Recent Goings-on

LATEST:

My day went like this: wake up and work feverishly on my preparations and Power Point presentations for the afternoon's class or for classes to follow. At 1.15pm walk down to the Rehab bus station where I would arrive in good time for the bus that left at 2pm for Cairo. Arrive in Cairo at about 2.20 to 2.25, depending on the traffic. Get off at the Merghany Bridge and try to cross the road.

The ‘road’ consists of four lanes in one direction and four in the other with a little island in the middle. Cairo's traffic system eliminates the need for intersections - almost no traffic lights. So the traffic flows fast and endlessly when it's not jammed. I got the hang of threading my way through to the other side but always nursed a secret dread that I would make a slip - and that would have been the end of me, especially after I was crossing a feeder road into the main road, hesitated and had a car clip my heel as it went past. I realised during the course of my teaching that English is an extraordinarily idiomatic language. We hardly ever say things literally. So before each class I used to share idioms or idiomatic expressions with the students culled from my recent experiences. On that day my idiom was: ‘He who hesitates is lost’. I followed it with: ‘Faint heart never won fair lady’ - though I was a bit dubious as to how my Muslim students might relate to that.

So having successfully negotiated the traffic I walked to work and arrived there at about 2.45pm with a quarter of an hour for setting up. 3-5 and 6-8 teaching and then repeating the process going home though no dangerous road crossings this time as the bus came back in a friendlier way and I was able to catch it not far up the road. One night however there was a breakdown and I think the driver was rushing and did not want to stop at any bus stops. When we flagged him down he did not pull over but stopped in the middle of the traffic. So with the traffic flowing past on either side of the bus like a river around a midstream boulder we boarded the bus - or rather let me say two others did and as I had just placed my hand on the rail at the rear entrance, the bus driver sped off. Luckily I was able to spring on in time and not fall to my death under the tyres of the passing cars! I screamed at the driver and everyone tittered because I screamed in English and they of course they spoke Arabic. Then I went up to him as he drove and all I could say was: "Haram! Haram!" [Wrong! Wrong!]" He paid no attention but somebody nearby said: "Malish" - meaning "Alright. Never mind."

Then I would arrive at the bus station by about 9pm and make my way back to the house, getting in before 10pm. I would have a cup of tea, eat, sleep and then at 6am wake up the family and get the boys up so that they did not miss their buses to school - which seems to have been a regular occurrence. Snatch a little more sleep when all quietened down and then the daily grind resumed. Saturday/Sunday meant a respite to catch up with my preparation - except when Gugu and Njabs were there - and that is another story for next time I have the energy and the time.

Amai is a having great success at the church in Mbare. The youth are flocking and she has started a Junior Service after the main service - fully subscribed. So that is three services in one day instead of two!

Other news - my old book, Theatre and Cultural Struggle in South Africa, is coming out in a new online edition, which I have updated a little. I was able to buy a scanner in the Rehab marketplace and felt a whole new world opening up but discovered when I got back that I could not trace my copies of Sketsh – and Thando couldn’t find them either in Egypt where I might have taken them. To my great relief I spotted them in a nondescript plastic back stashed away on top of the wardrobe!

Following on from our trip up Mount Sinai Amai and I have started a Bible Tour project. We are in the process of putting it together in cahoots with an Egyptian tour company. There will be an Egypt only tour and an Egypt/Jordan one too.

One rather tragic development is that the chicken run is almost empty. Eight lovely little chicks I had been nursing died apparently a day or so after Amai and I left for Egypt. Then when Amai was all alone no-one was really looking after them and so although I resumed doing that when I returned the cre started dying one by one. Not Newcastle - symptom is a twisted neck - but something called Marek's Disease, I think, The legs become paralysed. One showed the symptoms very early on. I isolated it and tried to give it an antibiotic. None of the others responded but it is alive today and its legs are working again. Did I tell you that previous to this, a cat or something got in and wiped out 7 youth [chicken, not human beings] during the night. So all in all we lost something like 27 birds.

Am feeling very fulfilled at the moment. Though we have to struggle to raise an inordinate amount to pay for the two boarders, I remain buoyant as life with Amai and my work is very nice and I am doing things I have wanted to do for years.

PAST EXPERIENCES

RETURN FROM EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA

Since I last wrote, I moved back to Zimbabwe. Why I have left the land of my birth after such a short sojourn and returned to the country I have lived in since 1984 is a story for another day.

In March this year I left for Egypt to do a job for my son-in-law in this marketing company,

Emerging Media Basically what I was a six-week course entitled "Language and Communication through Creative Drama". It was an interesting and a new experience working in a marketing company in Egypt but it turned out ver well in the end.

I am now back in my house in Harare and very glad to be so. On the way back I spent some four days in Addis Ababa, whjere I had once worked at the university.

My stay in Addis Ababa turned out to be as good as I could have hoped for. After some initial misgivings about delaying my return home by some days – after my long stay in Cairo I was just dying to get home – I am very glad I went. Lots of injera, invitations, a meeting with students at the university, ideas to get Ethiopia to start up a CHIPAWO-type organisation, wonderful chats with old friends – Abate Merkuria, the famous director, who directed me in the play Tewodros, Haimenot Alemu, the equally famous film-maker and theatre personality and Manyazewal Endeshaw, a student in my first year at the university, whom I had not seen since I left Ethiopia. We had a wonderful evening at his house, with so much to catch up on and a great idea to act on for the future – a site for African theatre artists with scripts, videos, article etc., something I had already discussed with others in South Africa. Ethiopian television even wanted me on one of their shows! And of course the Amharic all rushing back like sweet spring water.

Stayed in a cheap but very pleasant lodge which was so well situated that I went everywhere on foot. Much better than a hotel any day – like being in someone’s compound. Z Guest House)

MY FANTASTICAL TOUR TO VISIT FRIENDS

I came over to England on a CHIPAWO World mission with three young people from schools in Namibia, South Africa and Zambia as well as a youth technician from CHIPAWO Zimbabwe. The first few days were taken up with the 2020 Education project launch and other activities in Oxford and then there were three days in London. After seeing them off on their way back to their home countries I spent a couple of days in London with an old family friend and had two delightful dinners in the company of my son.

I then went over to Holland on the ferry, spent a night there and then boarded a few trains to Bremen in Germany. I stayed for a few days with other old friends, and then set off again to Lingen, a small town in the north west of Germany. From there some more trains to the tiny town of Rødekro in south east Jutland, Denmark. Spent the night with friends on the banks of the Åbenrå Fiord. Next day, I was picked up and after dropping in at another old friend’s 75th birthday party in Grasteen, we drove up to the lovely old town of Ribe.

I had hoped to return to England by sea again but unfortunately this turned out to be too expensive and so I boarded the original airline cheapie, Ryan Air, at Billund International Airport, not too far from Ribe, and Ryan Air duly fitted me into my little cage like a battery hen and transported me to Stanstead Airport, not too far from Bishop Stortford in Essex. In the course of my travels I had taken 15 trains!

Another old Zimbabwean friend picked me up at Stanstead and took me back to Hitchin in Hertfordshire. After some days of being treated like a king, I journeyed back to London – again by train, one to St Pancras and the other to the unprepossessing London suburb of Tooting in the borough of Wandsworth, where my son had secured me comfortable and convenient accommodation. Tooting is a very old human settlement - though you would be forgiven for doubting it now - dating back to pre-Saxon times. Conjecture has it that its name comes from the Saxon word we derive the modern word ‘tout’ from and meant ‘the people of the watch tower’. The old Roman road from London to Chichester, Stane Street, apparently passed through Tooting and the main road through modern Tooting was built on it.

After one or two more social encounters involving old and new friends, my son and, by lucky chance, my son-in-law, who was in London on business from Cairo, I boarded my Ethiopian Airlines flight at Heathrow. After a smooth though of course never comfortable journey for a man of my height, I arrived home. Homecoming was marked by some whisky, red wine, lovely food and warm and cheery hygge[1] in my friend and landlady’s kitchen.

There was a surprise though, reserved for almost the last. In the bus from the terminal out to the plane at Addis Ababa airport, a rather sociable young South African couldn’t help engaging me in conversation. He was obviously bubbling over with his achievement. He and his friends had motored up from South Africa to Addis. He had to go back for one reason or another but his friends were continuing on to Egypt and from there across to West Africa – and as this is something that a friend and I are planning to do in a couple of years time, his description of the road up was fascinating. He actually said that is a couple of years time you will be able to do the journey from Cape to Cairo in a Taz!

[1] ‘Hygge’, pronounced ‘hu’ as in ‘huge’ and ‘ga’ as in Lady Gaga, means a homely, warm and companionable time – lots of good food and drink mandatory.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TOUR

“Children learn, collaborate and make a local impact on global issues in the 21^st century” - LAUNCH OF THE 2020 EDUCATION PROJECT

An unaccompanied minor with a difference - FROM LUSAKA TO LONDON

You’ll be alright. It’s like riding a bike! - PUNTING ON THE CHERWELL

Of duck ponds and sewage - CROSSING THE NORTH SEA

The man who said: ‘You’ll be alright. It’s like riding a bike!’ was right – about bikes - CYCLING AND THE WÜMME

An unexpected delight between trains - LEER IN FRISIA

‘Freilichttheater’ – a village of Thespians - OUTDOOR THEATRE IN BAD BENTHEIM

A slither to the fiord - A SWIM IN THE ÅBENRÅ FIORD

Of ancient towns and rare beauty - RIBE AND HITCHIN

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