The Leaving of De Aar

I guess that this will be the last blog of our adventures in South Africa. Many thanks to all who have read our 30 blogs and especially those who have written saying how much they have enjoyed reading them. We must also thank Gary Collins who set it up for us. We are 24 hours from setting out for Jo'burg airport and our flight home, staying with Emma's niece Lucy and her partner Bongani in their lovely house in Melville, a suburb of Jo'burg.

Emma left off the last blog on Holy Saturday so let me start with telling you of my Easter experiences. At St. Thomas, we had our major Easter service at 10.30pm on Easter Eve and this went well, with the lighting of the Easter candle outside the church and the bringing in of the light before a vigil of lessons and prayers before the eucharist. Howeever there was an almighty storm at about 10pm which did not stop for about 30 minutes. Fr. Joseph and I sat in the vestry thinking that nobody (with the exception of Emma) would turn up. Oh! Ye of little faith!! A few minutes after the storm abated, the church was fairly full of people and we managed to light a fire outside the church on some least muddy part of the yard.

We got to bed about 12.30a.m. but soon after Emma woke me with an excruciating headache which was of such intensity that we thought she might have meningitis or something equally nasty. It took some time and a second dose of different painkillers before she could feel comfortable enough to sleep fitfully so I guess I was not asleep until 2.30a.m. I was due to take the first service of Easter Day at Britstown at 5.30am (they love their early morning Easter dawn services!) so the alarm was set for 4.30a.m. I did not feel too bad after two hours sleep but on trying to get out of the churchyard realised that I had foolishly locked the gates in such a way that I could not open them (too technical to explain here so ask me later!).

I felt it would be unkind to wake the caretaker at that hour of the morning so eventually managed to get the car out of the yard by way of the garden gates in front of the church. It meant driving across flower beds and lawn!

I reached Britstown 56 kilomteres away in time for the service after driving rather precariously through quite thick fog. But the dawn service was great and the people came.... and I guess it was well worth the effort. But I was not done. Back to St. Thomas for their 8am service and to see how Emma was fairing. Luckily she had recovered enough not to give concern but was still feeling pretty grim and mostly fast asleep. I had discovered at the beginning of Holy Week that an Easter Day Communion service at St. Thomas had been announced in the weekly bulletin but my colleague Fr. Joseph had previously said it was not necessary as people came on Easter Eve. Not to to have a communion service on Easter Day in your main church seemed a little strange to me so I offered to get back from Britstown in time to do one. In fact the church was quite full again with lots of young families and it was a very happy service and people were glad to have had a eucharist.

But I was still not yet done. I also offered to go to our church at Nonzwakazi – the township on the edge of De Aar – for their Easter Day celebration. This was great fun and the congregation (Xhosa speaking) were in fine voice. So we had a more exuberantly African service there which made a nice change from the more restrained services we have at St. Thomas.

Our plans to drive to Kimberley had to be shelved, Emma was asleep until late afternoon and I had a quiet restful time. I remember how I always told my clergy colleagues at the start of Holy Week that I wanted them to be on their knees (literally and physically) by the end of Easter Day. I do not not think that I can be accused of being a hypocrite on this score.

By late afternoon of Easter Day, Emma was much better but we decided that we would not travel to Kimberley that day in order to stay with our new friend, Simon, the Dean of the cathedral. At any rate after having only two hours sleep I was in no position to drive for three hours. This meant that sadly we had to miss the Renewal of Priestly Vows and Ordination service that was being held in the cathedral on Monday morning. Monday was a public holiday as it is in Britain; an odd time to have such a service. However we did travel to Kimberley on that day and had a lovely evening with Simon, who took us to dine at the grand Kimberley Club. The Kimberley Club has the "ghosts" in one form or another of Rhodes, various Oppenheimers etc. And it is a bit of the old empire. Bizarre but very good fun.

On Tuesday morning I took Emma to the Africana Library just opposite the Kimberley Club to show her the original Moffat Bible that they have there. After many years Robert Moffat eventually translated the whole Bible into Setswane and printed it himself in about 1850. The Library has a copy with markings made by Moffat where he made corrections to the text for a further edition. It is fascinating to see and when we revealed that our surname was Moffatt the staff insisted on taking our picture holding this precious book.

 But it did not end there. We had delivered to the Diocesan Office via the Dean three boxes of archives that we had found in very poor condition in the vestry of St. Thomas and had put them in some kind of order. When the Librarian heard we had done this she said that they would end up in this library and then proceeded to show us other church records that they had. We were grateful to know that our hard work on the archives (actually it was Alastair's and Emma's hard work) would not go to waste. But during this time Emma discovered that a Rev. C. B. Maude had been one of the first Vicars of St. Cyprians, Kimberley (now the cathedral) in the late 1870s. She suspects that he is a relative and will endeavour to find out more when we return.

Also during this visit to the Africana Library we met a retired curator of the local Macgregor Museum called Rosemary Holloway who said that she was very worried about the state of the Moffat Mission in Kuruman. She intends to take a group of experts there soon but asked us to let her know how we found it when we visited in a couple of days' time. This seems to have made us a link in a small group of people who are concerned to stop the mission falling into disrepair and losing many of its artifacts. I suggested that we might get interest from the Moffat Clan in Scotland in helping to finance some kind of effort to restore the missions buildings and its contents. After all Robert Moffat is probably the most famous member of the clan!

We dragged ourselves away from the Library and headed towards Kuruman. We arrived at Batlharos, a few miles outside Kuruman, in time to meet some of our friends of the parish of St. Michael and All Angels with whom the Newbury Deanery is linked. We had a good time with them and met their delightful priest, Fr. Henry Joseph. He is joining a group of about 12 people who are going to visit the Newbury deanery in June. We were able to meet several of those going at a meeting quickly arranged for us and answered many of their questions. It is great to think that the link has got to this stage and we trust good friendships will be formed during their visit.

A visit to the Moffat Mission just down the road from Batlharos confirmed that it is not being looked after particularly well and we had to report back to Rosemary that her visit could not come soo enough. After two nights in the rather delightful but bizarre African hotel lodge in Batlharos we had to head back for our last few days in De Aar. But there was just time to go a rather round and about route to see the Mary Moffat Museum at Griquatown. The musuem was based in the small house that Mary Moffat (daughter of Robert and Mary Moffat and wife of David Livingstone) had lived in for some time. It was not very well kept but had a few interesting items.

Our time was running out and we had fulfilled our aims to renew our acquaintance with the area of the diocese we had first visited many years ago now. But it was back to pack up and take our leave of De Aar. This proved more emotional than I had thought it would and proved to us that we had been appreciated and loved in many ways. The coloured people are much more reserved than the black congregations but obviously a lot of people got a lot from our ministry to them and they said a lot of very nice things to us, showed us much appreciation and gave us many small presents. We had a lovely final service on Sunday morning in St. Thomas and then a little reception in the hall before Emma and I escaped to Nonzwakasi to say goodbye to the congregation there. We were each presented with a blanket to wear round our shoulders in true Xhosa style.

Father Joseph with his wife Cathy and Peter,a Lay Minister who regularly joined us at Morning Prayer

On Monday morning many of the St. Thomas congregation came to see us off. It was again a public holiday (May Day) so that meant a number of people were not working. We had a lovely informal party and it was great to see how much the barriers had come down, they seemed to speak English all the time even to each other (this is because they have grown in confidence in speaking English to us) and much laughter and tears. So it was a very good farewell and we left feeling that we had contributed more than we could have hoped to their community. We do hope they can push the bishop to persuade a good priest to come and replace us because they really have a lot of potential as a congregation and it would be sad to see that go just because of a lack of leadership. Father Joseph's continuing ill-health had put him in hospital for two nights straight after Easter.

We enjoyed our last drive out of the Karoo to Bloemfontein where we stayed overnight and then travelled on to Jo'burg where we now await our time to fly home. We are very excited every time the telephone goes because we expect news of Laura's baby (today was the due day) but we are also trying to rest well as we realise that when we get back to UK we shall be busy moving to Tysoe and starting a whole new life. This has been a great preparation for it and a very worthwhile experience. We are glad to have done it and hope you have enjoyed sharing our experiences.

Thanks again for reading our ramblings. Come and see us in Tysoe when you can. We'll being be emailing address and contact details shortly.

Holy Week

Holy Week has been kept in true anglican style with a service each evening at 6pm , consisting of evensong followed by Stations of the Cross using the liturgy in the South African English Prayer Book. Some of the pictures have at some stage been stolen from St Thomas' so one's imagination had to come into play. Numbers attending gradually rose as the days went by and on Thursday about 40 were at the Maunday Thursday service which included Tom washing people's feet. Confirmation candidates are expected to come to these services so that helped swell the numbers.

                                                           St Thomas'church

Our young American friend Lindsey stayed the week until she left to return to Cape Town where she is running a half marathon tomorrow. She and I were both sad to have to say goodbye to the kids at the FAS house whom we have got to know and love. We'd enjoyed being part of an Easter Egg hunt one afternoon followed by some amusing singing games where the children stood in a circle on the grass, singing and dancing different rap-like songs, with english words which we struggled to pick out properly but which were quite saucy in a sweet way. They move their tiny bodies so cutely, as Lindsey kept saying! The house is closed next week as there are 2 public holidays and then I shall be gone. It has been great for me to go over twice a week in the afternoon and play board games or whatever with them. And I have got to know the other staff and we all had lunch out together on Monday, courtesy of Lindsey.

Lian invited me to spend a morning there too this week to see one of the sessions with pregnant mums. She was showing ingenious ways to make simple baby toys, giving each of the 11 mums a foot massage (I helped do that a bit, very appropriate in Holy Week) and one of the helpers gave a talk to reinforce the message of not drinking alcohol, of any sort, to avoid risk to their baby. The long holiday weekend will see many people getting drunk in and around the town.

We woke to our first frost this morning, and a cloudless blue sky which lasted all day. The sun grew hot but the air temperature in the middle of the day was only in the low 20s, so it depends whether you are in the sun or not as to how warm you feel. The evening temperature falls rapidly with the clear sky and as we have no fire in the house of any sort a hot bath before bed is welcome. We gather you have warmer temperatures than us in the UK now.

Our Good Friday service was held at Britstown, one of the chapelries. The idea is that it moves round each year and we join together. In fact two churches were not represented but distances are large and transport expensive. Three languages are used across the churches but most of the readings and the talks were in Afrikaans. The Litany was said in English and hymns too were from our A&M. I feel considerable frustration when I don't understand what is being said but it makes me realise what everyone in this country of 11 official languages must often feel. It brings home too the power of the Pentecost experience with the joy people must have felt at being able to understand what was said even though many languages were being used by the early Christians..

I think our difficulty in communicating easily with people has been the hardest part of our stay here. Afrikaans is such a difficult language to pronounce. All the vowels and their combinations are so different to english that we still only have very few simple phrases we can say. I can now pick out and understand a very few words and obviously if we stayed longer that would continue. Although most people here do understand a bit of english when it comes to reading it out loud as in church it is much more difficult. And speaking socially is even more difficult except for a few phrases. So it stops easy discussions except with those who have a very good grasp. However that doesn't stop frienships being made and we shall be sad to leave our new friends.

The Good Friday service went on for over 3 hours, with no silence at all as they don't do silence here. A bunch of kids sat at the front as usual and they barely stirred, seemingly enjoying all that was said and sung. The two priests and many lay minsters did the varipous readings, prayers from the litany and talks, with hymns interspersed. Afterwards when we all burst out into the sunshine, plates of pickled fish in a curry sauce were given to everyone, though I refrained having just eaten a marshmallow chocolate egg I was offered.

Tonight, Holy Saturday, there is a 10.30pm service of light and Easter communion here at St Thomas with an 8am one tomorrow which will be quiet we suspect. We will be at Britstown again for a 5.30am service as dawn breaks and back for 8am. Then Tom will go to Nonzwakazi but our farewell there will be on May 1^st so I can miss that.

Then we set off after lunch to Kimberley for two nights so that we can meet other clergy at a service of renewal of vows in the Cathedral on Monday. On Tuesday we drive northwards to the Moffat Mission which is a very special place, founded by Robert Moffat (not a forebear but of the same clan surely) in the 1820s. Nearby is Batlharos where we have had a link with the Newbury deanery for a few years and where I spent 10 days a couple of years ago. So we shall stay in a rather african style lodge and meet up with their new priest and the group of 18 who are coming to vist Newbury this June. On our return journey on Thursday we hope to visit the Mary Moffat museum at Griquatown; she was Robert's daughter and married David Livingstone. And so back here to pack up and after a final service on Sunday May 1^st to make our way to Johannesburg and home to our family and friends. Laura's baby is due the day before we leave so we have that excitement as well as the move into our house in Tysoe. Emails will be sent with our address and phone details once we are sure of them.

Meanwhile have a very happy and joyful Easter!

Running down or a fast last lap

Emma's last blog had me ailing with a fever and horrible sickness. I am glad to say that this was a 24 hour affair and by Monday morning I was fit enough for us to re-engage our plan to go to Graaff- Reinet for a short overnight stay. But on the way we called in at Richmond, one of the towns of our outstation churches, hoping to catch up with an American called Joel Tjornehoj (pronounced “Churnahoy”). Let me tell you about Joel. He is an Anglican lay man (actually he was brought up Lutheran – his name and ancestry is Danish – but married an Anglican) who is a member of St. Peter's Anglican Church, Poolesville, Maryland, USA. A few years ago a fellow worshipper at St. Peter's called Jonathan Warner (we have mentioned him before hving met him a few months ago) started a link between St. Peter' Poolsville and St. Matthew's Anglican church in Richmond. This has grown into a partnership with all the people of Richmond, not just the church community, to improve the quality of life there. Jonathan being a good Rotarian has involved some Rotary Clubs in USA and elsewhere in this project which has now grown so much that instead of calling it “Hope in Richmond” they call it Hope in South Africa. You may wish to look it up on the internet (Hopeinsouthafrica.com).

Joel and Barbara who runs the community centre (HISA) at Richmond

Having been given the wrong mobile phone number for Joel , we had to track him down in Richmond but that was not too difficult. An American in a remote Karoon town is easily known.

We had a fascinating couple of hours seeing what has been achieved and hearing of the hopes Joel has for the future. Their website shows what can be done and by re-naming it “Hope in Sotuh Africa” (HISA) they hope to expand from Richmond into other areas including De Aar. Some of their work has already reached us here as they have been very supportive of the Foetal Alcohol Syndrome House and Grassroots Soccer initiative which uses soccer as a vehicle whereby you can teach the young people about HIV/Aids.

We discussed at leangth the problem that Joel has with the relationship with St. Matthew's. The link of course was naturally seen by the people of St. Matthew's as a way of getting financial help with their run-down building and facilities and purchasing prayer books etc. But the church community has not been supportive of the other initiatives taken by HISA and has rather kept aloof from them.

There are cultural reasons for this. The divisions that still exist in even the smallest towns of South Africa mean that if you help one group, the other will dis-associate themselves from it. This is compounded by the fact that the theological concept that social action is part of the mission of the church is alien to many Anglican churches here. To them mission is something that is done to them by priests and missionaries from outside. It is not seen as something that is central to the life of the church community. Most people in our Anglican churches here will not know what you are talking about if you speak to them of mission as we see it. Perhaps we have the old missionaries to blame for that; or perhaps our continued patronising way of trying to help.

The other difficulty for HISA working with the church in Richmond is that because of the link with a rich parish in USA, the other churches in the whole parish of De Aar are naturally jealous. One of the mistakes of the Richmond/Poolesville link is that it seems that consultation with the rest of the parish has been minimal which has caused resentment. It is something that perhaps our influence might help to overcome. Joel's rector in USA has a tentative plan in which one or two seminarians from a theological college in USA might do a placement in Richmond. He seems to have a good relationship with a college principal who is keen on the idea. We advised that this should be seen as something for all the parish and not just for Richmond and that consultation with the Dean/Archdeacon was very necessary, along with the church council here who have overall responsibility for the parish as a whole. We are staying with the Dean in Kimberley after easter so we will talk with him about it.

So having had interesting and we hope fruitful talks with Joel, we continued on our way to Graaf-Reinet which is delightful Karoon town some 250 kilometres to the south-east. We stopped there breifly on our return from holidaying in the south and promised ourselves a longer visit. It is a very historic town having been one time second only to Cape Town in importance. It was for a time at the end of the 18th century, the town that “governed” a vast area of the interior of South Africa. So there is much more history and culture there than in De Aar. It has a number of museums and art galleries, some good restaurants and colourful shops. We had a very pleasant time there before rushing back for a church council meeting.

The church council meetings are very different from when we first came. They are much more relaxed and informative and we even use the new data projector we have installed in church for studying the accounts. The data projector is also a great new aid to worship. Many of the congregation do not have hymn books or prayers books themselves and the church does not supply them. So any newcomer or young person had no way of participating in the worship. But now it is up on a screen in front of everyone – oh the joys of modern technology!

Finally a few short items. Lindsey, our delightful American young lady, moved out to stay with another family but is returning here tonight for her last few days. We have been greatly blessed by all the people who have come and stayed with us, all so different but making ourlives so much more colourful. Emma has finally succumbed to her gardening passion now that the temperatures are cooler and has bought some shrubs and plants to enhance the rectory/church yard. We have spent some time weeding and digging which has perplexed some of the locals. White people do not do that type of thing and get others to do it for them. They do not seem to realise we enjoy it! And so to today, Palm Sunday, where we processed around the local ward which is far from salubrious! As we trudged through some rather smelly and rubbish strewn roads and pathways, I could not help but realise that Jesus' entry into Jerusalem must have been through similar rather disgusting routes. Perhaps that is why cloaks and palm branches were used to make the journey less grim. How we have sanitised these events in Jesus' life! Fresh palm branches from the churchyard were used to decorate the church and made into green palm crosses by a couple of nimble-fingered men.

So on to Holy Week and really the last full week in the parish. We hope it will be a fitting climax to the time we have spent here.

Railway ramblings

My cousin David has been to stay briefly, coming from Cape Town where he is staying with his son and family, by train to avoid an 8 hour drive. The trouble is the train arrives at about 11.30pm if it is on time. We/he were lucky as it was a mere 30 minutes late so we all got in a decent night's sleep. The only alternative is a very expensive tourist train which does call here on some days at about 4.30pm but you have to buy a ticket for the whole distance to Joburg costing hundreds of pounds. David quite enjoyed his long journey – 13 or 14 hours so a good deal longer than the flight to London! He had chosen to be in a coupe or sleeper for 6, all men (or women- or you can have a half coupe for a couple. One woman I heard of booked for her husband too, knowing she would actually be on her own but preferring to travel alone. The cost is half that of the overnight coach which she usually takes, feeling safer, so she didn't lose out. The trouble with that method of travel, which is much quicker, is that it is a 45 minute drive to get to Britstown where it passes through. Most have no means of doing that.) But David seemed to have quite enjoyed swapping life stories with his fellow travellers and he could get lunch and supper in the dining car, not a brilliant meal but adequate.

For his return journey two days later the train south arrives at about 1am and was only an hour late. There are plenty of other people around at the station and David insisted he felt safe enough so we left him to wait on his own and we retired home to our beds leaving him to get back to his son's at 5pm or so! It is a marathon journey which we hear dreadful tales about – not safety but the delays of perhaps 6 hours. And for those who can't afford a sleeper the length of journey must be awful. We saw families with babies strapped to the mother's back and bundles of blankets waiting to board. It is sad that with the infrastructure in place for long-distance rail travel that there isnt a better service. Only wagon trains use the E-W line between Port Elizabeth and the far west and many people must wish there was a passenger line to connect them to their distant families in those directions. Perhaps in the future?

David as it were brought some heavy rain, as have all our visitors! (Actually a sign of the unusually wet summer season here.) The cold winds from the south seemed to switch to warmer wind from the north and we had a classic front situation, even experiencing some fog. But it was good for him to experience our flooded yard as others have, as well as some glorious blue sky and puffy white clouds. We did our usual trip to the Vanderkloof dam, as he is an engineer, and this time as well as continuing overspill from the lake they were clearing out silt from the pipes and there was the most extraordinary sight of red muddy water wooshing out from 5 huge pipes just downstream of the spilling water. The wind direction was different and we had a wonderful rainbow effect in the spray. I'll see if I can post a photo.

David is keen on birds and he was able to confirm that we saw two black eagles from the top of the De Aar hill as well as the usual Lesser Kestrel, about 100 perhaps! There aren't as many as there have been, so maybe they are starting to return to Russia for their summer. There are still many swallows and swifts but we dont know if they will make it back to Europe for summer there or if they stay here. We shall!

While David was here there was a rare knock at the door from someone in the congregation wanting help with CV. We actually have no copier nor printer here so Tom took her across to the FAS House where Lian kindly helped create an impressive document and then Tom was able to drive her to a newly opened correctional centre where she'd heard there was a possibility of a job caring for teenage boys. Her present job at the hospice pays so badly and not on time that she is desperate for anything. But it is difficult. The gap between the rich and poor here is so great. We have just found a few streets on one edge of town with huge mansions and green well-manicured gardens. And yet on the opposite side many live in the most appalling basic shacks. Many are in between and one thing that surprises us is that people don't seem to move away from a poor district but simply rebuild bigger and smarter houses on their plot, cheek by jowl with hovels. Some aspiring people do move to the white side so at least apartheid has broken down to the extent that it is possible. It's not like the old days when anyone coloured or black had to be over the railway bridge by the 9pm curfew. But we think we are the only white people on 'our' side. Having a wide area of railway land slice through the town does exaggerate the situation.

Walking through the long grass in the area this side of the railway lines one comes across all sorts of abandoned railway ironware – from largely broken fences, to buffers and even old steam engines. For some poeple it would be paradise! There used to be hundreds of old steam engines apparently but most have been sold off to other countries around the world. We hope that these last few aren't allowed to rust away totally or be sold off for scrap. But no care is taken at the moment. As I walked over the railway bridge today I saw 3 donkeys about to stray on to the line. Such is life here!

Tom is down with another nasty bout of fever today, hence my rambles.

A month to go

Today Tom has driven to Kimberley for a meeting of the archdeaconry clergy, taking Father Joseph but refusing to use the parish car without aircon. Temperatures have risen well into the 30s again in the last week and at night we only use a sheet again not the light quilt we had started to use. I have repositioned my cheap thermometer amongst the branches of the vine, more or less in the shade and out of sight now that the kids have no reason to come here looking for grapes. It had been inside the kitchen door but the temperatures varied so little as the house retains its heat. A week or so ago I found the morning temperature to be 10C; now it is 18 or so. So we thought autumn had definitely arrived but since summer style thunder storms have also resumed we are not so sure. Our house fans are once again sometimes in use as temperatures are into the low 30s in the afternoon and the evenings are uncomfortable without them. I insist on windows being shut by dusk as mosquitoes continue to plague me if I am not careful. Apparantly there are summer and winter varieties. I think the latter may have arrived as my bites are even bigger than before. But thanks to a pleasant skin oil produced by Avon, Skin So Soft, and Raid plug-in mosquito killers I mostly avoid them.

We had a perfect day on Monday when we decided to try the dirt road north from near De Aar to Hopetown mostly following the railway, 123 km going straight as opposed to going on tarred roads which is much further. The sky was a brilliant blue with puffy clouds here and there lighting the relief in interesting ways. We took our time, stopping to use binoculars to try to identify birds and to take photos and just to take in the silence and beauty. Every so often the karoo scrub is broken by a group of large trees and even a few fields of maize or alfalfa where windpumps bring water from deep underground.

The farmhouse and small workers homes are usually found amongst the trees and often this coincides with what used to be a train halt, still marked on the map but no longer in use. We got very excited when we saw a train in the distance; it proved to be just a diesel engine but a later one passed us pulling a huge length of wagons. Tom managed to catch it on his small video camera and later counted that it was pulling over 100 open wagons, probably with stone or ore.

The sense of being at one with nature was so strong; apart from a rusty wire road fence and a partial surface of stone or grit on the natural mud there was nothing man-made between the farmsteads, no billboards, filed boundaries. We have been reading a fascinating book 'Circling the Great Karoo' by Nicholas Yell where the author describes a solo journey on a scrambler bike around the Karoo giving details of conversations with the locals in the small towns and decribing the history and geology. This was one of our ventures into the real Karoo. Not knowing how long we would take and knowing there would be no towns we had packed some lunch and folding chairs and we found a thorn tree that gave just enough shade for a picnic. The silence is incredible. No aeroplane ever passes overhead, no road was remotely within earshot and we met about four cars during all our time. It may reduce the mileage to Hopetown a good deal but since driving speed is halved it doesn't reduce travelling time. But it was a thrilling experience for us.

Later we diverted on our way home on the usual route to go into Orania, a white-only settlement started post 1994. It had the blessing of a good clean swimming pool to cool us off, empty except for one family, but the small town seemed very dead, no children even though school would have finished. Black flags flew at half-mast in honour of its Afrikaans founder who recently died. I was strongly reminded of the kibbutz I stayed on back in the 1960s, newish soulless buildings and very tanned white people doing manual work, which you otherwise never see here.

Our week since has been enlivened by the arrival of Lyndsay, a young American doing research in Cape Town who has come to work at the FAS house mostly inputting data. I continue to go and help on a couple of afternoons a week. This week I got eager children using (Play)dough on one afternoon and playing matching games on another. My inablity to speak Afrikaans doesnt help in controlling their noise and enthusiasm for attention but they get such a lot of fun from whatever they can get their hands on that it is worthwhile I hope. My one regret was suggesting they be allowed to use some plastic motorbikes and a nylon tunnel I spotted in the store room. Play had to be in rather a small room so as to not get completely out of control. As their body temperatures rose from dashing about so my nasal senses suffered! Cleanliness is difficult I guess in the sort of homes they come from.

Tom has spent a lot of time on practical jobs this week, eventually succeeding in fixing a bad leak from our toilet cistern (only to have another develop from the pipe, but the sort that is manageable with an old ice cream tub beneath). Yesterday he again spent ages trying to attach a rather ingenious draught excluder on the chapel door after we had noticed leaves had blown in during the night. He and Danny the caretaker so nearly succeeded until they realised the door-frame was metal not wooden and a roller stop had to be fixed into it. More ingenuity eventually solved the problem using the draught strip in a different way from that intended.

A few priestly tasks came Tom's way but he is having to resign himself to the fact of his paid ministry ending in about a month from now. Our time here is in some senses a gentle slowing down.

Times they are a changing! (immortal words of Bob Dylan)

It is many days since the last blog and I apologise for that. I did try to start this blog a few days ago but there have been some changes in our circumstances which meant I found it difficult to find time. Perhaps also it is because I have been watching cicket on the TV with some crucial matches in the World Cup last week. By the way there is much lamentation here in SA about the woeful performance of their team's middle order – something about not having the bottle!

So why have things changed? I guess it is because we are beginning to develop some good friendships and because we have got involved in some social action in particular with the Foetal Alcohol Syndrome house (called "the fasshouse"- FAS) that is some 100 yards away over the rough ground outside our church compound.

Looking back we realise that it was silly for us not to have visited the FAS house earlier but when we got here in November everything was shutting down for the long summer holidays so the house was closed. However in February Alastair and Emma got stuck in with Alastair driving the minibus collecting pregnant women to come for their interviews and Emma playing with the children in the afternoon.Added to this we have developed a good friendship with Lian who runs the FAS house.Lian lives with her husband Peter in a cottage on a farm a few kilometres outside De Aar. They invited us to a lunchtime brai (barbecue) and we enjoyed the peace of the Karoo and some interesting discussion about living in this part of the world. We came away with a fascinating book called "Circling the Great Karoo" by Nicholas Yell which describes a motorbike trip the author took on the dirt roads of the Karoo and visiting many remote spots. It is a great insight into the life of the people of the Karoo, their history and their way of life. I wished I had read it before we came here.

We have not been invited out to the homes of the parishioners of the church and worried about this until I was talking to a Dutch Reform priest who has ministered in the coloured location for 26 years who said that in all those years he had not been invited to any of his congregation's houses!

However at almost the same moment our lovely churchwarden Eugene and his equally delightful wife Ria invited us to supper. This was ostensively to say good-bye to Alastair but it turned into a fascinating evening with Eugene and Ria being very open about what it is like to be a coloured person in South Africa today. They are in an uneneviable position with the black Africans now having the power and taking the jobs through the policy of affirmative action and the whites still running the businesses and making the money! So they feel that they are now the section of South African society that are at the bottom of the heap. Eugene and Ria are both schoolteachers and at the point in their career when they could expect to be headteachers of secondary schools. They are extremely able people and highly qualified yet they fear that at the two locals local school where there are vacancies for headships the jobs will go to black Africans who are not so competent. This is something that is happening all over South Africa and whereas we can see the need for affirmative action for the black African population, it is usually to the detriment of standards and efficiency. This is one of the dilemmas left over from its colonial and apartheid past.

(It is rather difficult to concentrate on writing this as outside the window on the vine and bushes of the yard there is a wonderful display of birdlife – one of the great joys of living here.)

Our friend Alastair Blaine left us on Sunday March 20^th to do a little more travelling before returning to England. He has been a great success here in the parish and received a lovely farewell from the church congregation. For us it was good to have him with us to give us some company and help us to feel less isolated. He was prepared to work hard at some of the clearing and cleaning jobs in the church and Sunday School house, to help with long drives to outstations relieving both of us clergy and he wrote a short history of the church here using old sources we came across in our clearing out. With his departure I have taken over driving for FAS and although I cannot do it as regularly as he did, it is a way of feeling we are contributing to their work. It is hard to get the church here to think about the social gospel as for much of the time they are bound up with their own problems. I know that many individuals do a lot of "good works" but the idea of mission through concern and help for the poor, vulnerable and oppressed is not high on the list of priorities. I am not sure that in the few weeks left for us here we can do anything about this except by setting an example.

Are the times changing? Recently we have been bold enough to ask the question that we have been wanting to ask for a long time, "Did 1994 ever happen here?" In these remote areas of South Africa it is not easy to see where there has been progress towards the breakdown of the apartheid system. This is not just the result of white Afrikaans rigidity but also the suspicion there is between the black Africans and the coloured community. They are still very separate communities and sadly the churches reflect this. The white Dutch Reform Churches are slowly dying because many of the white people are moving away. They seem unable to open their doors to people of other colours and still live in fear. But we cannot claim to be any better as our own congregation is almost entirely coloured (whatever that means!) and is not particularly welcoming to any newcomers. The social life of the town has changed little and the High School (previously the preserve of white people) still has no black or coloured teachers. It is going to be a very long time for those barriers of fear and distrust built up amongst the people during apartheid years to be overcome.

There are changes happening in St. Thomas and it has been quite a revolution. It is the kind of

change that has happened in many parishes in England over the last few decades. The parish has been led by a few powerful, well-meaning and generous people who have been in positions of leadership for a long time. It has been difficult for them to let go and this has caused a certain amount of friction as there are a number of eager and able younger people who would like to have their say and perhaps do things differently.

The parish is divided into wards and parishioners in each ward are expected to meet to pray together, to care for each other and run money-making schemes. Not many wards do this but the Montana ward does and it has meant that it has become a powerful group within the parish.To their credit they organised themselves so that several of their members ( young and very able) were elected to positions on the church council (see photo below) and since then they have quietly been revolutionising much of the way the parish is run. In time the hope is that it will not rely on the rich and powerful making contributions to keep it afloat but that all the people will contribute because they feel more part of the parish. Things have begun well and it is being ably led by our churchwarden Eugene who we have mentioned before. I have played little part in this except to give my encouragement and support and try to appease those who have lost power and influence. It does give me great joy that such a change has been made during the time I have been here.

We had a visit from the Archdeacon of the Karoo (who is also the Dean of the cathedral) last week-end and I think he was duly impressed by the change that has taken place. He was doing the swearing in of the churchwardens and church council both for St. Thomas and the churches of the outstations. It was quite a gathering and our first attempt at introducing new technology into the church as we had a video projector for the service.

Eugene on the left, and the other new warden , secretary and treasurer

So are times a changing? In many ways, no. De Aar is so isolated that it will take many more years before the kind of integration you see in other parts of South Africa will come here. However in many little things there are signs of change and the life of St. Thomas is one. My hope and prayer for St. Thomas is that somehow it can be a community that could live the "new South Africa" and therefore be an example to the rest of the town. What a wonderful gospel they could tell then!

A lovely one of Billy on his own little climbing frame in the churchyard

I tried to upload a third photo of the Dean etc at lunch but it wouldnt have it - sorry Dean Simon!

Some illustrations

                                             Playtime in our yard

                                         Billy at the organ in church, never normally used. One of the pedals to pump air is missing but it is a nice relic from the Victorian Anglican era.

Photos should be easier to load now I have picasa to reduce the size, but only two seem to be allowed to me so I will go with what I can get.