Slow internet access and a series of house moves has delayed this post – so this is an omnibus, assembled over several days.
The last fortnight has certainly seen quite a range of new experiences. Lucy tasted the better side of ex-pat life when she sampled an art class in a beautiful house and garden overlooking Lake Victoria. A fabulous exotic lily was plucked from the border and positioned for a group of them to paint. Amidst interesting chatter about books, life in Uganda and previous lives led on tea, coffee and rubber plantations. Alastair, on the other hand sampled sleepover Ugandan style: BBQ, tents, wild games in the huge tropical garden and running around at 3am in torrential rain accompanied by the family Great Dane.
Saturday 12th for most of us was moving day and as it turned out for Peter, decorating day! We moved c into 3 buildings: boys in the Buttons house where Peter & I have our 1st breakfast of the day. Lucy sleeps top-to-toe with the eldest Adams daughter, Jane, next door to this. Peter & I are sleeping in the newly painted and ceilinged garden/school room at the top of the garden with our own African privy and outside basin. The call of nature never normally heard is always heard here by JoJo who on her first night had to wait for the rainstorm to stop, only to find a large wild dog hovering outside the door. We have had other late night visitors including a mini swarm of Safari ants (the ones that can eat a cow in 3 hours...). These people are incredibly kind to have their already stressful lives overtaken by the Ackroyd hoards, for 7 nights!
Living higher up the hillside now we got to see red-tail monkeys stealing fruit from the garden here and frolicking with black monkeys only a few meters away. Mongooses busied themselves in the evenings foraging for snakes eggs and other delights. The noise is extraordinary from about 4 or 5am onwards: Muslim call to prayer, cockerels, and raucous squawking Hadada Ibises, Plantain Eaters are the worst. During the day only the Adams children can dare to compete. Each of these children represent a well known stereotype in terms of speech. A daffy duck, John Wayne, Larry-boy from Vege-tales etc. They are all completely unselfconscious, articulate and relaxed in a range of company. They are very pumped up at the moment with the discovery that the gardener can make proper catapults with sticks and an inner tube that could kill things. Our boys are safely at school and have not cottoned on yet...
We moved on Sunday 20th to our final resting place where only this week large paw prints belonging to some kind of biggish cat (maybe a leopard or serval which is a little smaller) were found by the screen door which had also been damaged by it. Life is never dull! The family (Tom and Jean Froese, Elizabeth and Jonathan) who normally live here have returned to Canada for four months, leaving us not only the house but a pregnant cat, their charming maid Alice, and a catalogue of security arrangements to make the White House blush. We are gradually settling in and very relieved to be altogether under one roof and facing no more moves.
P’s lecturing career got off to an inauspicious start last week with a double-booked lecture hall (wall-less) and the absence of workbooks. I’m sure the 2 hours pass in moments for those hapless students. Beware St Mary’s, he could get used to this teaching approach. He is now on the second lecture (Mark’s gospel) and beginning to get into his stride. He is also looking after a weekly discipleship group of ordinands.
JoJo spent her week at the Adams trying to find a routine for her and Lucy but failing. The call of nothing is a powerful one and dipping in and out of domestic chores. The milkman come (bicycle and giant aluminium urm perch precariously on the back) and so it is time for Mrs Adams to bring out the large saucepan into which he scoops the daily amount which is taken to the stove and boiled gently. Later the thick semicongealed mass on top is carefully scraped off – the precious cream for a quiche or perhaps to accompany an apple or pineapple crumble. Generally the milk is sieved again once a day, to remove the unsightly blobs. Together with concrete work surfaces, it can feel like ones hit a WWII timewarp.
Since moving into the ‘Save the Mothers’ House (so named after the programme which Jean Froese runs at UCU), we are all getting used to yet another routine. Hopefully this will be the last!
Alastair and Tom are on a two-day half term this Thursday and Friday. We are taking two day trip to a tented island camp on the Nile, 50km north of Lake Victoria - the 'Hairy Lemon' - with our friends Jem and Lucy Hovill and their children. They have been in Uganda as Crosslinks associates - supported by (among other churches) Emmanuel Dundonald in Wimbledon for the last seven years. Jem works mainly with the Church of Uganda as a trainer - and Peter has been reading his doctoral thesis on theological education in church here, which is a fascinating insight into the stirring history and current challenge of Christian mission here.
