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.
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.
