The Strays, Emily Bitto Winner of The Stella Prize for this year, this novel reminded me of Doris Lessig’s The Golden Notebook in its retrospective angle on a historical social movement, except that in The Strays I also felt like I actually got to know the characters though they were […]
Another use for paper plates – spider webs! We have stacks of spiders (along with various bugs) in our house so Elliot knows all about them and how to be safe around them. But these spiders were talking about having a tea party!
Every afternoon while Elliot eats his dinner and then Arthur puts him through the bath, I go for a walk, skirting the boundary of the university. It’s not exactly a power walk, but it’s energetic. I normally listen to a podcast while I walk so I’ve got headphones in but […]
For me, reading to be energised is not the same as reading to be relaxed. I do the latter in my fiction and (auto)biographical reading which make up the bulk of my monthly book reviews. Energising reading for me means books that stimulate me intellectually, and which are only tangentially […]
The waterhole is a major feature of our walks, especially when it has water in it! We sit on the bridge and Elliot spots turtles and dragonflies while I try to assure the many concerned passers-by that he will not fall!
Something we’ve been confused about here in Tanzania is why so many Christian women marry Muslims. We asked our student friends, one of whom has a sister who got married to a Muslim. They said it’s not family pressure. Instead, for most girls, it’s seeing the money the Muslim guys […]
Nicholas Wolterstorff is an important voice in our discussions of engaging the university. Here’s a mashup of some of his thinking, which I’ve begun exploring in the last couple of years. Wolterstorff originally comes from a Dutch Reformed background, in the tradition of Abraham Kuyper. He is often addressing Christian […]
Meet Jesus at uni 