Our Initial experiences in Uganda

We are writing this on our second night in Kisoro. Outside we can hear the thunder and lightning of our first tropical thunderstorm. The annual rains only started the day we arrived here so maybe we brought them with us from England!!! If so the villagers are delighted as they have been desperate for rain so they can begin sowing crops for next years harvest. We are also writing this by the light of a candle as we experience the third power cut in 24 hours to – a regular feature we will have to get used to.

We are very happy that following a lot of hard work by the Diocese staff the house has been ready to move in to. The accommodation is basic and adequate – and there is plumbing ‘In’ and plumbing ’out’ to the shower room. Further work will be needed to convert a room to a kitchen and to provide hot water. At present we have the loan of a Baby Belling type hob and furniture.

Unfortunately, because our flight was late, we missed our connection in Nairobi, and arrived in Rwanda, the nearest airport to Kisoro, over 5 hours late. This was long enough for the staff here to get extremely concerned that something terrible may have happened to us en route, for the Bishop to be interrupted part way though conducting 2 weddings and a funeral, and for urgent phone calls to be made to England. We felt guilty that we hadn’t found a way during our journey of letting our hosts know that we would be late.

We have arrived at a busy time for the Diocese as 2nd September is the start of a 4 day ‘Convention’. These large Missions are held every 10 years or so, and attract several thousand visitors (10,000?) from across Uganda and other countries, including the Archbishop and many Bishops. We imagine this will be like a ‘Spring Harvest’ or ‘New Wine’ but with most of the meetings in the open air. Although there is rejoicing that the rains have come, there is also prayer that they won’t be too heavy during the convention.

The local CMS Mission partner is Jenny Green who has lived here for about 15 years, and is responsible for the Diocese’s Children’s work. Her main project is the Potters Village Children’s Home which looks after abandoned or orphaned children, and young single mothers. She has three children, Issie, Hannah and Joseph and is currently looking after a baby, Joanne, until she is strong enough to be cared for at the Potters Village.

Prayer:
We thank God for:
- The hospitality and generosity of churches, family and friends in England during our last weeks in saying farewell to us and providing somewhere to sleep
- our safe arrival, and that all our luggage arrived with us
- for the way we have been made to feel welcome here by the Bishop, Jenny’s family and Diocese staff
- that the rains have arrived

We pray for the coming month, that:
- we are able to make our basic house into a home
- we find our way about the Town, and begin to adjust to the new culture
- we can a learn few words of the local language
- we can find out the work that God wants us to do here so we can help the mission of the local church, and so that we grow spiritually


In addition to this occasional ‘serious’ item we also plan to keep a weekly blog to describe some of our experiences here. You can find it by searching on the Internet for ‘Malcolm and Irene Crawford’

Where's the Crawfords?

Sometimes luggage gets lost on a flight. Unfortunately there was concern that we had got lost between London and Uganda. The driver had turned up at Kigali airport at the right time – but we didn’t arrive. He came back to meet the next flight – still we weren’t there. Emergency calls were made to the Kisoro, and even though the Bishop was busy conducting 2 weddings and a funeral (a good name for a film, maybe) he was interrupted to be told of our disappearance. Phone calls were made to CMS in England. Where are the Crawford’s? Not here. Beijing? Majorca? Manchester? Florida?

Nothing so dramatic. Our first flight from Heathrow to Nairobi was 1.5hrs late, and we had missed our connection. We were put on a later flight, but unfortunately this took the longer route first stopping at Burundi, before flying on to Kigali in Rwanda. This made us almost 6 hours late. Not a good way to start. Must do better.

We have been made most welcome here. A lot of work has been done by the staff of the Diocese to prepare a house for us. The garage has been converted to make a new lounge, and plumbing has been installed to the shower room and toilet. Unfortunately, the first time the new toilet was used by one of us, (guess who!) the seat broke. More work is needed to convert a spare bedroom to a kitchen (install a sink and buy a cooker, fridge etc) and to provide hot water as Irene is not too keen on a cold shower, but we have plenty of time to do this. (No we haven’t, says Irene)

On our first evening we were invited to a meal with the Bishop, his wife and other staff from the Diocese. The menu was a beef stew with potatoes, pasta, beans and spinach – delicious after airline food. So far we have not had to cook any meals as the Mission Partner here, Jenny Green is being very kind to us. She lives up quite a steep hill with her three children, Issie, Hannah and Joseph, a friend, Peace and baby Joanna who almost died when born and has needed a lot of care to get strength – and who looks now extremely ‘bouncing’ – especially in her bouncy chair. We have also had the company of Ian, a visitor from Cumbria who has come on holiday for a few days

On Sunday we attended our first service at the Cathedral – we chose to attend the shorter, 1 ½ hour English speaking service rather than the 3 hour local language one, as we thought we needed to get our breath back first after our journey here.

This will be a week of settling in, but with its share of excitement. The Diocese is holding a Convention, of several thousand people from across Uganda and elsewhere in Africa. This is only held once every 10 years or so, and speakers are coming from England and the USA, as well as the Archbishop of Uganda. In fact, today (Monday) Malcolm has been asked to paint the veranda outside the house where the Archbishop is staying – but as he will also be fed as a reward he is most pleased to do so:

So what has the next week promise:
- Malcolm getting into trouble by ruining his best clothes with paint?
- Visiting the town to get some money and to buy essentials such as Internet and mobile phone access, food, cooking utensils etc?
- The arrival of thousand of visitors for the Convention?
- Trying to learn some of the Local language, especially ‘I don’t know where the …… is – I’m new here too’

Here we go again, happy as can be?

A lot has happened in the last 10 months since we arrived back from Tanzania. To cut a long story short, this Friday (27th August) we fly out to South West Uganda, to spend 2 years working as volunteers for the Diocese of Muhabura based in Kisoro.

Malcolm has been asked to be the Diocese ‘Estates Manager and Internal Auditor’. This is a bit of a challenge as he has never been an Estate Manager, but is content that his primary concern will be to get best value from the Diocesan property. Incidentally, its several years since he did Internal Audit – about time he got his hands dirty again!!!

Irene has been asked to help students at the Vocational Training Centre to set up small businesses, and to assist at the orphanage to teach mothers how to encourage their babies to be inquisitive – a skill they tend to lose when they spend most of their day on their mother’s back whilst she is busy working. Again, the VTC will be a new challenge , though she has been refreshing her baby rearing skills when visiting our two grandsons (and has therefore already got her hands dirty again).

But, returning to the long story, the ‘highlights’ of the last 10 months have been:

- acceptance by CMS as short term mission support ‘thingies’ (as Malcolm calls us)
- the engagement of our eldest son, David, to Sarah
- the birthday parties of our two grandsons Jonah (2) and Thomas (1)
- the news that our daughter is expecting a second child (our 3rd grandchild) in December
- visiting lots of friends and family and burning up the miles in our car
- the wedding of our niece last December during the start of the bad winter weather

- Irene's mother's 90th birthday
- the death of Malcolm’s mother, sorting out her estate, buying her bungalow
- consolidating from various stores all our belongings, and preparing the bungalow for letting

What will next year bring?

We understand Kisoro is a town in a beautiful area, nestling high up amongst extinct (we hope!) volcanoes and popular with tourists for the nature reserves (mountain gorillas) and ‘impenetrable forest’ (not much point going there then? Or is there?). In the 1930’s it was in the area where the Rwanda Christian revival occurred, but more recently has suffered from the influx of refugees from conflicts in Rwanda and DR Congo (formerly Zaire). Currently the latter is still a country where visitors are advised not to go. In Rwanda you get Gorillas – in DR Congo you get Guerrillas!!!!

We will be coming back for 2 breaks in 2011 – the first in January for 2 weeks for the wedding of our son, David, and a longer 3 month break over Christmas and to celebrate 4 birthdays!!

And so, we are almost packed with clothes, basic cooking implements, computers and 2 kg (yes, 2kg) of Cadbury’s chocolate. This is not for us, but for the Mission Partner, Jenny Green, to give pieces to the children at the orphanage (though it might be drinking chocolate by the time we arrive)

As ever, tune in next week to find out:
- do we arrive in Kisoro, and is there Internet access to update this blog?
- are our clothes one molten chocolate mess?
- Does our house have plumbing in, and is there plumbing out?


PS Rumours that we are leaving the country simply before our appearance in ‘To Buy or Not to Buy’ on BBC1 are purely coincidental .

We are only Tourists here.

It seems strange being mere tourists, doing touristy things in Africa.

We remember learning at school about the many battles that the British fought here in the 19th century against the Zulus and Boers, and we had the chance to visit some of the Battlefields over a long weekend. Probably the best known battle was the subject of Michael Caine’s first film, Zulu , which was about the defence of the Rorke’s Drift Mission station in 1879. Not only was this of interest from a historical perspective (when about 100 British (mainly Welsh) soldiers held out against 4000 Zulus), but the site and original mud brick buildings might also have been similar to the first Mission station established in 1900 at Mvumi – out in the wilds of African countryside, miles from any other buildings other than scattered native huts. Unlike today when Mvumi has grown to a village of 12,000 or more people.

The defence of Rorkes Drift immediately followed the massacre of 1,000 British (mainly Welsh) troops at Isandlwana, about 9 miles away (the subject of a later film, Zulu Dawn). Our guide, Foy, explained the history of the war, which was initiated by the British in order to conquer territory. The Zulu king did all he could to prevent it and never understood why his friends, the British, wanted to fight.

Apart from that we are mainly lazying around. Malcolm has been working on some DVD’s including a video of the service at St Andrew’s Church on 4th October which he has posted on YouTube. It can be found by searching for ‘the crawford clan’ or by URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjXmZX3zCmE

On Sunday we return to Tanzania prior to preparing to return to England.

Farewells

Again – two blogs for the price of one.

It has been a hectic week packing up and saying farewell. One exciting piece of news was that our church in Chesham had raised at their harvest supper an enormous sum for the Hunger Fund here. Although wonderful it did give us the problem of how to get the money out of Dodoma’s ATMs before we leave and what to do with it, We felt the best thing would be to use half to distribute through the Anglican Churches in Mvumi, by increasing the number of families supported each month by 38, and by extending the support until June next year. The remainder we have asked to go to the Diocese Secondary School to help the poor families of children at the school who are sponsored because they are intelligent but don’t have money to pay secondary school fees.

To mark our departure from Mvumi our church invited us to a special meal after the Sunday service. Because a lot of money has already we past few months for the Hunger Fund and to complete the building we left small sums for each of the choirs and Sunday School, plus a cloth for the altar.

Our friends invited us to a farewell meal at the Dodoma Hotel on Sunday. This included a cake with the inscription ‘Thanks for all the fish’ which is a reference from ‘the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ which had to be explained to some.

And then we left on the next leg – the 8 hour coach ride to Dar es Salaam with our six suitcases and other various bags. Will we all arrive safely in England……….?

A Different World?????

If our operatic society were putting on a concert then there would be weeks of rehearsals, and at least one run through before the performance – but nor so in Tanzania. As we wrote last week, having seen a video of their performance in our house, the Mamajus Kwaya asked if they could come again the next Saturday to have not one, but 9 more songs videoed.

Naively Malcolm thought this would just be a run through in the house similar to the previous time. Not so. These were highly choreographed productions using the features of our garden including the child’s climbing frame. The nine songs were completed one after the other without a pause, to a backing tape they had produced themselves a few weeks earlier. And all this without a run through in the garden. It was difficult for Malcolm to keep track of what was going on.

Now all he has to do is produce some DVD’s.

On Sunday we began the long journey via Dodoma and Dar es Salaam to Pretoria for a holiday with Malcolm’s sister, Helen and Partner Chris. She started work at the British Consulate about 3 months ago. Some things are familiar in Africa. The way that as we left the plane to walk the long corridors to find our baggage, at one point we passed a group of 6 staff idly chatting to walk down a corridor to meet other passengers coming towards us as the door at the end was locked so they assumed we’d gone the wrong way – but it was simply the staff had forgotten to unlock the door. This is Africa!

Pretoria in many ways is like England. The weather is temperate, as they move from spring to summer. The grass is green and the buildings are smart and European. However, we have been warned that it is not as safe here as in Europe or Tanzania with concerns about mugging. Helens house is in a gated compound with guards and electric fences. An automated finger print reader is used to allow people in or out – as neither of us are registered in effect we are locked in!!!!!
We went for a trip on a ‘Hop on, Hop off’ tour bus that passes some of the tourist’s spots in Pretoria. This was billed as having a ‘Professional Tour Guide’ to explain the history of Pretoria. Unfortunately the bus was 20 minutes late and there was no tour guide but simply western pop music. However, the ticket was only £5 so it was good value and we were almost the only customers. We visited the Parliament building and the monument celebrating the first Dutch trekkers who traveled by ox-wagon train into the interior of South Africa to found states such as the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

Next week we plan a few days visiting battlefields near Ladysmith and Rourkes Drift before returning to Tanzania on Sunday.

Homeward Bound?

Two blogs for the price of one this week!!

This weekend we start of long journey back to England. The Hospital hade a farewell lunch for us on Thursday, when we were presented with a kanga and some material for Malcolm to have a shirt made – though we might find a better use for it as it is a bit bright for Western fashion, and Malcolm is known fro his sartorial taste!!!!! Ir ene has spent most of the week packing up. What we are not taking back to England, or a few item we are leaving in case we return to Tanzania, we have given to friends or our house workers.

When a ‘mzungu’ leaves a common experience is to have a long series of visitors who come to say goodbye – which is very nice. Unfortunately it is also their last opportunity to ask for money so it does get a bit wearing as they don’t realize that although that is normal for their own culture, for westerners it feels like all they want is our money. Hey ho – you get used to it.
When Dr Corrie left a few weeks ago she did the sensible thing. For the last 2 or 3 weeks she only did limited work at the Hospital because the other staff would have to cope when she left, so it was better if they coped whilst she was there to help.

Did Malcolm do the sensible thing? Did he heck!

Whenever he leaves a job he always tries to do lots of things at the end. In addition to sorting out the accounts of the Eye Department, answering auditors queries, sorting out PAYE annual returns, leaving notes on what to do when the September payroll is received from Government (which has not arrived yet), write a final report on action taken for the Medical Officer in Charge and a host of other things he was also pleased to do some work on a system for the Secondary School accounts and payroll. Still, he thinks he has dealt with everything.

After a farewell at our church, St Andrews, on Sunday we go to Dodsoma for the evening and a meal with friends at the Dodoma Hotel. Monday a 600km coach ride to dare s Salaam and on Tuesday we fly to Johannesburg for the 60km drive to Pretoria.We might be on our way back to England – but its in the wrong direction!