It’s the weekend, but really for my new friends it’s just another evening in sleeping old Ndu. We started off the night by visiting the head of the Baptist church to enrol him in the possibility of joining our 2 year project, supporting the local council to develop their skills. He was delightful and very excited when I told him that his church was on Google Images. So excited that he wanted me to see the inside as well as the outside. So in we went.
It has the capacity to hold a congregation of 1,500 people, but he realises that he does need to raise money for an extension, as it is sometimes very overcrowded. He is very excited about the VSO project, is 100% committed, and, with the promise of a congregation of almost 2,000 and six choirs, I happily accepted his invitation to church at 9am on Sunday.
Then off to the bar to meet SG and MT (municipal treasurer, AKA Patrick) and an aperitif of wood-smoked beef pieces with a hot pepper dip and cold beer. Yum. We then left for the Lord mayors house for supper. The Lord Mayor is holed up in a town 4 hours drive away because of a national strike – more of that later, but he had asked Gladys, his housekeeper, to cook for us. The menus was goat stew, yams and rice followed by paw paw and bananas and lashings of beer.
Now, lashings of beer is not a good idea at the best of times but just imagine a mile long walk home, down totally unlit scree tracks without a touch. I had left it in my room because the evening before there was no electricity.
MT and SG walked me home by the light of their mobile phones. The night sky was so dazzling in the total absence of man-made light that it was breathtaking. The following conversation followed:
SG ‘Polly, you need to watch the road not the sky’
P ‘But the sky is so amazing that I can’t take my eyes off it’
SG ‘ More amazing than an iPod?’
P ‘Yes’
SG ‘But how about an iPod and the night sky, now that would be something.
SG then confessed that he went to bed last night and in his dreams he was listening to an iPod.
3 comments:
i Feel bad now for having an ipod. hi mum hope all is well sounds like it is, happy mothers day which was on sunday, i would have emailed you but our internet was broke but we fix it now.
well keep having fun and ill see you in a few weeks.
Lots of love and kisses Arthur
p.s i did a first aid corse today and im working on gettin a job in the bike shed, ill keep you posed on how that goes
p.p.s hehehehehehe pee pee
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Hi Polly
Your journey so far sounds amazing! I love the Womens Day Dresses - maybe we can put this to the Assembly as part of making St Davids Day a Bank Holiday -I can just see every midwife in Wales outside the Senedd in pink frills!
Have a wonderful time, stay safe
love
Suzanne
xx
life is a series of breakdowns: the radiator, the internet, the car, the printer, rehearsal spaces, dead grannies (don't worry - no-one you know), singers catching flu...but I refuse to soldier on. These are simply things that need to be fixed. In the greater scheme of things they mean nothing. The universe continues to unfold and provides generously. We make astonishing music in a space of generous play. It will be an extraordinary thing and I'm sorry you will miss it. But what you are up to sounds beyond extraordinary. I would also like to follow the ju ju man....
xxxxxx
yr valentine
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