When Red Twin died, a number of people sent me this image, entitled ‘First Day in Heaven’ by Kerolos Safwat: It’s meant to be a comfort, to picture the relief and happiness of the deceased person, now that they are united with the One they have spent their life following, […]
It’s Advent, the season of expectation and preparation for Christmas, our first Christmas without Red Twin, and the two year anniversary of her cancer diagnosis. Christmas Eve two years ago we were in Iringa for a conference when Red Twin WhatsApped to say the diagnosis was in and it was […]
My grief counsellor showed me this diagram: It’s about ‘grief work’, which is a combination of doing two things: feeling the loss, and working out how you will go on. Healthy grief work is like a pendulum. You swing between the two, and the swings are big at first and […]
Since we moved to Dar I’ve been pretty isolated. I can’t get a work visa, but being a stay at home mum is not really a thing in middle-class Tanzania, so it’s been hard to even find people to be friends with. I had an American friend who worked full-time […]
We have discovered that we have a henna tree in our backyard. Callum’s nanny started picking the leaves and I asked her what they were for and that’s how I found out what it was. Where did I think henna came from before this? Did I think it was some […]
One of my mentors wrote to me recently that now that things are settling down a bit in our lives, it might be that the emotions that I haven’t had the chance to pay attention to while we were in survival mode will bubble up to the surface and unseat […]
We think our house hunting saga might be over. We have found a place, and have entered negotiations with the landlady. The house is OK – looks big from the outside but is modest inside. The garden is amazing – lots of shade, and absolutely massive. It even has the mango trees […]
