Steinbeck's Tortoise

Before heading to our placements VSO volunteers are required to attend several training courses at Harborne Hall in Birmingham, a curious building and one time convent, hospital and stately home. By the last of these courses, a week’s long ‘Skills for Working in Development’, a strong camaraderie has developed and excitement runs high. The last evening, lubricated by tepid English ale and cheap red wine, becomes a crescendo of emotions as VSOs share their formative experiences; childhood traumas, lovers and sweethearts, the death of parents, the birth of a son or daughter.

I was sharing a room in the gatekeepers lodge with Paul, a young man older than his years, modest but confidently spoken, an astute observer. Sharing a bottle, sitting on the steps of the lodge, we spoke of books, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A House for Mr Biswas, Under Milk Wood (complete with Burtonesque renditions of the slow dark, crow dark, fishing boat bobbing sea),  A Man’s a Man, and later, much later into the night, The Grapes of Wrath and talk of Steinbeck’s tortoise, the symbolism of the struggling creature so poignant now, Paul closing his eyes as he spoke…….The wine ran out, we went to bed.

Raising our weary clouded heads the next morning we joined the other pasty faces for breakfast. I stood in the queue next to Stu, one of the trainers. “So Stu, how are you?” I said “Sleep well?”  “Not so well really.” He said, yawning.  “I was woken by a couple of drunken wankers talking about a bloody tortoise at three in the morning”…….

I was at an event at the American Cultural Centre, some weeks ago, (yes I know, the irony wasn’t lost) when I met one of the OYO Directors, Sandy Rudd, Director of Namibia’s National Theatre.  I mentioned a book I had read shortly before coming here, Mukiwa, an autobiography by Peter Godwin, a white Zimbabwean who wrote of his experiences during the war for independence, a conscript for the forces of White Rhodesia. “I’m in that book” said Sandy, and she was, “the girl in the orange skirt, with fishnet stockings and platform shoes”. When the laughter subsided, Sandy spoke of the importance of the book to those like her, white Zimbabweans, whose fathers and brothers never spoke about their experiences, soldiers on the wrong side in a war that should never have been. “I gave that book to my husband. We’d been married thirteen years. He read it in a day. We walked around Avis Dam and we cried as he told me things I didn’t know” She closed her eyes “of things that he had seen and things that he had done. This is an important book”

There are just two of us in the office today. Namibia closes early at Christmas as thousands return home to villages and homesteads, for many the one time in the year when families are together. My colleague Ivan ‘Fly’ Meuse, he who starred in the brilliant OYO DVD, The Virgin Pumpkin, the story of a boy from the village moving to the school hostel in town, teased by the cool guys who call him a pumpkin. He whose character falls in love with a girl, but who denies their relationship when she becomes pregnant, Fly who played this part so well, showed me his poetry. And this young man can write.

The Flame in My Heart

No one teaches the sun to rise

A bird to level its wings to fly

A fish to swim

A plant to grow and flower

A child to cry

Raindrops to quench the earth

The heart to glow

You had the instinct of a comforter

When life went up and down

You were my true companion

Always willing to listen to my tears

You helped me celebrate my victories

And with you by my side

My troubles had no principal role

My smile is a gift from joy

My love is steered by your happiness

My touch a sign of your affection

My candle might melt and its flame might die

But the flame in my heart will remain a lifetime

Time might ask you to forget about me

But knowing you were once in my lifetime

To have held a person like you

Is a true sign that God has been good to me

I think he likes her.

We’re off to Malawi on Thursday, driving via Zambia, the mighty Victoria Falls and South Luangwa national park with the greatest concentration of leopards in Africa, Cameron and Eilidh just bursting to see one.  In Lilongwe, Area 25, we hope to visit the houses we built last year with the Dunfermline Building Society, Habitat for Humanity Team, and the teacher’s house we have all since funded. I remember Gordon cutting the ribbon, the day we danced the Dashing White Sergeant in the dust and sang Auld Lang Syne together.  It’ll be different this time, my mother-in-law is with us……

Have a good Christmas everyone.

Alan