um, about eight." But I took this vague answer to be purposeful, rising from the feeling that if someone knew too much they could do some kind of harm to that family, rather than from an actual uncertainty of how many children they had. But now I wonder if the person actually objected to the question. I suppose thinking about it, one ought to ask "How is your family?" but perhaps not, "How many children are in your family?" Or maybe this is more sensitive in Nigeria than elsewhere. Eighteen years in Africa and still so much to learn!


Chinua Achebe's book Things Fall Apart was seminal and is read by nearly every African child in school, and I read it before going out to Zimbabwe, but now I want to read it again. Now I feel excited about African Literature all over again. Thanks Abby!

A fleeting dream and a realisation...

So after a whole wonderful week of being a young, free couple again, we collected our two best-beloveds from my parents, first spending two days all together in Devon before bringing them home.

Yesterday we dipped happily again into the Tudor history of England - I had forgotten how close all our colourful and varied history is and how much of it is preserved here.  We went to an ancient house called Buckland Abbey in Devon - originally in the 1200s a monastery, then owned in the 1600s by Sir Francis Drake (an explorer, naval captain, friend and defender of Elizabeth I, victor over the Spanish Armada, first circumnavigator of the globe, treasure-seeker, bowls-player). Now it is owned by the National Trust and is full of Tudor furniture and artefacts and is beautiful.

This is Abigail dressed in Tudor clothes, in front of a portrait of Sir Francis Drake.

On the way into the Abbey, there were various panels depicting some of its history.

One of them described the original function of the place as a Cistercian monastery, with the words: "The monks lived here a life of peace, discipline and dedication."

Those words flowed through my soul and body like warm oil, or, like a long soothing sip of hot tea...

oh, to have our home be a place of "peace, discipline and dedication"... 

I mentioned this to Abby, Alex and my Mum who were standing with me, and we all just laughed. OK, we all know which of us would have the most trouble with "peace" (Alex, our real boy) but I have to admit that the "discipline" would be hardest for me, not least the getting up at 2.00 am for prayers... 

Coming back home this evening, I have been surveying our cosy, untidy home with a new eye. I could look at it as a place that badly needs organising, cleaning up, and hoovering. I could wish that the TV wasn't yakkering on with the Olympics every minute right now, and that Alex would be a bit quieter and more relaxed, and that it was all peaceful and clean... but then again, I was not called to live in a monastery after all, I am a mother of two fun, energetic and creative children and wife of a husband, ditto. I am happy with that, and I love our home.