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.

Happy times

It is just over a fortnight since we met Laura, Jonathon, Billy and Henry at Kimberley airport and much has happened since then, most happily. We watched them walk across the tarmac to the smart new airport buildings and enter, fully in our view as there are no passport or customs checks. The glass door between us slid open and we could hug while they still awaited their luggage. Billy's face was puzzled for a while but soon broke into a lovely broad grin of recognition. Occasional skype video calls have helped keep our faces familiar.

Every grandparent no doubt thinks their latest grandchild is amazing. We certainly do; Billy wonders at everything, has a real sense of fun and curiosity, rarely grizzles and is quite simply adorable. So although we were so glad to see all of them it was Billy who just made the holiday for us. I travelled in the their car, sitting with Billy in the back so as to maximize my time with him.

Jonathon has described their first week so well and I will fail to write about all that happened since then but briefly, while they went off south for 4 days on their own, we took Henry and Alastair to a nature reserve overnight at Gariep. We were able to do a fascinating tour of the big dam, the biggest in SA, and began to understand the differences between flood protection, maintaining river flow and controlling the silt flow. Our resort by the lake behind gave us a swimming pool and walks as well as the chance to braai, albeit with a struggle as a storm was starting. Alastair is a real expert these days and Henry much enjoyed his company.

We returned in time for the Mothers' Union's fund-raising pancake sale and did our bit cooking pancakes in the church hall. The following day was Ash Wednesday and the 6pm service was a big, solemn, well-attended occasion. We left at 5am next day, with Henry, to drive south to Nature's Valley on the Garden Route where we met up with Laura and family and had 2 nights at a lovely self-catering place on a farm. It was near the beach below, had views of the mountains behind and apart from the cloudy, sometimes wet weather was ideal for our last days together.

Nearby was an elephant sanctuary where we walked 'holding hands/trunk' with an elephant, rescued from the wild and being prepared to be returned. The soft skin behind the ears, which are flapped to cool the animal, was especially intriguing, as was inside the mouth. Billy was especially mesmerized but we all were.

Swimming was limited both by the weather and the size of the waves on the Indian Ocean. As Laura later commented it was sobering to think that as we watched the huge walls of water pounding in, she later realised it was at the time of the Japanese tsunami.

At Nature's Valley there is a lovely calm lagoon behind the beach where some swam, and at Plettenberg Bay similarly. There the current of the incoming tide was so strong it was hard to move aginst it so swimming was limited. As we later played in the lovely white sand, Tom building a ball-run sand castle for Billy, a man missing one leg walked past, jumped into his canoe and sped across the lagoon. A conversation with a later passer-by confirmed Jonathon's suspicion that a shark had removed one leg. It was the only known attack at that resort some many years ago but it was another sobering moment.

After a rather tearful farewell at George airport, Tom and I drove eastwards along the beautiful coast into sunshine and to Addo where there is a vast nature reserve famous for elephants. We had some wonderful watching of elephants in Addo National Park as well as most of the other big game at a private reserve close by. One large group of about 50 elephants had a reddish colour which was the result of cooling themselves by splashing in the reddish mud pools. From the safety of our car we had amazing views.

At Schotia Game Reserve you are driven in special raised landrovers across rough tracks to view the animals over a period of about 5 hours, with a tea and supper break in different safe locations. Our experienced driver knew where he was likely to find what we had come to see – white rhinos, hippos, crocodile (both in or beside a large pool), zebra, giraffe, warthogs, various buck and most amazing of all lions. We saw close by a lioness with five cubs, 4 months old, playing nearby just by our truck. Up the slope were a group of four 2 year-olds, two male, two female. In the bigger reserves they would go off once their mother had another litter but here with more limited space they stayed nearby for safety. Two huge males were visible high up on the hillside. The guide told us how they become so used to the twice-daily drives that they are unfazed but if he or anyone got down on the ground at their level they would feel threatened and would attack, with devastating force. We had never seen lions in the wild, and this is wild in that they are never fed but have to hunt, mostly at night, from whatever is in the reserve. Some species survive, others don't. Our night drive sadly didn't come across a kill, nor the two hippos who graze with their wide jaws on the meadows at night. But the whole thing was very special and memorable.

The long drive home, about 6 hours driving, was broken by stopping at Graaf Reinet, a lovely town with many 19thC buildings and several museums. It appears to be a bigger more cultural centre and we would have enjoyed staying there. Nearby at the Camdeboo National Park we drove high up a mountain to get spectacular views of the surrounding mountainous Karroo and nearby of huge reddish dolerite pillars and the Valley of Desolation a gash in this huge geological feature. Tom and I share an interest in trying to work out something of the geological past, albeit inadequately.

And so home, to Alastair's final week with us, catching up on things domestic and parochial.

(I managed one photo at last but something then refused to play ball. My laptop has been getting very slow so Alastair has helped me clear some space and perhaps it is a little faster - it is our lifeline and very precious.)

Sunshine and the long shadow of apartheid

We're busy enjoying Billy and his antics so our son-in-law Jonathon writes:

I think I'm beginning to understand the iconic status of the 'Black Power!' picture of a fist clutching barbed wire that we saw painted on the wall in Soweto last sunday, and that was popular on T-shirts and reggae albums in the UK in my childhood in the 70s and 80s.

Nowhere in the world have I ever seen so much barbed wire. In all its various forms, straight, curled, rolled up, with razors, above and below electric fences, supporting flowers and rotting on concrete posts. When we arrived in Johannesburg last weekend we stayed in Melville with Laura's cousin Lucy and her long-term partner Bongani. The houses, with one exception, were heavily fortified with 3-meter high walls topped with an array of barbed, razored and electrified wires. Most gates had a sign warning that they were also protected by 24-hour armed response security. Lucy and Bongani's house didn't advertise this, but a solid gate opened electronically to let our car in and then slid shut behind us. The high walls had spikes on the top and the windows were barred or leaded and there were metal grills over the door to the guarden. They explained that the security measures in their neighbourhood were put up hastily (you can tell) in 1994 after the elections when white people feared attacks from blacks and coloureds. Even now, though theirs is a mixed neighbourhood, the fear remains. It is fear of the violent poor, but here poverty is overwhelmingly related to colour.

On a short drive into Soweto we saw the tin shacks of a squatter-town and the concrete sheds making up workers' dormitories. I wasn't aware before coming here that South Africa was still such an impoverished, segregated country, clearly developing very slowly, especially in terms of the vast and widening differences between blacks, coloureds and whites in maternal mortality, infant and childhood mortality and rates of tuberculosis. What is shocking is that economically South Africa is doing well, though in terms of health it is moving backwards, lagging behind many other African countries. We should take note of this in the UK as we move away from a universal standard of healthcare towards a South African system of different tiers and standards of care for the poor and the wealthy.

In Soweto we visited the Hector Pieterson Museum, a memorial to the 13 year old boy who was shot dead by police in 1976 during a protest by school-children about the forced teaching of subjects in the Afrikaans language. His accidental death, albeit in the line of police fire, was the spark that set off the civil uprising in the city and beyond. The museum is at the end of the same street where Nelson Mandela used to live and Desmond Tutu still does. London is gearing up for a summer of discontent and an enormous march in London on 26.3.2011 is planned shortly after our return. There are calls for protests as radical as industrial action by doctors and a general strike. When I announced that I wanted to join the march, Henry said, 'what's the point, it's not going to change anything'. Aside from Henry's natural pessimism, he has a point: the death of a child, not the marching of children was the spark which triggered the uprising here, and the underlying discontent and suffering were the fuel that sustained the fire of protest. It makes me wonder whether significant change is likely in the UK, where the threats are of future rather than present suffering. Suffering comes from exclusion. In South Africa it was and remains primarily exclusion on racial grounds, but in South Africa and the rest of the world, the dividing lines are increasingly less to do with race or religion than they are to do with poverty. At home there will be exclusion from healthcare, education, housing, employment and so on, all long assumed rights. These exclusions will be the fuel for the protests, but as yet there is not, nor is there likely to be, anything like the actual suffering people have had here. We will probably need our own spark as well.

In Kimberly, the regional capital of the Karoo, where we met with Tom and Emma, we visited the De Beers-owned museum at the Big Hole diamond mine (1871-1920). As a tourist award-winning attraction it has a movie theatre, an underground re-creation of the mining tunnels, a history of diamonds and a quote from Za Za Gaboor, 'I've never hated any man enough to give back my diamonds'. In the book I've read while I've been here, Cry, the beloved country by Alan Paton, written in 1948, one of the black characters, John explains, 'South Africa is not built on the mines, it is built on our backs, on our sweat, on our labour'. 'For three shillings a day ... we live in the compounds, we must leave our wives and families behind. And when the new gold is found, it is not we who will get more for our labour. It is the white man's shares that will rise, you will read it in all the papers.' Later in the book a white South African explains from his perspective, 'There wouldn't be any South Africa at all if it wasn't for the mines' ... 'if mining costs go up much more there won't be any mines, and where will South Africa be then? And where would the natives be themselves? They'd die by the thousands of starvation.' The novel brings up the dilemmas of the white man Jarvis who cannot find any moral justification for allowing blacks to suffer so much in the pursuit of wealth, whilst social progress is subordinated, 'It is permissible to develop any resources if the labour is forthcoming. But it is not permissible to develop any resources if they can be developed only at the cost of the labour. It is not permissible to mine any gold, or manufacture any product, or cultivate any land, if such mining and manufacture and cultivation depend for their success on a policy of keeping labour poor. It isn't permissible to add to one's possessions if these things can only be won at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.'

We are staying in De Aar, a town of 45,000 which used to be the rail crossroads of the Karoo. Passenger trains would go frequently to Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Namibia. From where we are relaxing in the rectory of St Thomas' anglican church we can see the decaying ruins of the rail junction where steel sculptures are now industrial supports for wild plants and perches for birds. It is reminiscent of some impoverished Texan towns we drove through in 2009 with the pot-holed roads and crumbling pavements, intimidating edge-of-town liquor stores stocked with cheap spirits for the poor, beer for the better off and unlabelled gallon containers for the very poor. Here was the first liquor store I had shopped at where the cheap brandy selection exceeded the entire wine selection of four bottles by about 10:1. This is a town where drinking is a means to an intoxicated end which is why it has the highest incidence of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) in the Karoo. The barmaid in Pringles, the main pub in town, was wearing a FAS T-shirt and explained that it was illegal to serve alcohol to anyone who might be pregnant. She looked visibly anxious when Laura revealed her 33 week bump as she sipped a Castle Light she had been served earlier.

There is a gap in the market for beer with flavour. I suggested to Bongani that he could import ales from Brewdog, the brewery in which I have a tiny financial interest, to break the mass produced fizzy lager monopoly here.

This town, De Aar, has its share of barbed wire, more decorative than protective in the poor, coloured neighbourhood I strolled around this morning. People were friendly and children lined up in order of size to be photographed. A drunk put his arm around my shoulder and his sober colleague called him away, explaining that the drunkard was supposed to be working for him, but now he had to hire someone more capable. Perhaps it was the iconic visibility of a Leica dangling around my neck that made people instantly recognise that I was carrying a camera and ask me (as they so often do in very poor places) to take their picture. Only one person asked to see the picture on the back of the camera, perhaps people here are afraid to ask, or perhaps they are unused to digital cameras or tourists. De Aar isn't a tourist town. A white farmer who was training for his annual water-polo championship in the olympic-size swimming pool which is crumbling like the railway and green as the Serpentine, was perplexed as to why anyone would come here unless they had to. He thrashed me in a series of ten 25 meter sprints, and looked slightly disappointed that the first sign of a training partner in months wasn't much competition for a farmer, cum competitive water-polo player with a lake in his back yard and a 50m pool in his nearest town.

One of the most decorated homes I photographed this morning was at 84 Wentworth St adjacent to where we're staying with Emma and Tom in the coloured part of town. Coloured is a label for people who are neither black nor white, and from many perspectives, economic, education, health etc they are more disadvantaged that people labelled black. Wentworth street has on its west side a series of crumbly breeze-block bungalows interspersed with rickety tin shacks. The owner had yellow stars hammered out of oil cans fixed into his barbed-wire fence. The corrogated steel that made up the walls and roof of his ramshackle home had a beautiful patina of faded, peeling paint, rust, flowers and flags growing up and over it. He introduced himself as Mr W.J. Muller, and was surrounded by his six children, as thin and muddied, shy and curious as any I've seen on my travels to India, Nepal or Afghanistan. He asked me to come in to his tiny garden and photograph his children with his menagerie. There was a pair of ducks and some ducklings, some chickens and a couple of rabbits in a tiny muddy yard. I asked if I could bring Billy around later on to meet them all and he happily invited us.

By contrast the white side of town, no longer either exclusively white, nor exclusively wealthy, though there are no whites in the black and coloured areas, has wide avenues of brick and stone built houses with some beautiful gardens. There are some exceptional properties, some dating from the 30s or 40s and some quite new. Others only a couple of plots away that have fallen into ruin.The municipal swimming pool to which we returned today was built in 1974 and like the tennis courts and the stadium it has fallen into disrepair since the 1994 elections. As we swam in the green water this afternoon, a member of staff poured in a couple of gallons of liquid from plastic containers labelled hydrochloric acid, 'to purify the water', in the shallow end, right next to where we swam with Billy. A couple of hours later we're not suffering, the gurgling from our bellys has more to do with the excessively meaty diet than the pool water.

Mr M said with a smile, as Laura, Billy, Emma and I arrived, 'this never happens, we never have visitors like this here'. Billy was a wonderful bridge between the families. As is usually the case when lots of children grow up together, they were confident and delighted to take care of him. He was introduced to the ducklings, rabbit, chickens and kitten and very quickly lost his initial shyness. I'm sure if we were staying longer he would make some friends here. He was completely lost in excitement when the 12y old neice of Mr Willy J Muller gave him a duckling to hold. He beamed at the crowd of about a dozen children who squeezed up against the fence in the tiny back yard to watch him.

Tomorrow we're heading for the coast. We're more relaxed than we have been for months after 3 days relaxing with Emma and Tom. Billy is completely at home with them, full of energy and affection. He can point to an elephant, a zebra and a lion with roughly the same degree of accuracy as a baby monkey which reminds us that we're fundamentally all from the same place. We're looking forward to seeing real wildlife in Addo and the sea in Cape St Francis in a couple of days.

(E: I have lovely photos I want to upload but the signal is once agin so poor that I have had to give up - again.)

Into the wild Karoo

After Sunday's service at Philipstown we were taken for lunch to a farm about 8km from the small town, to the home of one of the lay ministers Frank and his wife Esther. He is manager of a vast white-owned farm which includes game shooting (just allowed in June we think). They gave us a delicious lunch with lamb that was both tender and tasty, as opposed to sheep which is more common! Also a lasagne made with macaroni, corn-on the cob, very much in season and delicious, pumpkin, carrots, and rice. Frank had made the pasta dish as well as a malva pudding, which is a treat not unlike sticky toffee pudding, served with proper homemade custard.

The road to the farm was unmade, one section across a river had been washed out by floods and so a different route out of town had to be used, and with 5 of us in our Polo Golf the steep bumpy section was a little hairy. Charlotte's daughter came with us, as Charlotte was on a weekend away with her school at a nature reserve. Maranda was delightful and told us how after training to be a teacher she hoped to move on to run her own businesses, so as to have an income more often tham once a month! We wished her good luck. and drove ourselves home on a new route via Hanover, a detour of something like 60km which the lads wanted to do. Unlike on a similar outing with the sisters when we had seen blue crane, bustard etc we only saw storks but the scenery is a joy with all the grasses swaying in the breeze, virtually ungrazed and untrodden as the land in drought times supports few animals..

On the following day we decided to see if we could find Sterkaar as Alastair had found references to Anglican services being held there in the past. It involved another drive out into the wild Karoo, along an unmade road to the south of De Aar, following the railway line towards Cape Town. We saw no trains in the 3-4 hours we were out but passed lots of what had been railway stops, still marked but with only the remains of small houses around.Sadly the railway line is so little used that small halts to pick up or drop farm workers no longer exist. The passenger trains from Joburg to Cape Twon go through De Aar in the middle of the night and most wagons seem to go on the E-W line between Namibia and Port Elizabeth. Some wagons do use this route: Alastair had seen a wagon derailment as he came back from CT, which had closed the rail system completely for a good week or more.

We enjoyed the scenery with its mountains and plains and the occasional field of huge prickly pear (cacti used in times of drought, minced up with lucerne to feed stock) and sightings of various bok as well as a few cattle and sheep.The huge skies are wonderful with white puffy clouds building up in places, resulting eventually in a storm later in the day somewhere.

I had in my mind that I had read that there was an Anglo Boer War cemetery at a stop called Deelfontein and sure enough as we got there on our bumpy road we saw across the rail tracks a large late Victorian building and the remains of several others as well as what had been a proper platform. We drove into the long grass to inspect and getting out found a huge arch saying Yeomanry. The painted-white stones on the hill above said IYH which in the end we realized meant Infantry Yeomanry Hospital. Along the road out of the village was the war cemetery with well over 100 iron crosses, all recently repainted and the area free of weeds, kept up by the a War Graves Commission we supposed. The railway must have brought wounded soldiers to this out of the way hospital – but De Aar was barely begun then so everywhere was out of the way.

(Sorry, our photos are not yet downloaded and we left the connecting wire back home- writing this on the way to Lesotho)

Not a soul was around, other than a railway worker who we saw checking signals. And how recently anyone had visited we wondered, did British families realise their loved ones had been buried out here in the wild Karoo? It was all rather surreal. Alastair was keen to press on towards Sterkaar but we were anxious not to scrape the bottom of our hire car as no road of any sort was marked on the map and we turned round and returned. All very fascinating though!

On Monday early evening we were invited to the FAS house to hear Professor Denis Viljoen from Cape Town University speak about his research and work with those affected by Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. He was visitng for the week to assess babies for FAS. In his view the problems of alcohol in S Africa are as great as those from HIV/Aids and one in ten in the world have alcohol problems he says. FAS is the most common preventable cause of mental retardation. He is now on some UK committee and has presented his findings to WHO; they are soon to be published and we are interested to see if it becomes more widely talked about in the UK. We were pretty much ignorant. I won't continue with the details of the lecture but it was certainly very interesting and his work in helping to get the message out into the community is showing encouraging results.

We had a visit to the health clinic serving our area, shown round by Sister Kathy, wife of Father Joseph. She, one other nurse and a young doctor from the DRCongo see 3000 visits a month, with some admin staff and hopelessly inadequate buildings. A new larger clinic has been opened in Nonzwakazi to serve fewer people, leading to some envy. There is no room for use as a pharmacy, only metal cabinets, and to avoid cross infection TB patients are given their injections in a permanently parked van outside, wedged in by two concrete toilet blocks to prevent it being driven away. This adds to the stigmatisation of patients. Attendance at the clinic is free so people use it for the slightest thing – a common problem at home I imagine – and HIV patients come monthly for free ARV medication (anti-retroviral).

The week included its usual frustrations or tensions, some rather too sensitive to be aired on a blog! On Saturday the fund-raising parish breakfast had only had a few tables filled as some people collected their ordered breakfasts. Later that day after Tom had (happily) watched many hours of sport on TV, I was dying to get out to see a film or go to a concert: impossible, nothing ever happens! We had had a meal out in an english style pub the previous evening and the steaks were to die for! And cheap, so we must return.

One morning a young woman came asking about the Anglican church. She had moved to De Aar before Christmas from Cape Town to live with her boyfriend's mother. She was sharing a bed with 4 others! Neither had jobs; she felt obliged to attend the mother's church but she was brought up speaking English and struggled to understand the scriptures or discussion in Afrikaans.She was desperately lonely and longed for Anglican worship. We were very easily able to understand her frustrations and loneliness – and we have the benefit of a car and are able to get out of town. She did appear at St Thomas' on Sunday but I rather doubt she will stay in the town long, if she can find the promise of a job in Joburg. We were able to tell her where to find internet access at a cafe.

And we will only be here for another two months.

Meanwhile we have the promise of seeing Laura, Jonathon, Billy and Henry next week, and this weekend of getting to Lesotho.

Parish update

I feel that I am a little behind Emma in keping you informed of what is going on in the life of the parish. I am glad to say that things have picked up and although there are still times when we are not sure why we are here there are now plenty of occasions when it seems we are making some kind of impact. It has been slow coming but that is the way things happen here.

So the two Bishops came and went (see Blog ) and there was a chance of what seemed to be peace breaking out. Two funerals the next Saturday (one at 8am and the other at 10am) meant that the week of Emma's birthday and her sisters' visit was also time when the homes of the deceased had to be visited almost daily for prayers and a requiem mass held on the Friday evening. One of the people who died was a old lady to whom we had been taking Communion every week. She was a staunch Anglican, often winning the award for the most money raised at the annual bazaar, and it was quite beautiful that only a fw minutes after we had anointed her she died peacefully at the age of 92. We had a good funeral for her with the Mothers Union in full force. But this was followed by the funeral of someone called Paul, who was only 39 and had a wife and two children. Paul was a police officer and a member of the church council so this was a huge occasion. He had had emergency surgery on a stomach problem but then died of a heart attack. All a little mysterious but I guess we shall never know the exact circumstances of his death. Paul was a delightful man, quiet and humble, and it is a big tragedy for his wife and family. The funeral was enormous with hundreds packing the church and many more outside. The local police force came to make it a semi-military occasion but the police chaplain was very understanding and cooperated well with us at St. Thomas. So that was quite an occasion and gave us another inside look at how they do “death” in South Africa. Part of me feels that they have it better than us with our uptight and sterile type of crematorium services.

Sunday the 13^th was the day of our Parish vestry meeting (or as we call it the Annual Parish Church Meeting). This was to take place within the Parish Eucharist instead of a sermon. There were reports from Fr. Joseph, a churchwarden and the treasurer. All these seemed to go on for ages. It did not help us that they were all in Afrikaans (our abiding problem!). Following that there was some quite heated discussion about a number of things before we had the elections. This seemed chaotic but eventually the meeting succeeded in electing its churchwardens and council for this year. But it all took a very long time and having started at 8am the service did not end until way after 11am. All this time several young children and even teenagers sat through it all. I cannot believe that would happen in our churches. So we have one new churchwarden and several new members of the council and it feels a little as though the younger members of the congregation are getting a little impatient with their elders who seem to have a long history of in-fighting. Whether that is true or not I do not know but we hope for a more cohesive working unit.

We had three more visitors on Monday (14^th) and Tuesday (15^th). Charlotte Bannister-Parker who is the Bishop of Oxford's Officer for Foreign Programmes came with the Diocesan Communications Director, Sarah Meyrick and Sarah's daughter Imogen, who is doing part of her gap year teaching at St. Cyprian's School in Kimberley. It was a great visit and it was a delight having them. Charlotte filled us in with what is happening in others parts of the K and K diocese and how certain projects that have Oxford diocesan input are proceeding... or not. It was fortuitious that as we were sitting out under our vine sipping gin and tonic, first Fr. Joseph and then Eugene (churchwarden) arrived and we had a most helpful and enlightening discussion which helped fill in for us some of the background to our visit. It would be wrong to report what was said but it was very useful for us all in getting the full picture. Perhaps Sarah will write something about it in the Door (Oxford Diocesan magazine).

Today we had another bit of a breakthrough. During our talks with Lian, the lovely person who runs the Foetal Alcohol Syndrome unit, she said that she wanted to get the clergy of De Aar together to see whether she could get some support from the churches. She and I invited some of the clergy to a meeting and that happened this morning (Friday 18^th). It was a great success with about seven clergy present and we agreed to meet again in March. No such thing as a Churches Together in De Aar and the clergy never meet. This is typical of how much this town is behind the times. All the clergy thought that it was a good idea to meet together regularly so perhaps I have started something that will really benefit the town. There are so many problems that face De Aar and its people that the churches really do need to get their act together and start supporting those who are trying to make it a better place.

The Pink House

I promised to write a bit more about the sisters' stay as some interesting contacts were made which we hope to take into the future weeks. One involves the Pink House which we see in the distance across some rough ground from our house. It is unusual not so much for its smart pink paint as for being a two storey house in a grassy area near the railway land. Its proper name is the Joan Wertheim House, often referred to as FASS, meaning Foetal Alchol Spectrum Syndrome. We have looked at it from the outside but it was always shut and for many weeks over the holidays nothing was happening there.

Our contact at the Rotary Club in De Aar invited us to come along to the house to meet an American Episcopalian and Rotarian, Jonathan Warner. He was visitng to fund a training programme to encourage community workers in their undertanding of alcohol abuse which is very widespread here.Jonathan is an interesting man with a great passion for South Africa. We knew his name from the Anglican Church at Richmond as along with many other ventures in this town he has helped them through a charity called "Hope in South Africa" (see "hopeinsouthafrica.com"). We found Jonathan to be a kindred spirit (Anglican, Rotarian, love of South Africa etc.) and hope that through this chance meeting we might be able to form a link that will prove beneficial to all concerned.

Along with Sarah, Nicola and Sophie, we were invited to be present at a meeting between some Rotarians and the person called Lian who runs the Pink House. She will provide the training over a 3 day period in March for community leaders in De Aar, Richmond and Colesberg, as part of a programme designed to take the message about the dangers of drinking during pregnancy and breastfeeding to the target audience of young women across the social spectrum. It was fascinating to listen in and learn about the work being done as well as to hear how the levels of damage by alcohol to newborn babies has declined significantly since the work here began. FARR is the Foundation for Alchol Related Research, based in Cape Town, and De Aar was chosen as the levels of drinking have been found to be higher here than even in a wine-growing area such as Upington.

The day to day work of the house involves bringing pregnant women there once a month, following them up after they have checked into the usual clinics. The message not to drink is put over and they are given a meal and some counselling. Lian has two assistants but has lost one who had a driving licence so she spends up to four hours a day ferrying the women there and back. Today Alastair signed up to assist with driving and I had my first afternoon session playing with children who come in after school because they are hungry and know there is a meal waiting. Then they have an hour's play and I was able to play things like picture dominoes with small groups of children. Little language is required. I was surprised how well quite small girls were at counting and simple phrases in english. They seemed to enjoy our games and I certainly did, as contact with small people is something I have missed a lot. Contact with anyone, really!

Of course what we hope to do is to interest one or two people in our church community to do it with us or at least take over helping when we leave. At the moment there seems to be no link in spite of being so close to us. One lovely couple here used to be involved in the early days of the House but have moved on.

On Friday there is to be a meeting with as many of the mainstream church leaders as Lian and Tom between them can contact. There is no such things as Churches Together in De Aar that we can discern and Lian wants to impress on church leaders the importance of trying to support young women in abstaining from alcohol. For heavy drinkers it is not an easy thing. Interestingly she has said it is easy to get the message over and women are keen to try; churches are about the only place they might get support in their efforts. Lian spoke of the common feeling of hopelessness in De Aar, very much to do with unemployment and a decline in the town's economy as the railway system collapsed.

Another thing we sisters did last week was to make contact with someone on a tourist leaflet, described as a maker of musical instruments.and African drums. Sam Mooi met us at a tin shack workshop in Nonzwakazi, the black area on the edge of De Aar. Using recycled materials he makes marimbas or more strictly karimbas, which interested Nicola as she has a grand-daughter who plays the marimba in Germany. Sam cunningly used wood from a cable drum or the struts from a bed base. His drum sticks were the rubber from car shock absorbers fixed on an old chair leg or plastic toothbrush! He was a delightful character, very keen to explain and gently demonstrate drumming to tradtional songs from his Khosa background, as well as to explain his family's and the town's history. Since the only book we have so far found is in Afrikaans I found this very helpful.Sophie proudly left with a sizeable karimba to take back to Joburg for Bongani, despite the fact that the others were doubtful they would all fit in their little hire car.

So their visit combined some lovely times together, with enjoyment of the natural environment as well as social opportunities. And of course the big treat was having them here for my birthday which made it a very happy day. They did all the catering and we celebrated with a swim and dinner at the Trans-Karoo Lodge in Britstown. We all slept there and in the morning they drove off north to Kimberley and Johannesburg and we returned home. My fragile state was helped by finding lovely things waiting in our PO Box. Thank you.