Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 I have just finished reading this latest book from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and have really loved it. Adichie is firmly one of my favourite authors. This is a huge book but I lapped it up, sneaking half hours to read it when I should have been doing other things...

It tells the story of two Nigerians, girl- and boyfriend at school, callled Ifemelu and Obinze, who both travel to the west as adults to find the "better life" they have dreamed and talked about as students.  Ifemelu gets a scholarship to the US, and Obinze finds work as an illegal immigrant in the UK. The book is partly their love story, but more about their experiences as immigrants, their relationships, how it is to be black (which wasn't an issue back home) and eventually how they return to Nigeria and pick up new lives there.

Ifemelu takes to blogging about her experiences as a "Non-American Black" and the sections on her blogging are brilliant, including some of her posts and readers' reactions.

For me the parts I read most avidly were the transitions, both how Ifemelu arrived in the US, and then how she felt about returning home after fifteen years abroad. I was surprised how completely I related to the descriptions of her initial reactions to the west. Her shock that it was not all as clean, wealthy, and beautiful as she had come to believe. Her feelings of confusion about everything. Her disappointment with the fruit and vegetables.

This is such a rich book, revealing about what it is to be an ex-pat, and a returnee, a woman, a friend, a desperate job-seeker, a lover, a writer. I highly recommend it.

Under the skin

Dan gave me this little metal bird for Christmas. My mother commented that she found it strange that we still gave each other African things. Well, it is in fact a robin, THE English bird, and Dan bought it at a Victorian market in Gloucester. But actually, it is a "junk metal" bird just like the ones sold in Zimbabwe and Uganda.

To me, it is not strange though. Even though we have been back two and a half years, and the memories don't pop up anything like as often as they did at first, still feeling for our homes and lives in Zambia, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda are just beneath the surface and our roots there go deep.

I still can't get away from reading books set in African countries. I only read "Heart of Darkness" because it is set in Congo, and now I am, very appropriately, in the middle of "In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz" - which is Michela Wrong's account of the fall of Mobutu and the beleagured history of Congo. Reading stories and descriptions of Africa makes me feel like I am glimpsing a very loved home - even if the events described are sad or terrible.

Sometimes a nostalgia or a pang will come out of the blue and stop me in my tracks.  The potted Christmas poinsettia on our kitchen table still reminds me of whole enormous poinsettia trees in our gardens in Africa. And today  when I walked into the supermarket, there was a display of potted jasmine plants. Seeing the pointy white buds in their distinctive sprays, about to open out into the most fragrant blossoms imaginable, made my heart suddenly clench - we had a hedge of jasmine in our garden in Harare, and its beauty and pungent scent accompanied the happy early years of our marriage and the births of our babies - as well as the difficult months before we left Zimbabwe.

Out of the blue.

Heart of Darkness

So many words have been written about this book over the years. But I have only just read it, so my thoughts are fresh - to me - , if not new. Having recently read the dystopian MaddAddam,one  of my reactions reading this was, it is not as graphic as the same book written today would be. The evil is hinted at, the suffering of the Africans forced to work for the colonialists is only sketched in. But in my view the horror is all the darker for that.

One way of thinking about the book is that it depicts a man's journey into his own soul, by journeying towards, first physically and then in understanding, another man, Mr Kurtz. And the ultimate revelation is that what lies within a person is "the horror, the horror"... The great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe spoke out against Conrad and this book, criticising it at one point for using Africa and the exploitation and suffering of Africans, as a mere backdrop for the story of the mental collapse of a petty white man. It is true that the Congolese people are kept very much in the background, their behaviour seems parodied, they appear out of the forest on the river banks almost as a wallpaper for the journey. And they are called savages and so on. There is some truth in Achebe's criticism. But on the other hand, I wouldn't say this is the story of the collapse of one white man - it is a description of the collapse into madness, futility, and evil, of all the white people involved - and Conrad does seem to link this to the whole evil of colonialism and the wickedness of using its people, stealing from them, stripping the Congo of its resources using the very sweat and blood of the Congolese people to do it. It is really the story of the fall into evil of the whole human race. But the Congolese people are not being blamed, they are the victims, and so they do appear as the props. And clearly Conrad didn't have much understanding of them.

It is true the Congolese people in the book are dehumanised, except for one or two glimpses of genuine interaction - such as at the helmsman's very moment of death - and that is sad, and leaves the book feeling dated. I felt the same reading Graham Green's The Heart of the Matter, where there are no African people included in the story at all. But Conrad was writing at the end of the colonial period and he was writing to show the evils of the colonial enterprise, not condoning it. He objects manifestly to the ignorance and self-seeking greed of the various agents and station managers his character Marlow encounters. He seems to prefer Kurtz's complete madness to their hypocrisy and stupidity, which is why Marlow sides with Kurtz in the end. I would see the book as a step in the right direction, a first awakening to what was going on in the "Scramble for Africa".

Conrad ends the book with the none-too-subtle message that the heart of darkness is not in far off "uncivilised" places, but just around the next bend of the river,  - for all of us.

This made me wonder about our capacity for evil, again. As Christians we know the source of light, and He is real to us. And I said in my recent post on this, that we have the responsibility of being that light to other people. But still sometimes I am touched by fingers of that darkness, that sense of horror at the heart of it all, even hints of despair. When the evil that goes on seems too much, too prevalent. When the news shows young blood-covered Syrian men lying in hospital, no living relatives left, no solution to the fighting, the beautiful Syrian cities shot and bombed to rubble. When fighting in south Sudan goes on, and on. When the flood waters damaging our farms, homes and churches sit and sit and sit, and it still rains and rains. When I then think of Bangladesh flooding worse than this every year...

Is the human race a messy, selfish disaster, and our world a ruined, warming planet heading inevitably to its man-made end?

That would be one way of looking at it.

Another way is that God made our world, and made us, male and female, in his image. When he made it, it was all good (Genesis 1). When we messed up, he sent his son to show us the right way to go about life (John 3:16). And at the same time, to give us a way to be saved from our own personal particular sins. And he also sent his Spirit to be in us, to give us the strength and ability to live right. And he also promises that he will return to reign on earth, and that then the evil and all the pain will be No More. This painful, sometimes dark time, is the grace period God has allowed us, for as many as possible to get to know him. Also, the world is not hurtling downward to disaster and ruin like a run-away train. It may be heading towards its end, but, only at the pace and timing allowed by God, and under his control.

That gives me a lot of hope to hold onto. And we do need hope.

In the presence of greatness. Nelson Mandela RIP.

In December 1998, Dan and I attended some of the World Council of Churches assembly in Harare. Nelson Mandela came to speak at the opening ceremony, and so we were lucky enough to be in the crowd welcoming him in, and then to sit and listen to his address. This is the only photo we got which he actually can be seen in - there were so many people, so much excitement, so much pushing and jostling, shouting and waving.

The height of feeling of the crowd was infectious - they were greeting him as a hero, and like a long-lost family member coming home. A Zimbabwean lady beside us was screeching his name, Madiba Madiba! and waving her programme violently over her head, completely beside herself. In very noticeable contrast to the ecstasy of the crowds, Robert Mugabe walked along beside him solid and stony-faced. This was the year he was beginning to pay his "war veterans" their "pensions," the year when inflation first took off, bread riots began and the first food shortages began to occur.

In his speech Mandela talked about his years in captivity, and about the role of Christians in Africa (very graciously). He also talked about leadership. He looked straight at Mugabe sitting front and centre, when he said, "When I step down from the presidency, I shall ask myself, "Have I served my people?""

Although we only saw him fleetingly, the adjectives that are being used everywhere about him seemed apparent then: gracious, true, uncompromising, humble, joyful. It was the joy he brought to the people that I remember the most.

Our Zimbabwe experience in a teeny tiny nutshell

Since I gathered a few photos of our time in Zimbabwe, for my talk on Saturday, I thought I'd post them here. There is loads not included. We loved Zimbabwe, and left reluctantly.

I went to Zimbabwe with Crosslinks, to teach Old Testament in a small Anglican theological college, called Bishop Gaul Theological College. It was the provincial college for the Province of the Church of Central Africa, ie for Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Botswana. But, since it was such a large Province, students normally trained in little local colleges - and we only had twenty something students at the provincial one!

After one year, I married Dan, and we had a wedding celebration in Harare, in our friends' garden. Since I had become close to an older couple called Joe and Zilla Chiphudla, they demanded some bride price for me, so Dan paid them a goat for me! The goat then had twin kids - so they were really pleased!

Both our children were born in Zimbabwe. Babies are much loved there as you would expect. This is Pilani, one of our friends, meeting Abigail. She wasn't loving it...

This is when Alex was born - as you see, everyone comes to visit the newborn! These were some of the gorgeous ladies from our church, All Souls Mount Pleasant. Alex was only one day old! The visitors would always sing some hymns and say prayers aloud for the baby - it was a very special time, for me, and for the white farmer's wife in the bed next to mine!

A typical Jacaranda-lined suburb street of Harare. We lived right in Harare, a modern city (although it felt like it was still in the 1950s - but clean, wide streets, potholes fixed all the time, nothing like Kampala... at least, it was then; now, it is getting more like Kampala.)

This is me with Chad, the principal of the Anglican college. He is such a lovely man. He is now the Bishop of Harare, a job which came in very difficult circumstances, although things are better now.

Because I had previously lived in rural Zambia, I always longed to get out of the city into the other Zimbabwe. We made friends early on with a couple called Cuthbert and Shylet, and Shylet's mother lived in what were called "communal lands" about 45 minutes drive from Harare. (ie villages, in farming land, but, rough stony land, which the settlers allowed the blacks to live on - Zimbabwe's history is not all sunlight and roses...) This is me with Shylet's mother at her home.

In Zimbabwe, you usually did not use a person's name once they had children, you called them "Mama eldest child's name" - so we never learned this lady's own name!! Although we went there very often. I was called Mama Vimbai once Abigail was born - as her Shona name is Vimbainashe, shortened to Vimbai.

Dan meanwhile worked in an interdenominational college called Domboshawa Theological College. He was the academic dean there, and acting principal for a while.

We ended up leaving at very short notice, because a new bishop (before Chad) was appointed who was a political appointment, and found reasons to terminate all the contracts of white missionaries or clergy. Many Zimbabwean clergy also left the country at that time. It is a long story, but it involved Dan being accused of being in an assassination plot!! and getting phone calls from the War Veterans' Office accusing him of mistreating a war veteran (which would lead to many scary things if found to be true). Needless to say, neither of these things were true! It was all quite exciting, in its way. Alex was a newborn and Abby less than two at this point... In the end we found out we would be leaving, because a journalist rang us up and said, "I am hearing that you have been fie-ad - is it true?" It was the first we knew of it - but it came to pass.

God had already prepared a way for us and our young family though - and we were able to move to Redcliffe College within a few months, and start teaching there as Visiting Lecturers, while we looked for our next placement in Africa - which turned out to be, Uganda Christian University...

Mukinge Girls Secondary School Zambia

When I was 25 I did what I had said for about ten years that I would do, answered the call that I believed had been put on my life, followed in my grandparents' footsteps (although in the wrong direction, south not east), and went to teach as a short termer in Zambia, at Mukinge Girls Secondary School.

I went for two years, feeling that anything shorter than that would be not giving enough, and would go in a flash. And I went thinking that it was a taste as well, to see if I should spend more of my life in Africa. 

I was with Africa Evangelical Fellowship, a wonderfully traditional, Bible-believing, old-fashioned mission, that made you feel safe as houses. (AEF has since merged with SIM.) Mukinge was a mission school, a boarding school for about 500 girls who were aged from 11 to 23 and who came from all over Zambia. The headmaster was Zambian - Mr Ntaimo (=Mr Time)- as was my head of department (RE), Boston Mwandobo, and most of the teachers apart from a couple of other short termers like me, and Doris an American maths teacher, whose house I shared. There was Felix Ngoma (= Mr Drum,) Grace Nosiku (= Mrs Night), Aaron Mbuuzi (Mr Goat), Nelson Chikafu who spoke perfect English, Mr Lungu, an incredibly short man called Goliath, Bridget Mutwale who was a lovely friend, and many more ... They were a fun, dynamic and ambitious group of teachers - lots of them went abroad for further education. I learned a lot from them, about the local culture, teaching, and theology.   

I loved Zambia so much, loved living in rural Africa (we were about three hours drive from the nearest town with shops that sold anything imported or refridgerated, and ten hours drive from a supermarket), I loved my Zambians colleagues and students, and as short termers we had so much fun - the whole two years were, almost completely, happy and wonderful. 

We didn't really have telephones (a couple, but the lines were broken down or stolen for the copper most of the time), no TVs (tho I bought one half way through my time), no laptops or email (it was 1992). Our evening entertainment consisted of potlucks, often themed, eg dressing up as our housemates, playing wild cheaty games of Uno, Murder Uno, Hearts, and Rook, or sitting around swapping tales of our lives, things like our favourite chocolate bars and crisps. We made up bizarre recipes with the limited selection of local food that was available to us: red bean crumble is the one I remember best, and avocado ice cream (actually a real recipe but, very strange.) We made our own bread but then a man started to come round selling loaves of bread on the front of his bike - he told us he made it in an ant hill by making a fire inside - so after that we ate "anthill bread". 

I walked an hour to church, through mud hut villages with scruffy thatch hanging down, the name of the headman scratched into thin pieces of wood nailed to the tree at the entrance, past tall anthills that towered up like Dr Seuss chimneys, through maize plantations, over a rickety wooden bridge that tilted to one side, under wooden beehives stuck into the branches of trees. It was real rural Africa, dusty, snakey, impoverished, and with little crowds of children who yelled as you went by and then followed you for a way giggling.  

I taught RE and English in the school, had my own class I took devotions with every morning, led an English Bible study at my church, became the school nurse (crazy!), learned to cook mealie meal (nshima), to eat it with my hands and most amazingly to like it. 

It was an unforgettable two years and I loved every minute.

Here are a few pictures I scanned in to make a power point recently:

Give Me This Mountain, by Helen Roseveare

Helen Roseveare when she was a medical missionary in Congo

I have just finished reading Dr Helen Roseveare's autobiography, "Give Me This Mountain." It is a classic missionary life story, telling of Helen's teenage years, university life as a medical student and as a star hockey and cricket player, her conversion, and then her first placement as a WEC missionary doctor, in the Congo in the fifties and sixties, pre and during the independence struggle.

It is so honest, which is why I loved reading it. She writes in a real and lively way, so that you feel that you can see the sparkle in her eyes as you read it. And it is almost like following a modern-day blog, in that, she recounts so many of her thought processes and emotions along the way, and the mistakes she made, the struggles she had, her disagreements with other missionaries, her feelings of being the odd one out, of loving the Africans too much, or of being imposed upon too much, her feelings about being single, and much more.

It is also a fascinating account of how just a few missionaries, in a country with no trained doctors of its own (then), managed to set up several hospitals and training centres: Helen herself established and monitored over forty local clinics in the surrounding areas, among many other projects. She sounds like such an independent, gifted woman, much-loved by the Congolese she worked with and for, and yet often she apparently felt lonely and misunderstood, and according to her book she felt as though she achieved little.

This book culminates with the account of how the hospital and the missionaries fared in the violent days of independence. Many left, but she did not, and was captured at one point by Congolese soldiers and even raped. She does not go into that at all in the book, apart from hinting that she and the others all suffered physically at the hands of the soldiers. But her willingness to suffer and to stay in the country, to side with the people, to try to understand, is inspiring.

Helen Roseveare 

I am now looking forward to reading the second book she wrote, about her return to Congo only a short while after these events. It is called, "He Gave us a Valley."

I recommend this book to all you medical and missionary types out there. Maybe some of you already know it, it is a well-known classic - I am glad I finally came across it.

The Lower River, by Paul Theroux

 If you have read Paul Theroux's 2002 Dark Star Safari, you'll know that Theroux worked at Makerere University in Uganda in the 1960's, and made a return visit to Africa forty years later, when he traveled from Cairo to Cape Town by local transport, revisiting Uganda on the way. (Before his stint at Makerere, he had gone as a Peace Corps volunteer to Malawi - but he was thrown out because of his political activities there.)
Dark Star Safari irritated me because, although I enjoyed Theroux's descriptions of the scenery, the people, and his journey, I found his attitude really annoying. He seemed to think that he alone understood Africans and Africa, and that all the people he met along the way, apart from poverty-stricken Africans, were either idiots, or misguided, or self-serving and making a buck. He wrote off every NGO worker, missionary, and settler.

But he had an agenda apparently which goes towards explaining this: he was out to show that Aid was a bad thing, all the "help"given to Africa  had failed. He makes the case that the cities and towns of Africa he visited on his journey, had badly deteriorated rather than improved in the forty years since he was there before. Especially Makerere - which was a beautiful and organised campus in the 1960's. He found it not so much so in the 2000s. Well, having recently seen photographs myself of Kampala and Makerere in the 50s and 60s, I might be inclined to agree on that point. However I still find Theroux arrogant. It would be somehow different if he would be even a little bit sympathetic to the people who have come with good intentions, sincerely trying to "help," rather than drawing them all as a hopelessly naive and/or cynical bunch. (Which OK, some missionaries and aid workers are, but, not all.)

This book, The Lower River, written in 2012, reflects Theroux's belief that aid has basically ruined Africa. It is quite a shocking story. He writes about the Malawians harshly, but puts all the blame for the way they have become on the westerners who picked them up, used them and dropped them, in his telling of it.

The story is of a retired shop-owner who, with nothing left in his American life,  returns to the remote rural village in Malawi where he spent four happy years as a Peace Corps volunteer in his twenties, building up a school, loved and accepted by the people, living the simple African life. But the village he returned to, turned out to be nothing like the one he had left before. Only a few people knew him still, but they had aged far more than him and were all but unrecognisable. But he was welcomed as an honoured guest, and apart from his disappointment that his school was a fallen-down ruin and home of snakes, he was initially happy to be back. But slowly he realises that the people have changed. Independence has been a disappointment to the rural areas of Malawi; the hope of prosperity and development, which had given the people such a positive and determined attitude back in the 60s, has failed them, and they find themselves worse off than ever, with no hope at all. So they see the white man, who tells them he has come back to help, as a dupe, and they basically wheedle, flatter and manipulate all his money out of him until he is as poor and helpless and trapped as anyone there - if not more so. The story turns very dark.

Some of the scenes are very telling, such as one of food aid arriving in otherwise unreachable places by helicopter, being handed out by famous pop stars from the west in ridiculous skimpy outfits, their unknown songs blaring out as the helicopter descends, and the people gathering since the night before, rioting, grabbing the sacks to take away and sell or to feed their own families instead of the orphans it is intended for. Some of what Theroux portrays is true.

But it is, at least I hope, exaggerated, and made into a very gripping but hyperbolic story: actually, a morality tale of the dangers of dependency and aid.

I loved it for its descriptions of scenery, village life and culture before it had gone so badly wrong, and also for the perspective of the mzungu who only came to help - that one could relate to a little bit. But it is incredibly sad. And definitively negative about the effects of foreign aid. There is no sighting of a person who has actually helped, or been a good or positive influence. There are glimpses of "good" Africans, but they have been chased out of the village; they are powerless to help the situation and can only mourn it.

So, read it if you can stomach it.

I still gobble up any book set in Africa, even if it leaves a sour taste in the mouth like this one does. I did abandon one (called Hotel Juliet) after a couple of chapters because it was so badly written. This one is very well written, but, it is only telling one part of the story, a tragic one. If you read it, please tell me what you think...

Some faces from the past. And, did they really use to travel like that?!!

We are putting together a book of old pictures of Bishop Tucker, hopefully in time for the centenary event this year. Rev John Hunter sent us this one, and I thought a lot of you might enjoy seeing it. John Hunter was a principal of the college from 1962-65, and he visited again in 1993 which is when this photo was taken. So I can name a few of the staff from 1993 but not all of them. The ones I know, l - r, are,
-----, ----- , Eliphaz Maari, ----, Elisha Mbonigaba, ----, -----, Lusania Kasamba,  John Magumba. John Hunter was here with his son Christopher. Any filling in of names appreciated...

This shows John Hunter's mother, who had lived in Uganda long before her son, travelling from Kampala to Toro circa 1909, in what they called "landies". Incredible. The road on the other hand, doesn't look much different...

Decision in Harare

Eleven years ago our family left Zimbabwe at short notice, because our contracts were terminated by the newly elected, pro-the president, anti-evangelical, anti-white bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga.

He had proved himself within a few months to be a political appointment, there to promote Mugabe's interests. He locked up churches which had been allowing the opposition MDC to have their meetings in their church halls, he demoted all kinds of good clergy, he got rid of whites and evangelicals in various ways, he usurped large funds from various churches which were designated for other purposes, he took and used various church's cars, he threatened our students, he had the war veterans send a death threat to a clergy who wouldn't allow him to take church money... His wife put a stop to the clergy wives conference that I had been running for years at our theological college - which had been s special time of fellowship for all of us. He put his nephew in as principal of the theological college although that man was also the dean of the cathedral at the same time.  Without going into any more  details, we did support one church which tried to hold a kind of protest, and so we were "terminated."

At that time, we had already formed a connection with Redcliffe College, and so we were able to come here as Visiting Lecturers for a year, which was completely providential for us as a family.

Well, in 2007 Kunonga announced that he was taking the Zimbabwean Anglican church out of the Anglican Communion, and setting up a new Province in Zimbabwe. He made himself its "archbishop" and he made four of his friends, "bishops." Because of this action, the Church of the Province of Central Africa (the part of the Anglican Communion Zimbabwe is in) ex-communicated him. It seemed like the problem should be over... but, it was really only beginning.

Soon the CPCA elected a bishop to replace him in Harare, Sebastian Bakare. But Kunonga said his ex-communication was invalid, he was still bishop of Harare, and so he wouldn't move out of the bishops residence, nor would he stop leading services in the cathedral.

Unfortunately he took it to court, and the court said, it was a church matter, but since they couldn't sort it out amongst themselves, (grr), the judge decreed that the Kunonga people could use the churches for half the morning and the Bakare people could use them for the other half. This seemed to be OK, but then, Kunonga broke the ruling, wouldn't leave churches, and even had police and war vets go into the other services and break them up. As for the cathedral, he chained up its doors, and he held services in there himself - with his tiny following of about six clergy and their families.

Sadly the police gave him their muscle for political reasons - once police went into a Mothers Union meeting with about 500 lovely ladies, some pretty elderly, in their blue and white outfits, and literally beat them up with sticks, and dragged them out of the church by their clothes.

Eventually the "real" Anglicans were only able to have their services in school buildings and even out in the open. A church in exile, in their own city.

Meanwhile Kunonga was rewarded by the President by being given one of the farms taken from white farmers outside Harare, which he promptly moved into...

Our friend and former principal of the theological college was elected Bishop of Harare when Bakare retired, and so he had to take the lead against this renegade. He did well in raising prayer support from Christians all over the world, and he is such a godly, gentle man himself, everyone who knows him loves him. We worried for him, and prayed for him.

Kunonga's next move was to take away the leadership of the Anglican orphanage in Harare, and give it to again his own people. And at the same time, he claimed that all the rectories belonged to him, and so, he gave them all to the clergy he had ordained himself. So, friends and former students of ours who were clergy in the church under Bishop Chad, came home one weekend to find intruders had moved into their houses and put all their stuff outside - and in one case, the clergyman's elderly mother who had refused to leave the house, had been taken and held in police cells. I believe Bp Chad went and spent the time in the cells with her to support her, as well as getting lawyers involved.

Finally there was a much longed for court case, put forward by the real Anglican church (CPCA), to have Kunonga stopped, but sadly, the judge after hearing the first day, then failed to show up again and concluded that he could not make a ruling. That was about three years ago.

But this week, at last, the Supreme Court for the first time heard the case - and the ruling was made on Tuesday, that Kunonga had removed himself from the church back in 2007, and so he had forfeited the right to any claim on church property, vehicles, money, institutions, and rectories. In other words, he doesn't have a leg to stand on as far as the court is concerned. They have said to him, "Get Packing", as one headline put it.

Woooooohooooooo!!! I mean, Praise The Lord!!!!!

He has been given until Friday to move out of all the buildings, the cathedral, and to hand back all the rectories and vehicles.

I do not know what will happen. No doubt he is furious. Much as we, Dan and I and all our friends in Zimbabwe who are in the Anglican church, including our former students there (several of whom we are in touch with) are rejoicing - we are also praying for what will happen over the next few days.

Please if you do, pray for our friend Bishop Chad and for other clergy and their families who will now hopefully be able to move into their old homes, hold services in their churches, and begin to sort things out.

Woman Returner

I just found out that this is a term for women who go "back to work" after taking several years "off"  during the baby and young children phase. There is so much that could be said about that statement... But my point is about the returning - to the formal workplace, shall we say.

Last November I started working as the librarian at WTC (Westminster Theological Centre) - which runs theology courses, taught in teaching centres dotted all over the UK.

In the beginning I had a lot to learn, since much of the job is computer-based, using Excel and an on-line cataloging system which I did not know before. And it was the first time I have ever worked in an office situation for any length of time. I have done some temp-ing jobs in offices before, which were always different and interesting in their own ways, but only for a few days so I didn't have to invest myself in them really at all. (But I have some funny stories from those jobs though...)

So this has been a whole new experience for me. In one way I wasn't exactly a "Woman Returner" because I had been teaching a bit and ordering books and helping run a library in Uganda, so I wasn't purely the at-home Mum. But, there is a big shock for the returning "missionary wife" who I believe comes into a category all of her own.

All my life in Africa I viewed myself as the missionary, not the missionary wife. I went out to Zambia to work full time, and even when I had babies, after maternity leave I worked full time because childcare was so affordable, lovely, and so do-able in that my babies and "Amai" came with me to work.

But when we were in Uganda with slightly older children, and I was trying to do an hour-long school trip, drive home and lecture, as well as everything else I was involved with, I reached a point of extreme tiredness, irritability, and disaffection with Uganda and mission - and I came down with shingles, and finally I decided I had to stop working for a while. I took a few terms off teaching, lived the ex-pat life a bit, had coffee with other school mums in town, took up art classes, and then did a writing course, and life became more manageable. Especially when other families joined in the school commute, and basically saved my bacon!

Then after a while I did begin to go back to teaching, but I kept it quite minimal, one course per semester, and I still hosted a women's students' group and helped with the Children's Library, so I was making various contributions, but not pushing myself. And that was how I finished out my time in Uganda.

With the Daycare children (including Mary Bartels), at the UCU Children's Library

How much a missionary wife with young children and a long school commute should also work, is a question many of us have tried to sort out. You are there because you want to help, you have been called to help, and you are being supported by people back home to help - who might even have expectations of you - but you also have to not burn out, (which I think I nearly did),  and you also have your unavoidable and overarching role of caring for your children and your husband, who might also be pushing himself to burn-out point in some cases.

And just being a mum of small children in a developing country which is not originally your home, with no grandparents or aunties around, (only adopted ones, which are also great...), is stretching and draining at times.

So, we all make our own choices and hopefully find sustainable ways of doing the work we feel we are supposed to do while also surviving and even, enjoying! the life we have been given in Africa.

If you are reading this and you are not a missionary (a what?!!) and are not in Uganda or elsewhere because of the peculiar belief that we are there to do stuff to "help," to play a part in showing God's love for people and the world, which is what took me to Africa in the first place, - then you will think we have our knickers in a twist probably, but, you will most likely have your version of the dilemma of working and being a mum - and we all see a need to contribute anyway don't we? and to be busy and to be useful, competent people and not just loll about at home (tempting though that is...) So, I'm sure you get it.

Anyway, the point is, that then when you return to "normal" paid employment in your home country, suddenly everything is very different. For one thing, you are being paid for your time and work, to do a job which has to be done, and therefore you have to achieve what you are being paid to achieve. It is no longer a case of, whatever I do will be useful, and appreciated. Not that what you do matters more, or less actually, but, it is simply being expected of you, and you have to be able to do it - so that's quite a different kind of pressure.

Secondly, if you have been out of the developed world for quite a while, or if you have been outside of a technological environment, you will find that everything has changed and so there is a lot to learn, and people will expect rapid responses to emails, appearance right on time at work, all kinds of techie skills, and there are no excuses like, the power is off, or the internet is off, or, we had visitors. (Not that I would have ever used those as excuses...!)

Thirdly, and crucially, you do not get people saying "Well done for the work!" or "Thank you for the love!" at various points in your day.

Fourthly, there are a lot less public holidays.

I am so fortunate that I work with really lovely people who are supportive, kind, and friendly. But I joined this company at a time when it was moving offices, and going through changes, and everyone was quite preoccupied with all of that. And I had to desk hop for about two months, which didn't help. And I was at the peak of my stress and anxiety about everything. So, it was a pretty rough two or three months, I would say, where although I was so thankful to have this job and loved the people there, I also found it very stressful for quite a while. But it is great now.

So, this is meant to be a word of encouragement to the "Returnee Returner" - going back to the workplace is a bit rough at first, - expect it to be - , but keep going, don't panic, trust in your past capabilities and in the abilities you know God has given you, pray!, and it will all be OK in the end!

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!

The Heart of the Matter

Still addicted to reading books about or set in Africa... A few weeks ago I roared through "Chasing the Devil," Tim Butcher's book about Sierra Leone and Liberia - where he describes his recent journey on foot through these two countries following the route taken by author and MI5 spy Graham Greene in the 1940s. Like his book on the Congo, it is evocative and very readable, bringing in in a very interesting way the history of these West African countries as well as their current situation and beautiful descriptions of the people, country and culture.

This put me in mind of reading Graham Greene's own novel set in West Africa, "The Heart of the Matter," drawing on his experiences in Sierra Leone. I had read the book years ago when I was in a Graham Greene phase, probably in my teens. All I remembered from that reading (some years before I ever went to Africa) was Greene's description of the overpowering heat and humidity, such that whenever he touched his wife or shook hands with someone, sweat sprang out of their skin. And the conflictedness of the main character, Scobie.

It was such a pleasure to read it again now. Partly just such a joy to read a well-written, carefully crafted book after rushing through a pretty rubbishy one before it (NOT Tim Butcher's!) But also this book has interesting themes and a background I could relate to to some extent, although set in truly colonial Africa.

In brief, the main character, Scobie, is a police officer whose marriage to Louise has long deteriorated into a relationship of pity and some guilt on one side (Scobie's) and dissatisfaction and continual complaining on the other. Eventually Scobie finds a way to send his wife to South Africa, to escape the heat and loneliness, and his failure to be promoted in the colony. When she has gone, he falls in love with a young widow, Helen, and has an affair with her. This is also largely motivated by pity for her, and his belief that he has to make her happy. This relationship begins to look a lot like his unhappy relationship with his wife. Then, just when Scobie has made a promise never to abandon Helen (in spite of his better judgment) Louise sends a telegram that she is on her way back by ship, having realised she should never have left him. There is also Wilson, who watches Scobie, and loves Louise. Everyone except Scobie soon identifies him as a British spy.

Scobie has a deep Catholic faith, but this mainly consists of a conviction that he has to be honest with God, that God surely pities the young and helpless, but that he will punish the unrepentant. Scobie comes to believe that by his adultery and then inability to make either his wife or his mistress anything but miserable he is also making God miserable. Eventually he decides that the only way to set them all free from the despair he has inflicted on them in spite of his earnest desire to make them happy, is to commit suicide. He believes that suicide will doom him to damnation, but he sees it as a self sacrifice to set everyone else including God free from the consequences of his sins.

The introduction to the book comments that this shows Scobie's terrible pride. It shows to me how little he understood his faith. But, there is incredible power in Greene's description of Scobie taking communion when he has decided to continue in the path of adultery, feeling overwhelmed by his hypocrisy and by the damnation he is certain he is eating and drinking on himself - but the most powerful part to me was the image of how as he took the bread and wine it was as if he was punching the already bleeding Christ in the face.

One telling thing about the book is how relationships with Africans are virtually non-existent. Scobie is described as feeling great affection for the local people, but he has no actual friendships with any of them except possibly his house boy Ali. That was no doubt true of the ex-pat community then. The smallness and claustrophobia, range of quirks and incestuousness of the ex-pat world is recognisable and conveyed very well - the goldfish bowl syndrome as we know it.

Greene makes the heat and the corrupted, down-at-heel atmosphere of the West African port city very real for the reader, but he rarely describes or uses a landscape explicitly, to the extent that the book could really have been set anywhere where there is a closed group of people, unhappy for various reasons and dependant on one another. There are frequent references to the vultures, cockroaches and rats living around the humans. One of my favourite sentences in the book describes a group of vultures gathered around a dead chicken, their old men's necks stooped over, their wings sticking out like broken umbrellas.

True, it is not a cheery read, but, it is fascinating and I loved it. Highly recommended.

John V Taylor's Prayer Letters c 1946

A few days after our lunch with the Woodds, a thick brown envelope arrived in the post, with a bundle of letters and two photos in it - all dating from 1946 - 53! Joanna had very kindly sent us some copies of her father John Taylor's missionary letters, written as a CMS missionary to his supporters.

So many oh so familiar prayer requests, observations, descriptions... Even the way every letter opens: "I am very sorry this letter is late..." "A long time has passed since my last letter..."

Although obviously much has changed in Mukono in the last sixty years, and all the more so in the last ten, some issues just don't seem to go away... Here are just some all too familiar issues that Taylor asked for prayer for:

- Thanks for conversions, but sorrow that they are followed by dissent and suspicion among different Christian groups on and off campus.

- Finances: income for the college didn't go up for several years, although living costs went up by 60 %...

- Shortage of housing - five missionaries were on campus but there were only four available houses, and a sixth family was on the way...

- Malaria was prevalent among the students (he puts this down to the opening up of brick fields around the Mukono area).

- Resistance to new ideas... and dependance on the staff to solve all the students' problems...

Some things have improved for missionaries since those days though: for example, John Taylor writes that he and his wife were both sick with fever and jaundice for much of one term, in and out of hospital, and then he went down with blackwater fever, which he self treated by drinking quantities of soda bicarb.

Some other nice touches:

He writes about students and staff walking out into local villages to do outreach, sleeping on the mud floors of primary schools, playing football matches with the villagers followed by an evangelistic message, and even a blood donor scheme being run from "our great Mengo Hospital," collecting blood from the students on a fortnightly basis. Apparently the students were extremely reluctant to give their blood at first, after being challenged to do it in a sermon entitled "God and our bodies"given by the missionary doctor from Mengo. But Taylor describes how after a Monday of reflection, including a two hour discussion in the pastoralia class, and what he calls "the silent bombardment of the Spirit," 55 students agreed to give blood by the end of the day.

He describes the first buildings of the (now) Ordinands' Village as "four lovely little cottages and kitchens."

One amusing note: the African contractor who drew the plans for the new "Demonstration Hall" comprising of a domestic science room, a classroom and an office (I suppose this is Thelma Hall), wrote on the plan that this was to be the "Demons Training Hall". Simply too good to be true...!!

John Taylor comments on how strong the sense of unity and community was, in spite of, and he says partly strengthened by, the lack of resources, which brought students and staff together: the students were working together to grow food in the college gardens and even build the furniture for the college. Hmm I don't see our students growing their own food these days...

Well in some ways it sounds like a golden age for the college. Taylor sounds like a prayerful, thoughtful spiritual leader who was fatherly whilst making every effort not to be paternalistic, but more like a brother to the students and staff. But it also sounds as though the same misunderstandings, disappointments, frustrations and crossed wires occurred. I wish there were more details in the letter about things like their diet, and the pastimes of the missionaries when they were not at work, but, maybe there weren't many such times.

Reading these letters, I feel as though I have been in a time machine and gone back sixty years. It sounds as though Mukono was a special place back then,  - and I believe it still is now, a place where God is at work training and building up leaders for the church and for East Africa. John Taylor frequently refers to our Lord the Spirit working away in people's lives, the Spirit who is responsible for all the progress made and for all the good things that happened - and I know the same Spirit is there with all of you working in Mukono today. Hold onto that always.

Meeting John V Taylor's daughter

Yesterday Joanna and Charles Woodd came to lunch. This was very exciting, because, Joanna is the daughter of Bishop John V Taylor, who was Principal of Bishop Tucker College from 1943 to 1954. Joanna was 1 year old when her family moved to Mukono, and 13 when they left. She herself went to work in Kumi as a nurse later on, and has made a few trips back to Uganda since then, although her most recent visit to Mukono was about ten years ago. From her description it seems the family lived in what is now the Owors' house. She agreed with us that Mukono was an idyllic place to be as a young child, and she had very fond memories of racing about the grassy campus, in and out of other people's houses, and of the freedom and safety for children there. She told us that she went to school in Kampala, although she couldn't remember the name of the school, but they used to stay with an English family in town during the week, and only travel home for the weekends. Hmm, we did think about that from time to time... Mind you, she said Kampala was beautiful, uncrowded and leafy back then...

Joanna brought to show me a fascinating book made in 1950, about a Passion Play which her father put on with the Bishop Tucker students. It contains beautiful black and white photos of tableaux from the play. The students were in Biblical style costumes, and interspersed the drama with negro spirituals which, according to John Taylor's book, they sang beautifully. Just the expressions on their faces convey the solemnity, reverence and beauty of the play The play was acted out in the chancel of the old chapel, and was performed for the local community, which is described as the college, the three schools and the parish church all on the hill. Sadly no names are in the book, and carefully as I looked at the photos I did not recognise any faces - but I suppose these students from 1950 would have been at least 80 when we arrived in Mukono, so I shouldn't quite expect to!


I read two of John Taylor's books while I was in Uganda: The Go-Between God, which I loved, and The Primal Vision which I thought was fascinating. Apparently he wrote The Primal Vision not when he was principal of Bishop Tucker but when he made a return visit to Uganda some years later in 1963, specifically for research, when he was head of CMS in the UK.


Its full name being, "The Primal Vision: Christian presence amid African religion," it was one of the earliest attempts to describe African philosophy and religion, and to see how Christianity can be understood in Africa, and in fact how we can understand it better with the help of the African worldview. It was criticised at the time for being a bit too sympathetic to and positive about African religion, and leaning towards syncretism.

John V Taylor went on from heading CMS, to being Bishop of Winchester. He is described as being a "liberal evangelical rather than a conservative one" and was clearly greatly loved and respected wherever he worked.

We had a wonderful time chatting away with Joanna and Charles. They still do a lot to support Uganda, Charles being treasurer of an English organisation called the "Uganda Church Association", which sends out a yearly newsletter about goings-on in the Church of Uganda to a list of 230 interested people in England - many of them former Bishop Tucker missionaries, and many Ugandans who now live here. In the latest edition, for example, is an article written by Monica Ntege! Needless to say, we are delighted to have made this great connection, and hope to have more contact with UCA.

Joanna and Charles Woodd

We also discovered recently that John Taylor's grandson, Jonathan, (Joanna's nephew), is a lay assistant at our church in Exeter, St Leonards! He approached us at the mission weekend we spoke at in March. What a small small world...

"Blood River" by Tim Butcher

I have just finished reading Blood River by Tim Butcher, and of all the books I have read about Africa in the last year, this might be my favourite. It tells how the author fulfilled a long-term dream in 2004, to travel in the footsteps of the explorer Stanley, traversing the Congo east to west using motorbikes, motor boat, dug-out canoe, barge and a variety of other vehicles, following the route of the Congo River. The book is fascinating, amusing, and depressing in turns, and beautifully written.

I didn't know much about the Congo, other than that it is a vast, forested country with little or no infrastructure connecting its towns  and cities, and that it has had a bloody history both during and since independence from Belgian colonial rule. When we lived in Zimbabwe, we had a friend whose brother and sister were both serving in the Zimbabwean army in the Congo, as Mugabe exchanged his soldiers' lives for diamonds. We read stories in the papers of the bodies being brought back from the Congo, once allegedly without their heads which caused a huge fuss, but our friend Oscar assured us that in fact his siblings were growing fat and rich serving there. He showed us a photo and it was true, they did look fat.

When we moved to Uganda, we got to know various Congolese students at UCU, most of whom had left with their families to escape the violence. We heard stories of different Congolese people in Uganda being poisoned, drugged, kidnapped and held captive. We heard of earthquakes and a huge volcanic eruption, and more violence. Poor Congo.

Tim Butcher captures the chaos, and the frustration and dangers of trying to travel overland through this country, a land where typically UN workers fly into remote towns, live and work in sterile prefab air-conditioned cabins, and leave again, never attempting to travel by land anywhere. Travel overland or downriver exposes the author to threats on his life, requests to adopt strangers' children, endless demands for papers, permissions to travel and visas, extortion, dehydration, hunger, and illness. He calls it "ordeal travel," and he is open about the fear and tension he suffered from through the entire journey.

A major theme of the book is the evidence he sees that the Congo was once far more developed than it is now. Under the horrifically cruel Belgian rule, there were large cotton factories, wide roads, trains, steamboats cruising regularly down the Congo River, even hotels. But in the years of fighting since independence the bush has taken over again, roads have dwindled to mud paths, factories and hotels have crumbled. He describes at one point how he met an old man with his grandchildren, deep in the rainforest, as he travelled through by motorbike. The elderly man commented that in the old days many cars used to pass by road this way, whilst the children gazed open-mouthed at the motorbikes, because they had never seen a vehicle in their whole lifetime before.

Tim Butcher portrays the potential and great natural wealth of the country, and the courage and resilience of the people who helped him along the way. He conveys always his respect for the skills, strength, and integrity of the many Congolese and few ex-pats he met, who guided him, gave him hospitality, and protected him, often for no reason other than their kindness and decency as people, sometimes for the dollars he paid them. But the tragedy of this country, of its history, and the way it is still oppressed by its violent leaders and by the complete breakdown of law, order and justice, is the overarching theme, and the book leaves the reader feeling sad and frustrated, and puzzled once again by the enigma that is Africa.

I will finish with an excerpt, just to give you a taste of the beauty:
"... we followed a track climbing up and away from the lakeside still. Nightjars roosted on the path. I would pick them up in our headlights and watch as they sat frozen to the spot, exploding a the last second from underneath the lead motorbike, peeling up and away into the darkness. Although Kalemie had appeared asleep as we left, for the first few kilometres I kept spotting ghostly figures on the roadside. They were women, with baskets and tools perched on their heads, making their way out to the bush to tend plots of cassava and other crops. From a distance I would make out their dark shapes against the lightening sky and then, for an instant, they would be caught in the headlights, the colours of their cotton wraps bright and their wide eyes frozen in surprise."