A Good News Blogpost

I am excited to have some great news to pass on...

 1. Andrew has accepted a post as a MAF pilot for the Uganda programme!

 This means that we are now planning to move to Uganda as soon as possible. We are delighted to be able to continue in the exciting work of MAF!

 It is a huge relief to know what we are going to next, after a period of uncertainty since we felt unable to return to South Sudan as a family. We are starting to make plans for our move from our temporary base in Nairobi. We hope that this can happen before the end of the year... We are looking forward to our next MAF assignment and to discovering a different African country!

2. Our house-lady, Grace, in Juba, has delivered a healthy baby boy! I am thrilled by this news and so thankful for the safe delivery.
Grace has stayed well. despite all the upset and troubles of July when she literally had to run for her life with her 2 other small children. She took refuge in a UN camp in Juba during the worst of the fighting. When gun-fire broke out near the camp, her feet were badly cut and injured as she ran for shelter with her 3 year old and 7 year old.
Late last month, Grace went into labour in the middle of a dark Juba night. It is far too dangerous to venture out across town to a clinic or hospital at night in Juba, so she just got on with delivering the baby at home all by herself! Thankfully, a nearby neighbour realised what was happening and came to help her out- and all went well.
A friend in Juba has since been to visit and sent me some photos...

Introducing Moses Lado:

Grace and baby at home:

It feels strange that I haven't been able to see Grace yet, but it is very much my hope that I can see her in the not too distant future. We really hope to be able to get up to Juba as a family to say goodbye to our South Sudanese friends, our home and the Juba MAF team... if it is safe enough...

 In the meantime, I sent up a bag of baby clothes and gifts via Andrew when he was in Juba last week for work. He dropped these off with a MAF neighbour for Grace to collect when she is able to send someone. Andrew was able to speak with Grace on the phone, She was her usual cheerful self, which is heartening to hear.

3. Since my blogpost last week on home-schooling in Nairobi, something wonderful happened. A new neighbour in our block of flats, who is here for a temporary MAF assignment in Kenya, approached me and offered her teaching services to help me out with home-schooling! It didn't take me long to answer her generous offer with an enthusiastic, "Yes please!!"

Over the past week, it has been simply fantastic to have Ruth's help. She has worked as a teacher for many years and has raised 5 children, so is a great source of help to me. I am able to send one or 2 of the children over to her flat, just along the corridor from us: they get extra support and teaching while I am able to focus more on the other child or children at home. If this is for an hour a day or even for just an hour 3 mornings each week, I cannot express what a massive, positive help this is! A real bonus.

It has been a good week for good news!

Home School in our Nairobi home

We are all learning a new type of home-school in our temporary Nairobi home.

Doing home school here is a different experience.
For one thing, Joel has joined us, adding an extra layer of learning as he starts out from the beginning of Primary school. At 5 years old he still needs lots of help to consolidate his knowledge of the alphabet and numbers to 20.

Meanwhile, Esther is working towards the end of Primary School at Y6. Her maths gets harder and harder, but I have little time to prepare lessons or to even teach her with all the distractions of working in our lounge all together.

 Ben is supposed to be starting Y4 work, but at the moment all I can manage is to to revise his work from Y3. I am facing a new learning curve as I try to mange 3 levels of learning, alongside three contrasting learning styles, in a very different environment.

During this season, I find that The Teacher side of me is battling with The Mum side of me...

The Teacher feels very concerned that we are falling behind curriculum requirements. During these times, my head feels like it is going to explode, trying to keep ahead of the children's educational needs! I feel so overwhelmed by the thought of trying to teach everyone according to their level that, quite frankly, it makes me want to curl up in a ball and ignore the problem- it feels like it is too much effort!
 It requires clear planning to manage this well. Planning well requires time and space... both of which are tricky to find in this season. I haven't managed to find any time to plan ahead yet, so we swing from day to day, just revising last year's curriculum for Esther and Ben and starting out with basic literacy and numeracy for Joel. This makes me frustrated and concerned. I feel guilty when I pick up the children's home-schooling curriculum files and know that we are falling far short of what we ought to be doing, if we were in a more organised class-room environment.

The Mum side of me is enjoying this precious time with my children. I know it is a privilege to be master of this season of time with my children. It is a gift to have my children with me while they are still young. There is a sense of freedom that I don't have to answer to any school policy. The free spirited side of me is glad that I am not having to follow a particular set of rules imposed by some unknown education minister who thinks they know what is best for my children...
The Mum side of me is enjoying this school time to follow projects which are inspired by my children. Last week, the children had fun planning a meal for their dad's return from his week in Juba:

Joel planned pizza for starters.
Esther planned spaghetti and stir-fry chicken for main course.
Ben planned Andrew's favourite rice pudding for dessert.

Each child wrote down their shopping list, Esther and Ben having first researched their recipes on the ever-useful "Google" site. They had a think about possible costs in Kenyan shillings and wrote out their recipes in their literacy lesson, ready to use them for cooking the next afternoon.

On Friday morning, we borrowed a car and I drove them, with their shopping lists, to the supermarket, where they each found and bought what they needed. Esther and Ben used cash and tried to work out their change ahead of time (a tricky task, as it all moves so quickly at a check-out and Esther got a little upset at this point, bless her! A lesson in coping with pressure!!).

That afternoon, the cooking started. Utter mayhem with 3 mini-chefs in our kitchen eventually produced a wonderful Welcome Home meal for Andrew when he came back from Juba!
Now that kind of home-school definitely pleases my Mum-side, even if it does not tick all the boxes for the anxious Teacher in me!

 So we carry on... and today will be another day... we will do our best, with limited resources. Nearly all of our home-school resources are still sitting in the wonderful school room in Juba: we miss that school room sooooo much!! :-(  Last week, Andrew was able to bring back the children's rulers, maths equipment, reading books and pens- but we are still missing so much. However, we can be resourceful: dry pasta replaces maths counters for Joel, and home-made number lines and alphabets replace the posters still up on the Juba school-room walls... there are ways to continue even while we miss our class-room.

Home-school time in Nairobi:

Waiting in Nairobi...

"What kind of people climb off a flight from London, late on a dark night, with 3 small children and 8 suitcases, to move into a flat in Nairobi that they have never seen- and never even heard about until 5 days previously?"
I asked myself this question as we did exactly that last Saturday!

I guess the answer is: people like us, who are still in post-evacuation mode from Juba!

We find ourselves back in Nairobi as we wait to see what happens next. We must begin to work through decisions to decide the best way forward for us as a family.
While we wait, we are grateful to our MAF friends based in Nairobi who found us an appartment to live in for this period.

We heard a few days before we left England that a 3-bedroom flat had just become available. It is only a few minutes walk from the Nairobi MAF compound, where most of the Kenya and South Sudan team are now based. The MAF compound itself is too full to accommodate our family, but happily, two other MAF families from our South Sudan team are based in the same block of flats where we are currently living.
It is such good timing that this flat became available. It is the only 3-bedroom flat in the entire block! All the others are 1 or 2 bedrooms, which would feel very cramped for both living and home-schooling.

It was a strange sensation to usher our 3 children into an unknown, dark flat, at nearly midnight, attempting to find light-switches, then scrambling through a muddle of suitcases trying to discover everyone's pyjamas and toothbrushes so that we could all get some sleep.

Thankfully, the beds were made up and clean towels were laid out. Kind MAF friends had stocked our fridge with the essentials like milk, bread, butter and jam. It was a relief to fall into bed and rest. knowing we had everything we needed for the next day.

In the morning, we began to acquaint ourselves with our new, temporary home. It is fully furnished, which is great. We discovered a TV, which is exciting for the children- and we found out that the flat is quite orange in its decor!

I am super-pleased that this flat has a washing-machine, as most of the other flats in this block do not. This does well for me on the popularity front, as I have offered to share the machine with the other MAF ladies living here :-)

There were no mosquito nets, so that has been Andrew's project this week, in between his flights for MAF here in Kenya.  On Thursday, Andrew bought and fitted nets for all the beds, after Esther revealed 30 mosquito bites on her skin one morning! Andrew and I were also fed up with the mosquitoes. We had had enough after enduring a few nights of being woken by that ever-so-annoying-drone of tiny blood-suckers diving at us in the dark!!

The boy's room: now fully protected against mosquitoes!

It has been a little tricky to adapt to the idea of buying all our water for drinking and cooking after a few weeks in England, where clean water miraculously comes out of taps in every household :-) In our previous African homes, we have relied on a water-filter to clean water from our taps. Our water filter is still in Juba, so for now I am trying to remember to buy 20-litre water cans when I shop. Obliging shop-workers have been helping me lift these huge containers into the trolley!

Andrew managed to find a tap this week which can be screwed into the lid of these giant water bottles, so that a bottle can be laid down and the tap used. Genius!
It is now much easier to access our water, rather than trying to tip these weighty bottles every time we need a drink or want to fill the kettle for tea!

The other aspect of our new flat which has needed some consideration is the sparse nature of  kitchen resources. We only managed to unearth 4 knives and just one cooking implement- a wooden spoon! I have realised too that the 5 dinner plates and 6 bowls provided in the flat mean that I can never leave the washing up- because if I don't wash up straight after a meal, we literally have nothing to eat off at the next meal!
I deliberated and then eventually decided that it was worth buying a few kitchen items. On the one hand it seems absurd to buy new kitchen-ware when we already own a full complement of kitchen equipment- but the problem is that it is all in Juba! Since we cannot access our things in Juba immediately, I decided it was worth buying a few essentials. 2 knives, a few tea-spoons, a potato peeler, a serving spoon and a spatula later, I was ready to cook family meals in our new flat!

So after these little adaptations, we are all set to get on with life in Nairobi for the temporary future. We have already started home-school (that is a whole new blog post!) and Andrew is fully immersed in work again. On Monday, Andrew will fly up to Juba and be based there for the whole week, flying within South Sudan, while the children and I continue in Nairobi.

Welcome to our new Nairobi flat:

Back in Africa! But not South Sudan...

We returned a few days ago from England to Africa- but not to Juba...

We are currently in Nairobi, along with many of our MAF South Sudan team who evacuated at the same time as us. It is a strange time of waiting, but for now we are based in Kenya.
Andrew has already flown within Kenya and I am starting to work out how to home-school in a new environment, with all 3 children now at "home" full-time.

We will keep you posted with more information soon, but this is just a quick update and a huge THANK YOU to all of you who wished us well and prayed for our safe travels and a safe return to African soil :-)

Dates in the UK

This blog post is just a recap of where we will be when over the next couple of weeks in England...

An Invitation to You!

This coming Saturday, August 20th, we will be hosting an "Open House". We'd love to meet up with as many of you as possible in one place this Saturday!

Please feel very welcome to join us if you can!

Venue: St. John's Church Hall, Burscough, L40.

We will be there from 11am until 3pm. A buffet style "help-yourself" lunch will be provided, so come and join us for lunch!

Andrew will show photos and do a presentation about the work he has done this year in South Sudan with MAF (with time for questions too).

We'd love to see you there!!!

London

We will be in London from August 27th and will be at St. Michael's Church on Sunday August 28th and Sunday September 4th.

Liz's testimony

For the past couple of months, I have really felt that I would love to be able to share some of the lessons I feel God has taught me while living in South Sudan, There have been many blessings living in Juba, but it has not always been an easy place to live with a young family.

If you would like to come along to hear my testimony and see my pictures (and enjoy some tea or coffee and cakes!!) I will be speaking on the following dates about "God's Grace in a Hard Place".

Wednesday August 24th at 7:30pm, at St. John's Church, Burscough

Sunday September 4th at 4pm at St. Michael's Church, London

Tuesday September 6th in the morning (time TBC) at St.Michael's Church. London

In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures from our time in England so far!

The gorgeous coast line of the Isle of Wight:

Our three children enjoying time with their cousins yesterday in Southport's Botanic Gardens :-)

End of our Academic Year...Start of our Home Assignment

We ended our year of Home School in Nairobi and celebrated with the tasty meal- as noted in my previous blog. Here are the photos of each pupil receiving their well deserved end-of-year certificate and a small gift at the restaurant:

Two days later, we lit the bonfire in the garden where we were staying in Nairobi. We enjoyed a bowl of porridge around the fire- our final breakfast in Kenya before flying to England!

Now we are all safely in England. Time for Home Assignment! 

After landing in London, it was lovely to be welcomed for our first UK breakfast aboard my brother's house-boat on the Thames:

For the next few weeks, we look forward to catching up with many of you as we spend time in the UK. :-)

3 weeks later

It is now 3 weeks since I sheltered in a hotel courtyard with my children, my husband and our friends, listening to the frightening sounds of gunfire exploding around Juba. Wondering how close it was to us. Wondering what it would mean for Juba. Feeling vulnerable and afraid.

Since July 10th, we have been privileged to be in Nairobi. It has been good to feel safe. It has been a relief to regroup with some of our MAF Juba team and to be able to welcome more friends from various organisations as they have evacuated out of Juba. It has been helpful to receive help and support. We have had a busy time of appointments, meetings and also lots of opportunities to spend time with good friends :-) and Andrew has been able to do some flying within Kenya for the MAF Kenya programme.

It has been a challenge to try and finish our academic year of home-school, living and working in an unfamiliar house, on a busy compound and without our school books. We did the best we could - and finished this year's home-school on Tuesday morning! Horray!

To celebrate, we went out to our favourite Nairobi Chinese restaurant, "For You" and enjoyed delicious food and time together, to present the children each with a certificate and gift.

Photos will be posted at a later date- the internet does not want to work right now!!

Now our time in Nairobi is finishing and we are literally about to get into a taxi to the airport to fly to England for home assignment.

So now we look forward to seeing many of  you there, very soon! :-)