Oh my face, just six weeks ...

It is difficult to realise that the plan is that only six weeks from this weekend Tom and I will be landing at Heathrow.

Last weekend wasn't the best, though. I was ill, particularly on the Friday night. Diarrhoea and stuff. Needed water, went blind on my way to get it, ran into a wall, collapsed unconscious, that kind of thing. In that order. The lights were on and everything. Tom slept through it all! But when I came round seconds later, I could plan my route to the tap and then all was well.

And then the music on the Sunday at church was awesome. Normally the music is pretty cool, this time they really grooved. And I couldn't even record it as I had been expecting to play and didn't have my sound kit with me. Doh!

I'm still trying to work out what God might have in store for me long-term, although I am satisfied for him to let me know in his good time. This week I helped out with the English lessons in the Lalula church, and had my usual kid-magnet effect. Much more the kind of place where I feel at home than in the centre of the city. My thoughts have remained a lot in the UK whilst I've been here, though, and he seems to be setting me up for that - at least for a while!

So please give thanks with me for restoration of health, and that he will use Tom and I as he wishes in our remaining time here.

Helen and Zara's visa renewal trip was a bit longer than expected too - they missed the plane back (although they assure me it wasn't completely their fault). Give thanks for the success of the Bible Club for local children which they helped run. Pray for them as they work with others to organise a camp for the children of missionaries in the area, a chance for these children to have fun with others in the same situation as themselves.

The Grand Namibian Epic

To the bush and a farm

There comes a time in the life of every person living on a 3-month Angolan visitor visa, and who wishes to stay more than the aforementioned three months, that one must leave the country and (for those of us living in the south) make the trek into northern Namibia. For Tom and I, that time came at the end of April 2006.

We were accompanied by SIM long-termer and fearless leader for this trip, Becky, as well as fellow short-termer, whose first visa was also close to running out, Marcela. Becky came armed with her trusty British steed Tinka, a robust 8-year-old Land Rover Defender. Early one Saturday morning (though not as early as planned), this motley quintet set off from Lubango, bound for the border.

We soon departed from the main roads onto bush tracks, headed towards the Tchincombe farm, run by SIM missionaries Stirling and Donna Foster. The farm provides a base in the middle of the bush for agricultural employment (for about 200 workers), literacy work (which Donna does with the ladies) and Bible studies, as well as providing the location for a church of the União denomination. They live with kids Jeffrey and Meghan, as well as Carolyn who looks after Jeff and Meghan's education. 'Twas great to visit the farm: not only was it a refreshing stop on our journey, but a chance to see a rural SIM project in action. 12(?)-year-old Jeffrey showed us around the many-hectared farm, the land of which is primarily used to raise cattle, whilst Meghan enjoyed pointing out various wildlife forms, including a surprisingly speedy turtle.

Worn out by the hours of trampolining and chicken-and-duck-herding that I had enjoyed with the kids and Brent (a Lubango-based pilot for Mission Aviation Fellowship), my slumber that night was sound. Just as well really, for the alarm clock was singing its familiar monotonous tune before the crack of dawn on Sunday, and we were on the road out of the farm as the sun was rising before us.

Taking 'roads' through the bush was not without its supply of adventure. For one thing, bush roads do not have signposts. The supply of written directions that Stirling had dictated to us did not stop us making a plethora of exciting detours as well as a series of unplanned requests for directions from locals for whom Portuguese was not the first language. The journey also included many mud-holes, most of which were navigated successfully by Becky's skilful driving and Tinka's weighty momentum. However, there was a mudhole in which even four-wheel-drive could not help us.

I was the first to take off my shoes, roll up my trousers and dive in (a little too literally on one or two occasions) quickly followed by the others. A lot of log-fetching, pushing, revving and many other delightfully muddy things later, Tinka was freed from her hot and sticky prison.

I firmly believe that it was only the grace of God that got us out of that bushland. On at least two very crucial occasions, he sent along a knowledgeable Portuguese-speaking local to help us find our way and give us mechanical advice. He also kept us in joyful spirits on our adventure-filled journey, and gave Tom a very good idea which proved a lynch-pin in getting released from the mud.

Nevertheless, despite my and Becky's best efforts behind the wheel, arrival at the border before it closed was to evade us.

Ondjiva

We decided to spend the night in the southern Angolan town of Ondjiva.

Our night there, sleeping at the house of a União pastor, Bioco, was a real blessing. The setting, in the bairro (poor suburban area), took me back to my time in Mozambique: sleeping under the same mosquito net I used back then, on a concrete floor in a small house, built out of adobe bricks and capped with a sheet of corrugated iron held on by bricks as a roof. The toilet/washroom could be found in a separate hut a few feet away, built strategically over a deep long-drop hole. Water was obtainable via the manual pump outside, and we soon got to work filling buckets and bowls with which to wash Tinka. It didn't take long to realise why the local lads my age were so well-muscled!

We were welcomed and greeted by many local church members (Pastor Bioco was away in Lubango) who opened up the house for us and helped us to clean the car and settle into our home for the night. One helpful man popped out to get a piece of material to act as a curtain so that Tom and I would have something other than an open doorway at the entrance to our room. It was as we were finding a way to hang it up using a spare nail and a piece of a straw bag that he taught me a local proverb: "Quer não tem cão: casa como gato", which roughly translated means "He who doesn't have a dog makes do with a cat" ... in other words, if you're in Africa, you need to learn to improvise!

As darkness fell, I found some of the local children hanging around the house and couldn't help but start singing and playing with them (after denying requests for money from one or two of the bolder ones). After a brief absence, they all returned to sit with Tom, Marcela and I: we sang songs for one another and learnt a little about the children before they went home to bed. Soon after, we did the same.

On to Namibia

I was oblivious to the sun's early ascent outside our window on Monday morning, but it wasn't long before the electronic cockerel-device made itself heard in my earhole. After some particularly delicious scrambled eggs cooked up by Marcela, the four of us clambered into Tinka once more. This time we enjoyed a relatively smooth road for the last half-hour to the border. In fact, life continued in the same vein all day. We crossed the border with hardly any hitches and the minimum of paperwork (a few forms each). Coping with our entry to the compound on the Namibian side of the fence, though, required a major brain-switch: not only were we to talk to all the officials in English now, but we were expected to drive on the left-hand side of the road. Can life get any more confusing? I think not.

For Brits especially, Namibia would be an easy introduction to Africa. The Namibian Dollar is about a tenth of the pound, making mental conversions as easy as falling off a log (I don't even bother to go beyond the US Dollar conversion when I'm dealing with Angolan kwanzas for fear of making my brain crash). Namibian English also tends to be similar in vocabulary to that we find north of the English Channel: tomato sauce is no longer "ketchup"; I can go to the toilet instead of being excused to attend the "washroom". The locals drive on the right side of the road (as opposed to the wrong one) and there is even a SPAR supermarket.

Not that it isn't still Africa... Just about everybody here drives Toyota pickup trucks, often weighed down with passengers clinging on; readers of the "Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency" books would recognise parallels between Botswana and Northern Namibia. Shops and bars can be seen everywhere with names like "Number One Place To Be Bar" and my personal favourite, "SNIP: We cut, you pay". I didn't check what service can be procured there, my guess is that it is more likely to be haircuts than vasectomies.

The Consulate

But back to the tale. Having only been in Namibia for about an hour, we three short-termers were already in the Angolan Consulate to begin the re-application process. Before leaving Lubango, I had been prepared for the possibility that God was to send me to a new place (Namibia) for the remaining months. It was with some degree of trepidation, and a prayer of "not my will, but Yours be done" that we made our way through the gates, past the armed guards and into the building. It did not seem to be our lucky day, as the lady at the desk - speaking in English to another applicant - did not seem in the best of spirits. When it came our turn to be served, we greeted her in Portuguese and asked how she was. And from that point on, she was super-charming.

As far as I was concerned, our God was making his will very clear through the smoothness of things at the Consulate ... we were to be back in Angola! Beyond the minor inconvenience of having to fill out the application forms many times over to ensure that they were legible and entirely mistake-free, things could not have been much better. By noon the next day, we were walking out of the doors with freshly-granted visas. Praise God.

Rest and recreation

All this excitement marked only the beginning of our stay in Namibia. With paperwork filled out, it was time to move on to the other purpose of our stay - having a short break. It was getting late in the day on Tuesday and we were a little concerned about some noises that Tinka was making, but decided to go ahead and make the drive south to the Etosha National Park. I had the pleasure of being behind the wheel and giving Becky a break. That's something else about Namibia: probably the longest, straightest roads I've ever driven. If you could see over the steering wheel (thankfully, I can - just), you would see only the road stretching to a heat haze on the horizon. Just like in the movies, apart from the fact that directors don't usually choose to include the sound of snoring from the back seat.

We knew that sunset was to be a little before 6pm, and with the disappearing of light over the horizon would come the closing of the gates to the park. We were cutting it fine. Too fine. Even once you reach the gates, there are another 45km to the campsite, with a speed limit of 60kph (the campsite also closes its gates at sunset). At five thirty, the white dot on the horizon at the end of the sandy track was gradually taking the shape of a lookout tower and entrance gates. I slowed to a halt at the ranger's window. "Can we make it still?" "Sorry, you're too late." What was to be our fate? Would we be left outside to fend for ourselves against hungry lions?

No such misfortune. The ranger invited us in to camp in the entrance compound. A large fenced area of dusty ground with no other humans. And toilet facilities. It is widely held to have been the best night of our time in Namibia. Nothing but the four of us, Tinka, the sun heading off to go and light the lives of GAPers and others in the Americas, and an expanse of grassland beyond the fence. Having set up the tents and watched Tom do a sterling job of starting a fire (using only one match), we enjoyed our chicken stew by star- and fire-light, and eventually retired to the tents. The small tent that Tom and I were using had two doors on each side: one solid and one netted. It was great to fall asleep seeing the stars through the mosquito net, and not to worry about the Machine of Slumber Destruction Complete With Beeps.

I was up early the next morning: I had, as I'd hoped, been woken by the light of approaching dawn. I scaled the lookout tower with no aural accompaniment but the sound of nature awakening, and read again the Genesis account of creation as I watched the sun rise. I don't know how He did it, but it sure is beautiful to watch it all in action.

And indeed watching it in action was to be the theme of the next couple of days. Rejoicing in the money saved by missing a night's official camping (we are missionaries after all), we headed into the park.

Well, I'll try not to make you too jealous, especially as the pictures you will all see in due course each say a thousand words. Suffice to say, I was privileged to see and to be so close to zebras, giraffes, wildebeest, oryx, springbok, warthogs ... ooh, the list goes on.

The week - as with everything on this spell in southern Africa - was passing quickly. Thursday was soon upon us: the day to return north to Oshakati ... Tom's 19th birthday too. We left the camp with high hopes for our last game-viewing trip, following the glorious time we'd had the previous evening following some giraffes into the sunset. Perhaps our rendition of "Happy Birthday" caused them to flee to some quieter corner of the park. The most exciting spotting as I drove towards the exit was a large lizard that crossed the road behind us. Tom seemed to be enjoying his day, nevertheless, and (as usual) great fun was being had by all.

Tinka's rest

It was now to be Tinka's turn for a bit of pampering (if having a prop shaft changed can be referred to as such), and so we said goodbye to her at a local garage for a few hours. She was ready to take us home that evening, although not all the work was complete. So it was back to the mechanics the following morning.

We inherited Trevor, a large white Toyota pickup (the locals call it a Bakkie) for the day, and went off to do various important bits and pieces of shopping so that we would be ready to head home on Sunday. Becky suggested that I should drive him as he was so similar to UK cars, but to the disappointment of all, no doubt, I realised I had left my licence in Tinka.

It was on a return trip to the garage to pick up some bits and pieces (including my licence) that things changed slightly. "Do you think you'll be ready by the end of the day?" asked Becky, hopefully. "No," came the reply from an extremely helpful (but very busy) chief mechanic. "Oh." A brief moment of silence. "Are you open tomorrow?" The mechanic raised his eyebrows briefly before commenting, "No, but we're open on Monday."

And so it was that plans changed. Various other problems had arisen in Tinka, and we had been told in no uncertain terms by the guys at the garage that Tinka was not to be driven. Meanwhile, various parts had to be sent to Windhoek (Namibia's capital, an 8-hour drive south) for modification. And so it was that our stay was extended, and that my friendship with Trevor the Pickup really began.

Our accommodation whilst not at Etosha was a very comfortable house belonging to the Finnish Lutheran Mission. If you're ever in this neck of the woods, you'll find it in the small settlement of Oniipa, just outside Ondangwa (in turn about 40-50km south of Oshakati). It has become apparent to me that no bona fide Finnish mission station should ever be without a sauna. This house was no different.

And so in due course Tinka was ready for us to begin our journey to Lubango - which you already know from the last entry on the blog was not quite as smooth as we had hoped it would be!

But now we are back safe, teaching at the hospital has resumed, and life seems at least as busy as ever, the weeks flying past ...

The journey back to Lubango

Well, at last I'm back in Lubango! Look for the Grand Namibian Epic (nearly finished) which will come out soon and tell you all about our time renewing visas and such in northern Namibia.

Our stay in Namibia was a few days later than originally intended. Tinka (the Land Rover) had been making some strange noises and so it had always been the intention to take her for a service while in Namibia. A phone call a few hours after leaving her revealed that she needed something more akin to a rebuild than a service, and so our stay in Namibia would be prolonged for a few days.

We reached Lubango at around 4:30am on Friday morning, after we left our guesthouse in Namibia shortly after 7 the previous morning.

After a relatively uneventful journey through the border compounds (which took a few hours) we were on our way on the roads of Angola.

At around 2:15pm, we reached the the town of Xangongo, where our first problems arose. Just as we were approaching the police checkpoint, the engine failed, and a bit of inspection and removal of the air filter revealed clouds and clouds of dust and debris. It was shaken for a good five minutes after which 'twas still yielding billowing plumes of the stuff. But at least when we replaced the filter the exhaust smoke was not nearly so black - now a slightly concerning shade of white instead.

Shortly after passing through the checkpoint and crossing the bridges over the Cunene river, Becky suggested that we swap drivers (she had been driving for some seven-plus hours at this point). And so my takeover of the wheel coincided with the commencement of some severely potholed roads. I declared it my life ambition to get into third gear.

Friends, you can achieve your ambitions. I managed to get into 3rd for at least four seconds before having to change down again for another large hole in the road. To be fair, there was a nice stretch later where the road was fairly smooth and I was able to select 5th as we travelled downhill: that shift was met with cheers and applause from my companions.

Taking the road from Santa Clara up to Lubango is a real African experience. The scenery is just breathtaking, and every time we took a pitstop (a necessary side-effect of our battle against dehydration), I was able to take a longer moment to thank God for calling me to such a beautiful place these few months. On one of these stops, just as the sun was beginning to set over the trees, and realisation of the length of the journey ahead of us was starting to set in, we were blessed with more joy as I noticed a familiar-looking white Toyota coming the other way. None other than a bunch of the hospital staff (some of whom I teach English) heading briefly to Namibia. They pulled over to see us and it was wonderful to talk to them, if a little daunting to recognise how much further we still had to go, and in the dark.

Some time, and many MANY potholes passed. For a couple of hours I was rarely out of first gear, and weaving all over the road, as is the custom here, to try to find the safest route. (The safest route is often on the tracks by the side of the road, or with one set of wheels on the road and another set off.) After about nine and a half hours of driving on my part, the road began to have a few fewer holes, so we were able to travel a little faster, although Tinka seemed to be having more problems accelerating.

As I took my foot of the accelerator to prepare for another pothole, the car slowed down as expected, but the engine did not. More than a little concerned, I stopped the car and put it in neutral, but the motor continued to scream at frighteningly high revs, and so quickly I removed the key from the ignition to shut the thing off entirely. To my surprise, this made no difference to the engine's behaviour. By this time, smoke was emanating from under the bonnet and so we all dived out of the car and moved to some considerable distance. The exhaust was pumping out huge quantities of grey smoke and I could hear the rev count getting slowly higher.

Realising that there was nothing we could safely do on the car to remedy the problem, we all four prayed. Sure enough, the engine quickly cut out. Whether it would have been working round to doing that anyway, or it was a case of divine intervention, we know that God was in control. Again we prayed, giving thanks to God for his immense faithfulness to us throughout the trip and praying that he would give us wisdom in what to do next.

It seemed far from wise to start the car up again, and yet we knew that we were at least half an hour's drive from reception for mobile phones, and that our CB radio's range would be of no use. So, having pushed the car off the road and into the scrub beside and below, we settled down inside the car for the night, with our hazard lights flashing in order that we would be visible should anyone come looking for us. Tom, ever the outdoor type, opted to sleep in a sleeping bag on the roof of the Land Rover.

Drifting in and out of sleep, it was difficult to tell how much time was passing, and there was no light by which to see my watch. Some time later, lights could be seen in the distance and then the sound of an engine approaching. The next I knew was the swish of air brakes and the gentle thud of doors being closed. The truckers came to the window, and asked if we were just sleeping. Becky explained that the car had broken down, and asked if they would be able to send a message on our behalf from somewhere in better cellphone range. They countered that it would surely be much more sensible to send a messenger, as they were going to Lubango. And so it was decided that Marcela and I should hop into the small Toyota lorry.

Lorry cabs like this one are only really designed for three people, but we all know the importance of safety-in-numbers (and all that jazz). So Marcela sat between the driver and his companion, whilst I found myself squashed into the small space behind the seats.

Praise God that he sent such sensible folks to help us out. Our new travelling companions did not drink or smoke, and drove most sensibly. I was thankful for the opportunity to get back into a Portuguese frame of mind and chat to these guys about their lives and jobs. It seems that they drive up and down to Namibia every week, collecting various goods which are presumably then sold in markets here. We were intrigued as to why they kept a large fragment of a mirror in their cab. They explained (and demonstrated) that most drivers are reluctant to dip their headlights when passing, and so they like to reflect the full beam back into the drivers' faces "so that they know what it feels like"! A genius idea, and one I must try myself.

Please do pray for these guys. We were so thankful that they came and helped us out. Both are members of churches, one of an evangelical denomination and the other a Catholic. But in our weary states the conversation did not become too deep, I'm afraid to say.

And so, by and by, we came to Lubango and found ourselves in the middle of a bairro (poor suburban area) somewhere in the city. The guys explained that they'd drop us off at a colleague's after they had unloaded the trucks, and so we waited. And waited. One couldn't help but notice that the yard was eerily quiet. All but one of the men had gone inside; this one was sitting in the driver's seat with his head on the steering wheel. We (by which I mean Marcela) plucked up the courage to speak ... "Will you be unloading now?" "No, only in the morning."

We thank God for the wonder of mobile phones. With a little more help from our friend, we were able to direct Peggy by text message to come and collect us. It's not everyone who would get up at 4:00 in the morning to do such a thing. One and a half hours' sleep and a happy reunion with Becky and Tom later (they were towed by our friend Brent, a pilot with MAF), here I am. It's nice to be back where God would have us serve with our colleagues.

There is so much to thank and praise God for. Please join us in rejoicing in his faithfulness ... as well as in the gift of sleep!