‘Sorry, he’s spent his whole life in East Africa.’ I find myself saying this almost daily. (I say East Africa rather than Tanzania because many people have no idea where Tanzania is, or mishear it as Tasmania.) Sometimes saying this diffuses the tension of a situation, like when Elliot joins […]
I’ve been asked a few times since we got to Australia, ‘Do you find it overwhelming how much there is for kids and mums to do here?’ It’s a good question. I’m not working at the moment until our deputation starts in December, so it’s just me and Elliot with […]
When we went through customs in Dar es Salaam on our way to Australia, Elliot ran ahead of me while I spoke to the customs agent and he did his thing with our passport. The customs officer poked his head out of his cubicle, smiled at Elliot and commented on […]
It was the morning of a public holiday and we’d gone out for a family walk to buy some bananas from a local stall. People call out to us all the time so we thought nothing of replying pleasantly to the three drunk guys sitting on the new drain constructions […]
Twice in the preceding weeks, Elliot had come home from school talking about people hitting. We hadn’t wanted to alarm him or make a big deal, so we’d made very casual inquiries. Who was doing the hitting? Why? He replied, ‘They were hitting to make the children share.’ Sounds like […]
Every Sunday I think about that Huffington Post article written to parents of young children in church. And every Sunday I am unconvinced by it. We have no creche or Sunday school but each week at church, people say to me, ‘It’s fine for him to run around,’ ‘We don’t […]
People ask me about making friends all the time and I say that it’s hard to do. We’re not in a village where I can make friends by collecting water with other women as we watch our children together. We’re in a town and pretty much any woman has a […]
Meet Jesus at uni 