Friday 3 September: Homeward Bound!

This will be the last blog in the series. I’ve arrived safely at O. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg for my homeward flights, first to Dubai and then on to Birmingham, where I’m due to arrive at lunchtime tomorrow.

What a full and remarkable two weeks it’s been. Only two weeks ago, I was boarding my outward bound flight. The ‘International Congress on Calvin Research’ already seems a long time ago. Even Matlosane seems to be weeks rather than days in the past, because I’ve done so much and covered so many miles in the last three days. There are lots of photos on my phone, and even more memories in my head. The whole fortnight has been an experience to treasure and I’m grateful to all those who made it possible – family, colleagues at Lichfield Cathedral, funders and hosts. It would have been still lovelier to share the experience with Cathy and the boys. But if I'm going to be apart from them for a couple of weeks, these are the circumstances in which I'd choose to do it.

The B&B in Middelburg was a good call. The owners were thoroughly helpful and the accommodation exceptionally comfortable. I never eat breakfast at home. In the ordinary course of things my appetite doesn’t wake up until midday. But when cooked-breakfast smells are wafting in the air, I get hungry much earlier than usual – especially when it’s combined with the knowledge that breakfast is already paid for! So I tucked into a slap-up feast, before hitting the road at 8am.

It should have been a two-and-a-quarter hour drive to Maporeng, the Museum of the Cradle of Humanity. My host at the B&B persuaded me that Pretoria is hardly worth a half-day visit, and that it would be a shame to be so close to Jo’burg and not visit the place where the earliest humanids are believed to have lived. But – despite the investment of some time on Google maps – I got hopelessly lost in the motorway network near Pretoria. Out of town motorway driving in South Africa has been a pleasure. But the stretch around Jo’burg/Pretoria is like Spaghetti Junction outside Birmingham, or like the bits of the M25 around London which connect with the M40, M4 and M3 near Heathrow – with the added difficulty (for me) that I don’t have the basic geography to know whether a signposted place is in the right direction or utterly the wrong one. On top of that, its clear that South Africa embarked on a massive national infrastructure upgrade for the World Cup, and failed to finish it all. So these major highways are also major roadworks. Anyway, I turned north at one point at a motorway intersection, instead of south. And because I believed that was the right thing to do, I persisted in that direction much too long, and got deeper and deeper into the suburbs of Pretoria and further and further from where I was supposed to me.

No matter. Eventually I arrived at Maporeng. The museum is located close to the place where ‘Mrs Ples’ (the skull of one of the earliest and certainly the best example of one of the early humanids: the 'australopithecus africanus', if you must know) was found. The museum sets out to tell the story of the evolution of the planet, as well as of the human race, with a strong conservation message and an emphasis on the damage this generation of humans is doing to the Earth. I chuckled on arrival however: the first stretch of the museum takes the form of a lazy-river. There’s no alternative. It’s not an option for kiddies only. All visitors are expected to clamber into circular floats, which are then swept along a water course for 20 minutes or so, as you are taken back in time to the origins of the human race. I had a float all to myself, and sat there in a bewildered sort of humour, thinking that I really needed a couple of 5 year olds with me to get the most out of the ride.

Mostly, the museum is well conceived and delivers a powerful message. But I did also laugh at some of the overblown rhetoric. My favourite phrase was this one: ‘Africa is the birthplace of humankind. This is where our collective umbilical chord lies buried’. Birthplace yes. Collective umbilical chord? I don’t think so!
Happily the journey from the museum to the airport proved easy enough and I was able to return the hire car in good time. It served me well. I’ve covered over 1000 miles in the last four days, much of it on dirt tracks rather than tar roads. I’ve bumped over pot-holes and sped too fast on occasion. I’ve negotiated alarming motorway junctions and gunned the engine anxiously at ‘four way stops’ in isolated areas. I’ve passed road-signs which have said, ‘High Risk of Hijack’, and those which have said, ‘Stay in your vehicle. Wild Animals’. But I’ve stayed safe (despite the national strike, which has still not been resolved) and have felt the risks to be reasonable. Still, it was a relief to arrive at the rental returns srea without a breakdown or a prang.

Now I’m hoping for flights which are not seriously delayed. I won’t mind the hours in the air, or the three-hour stop-over in Dubai. I’m back to work on Sunday, and there’s a sermon to write for the Sung Eucharist in Lichfield Cathedral in the meantime. I don’t think I’ll be short of material.

PS: two of these pictures have been uploaded at Dubai International Airport, where I've now arrived safely, and from where I posted the first blog in this series two weeks ago.

Thursday 2 September: 'Joyful' River?

Hmm… well, that sense of thankfulness with which yesterday ended lasted about an hour this morning. Then came an unpleasant incident, which spoilt the following hour or two, though I can see the funny side now.

At any point in the last four days I might have reported that in South Africa speed limits are advisory rather than mandatory. That was my clear impression. When I picked up the hire car on Tuesday, I spent the first few hours observing the limits scrupulously… but watching everything else whizz by. As I relaxed into the driving conditions, I conformed more and more to custom as I was seeing it, and became increasingly careless of the limits. Today I find that the limits are thoroughly, drastically enforceable…

It was entirely my own fault. I was speeding – no doubt about it. And I got pulled over by a traffic cop. Perhaps SA cops are all fierce, or perhaps it’s just him, or perhaps he just got out of bed the wrong side, or (and this is what I really think) perhaps he was playing a practised game. Having flagged me down as he was not just entitled but obliged to do, he shouted at me in broken English what I took to mean, ‘I have power to arrest you. You can be arrested!’. If his intention was to scare me, he succeeded. I admit to speeding, but I wasn’t driving that recklessly and I couldn’t see how it was an arrestable offence. He demanded my driving licence and walked off with it to talk to a colleague, leaving me feeling very little and heavy-hearted. When he came back, he said, ‘Don’t worry. Not arrested. You pay the fine. 750 rand. You pay this?’. £75 more or less was a bit more than I’d have expected, but it sure felt like a relief at that point. So I said, ‘Yes, I’ll pay. But I’m not carrying that much cash.’. ‘How much you have?’, he said. I fished out my wallet and took out all the notes – it amounted to about £40. Whereupon he said, ‘You give me that’; and when I did, he said, ‘No you go. Go’. So I did. As I drove away, of course, I became more and more aware of the irregularity. No paperwork. And since when is the size of the fine determined by the amount the offender is carrying? In the end I couldn’t decide whether I’d been conned, or had actually got off lightly. Maybe both. TIA... this is Africa.

You can imagine that my mood took a while to lift. But it’s been a good day really. It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself or weighed down by regret for very long, when the sun is shining and you’re looking out on vistas like the ones I’ve enjoyed today. It’s been another longish day behind the wheel: I’ve covered about 430 kms. First I drove the ‘waterfall route’, and then the length of Blyde River Canyon. It wasn’t arduous driving: there was something to pull over and explore every 20 kms or so. And ‘Blyde’ is Afrikaaans for ‘Joyful’ (as in ‘blythe’ presumably). So it would have been a different sort of crime to let my earlier traffic offence undermine my capacity to enjoy the moment.

One of the early treats was ‘God’s window’, a spectacular panorama across the canyon. I found the name quite thought-provoking. It implies God’s view, God’s outlook – but also a place where we might catch a glimpse of God. It put me in mind of the Bible in that respect: it conveys, mysteriously but truly, God’s view and outlook – but also affords me glimpses of God.

Bourke’s Potholes were fun: vast eroded pits in and around the river bed. And the Three Roundevals were worth waiting for. I hope the pictures give an idea of how extraordinary they are. This may not be The Grand Canyon. But it is staggeringly pleasing one all the same.

On the return leg of the journey, down a parellel set of roads, I visited Echo Caves – a 16 km stretch of interlocking underground limestone tunnels and caverns, of which visitors are able to walk 1.2km. It was a deserted place. I was the only visitor. But there were guides standing by and I got a personal tour. It was a comically surreal experience. My guide spoke only the English she had learned as a spiel. Questions were out of the question, so to speak. I’m pretty sure she’d learned her lines parrot fashion and without much understanding. She also had a strong accent, so we walked happily along, she declaiming as if to a group of 20 an interpretation of the caves of which I only really understood a tenth part, me nodding encouragingly and smiling to indicate interest. It finished well enough: the caves were 4 km down a dirt track, and at the end of the tour my guide asked if I could give her a lift as far as the ‘tar road’. I was delighted to do it, and had the feeling that was a prepared line too!

The last part of the drive reminded me of Scotland or New Zealand. It’s fly-fishing country and the landscape is dotted with trout pools and small lakes. As the sun grew lower in the sky these caught the light and shimmered.

This evening I’ve gone upmarket. You can only have so much Formula 1 motel. So I’m doing B&B. Actually it’s lovely. Just to give you an idea of the plushness: there were fresh flower petals floating in the toilet bowl. My room is spacious and well-appointed. The towels are soft, the bed is high – and what luxury: there’s a fridge. I might yet recover that sense of bliss!

Today has been my last day in this astonishing country. I hope to visit Pretoria tomorrow morning. But in the afternoon I have to return the car to the airport and check in for my homeward flight. It's been a wonderful fortnight, but I'm ready to see my people again and to resume routines. Nearly.

Wednesday 1 September: The Big Five!

In one sense, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a hunters’ convention, after all, to single out the five most ferocious beasts in the African wild, and to declare them ‘the Big Five’: the elephant, the rhino, the lion, the leopard and the buffalo. Why the cheetah misses out, I’m not sure. Or the hippo. Or even the warthog, which looks pretty fearsome to me close up, I can tell you. Those upright tusks could do some serious damage. But the Big Five it is. And the answer is… yes I did see each and every one. Woo hoo! I was ludicrously and irrationally happy to sight the leopard to make up the set. Utterly irrational and hopelessly conditioned. But there we are.

It was another early start and another long day in the car. In fact, I’ve probably clocked up more hours behind the steering wheel in a single day today than ever before. I may only have covered 400 kms, but most of those I drove at slow speed inside the Kruger Park. I left the motel at 4.30am, got back at 4pm and spent much of the intervening 11.5 hours driving.

It took me an hour to reach the park gate. It should only have taken 45 mins, but in the dark I took a wrong turning. As it was, I got there just after dawn, and just a few minutes after opening time.

It took me all of two minutes to see a lion. Honestly. It was the first thing I saw. I’d barely got the car into 3rd gear inside the gates when I saw some congestion in the road ahead. I’ve become a reader of the signs in the last few days. The ideal situation is a clutch of about 4 cars: that means something of real interest is in sight. More than that becomes a scrum and means lines of sight get difficult. This was perfect: two safari vehicles (that’s the other hot tip: follow that safari driver – he knows what he’s doing!) and one other car. I drove up, followed the line of craning heads and camera lenses and kept on peering into the grass until I saw it: the head and shoulders of a stationary lion. For all I know there was a whole pack of them. The disadvantage of DIY safari, which is what I’ve been trying, is that an ordinary car sits low to the road. Purpose-built safari trucks have raised seating. All those who’d paid extra will at that moment have had their money’s worth: if there were 6 lions there, they’ll have seen them. I had to make do with that one head and shoulder view.

As you can imagine, at that moment I thought I’d be sighting lions all day. I hadn’t even seen a zebra at that point. I could be forgiven for thinking lions would be here there and everywhere. But as it happens, it was the only one I saw all day. I’ll put ‘see a pack of lions’ on the list of reasons to come back one day.

A few kms down the road, however, another treat: a great herd of buffalo (the other beast I had not seen in Pilanersberg) crossing the road. This, I think, is what you get if you arrive at dawn: the animals are on the move. I was a good hour and a half earlier in Kruger Park than I had been at Pilanersberg and I think it made a difference. The buffalo were soon followed by elephants and black rhino (the ones in Pilanersberg had been white). The herd of elephants took about 10 minutes to cross the road: adults and young, they just kept on and on and on coming. So within an hour of my arrival I’d seen 4 of the Big Five. A leopard didn’t show itself until 10.30, and I’d begun to content myself that ‘4 out of 5 isn’t bad’. As with the lion, I’d doubtless have missed it if it wasn’t for the traffic jam. But there it was, sleeping on the branch of a tree by the roadside. I know it was a leopard (and not a cheetah) because one of the other drivers helpfully told me so. He was a South African, so it came out ‘Leepid’. Besides, when I got to one of the rest-stops, it was marked on the ‘Today’s Sightings’ board. A good deal later I think I saw another one. That’s to say, I certainly saw another big cat. This one I couldn’t miss seeing: it was just sauntering along the verge of the road. But I couldn’t swear it was a leopard not a cheetah, because there was no-one to advise me.

Kruger Park, you see, is – even by South African standards – huge. If Pilanersberg is the size of an English county, Kruger (at 20000 sq kms) is the size of a small country (Israel, for example). So you can drive for miles without seeing another car. At one point, in just such a situation, I found myself driving towards a rhino, standing head on to me about 100m up the road. That’s when you wish there were more cars around. It was fine, of course. I slowed, but kept approaching, and it soon moved off into the bush.

There were fewer giraffe and zebra than I’d seen on Monday, but lots of different kinds of deer (or bok, I suppose). The bird life was also spectacular. I saw at least a couple of kinds of eagle, a colourful stork, some turkey-like creatures and no end of brightly coloured smaller birds. Beautiful.

But after 12noon things went quiet. I pottered about along a stretch of river for a while, sighting any number of hippo and a single croc, but eventually (when my bottled water wasn't just warm, but distinctly hot) had had enough of the unremitting heat and headed out.

It’s the herds I shall remember most, I think – more even than the pleasure of seeing those elusive cats. And I’d recommend it to anyone. For me, seeing these creatures in what really is to all intents and purposes ‘the wild’ (that's to say, seeing them behave as they would behave if you weren't there to watch them) ranks alongside snorkelling in tropical sea, whale-watching and swimming with dolphins. I realise I’m a bit of a glutton for these intensely sensory experiences of the natural world, but it truly does wow the soul. My heart will be uplifted with thanksgiving for days, I can tell. (Well, till my plane is delayed on Friday, I expect…). The Lord be praised.

That’s ‘game over’ for the time being. I shall do a different kind of sight-seeing tomorrow. There’s a fabulous canyon not far away and some waterfalls too, I believe. And they’ll take me at least a bit closer to Jo’burg, from where my plane flies back to the UK on Friday.

Tuesday 31 August: The High Veld

Well, I wasn’t on the road quite as long today as yesterday, and I didn’t cover quite as many miles. But like New Zealand and the US, this is a place where you have to be prepared for a long haul on the roads if you want to see stuff.

I’m now in Nelspruit, another World Cup host city. If you followed the tournament, it’s the place where the stantions of the new stadium are designed and painted to look like giraffes. I’ve covered 530 kilometres, and have travelled north east (always a good direction to move in, I feel). I’m booked into a cheap and cheerful Formula 1 motel on the outskirts of the city. It’s not very glamorous, I know – but I like to think of it as a small act of homage to Lewis Hamilton, who won the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday. Frankly, it was convenient and inexpensive and I don’t expect to spend many hours cooped up in the tiny room.

I was up bright and early again today, to say goodbye to Brenda Diseko as she left for work, and then to the children as Bishop Stephen took them into school. Those who know me well are aware of the aversion I have, generally speaking, to being addressed as ‘Father’. It’s not entirely a reasonable reaction, I realise. A canonical colleague pointed out to me that although Jesus did indeed say, ‘Call no-one your father on earth, because you have one ‘Father’, the one who is in heaven’, he also said, ‘You are not to be called teacher, because you have one teacher and you are all students’, and yet I don’t at all mind if people call me ‘Doctor Wilcox’ (in fact, I rather like it) , when ‘doctor’ just means ‘teacher’. But somehow, the title ‘Father Wilcox’ or ‘Father Pete’ invokes a whole set of associations I just find ghastly. Anyway, all I was wanting to say is that here it has seemed much less grating, and certainly on the lips of the Diseko children. They’re so lovely, I can’t bring myself to correct them when they say, as they have been saying all weekend ‘Yes Father Pete’, ‘No Father Pete, ‘Thank you Father Pete’. It’s made me chuckle instead.

Bishop Stephen then drove me into Klerksdorp so that I could hire a car. We stopped by the Diocesan Office, where he recorded a message for our ‘Church on Fire’ event in November, when the Archbishop of Canterbury is visiting the Diocese of Lichfield and we’ll be holding a festival service on the afternoon of Saturday 6 November. The service will include a greeting from the bishops of each of our partner dioceses, and I’m now carrying Bishop Stephen’s message on my iphone.

I then set off from Klerksdorp at about 9.30, stopping in Potschefstroom at an internet café and a tourist info, to plan the day ahead. Actually I stopped before that, in Ikageng. Incredibly, on Sunday I had failed to take a single photo. And I did so want an image of the Cathedral from the outside. So on impulse I pulled off the motorway at the Ikageng junction and although I had no address or contact details for the Cathedral and only a hazy recollection of the route we’d taken on Sunday, I thought I’d make at least a brief effort to find it. At one point I took a wrong turning, and found myself at a dead end in a particularly forlorn section of housing, and it did occur to me that this might not have been my best idea ever. But retracing my steps, I saw where I’d gone astray and at once found the Cathedral, took my photos and was back on the motorway in a few minutes, with no trace of trouble.

By lunchtime, I was through the motorway madness which is Johannesburg and by 2pm I’d reached the High Veld. I might have lost my way in the labyrinth around Jo’burg, except that I’d heeded the warnings in the guidebooks and had invested some time on Google Maps ‘Get Directions’, mapping out my route.

The High Veld is a bit like the highlands of Scotland (or at times the Peak District), at the end of a particularly blistering summer: beautiful, in a brown, bare and dusty sort of a way – although every now and again a chemical works, or a mining operation or a power station blots the vista. There was one particularly ugly example at a place called Nankwe. The plant included what I can only assume was a weigh-station, but I was rather tickled by the potentially anti-Papist message of the sign which said, 'Mass Restrictions. Control Here'.

My plan, such as it is, is to get up bright and early again tomorrow (5am) in order to get into the Kruger Park as soon as it opens. I’ll spend at least the morning driving around looking for those lions. If I fail, I’ll book myself onto a guided tour on Thursday. But I’m ever hopeful.

Monday 30 August: Game for Anything!

That was a long day. We covered 570 kilometers (what’s that? 350+ miles) and sat in the same (non-air conditioned!) vehicle for close to 14 hours. It might not sound like a recipe for a great day, but it really was.

We duly set off just before 4.30am on a 3-hour drive to the Game Reserve at Pilanersberg, about 180km to the north. The drive gave us plenty of time to chat, and took us past a couple of interesting sites. First came the farm and then the home town of Eugene Terreblanche (is that how to spell his name?) the scary leader of the Afrikaans extreme (ie neo-Nazi) Far Right, who was brutally murdered on his farm earlier this year. I was scandalised to hear from Bishop Stephen that when he had tried to make contact with the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, to liaise with him over the participiation in the funeral service of the (black) Archbishop of Cape Town, the minister had refused to speak to him. I asked Bishop Stephen, 'Is that because you're an Anglican, or because you're black?' 'Oh, I think he would have spoken to a white Anglican' was the reply. How could a minister of the Gospel of Christ Jesus be so blind?

Later, we drove through Rustenberg, the ill-fated base of the England football team during the recent World Cup Finals. The road took us past not only their training camp, but also the stadium in which the team notoriously drew 1-1 with the USA in our opening game -- a result which, in retrospect, pretty much determined the outcome of our tournament. I didn’t bother to take pictures.

One of the topics of conversation on the journey was about the new African Churches (many based in Nigeria apparently -- which has, as a whole I think, a somewhat dubious reputation in black South Africa). These are predominantly ‘pentecostal’ in style and often preach what we call a ‘prosperity gospel’: come to Jesus and he will make you well and rich. It distresses Bishop Stephen immensely. ‘How can they lie to these people?’, he asks. ‘The only ones who get rich are the pastors’.

We also talked a bit more about the challenge the government faces in providing adequate housing in the townships. Bishop Stephen pointed out that it’s not straightforward. When a scheme gets underway in a new place, hordes of migrant communities descend on it so that demand utterly outstrips supply. Or a family of 16, say, occupying a single shack will be provided with a house. But only 8 will move into the house. A year or two later, the remaining 8 will clamour for a house. I was aware that while some shacks lack windows, electricy and running water, others do not… what I had not noticed until Bishop Stephen pointed it out to me, is that many have television aerials and some even have satellite dishes.

We got to the game park at about 7.30am. It’s vast, like so much else in this extraordinary country. Pilanersberg is one of the most compact reserves in South Africa, but it must be the size of an English county. It’s certainly big enough to mean there is no restriction in the animals natural habitat. They are utterly free to roam and to establish their ‘wild’ state. The reserve is served by a network of tracks, and we drove around these for 7 hours, stopping at the roadside when there were spectacular sights to see, and at a penned facilities area for lunch (where this strange bird kept us company), as well as at a couple of penned hides. (Outside the penned areas, drivers are repeated warned not to get out of their vehicles. Each year there are stories about casualties, usually because the person who is savaged was desperate either to relieve themselves, or to get that perfect snapshot.) The big cats (cheetah, leopard and lion) are notoriously shy and we didn’t see them. But we saw plenty: elephants, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, jackals and a hyena. Sometimes, we found them right at the roadside. Drivers were very helpful to one another, tipping each other off about what could be seen where. It was exhilarating and the time sped by. I didn’t resent the hours in the car one little bit, and was still scanning the grass keenly looking for that elusive lion as we headed for the exit.

The journey back was almost without incident, which is just as well because I was behind the steering wheel. After 10 hours behind the wheel of the car, with almost no break, Bishop Stephen was ready for a breather and asked me to drive. I say almost without incident: there was one hairy moment. It was a diesel car, and at one point I misjudged an overtaking manoeuvre. The acceleration was more sluggish than I am used to and on one occasion when I pulled out to pass a truck, with a gap to an oncoming car which I was confident was sufficient, I couldn’t generate enough speed to get by and had to pull hurriedly back onto my own side of the road, behind the truck I’d been trying to pass. The adrenalin surge certainly ensured I stayed wide awake for the rest of the trip, even if Bishop Stephen felt safe enough to snooze!

When we got back, I was able to take the family out for a burger-meal as a thank you. Their hospitality has been an inspiration to me. The cheerful way in which the whole family, in the midst of very many challenges, has opened the home to me is a lovely reminder of what the Christian gospel is ultimately about: relationships restored to wholeness, through our shared participation in Christ Jesus. I shall miss them.

We were also encouraged by news coverage which suggests that the government may be about to make a new offer, to bring about a resolution to the general strike. That would be such a relief to the people I've met. And frankly, I'd feel a bit safer on the last leg of my trip if I knew there were police on active service!

This was my last day with Bishop Stephen, who has generously devoted pretty much the whole of the last three days to facilitating my visit personally. He’s an exceptional man and I pray his ministry will prosper.

Tomorrow I leave Matlosane at the end of the second leg of my visit. The remaining 3-4 days, before my evening flight on Friday, are leg 3: leisure time. My intention is to hire a car here in Klerksdorp and to drive north and east towards the Kruger National Park. I’m determined to see those shy lions!

Sunday 29 August: Anglican Worship African Style

The opportunity preach and preside at the Cathedral in Ikageng this morning was every bit as memorable as I’d hoped it might be.

I have never before, I think, been the only white face in a worshiping community, as I was this morning. Once, in the mid-1980s, Cathy and I attended the New Testament Chuch of God in Handsworth, Birmingham, as the only two white faces. But this morning I was alone. Yet I felt utterly embraced in warm affection. I do hope that a solitary black stranger at worship in Lichfield Cathedral would feel equally welcome. It was also, just by the way, the first time I've worn one of those headset style 'Madonna mics'. Never a good look on a preacher in my opinion, and certainly not designed for shaven-headed types, I feel.

The African sense of time is well known, and this morning was full of illustrations. Like a dutiful westerner, I was all set and good to go at about 6.50, for the half hour drive from Klerksdorp, where Bishop Stephen and his family live, to Ikageng. In fact it was 7.10 before we got away, and even then we had to make a detour to drop off one of the children at another church. We arrived at 7.50, for a service which was due to start at 8, but which of course did not. Some singing started then. But I was left to sit in the vestry until I was called, which was at almost 8.15. Nobody minded of course. The service began when everyone and everything was ready, and what’s 15 minutes here or there? I might try applying that view to Choral Evensong at home one day and see how it goes down…

Bishop Stephen had briefed me last night about what I could expect and he lent me a Prayer Book of the Anglican Church of South Africa so that I could prepare. I wrote my sermon in the evening last night, and was relieved that it seemed to come together well. The lectionary in use here is the same as the one we use at home, of course, which helped; and it meant something to me that the same bible readings would be used in the Cathedrals of both Ikageng and Lichfield today.

I had been forewarned that the Diocese of Matlosane is ‘high church’ Anglican. So I wasn’t at all surprised that the first thing I was asked to do was ‘cense’ (ie, waft incense around) the Holy Table. It was a service of Holy Communion (or a ‘Eucharist’). There is usually a choir, but its members were all away today at a festival somewhere. But you’d still have to call the service a ‘Sung Eucharist’, given the prominence and exuberance of the congregational singing. I suppose there were about 400 people in church. It was a hybrid occasion: when I spoke it was (with the exception of two carefully rehearsed phrases) in English; when anybody else spoke it was in the local indigenous language of Setswana. So at the start of the service, for example, I greeted the congregation with the words ‘The Lord be with you’, and they replied ‘And also with you’ – in Setswana. Or a little later, the people said their confession in Setswana and I pronounced the absolution in English!

By the grace of God, I think I pitched the sermon about right. I wanted to convey greetings from Lichfield and to say something about Chad (the saint, I mean, rather than the African country) and our history, and something about my impressions of my visit. But I was determined also to try to say something about our Gospel reading. I had the impression people were engaged – they even laughed at the places where I intended that they might! I was speaking with an interpreter, which is a bit of an art. It wasn’t quite a new experience – when I visited the Dioceses of West Malaysia, Kuching and Sabah in 2008 I spoke to Malay, Iban and Chinese congregations in that way. But I’m not very used to it, and once or twice the interpreter and I stumbled over each other as it were: either I spoke on while he was still translating, or we both fell silent. But it was fine.

Presiding was a bit dicey. I wasn’t always sure what was coming next and what was expected of me, and how far the slight sense of chaos at one or two points was my doing, or was perfectly normal. I had a helpful server to keep me straight, but once or twice he dug me in the ribs as if to remind me what to do next, and I couldn’t see what that next thing might be! But we got there without too much unwanted drama, carried along by an enthusiasm in singing that I’d gladly bottle and take home with me if I could. The idea that the service might last 3 hours proved to be an exaggeration. We were done in two and a half hours. Though, of course, if the choir had been absent not only would the administration of communion have taken longer, but the singing would no doubt have done so too…

Afterwards there was much talk about the general strike. Things seem to be developing in ways that are extremely serious. Teachers and hospital workers have been on strike for two weeks now, which has resulted in school closures at just the time when high school students are approaching the equivalents of GCSEs and A levels – their ‘mocks’ were cancelled last week. And in hospitals, even emergency services have been cut and patients are dying. Now it emerges that the police are joining the strike next week, as well as local government workers. From Monday there will be no refuse collection either. The largest union in the country has threatened to make the nation ungovernable, and people in church (including a police officer I spoke to) seemed certain that they would implement their threat. It’s already a national crisis and there’s a growing sense that South Africa could descend into chaos in the coming days. Certainly among the township congregation, it was clear that sympathy is entirely with the strikers and not with the government. Promises were made in 2005, which should have been implemented apparently in 2007, but were put off until after the World Cup. Now the government is saying it can’t afford to keep the promises it made and the unions are saying, ‘We waited three years in good faith. Now its time for you to deliver’. The mood was pretty dark over coffee, but there was also a sense that the government will have to bend in the next two or three days. I do hope a resolution can quickly be reached… it’s the sort of country in which I could imagine that order might be hard to restore if it is lost.

Bishop Stephen is out in the garden at present, making the South African equivalent of a BBQ (a braai). Then we’re due for an early night. We going to get up at 3am tomorrow (yes, 3am) to drive to a game reserve at Pilanersberg. I’m looking forward to it.

Saturday 28 August: The Diocese of Matlosane

Now, let’s get the cricket out of the way first of all. The last news I had of England’s first innings in the final test against Pakistan came at lunchtime yesterday, when they were 92-5. It transpires that they lost two further quick wickets after lunch and were at one stage 102-7. Then Stuart Broad and Jonathan Trott apparently put together the highest 8th wicket stand in the history of the game, so that England ended on a barely credible 446 all out. Pakistan were then bowled out for 74 in their first innings. Talk about a turn around.

Anyway… where to start… Bishop Stephen gave up the whole day to take me on a whistle stop tour of his Diocese. It’s vast. We covered over 400 kms in 8 hours, with frequent stops, visiting 6 churches in only 2 parishes of the 20 that make up the Diocese. Admittedly, there is a concentration of parishes in the more urban (township) parts of the Diocese. But all the same it makes for some odd comparisons with the Diocese of Lichfield, which (though it is only one fifth as extensive in area) has over 400 parishes. Bishop Stephen can call on the assistance of only 36 clergy, many of them ‘self-supporting’ (ie, volunteers). Bishop Jonathan in Lichfield oversees about 500 clergy, more than half of whom are stipendiary. Yikes. The distances that some of these self-supporting priests have to travel (outside the hours they give to their paid work) in order to reach the most far-flung of their outstations is daunting. For about two hours of the day today, we were not on tarmac roads, but rutted tracks. It must be almost impossible for these volunteer priests to develop good pastoral relationships with their most isolated congregations, let alone with the neighbourhoods these serve.

From Klerksdorp, we drove north and west. The drive gave us plenty of time to talk. Bishop Stephen is an excellent conversationalist – not afraid of silence, but quick with helpful observations and a good listener. He pointed out to me one of the great differences between driving in England and driving in South Africa: on the whole, in England, the combination of rolling countryside and tall hedges/fences/ dry-stone walls limits the vista; in South Africa the roadsides are unobstructed and the flat plains means that you can usually see for miles. He also pointed out that whereas in England, the driver who weaves to and fro may be under the influence of alcohol, whereas the one simply follows the line of the road is probably sober in South Africa, the driver who weaves his way down the road is soberly navigating the potholes, whereas the driver who keeps to a straightline is invariably drunk.

We visited a number of towns (Ottosdat, Delareyville, Sannieshof, Wolmaransstad), their townships and outlying villages. Three things struck me: the first was that the townships are not indicated on the road signs, which always show only the names of the towns themselves. Almost invariably, town names are Afrikaans and township names are African – so that it’s hard to avoid the impression that the townships are being deliberately rendered invisible. It’s telling that the map I’m using has jogged my memory about the names of the towns, but is giving me no clues about the names of the townships. The second was that communinities are not simply ‘black’ or ‘white’: even so-called ‘coloured’ people tend to live in clearly demarcated neighbourhoods. One of the challenges faced by Bishop Stephen is how far to work with the grain of this continued segregation. Should he appoint a white pastor to an overwhelmingly white congregation, for instance? And the third thing that struck me was the prominence of death. We passed three funerals in the course of the day, maybe four. We also passed an astonishing number of funeral parlours – one of which refered to itself as a leader in the funeral industry. The funeral industry… there’s a thought. It is, of course, a terrible indication of the seriousness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

There was disappointment for Bishop Steve at the first place we visited. One of his initiatives has been to promote, on church grounds, the cultivation of vegetable plots. He had been enthusing to me about the project in the car: it encourages the poorest and most deprived communities to eat healthily and cheaply; it allows church people to give the produce away in their neighbourhoods, expressing love of neighbour in the process; and any excess can be sold off to produce a modest but much needed income for the parishioners. He was deliberately taking me to see one of the places where the project had, the last time he visited, seemed to be flourishing. But when we got to the place, we found the garden neglected. He pulled a carrot from the ground: the crop had grown but had not even been harvested. I could sense his distress. ‘I’ve brought my horse to the river’, he said.

He was more encouraged later in the day when we visited the community in which he himself had grown up. He pointed out to me the primary and secondary schools where he had studied, and the church where he’d worshipped as a boy, and where, as a member of the youth fellowship, he’d helped to build a vestry onto the side of the church building, which still stands. The garden there was obviously still being tended carefully, and gave grounds for hope. In one place we visited, we found a team of church members busily polishing the stone floor by hand in readiness for Sunday worship. They do it every week. In another place, the church was a simple shack. The Diocese owns the plot, but cannot at present afford to build a more permanent structure. The Cathedral, through it’s Traidcraft stall at congregational refreshments after the Sung Eucharist on Sundays, has raised enough money to have charged me with passing £1000 to Bishop Steve. I plan to talk further with our own Diocesan World Mission Officer, but one option broached by Steve was that we might use at least some of this money to help start a building fund.

We got back at 6-ish (5pm in the UK) in time to catch the Premier League football scores. I’m planning on an early night: we leave the house tomorrow at 7am, as I’ve been given the wonderful opportunity to preach and preside in the Cathedral of the Resurrection at Ikageng. The service starts at 8-ish, I’m told, and will end at 11-ish, and the congregation will consist of 300-500 people. It sounds great!