Saying Goodbye

At the Cape of Good Hope

Yesterday evening we took Matthew and David to the airport after ten memorable days together introducing them to some of our new friends and favourite places here. We also met up with friends from Oxford! Despite two stomach upsets and a split lip (minor surfing accident) we count it a very successful and enjoyable family holiday. It has been good to catch up with their thinking and plans after three months of limited communication.

Before he came to GWC, Sammy spent two years in the UK. When he returned home to Ghana, he told us, one of the most difficult things he found was readjusting to African breakfasts. Perhaps we will find a similar challenge in our re-entry to the UK (though probably not over breakfast). We fly out of Cape Town on Tuesday evening, arriving in the UK Wednesday 22 April (South African general election day).

We will miss:

• Early morning jogs on the beach with the sun rising behind the mountains
• The sea view
• The beach
• The sunshine
• The friends we’ve made, especially the GWC students
• The brief freedom from responsibilities
• The South African accent(s) and the way they say ‘is it?’ rather than ‘really?’
• The sunshine
• The mountains
• Having people wash your windscreen, check your oil, water and tyres as a matter of course when you fill up with petrol
• Notices that say ‘Baboons are dangerous and attracted by food’
• Watching a scene from an Afrikaans or Zulu soap (with English subtitles) and realising that all TV soaps all over the world have essentially the SAME PLOT.
• The mountains, the sea and the beach
• Did I mention the sunshine?

We are looking forward to:

• Seeing friends and family again
• An English spring and summer – we left before the February blizzards, remember.
• The new phase of our lives and ministry taking shape
• Finding out how everyone in Friends International has been getting on
• A two and a half week trip to Turkey in May when we will help at another Leadership Matters Course, which we attended 18 months ago
• Welcoming students to a new home (?) in East Oxford – please pray for the process to get there!

Oh yes, we’re looking forward to summer rain too – really!

Writing a weekly blog has proved rather satisfying, even addictive.  So although this will be the last post from South Africa, there may be more to come when we have something we think you’d like to hear.  What do you think?