Each of the fourteen classes in this school in Soshanguve, a township 25km north-west of Pretoria in South Africa, is taught in the shade of the karee trees. Itumeleng School has no buildings, fences, desks --- or grants. There are between 78 and 143 pupils in each class and the school would like to split the largest class into two, but there are no more trees. The Principal, Mrs Thuli Ngwenya has said: ``We scatter and break for home when it rains. Hopefully we will have shelter by winter.''
Link Africa is an educational charity which supports schools and teacher development in South Africa started by Cambridge University students in 1989. Its Patron, former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, writes: ``The essence of apartheid was the holding back of the potential of the majority of the population on the grounds of race. This discrimination in access penetrated all aspects of the education system for black people and ensured that all aspects of the black education system were underdeveloped. To allow for the redressing of past inequalities investment is needed in the education system. It is for these reasons that I support the work of Link Africa. Their focus has always been on the school and the pupil.'' The Director of Link Africa, Steve Blunden, agrees: ``The legacy is so great that the government can only do so much, and there is a focus on water and housing. Education is still the biggest spend out of the national budget. They're in a very difficult situation: they need new classrooms and new schools, 85% of the budget is taken up with teachers' salaries and 70% of the teachers are underqualified. The greatest problem is in rural schools away from major urban centres because there the issue of training was less well addressed in the past. So you've got massive disparities because of the legacy of apartheid.''
Link Africa is working with the education departments of three provincial governments --- Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Province. Steve said: ``We may be focussing on one district or one circuit but it's part of their own policy and policy development. There is much more opportunity for sustainability and systemic change with the projects we have now.'' Frances Rayden explained: ``The schools in those three project areas come to over 350 and the school sponsorship scheme aims to find UK sponsors (churches, schools, companies and organisations) for each of those schools.''
![[Link_Africa]](August/Link_Africa.jpg)
The Director said that the aim is to depoliticise the school environment and to get parents and the community involved: ``That's partly what the sponsorship scheme is. It's not just about money, it's about empowering local South African schools to raise money themselves because it's a matching process. They have to raise the money first, to prioritise their own needs, to make accountable spending decisions and to account for their money, so it's actually a training process, part of a wider training scheme for schools' own management.'' This summer Anna Colquhoun and Frances Rayden from Link Africa and six Cambridge University students (Graham Homer, Katherine White, Sasha Barton, Samantha Goddard, Arabella Fraser and Thea Pallut) are in South Africa working with district staff and schools on fundraising training. Frances added: ``Alongside the training and fundraising, there's also training in terms of schools' development. Each school is encouraged to have a development committee which will have representatives from the staff, parents, pupils and the Principal.''
In June twenty-six children (aged 11---16 years) from Sithobelumthetho Senior Primary School in KwaZulu-Natal gave a concert of traditional songs at West Road Concert Hall, hosted by Link Africa. They came to this country for a three-week visit arranged by four students from Exeter University who had been to KwaZulu-Natal during their teacher training. They raised £18,000 to make the visit possible and they wrote: ``As Christians we feel that this venture is inspired by God and have taken confidence through prayer that we would reach our financial targets and see this tour come to fruition.'' The children came from a disadvantaged area (Sections 6 and 7) of Madadeni Township. There are 978 pupils in the school and, as in all South African schools, parents pay a small fee for each child. The Principal, Mr Jethro Gina, is proud of the fact that, unlike similar schools, the school has a secretary and a security officer, both paid for by parents. What were the children's impressions of England? They were amazed by the amount of traffic, by the size of the buildings such as blocks of flats and, on their journey from London to Exeter to Cambridge, that everything was so crowded together. While in Cambridge they visited Great St Mary's and also bought sunglasses to keep up with western fashion! Singing is part of their culture and is not taught. The songs are unaccompanied (except, in some cases, by drums) and they sing (and dance) in the playground, in the classrooms and whenever they gather together. No one who attended that exhilarating evening of vibrant song and dance will doubt the value of helping the children and schools of South Africa.
To sponsor a school (£250 per year, which may be covenanted) or for further information contact Link Africa, Orwell House, Orwell Road, Cambridge CB4 4WY (01223 506665) Fax: 01223 578665 email: anna@linkafrica.demon.co.uk Charity no.: 1048007.
![[Peter Hilken]](../by/Peter_Hilken.jpg)
In 1966, when I joined the British Council, countries in Africa were joyfully throwing off their colonial shackles. I was young and enthusiastic, and wanted to have a hand in working out a more equal relationship between this country and those gaining their independence.
I spent thirty years testing my assumptions. I enormously enjoyed working on aid projects in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Sierra Leone; but
I am aware that many people are now feeling disheartened about the prospects for Africa.
Success stories do not make the media headlines. Uganda and Ghana, for example, have recovered from near-anarchy. Sierra Leone's democratic election in 1996 and the admirable behaviour of the Nigerian army and the Freetown citizens in restoring the legitimate government this year are, to my mind, much more interesting than ascertaining whether or not Robin Cook has lied about Britain's part in that restoration.
There is now widespread cynicism about bilateral government and international aid, and we should not allow it to obscure the good work carried out by these official bodies. Criticism is healthy, but sweeping condemnation is not; and some attacks come from the non-government organisations which may themselves be self-interested. In the argument over famine relief for Sudan, for example, I tend to believe Clare Short, Minister for Overseas Development, when she says that the problem is more political than financial.
Poor countries must produce their own leaders and their own policies. But there is no going back to pre-industrial innocence for them. The question should not be whether we co-operate, but how.
In Cambridge we have many sources of information besides those noisy headlines. It is easy to meet students and visitors from the developing countries (through the HOST organisation, for example), to read serious books and articles, and to talk to academics and businessmen. They can rescue us from negative thinking about development.
The Lambeth Conference is currently under way, and Great St Mary's is delighted to welcome the Rt Revd Mano Rumalshah, Bishop of Peshawar in the Church of Pakistan, who will preach at the Parish Communion (9.30am) on Sunday 2nd August. There will also be a discussion with Bishop Rumalshah at 12noon on the same day, in St Michael's. All are welcome to come.
![[Peshawar Shield]](August/Peshawar Shield.jpg)
Peshawar is the provincial capital of the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan and guards the eastern end of the famous Khyber Pass. The Diocese of Peshawar covers the entire province. The population is about 15.5 million and includes around 50,000 Christians. Most of the inhabitants are Pashtuns and Pashtu is the main provincial language.
Congratulations to the new Senior and Deputy Senior Choristers who took office in July: Arfie Mansfield (Senior) and Ben Hymas (Deputy Senior) in the Parish Choir; Cherry Wynn-Williams (Senior) and Catherine Atkinson (Deputy Senior) in the Girls' Choir. Many thanks to the retiring Senior Choristers, Tom McIntosh and Alex Mullen.
During August the Parish Choir and the Girls' Choir take a break from singing services at Great St Mary's. For a week in the holiday the Parish Choir, with some members of the Girls' Choir, will be singing the services at Bristol Cathedral and staying at Clifton College. As well as the singing, there will be trips to Bath, Wells and Bristol Zoo.
Whilst the choirs are away, on Sundays 9th and 16th August, the services at Great St Mary's will be sung by the Northern Cathedral Singers, who will be on a Royal School of Church Music course in Cambridge. They will be conducted by Gordon Appleton, Northern Regional Director with the RSCM.
In September, both Great St Mary's Parish Choir and the Girls' Chamber Choir have been invited to sing Evensongs at Ely Cathedral --- the Parish Choir on Saturday 19th at 5.30pm, the Girls' Choir on Sunday 27th at 3.45pm.
![[Teas in the Churchyard]](August/Teas_in_the_Churchyard.jpg)
![[Pam_Rhodes]](August/Pam_Rhodes.jpg)
Saturday 20th June saw the first Great St Mary's Open Day take place. Throughout the day a stream of visitors looked around the displays in church, listened to musical recitals, watched bell-ringing demonstrations, took part in children's activities, and listened to talks about the history of Great St Mary's. Refreshments were served in the churchyard, and there were stalls and sideshows. The day came to a finish with a Songs of Praise service, led by the church's combined choirs and a chamber ensemble. Pam Rhodes presented the service, which included interviews with Joye Rosenstiel, Selwyn Image and Robin Steinke. The day's undoubted success was due to the hard work of many church members.
Congratulations to Sheila Cameron (an editor of Majestas) for being recommended for training as a Reader. Sheila will begin the three-year course in September, at the end of which she will be licensed to serve at Great St Mary's.
Unfortunately, this picture is not yet available on-line.
Can you discover the location of this object in Cambridge? Bring or send the answer, and your name and address, to Majestas, Great St Mary's, Cambridge CB2 3PQ, by 30th September. The first correct answer drawn out will win a book token for £10 donated by Heffers Booksellers.
The image in the July edition is a footscraper outside the entrance to Westcott House in Jesus Lane.
David D. Wynn-Williams's work regularly takes him to an extreme part of the world, where life itself can only just keep a toe-hold. He describes what it is like living on a research base in British Antarctic Territory.
In true Cambridge tradition, Griffith Taylor (a geologist from Emmanuel College) took a bicycle to McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic on Captain Scott's 1910---12 Expedition. He used it for cycling on the sea-ice near their hut at Cape Evans. Perhaps more appropriately, I cycle to work along Madingley Road to the headquarters of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), where I am the leader of a research group concerned with terrestrial biology. Transport is a major aspect of working in the Antarctic. It ranges from the bike in Cambridge to the dubious pleasure of a seven-hour brain-numbing flight in a US Navy ski-equipped Hercules aircraft from New Zealand to McMurdo Station (in the tyre-tracks of Griffith Taylor and his colleagues).
The mode of transport is dictated by the destination. When we go `south' to our own stations within British Antarctic Territory in the Antarctic Peninsula region south of the Falkland Islands, we start with the RAF at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. The RAF TriStars take us first to Ascension Island in the equatorial Atlantic, where we are lulled into holiday mood by balmy tropical air. However, this only lasts for a tantalising hour during refuelling before we are bundled back on board for the remainder of our 18-hour flight to the chillier Falklands. For me, the Falklands have bitter-sweet memories. They contrast the atmosphere of an olde worlde village community with the stark evidence of `high tech' warfare. A walk in the hills behind Stanley requires a `mine map' for safety and takes you to places such as Mount Longdon, where a VC was won and a score of teenagers died in battle. And yet the view from Stanley Cathedral through its famous whalebone arch is as serene as ever.
For us, Stanley is another staging post. When I first went south in 1974, this is where we were kitted out with our Antarctic clothing before sailing in an ice-breaker to our various `bases'. BAS started life as Royal Naval Party 475, instigated by Churchill and the War Cabinet in 1943. They instructed James Marr to set up bases in the Peninsula region to secure our political claim. Although he had to take Servicemen, Marr selected those with expertise in botany, zoology, geology etc. to combine the occupation with useful research.
This humble beginning developed into the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, which evolved into BAS in 1961. In the early days of FIDS we had many bases on the Peninsula --- basic wooden huts with the atmosphere of a mountain `bothy' and some of them not much bigger.
I served my original overwintering contract at Signy Island in the South Orkney Islands (60¡S), which is now a summer-only research station. However, my current research is now focused on more extreme desert areas of Antarctica. These are reached via our air-base south of the Antarctic Circle at Rothera Station (68¡S). My trip from Stanley to Rothera is no longer in an ice-breaker but in the relative comfort of a Dash-7 aircraft with wheels, not skis, for landing on a gravel runway in an incredibly beautiful setting.
At Rothera itself, we have state-of-the-art laboratories fully equipped for terrestrial and marine biology. We have special TV-microscope systems for imaging the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that we use to detect effects of the extra UVB radiation they now receive during the `Ozone Hole'. We also use them to study global warming. These humble green soil microbes are ideal for studying the effects of changing stress because their need for light keeps them near the soil surface. Here they are blasted by UVB, desiccated like poppadums, smothered in salt crystals, warmed up to 30¡C in summer sun and frozen to ---40¡C in winter. What a life; but they still come back for more!
To study life near the limit of its existence, we have to fly even deeper into the field in small ski/wheel-equipped Twin Otter aircraft to set up a camp on the aptly named Utopia Glacier. Life in a field camp takes you back to the simple pleasures of cooking supper on a Primus stove, just like the ones that Scott used. Here, you ski to work down a `nursery slope', and, if you're lucky, you can hitch a tow back to the camp behind a skidoo (a snow scooter). We work late into the night because this is the land of the midnight sun. But there is occasionally still time to go for a ridge walk for breathtaking views above the head of the glacier before tumbling into a sleeping bag. The nearby desert research site is named Mars Oasis, one of several astronomical names in the region. Coincidentally, much of our research into the limits of earthly life is also applicable to analogous habitats which may have existed on the planet Mars. The Viking lander missions to Mars in the 1970s were tested in the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valleys region (discovered by Captain Scott's geologists but now served by American and New Zealand stations). As a visiting scientist, I am able to share their helicopters to get to work at the heads of the valleys where the environment is so hostile that the microbes can only live inside the fabric of the sandstone cliffs as `endolithic' communities. Their carbon turnover time is about 10,000 years, so they are the slowest-growing organisms on Earth!
In 2002, some of my endolithic microbes will hopefully be launched into orbit by the NASA Space Shuttle to be exposed to UVB radiation, representing a `worst case scenario' of the Ozone Hole. This would show if their sheltered habitat gives them a survival advantage. In collaboration with the University of Bradford we use laser technology to analyse their biochemicals. As we simply shine the laser into the living cells (or their fossils) inside the rock, this technique would be ideal for looking for life on Mars. We are working with NASA, ESA and the Open University to develop the potential of this technique for Mars research. All this is a far cry from the `low tech' science of Scott and Shackleton, who made the original observations which are nevertheless invaluable for comparing with modern satellite images to show the effects of `global warming' on ice shelves and glaciers.
The Antarctic Polar Plateau is also a great place for collecting meteorites. One of these is the famous ALH84001 from Mars, which ended up as a front page story in the newspapers in 1997. This was the one which was reported to have evidence of life, including tiny microbes. We are now working on it with Monica Grady (who looks after samples of it in the Natural History Museum, London) by comparing it with Antarctic rock microbes, using our laser.
We combine old and new travel traditions. Although we use satellite global positioning systems (GPS) for navigation, we still use wooden Nansen sledges as developed by the Norwegians and used by Amundsen with his dog teams. We had our own dog teams at Rothera until 1994, when they were removed for political reasons. One day in 1983 I had the unique opportunity of travelling through history with a dog sledge team from Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds back to the New Zealanders' Scott Base. One of the great pleasures during the dog era at Rothera was to round off our work at perhaps 9.00 in the evening, harness up a dog team, and take a sledge up the ice slope behind the base for the night at a tented camp. We would be up again at 0700, hurtle back down the slope, feed the dogs, and still be in time for breakfast and the next day's work! This blend of the old and the new is one of the great privileges of working for BAS.
John Binns has developed a deep love for the people of Ethiopia and their unique, ancient Christian faith. He recalls his first visit and the vividness of an experience that, despite subsequent returns, has lost none of its extraordinariness.
My first day in Addis Ababa remains rooted in my memory. It was my first visit to an African country --- or to any Third World country for that matter. I was completely unprepared for the vividness of the sense impressions and the strangeness of everything. Since Ethiopia is both high and mountainous and within the tropics, the air was clear and the colours strong, with bright blues, greens, whites and browns of the sky, trees, clothes and houses. The smells were unexpected too, with the smoke of fires of eucalyptus wood, and cooking food and gently decaying rubbish produced a heady aroma.
At first I found that everything I did was a determined act of will --- to go out and walk down the street outside the Chaplaincy, or to go into a café for a drink of the local beer, or to try to get around the city on the rickety minibuses with the boys standing by them shouting out where the vehicle was going. For the first time I understood what culture shock was, and began to realise something of the isolation and hopelessness which must be felt by Africans coming to England --- and they of course do not have the advantages of money or influence which I did.
After a week or so, I made a journey outside Addis Ababa travelling on a mixture of small two-engine planes and local buses. I made my way round some of the famous towns in the north of the country. I was away ten days and slowly began to come to grips with the huge, friendly, poor and beautiful country of Ethiopia. The main purpose of the trip was to go to the festivities of Timkat, or Epiphany, in the historic town of Gondar. I found my way to a delightful little hotel, where it turned out that the nephew was a deacon at one of the forty churches of the small town and there was water in the taps and the local food of injara and wot in the bar adjoining my room. The festival was unforgettable but tiring. There was a procession to a pool of water a couple of miles away, which took all afternoon, and a night of prayer and vigil, and then another procession back the next day. There were singing and drumming and praying and dancing, and the huge crowd of thousands of people from the surrounding villages enjoyed every minute of it. It was, for me, an initiation process. I arrived back in Addis tired and deeply happy.
I realise, though, that I have never got used to being in Ethiopia, either on that visit or on the two more I have made since. And there would be something wrong if, for example, I got sufficiently accustomed to seeing the terrible poverty in which so many people live that I stopped minding it. At first I was horrified and sickened, then I casually ignored the beggars as a normal part of life, then I started to think of them as individual and unique human beings and began to try to find ways to respond positively --- although always desperately inadequately.
What I wanted most to understand was the richness of the culture, and especially the religious tradition. One man told me that I should remember that the Christian Church in Ethiopia is very old and was founded many centuries before the birth of Christ. I see what he meant. The traditional view is that Ethiopia has been Judaeo-Christian since the time that the Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian, visited King Solomon and gave birth to a son Menelik, who brought the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to the holy city of Axum, where it still is. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a deep sense of continuity with these people of the Old Testament times and, for them, Christ can only be understood within that tradition. There are many Judaic traditions in the church like the distinction between clean and unclean food, the Levitical Temple dancers or debtera, and the practice of circumcision.
In addition to the antiquity, there is a strong sense of holiness. I often got up at around six in the morning to go to the local church. Every day there is a Eucharist, or qidasse as it is called, and many people go every day. They stand outside the church in the compound under the trees, sitting or reading from books of prayers. Inside the church are more people, women on the right and men on the left, wrapped in white shammas, some leaning on makomiya or prayer sticks through the long service, all intent on the worship, which builds up to an intense and powerful fulfilment as the time of the communion comes. I didn't understand a word, and can still only pick out isolated phrases, but I felt drawn to the mystery and holiness of the qidasse. Once, at a big festival, I stayed all night, waking, dozing, sitting, standing, listening, dreaming as the slow, rhythmical singing carried on --- with the clergy and debtera apparently feeling no exhaustion as they sang through the long hours of the night without a break.
Another aspect of Ethiopian life which struck me was the strong sense of community. In one family I knew the second daughter, called Betlehem, had a job in a travel agency. I asked her one day if she enjoyed her work. She looked at me blankly, and I realised that my question did not mean anything to her. The idea of work as being satisfying or fulfulling or enjoyable had not occurred to her. It was not just that the family's need for the money outweighed other considerations, but that she did not see her own personal needs as significant. What mattered to her was her family and her place in it, and her self-understanding was in these terms. A similar example of this way of thinking can be seen in the concept of religious faith. I do not think that an Ethiopian would understand what personal faith is. Faith is to do with belonging to a family and a community with religious traditions and customs. You cannot dissociate yourself from your church any more than you can stop being human. If you are born into an Amhara village you are also born into a Christian church. I realised many times how impoverished our society is as a result of its individualism and of its weak sense of community.
These impressions were built up through the twelve weeks I spent at the Anglican Chaplaincy of St Matthew in Addis Ababa. It was a time which contained some parish work --- teaching in the local school and Catholic seminary, as well as celebrating the daily Eucharist, sometimes alone and sometimes with others and always with the sound of the streets bringing the life of Addis Ababa through the doors. I was also able to make some journeys around the countryside. Above all I met many people and made friends. I only realised the importance of these friendships later when on the next visit, two years later, I tentatively called on people I had known, not knowing whether they would remember me or not, and being totally overwhelmed by the joy of seeing them again and realising that they shared the same feelings.
Back in England, it is, I suppose, the charitable work which is a way of keeping in touch. There is the remarkable work of the St Matthew's Children's Homes, a small charity set up to support the congregation of St Matthew's, Addis Ababa, in their commitment to care for 1,000 children orphaned as a result of war and famine in 1985. Then there is the new Anglican Church set up to serve the Sudanese refugees in Gambella, in the far west of Ethiopia. Then there is the work of FarmAfrica, with a very impressive, local and small-scale series of agricultural projects which are bringing great advances in farming techniques. Then there is Sister Lemlem, a small and kind Eritrean sister who has developed a women's project in some of the poorest kebelles of Addis Ababa which gives employment and income to poor girls.
The greatest gift of all has been the discovery of the people of Ethiopia, who at first were so strange, different and even frightening, but became much-loved and missed friends.
![[Welcome To Airport]](August/Welcome_To_Airport.jpg)
Chris Bishop is priest to a most unusual `parish'. He tells here of the job which he loves.
The title to this piece sounds like a contradiction in terms, and yet, for a number of years, as I settled into my job as Airport Chaplain at Stansted, or more correctly Industrial Chaplain, this was very much a feature of day-to-day life as the building took shape and the site expanded into London's third airport. It was an enormous £400 million building programme including the construction of a new terminal building, plus a London rail link that would go under the runway and a computerised passenger moving track-transit system from the terminal to the satellites where passengers would board their aircraft. When I started my work at the airport in 1986, the foundation work for this enormous exercise had only just started.
I am one of a 15-strong ecumenical team of Industrial Chaplains who cover Essex and the five London Boroughs that make up the Anglican Diocese of Chelmsford. The work we do is sponsored by the Church of England, the Roman Catholics, the Methodists, the Baptists and the United Reformed Church, as our concern is that the church should have a presence in the workplace, whether it be Lakeside Shopping Centre, the Port of London and Thames Gateway, Local Authority Council Offices or Stansted Airport. I love the work, the two days a week I spend at the airport, but I also have other responsibilities, as I am Priest-in-Charge of two rural villages on the Hertfordshire border (Manuden and Berden) and have been a Rural Dean for nine years.
Most of my time at the airport is spent with the workforce --- 7,000 at present on site. We are like a large village that nobody lives in. Being involved for me means being out and about and being concerned with the people and issues of the airport community, and part of this involvement means being Chairman of a group called A.W.A.C.S., which stands for Airport Working Against Crime, Stansted. This is a forum that addresses issues of crime prevention with the airport police. We have our own Police Division at Stansted, so it is the ideal opportunity for the companies that are members to raise their concerns, and also to take initiatives to keep everyone, workers and passengers, on their toes. Another aspect of my work is to do with matters of emergency procedures. No, I wasn't present when we had the hijack in 1996: I was on holiday in Guernsey at the time; but I was very much involved with the plane loads of Sierra Leone refugees that landed at Stansted in the early summer of 1997. I have developed a very good working relationship with the Victim Support Scheme in West Essex, and we all got involved, along with other voluntary agencies and the airport authorities, to help these unfortunate people to get sorted and settled when they arrived.
The refugee drama was of course out of the ordinary. For the best part of the time, my days at the airport are really a matter of `loitering with intent' (one definition of Industrial Mission), walking and listening, and reflecting. In 1991, when the Queen opened the new airport, it was, you might say, the end of terminal development, but the site is continually growing, and so is the workforce, and this year we expect to see six to seven million passengers using Stansted. I shall still be there, walking, talking and caring.
Great St Mary's has many international links, both informal and formal. Much of the formal work is channelled through the Wider Concerns Committee, which is a sub committee of the PCC, though it is lucky enough to draw also on members of the congregation.
Great St Mary's has three Thankofferings a year, all of which are used to raise money for overseas projects. Our aim is also to raise awareness of the groups we are supporting and the committee often seeks to support projects which aim to provide training and education for local people. Hence at Harvest 1997 one of the chosen groups was Action Health which sends local nurses and doctors to provide training in healthcare for people in India and parts of Africa.
Links with members of the congregation are also important and help for practical projects. Accordingly a Thankoffering was held for the Goodwill Children's Home in India, which has been visited by Jenny Houghton, a long-standing member of the choir. Funds have also been raised to help sponsor Bridget Le Huray a member of the congregation who spent two years in Malawi working as a Health Visitor.
Wider Concerns is about more than giving, it is about working in a spirit of partnership with others who live in very different circumstances, and about learning from others.
Joye Rosenstiel
Andy Martin offers some seasoned advice on how to survive working in exotic places.
![[Andy_Martin_and_kids]](August/Andy_Martin_and_kids.jpg)
You are offered the chance of working in Hawaii during the winter. Do you jump at the chance? My advice is: don't do it. For two reasons: (a) no one else in the whole of Hawaii is doing any work, which makes getting anything done even harder than usual; (b) no one in England will believe you've actually done any work anyway, and people will say things like ``Hey, how was your holiday?'' when you get back. I know all this and yet, whenever the opportunity arises, I always hop on the first plane to Honolulu. Well, someone's got to do it.
Another fallacy to clear up before you go: if you think you're going to lead a fantasy life there, forget it. I like to imagine myself as a tanned, loose-limbed surfer. But whenever I hit the North Shore of the island of Oahu, it's always, ``Oh, here comes Andy, that academic guy.'' Only in Cambridge can I be taken seriously as a surfer. Anyway, Hawaiians have their own fantasies to worry about. One hard-core surfer came up to me once and whispered in my ear, ``I hear the waves in Iceland are really something --- is that true?'' We fantasise about Hawaii; if you live in Hawaii you fantasise about Iceland.
Despite a couple of hundred years of literacy, Hawaii is still a resolutely oral culture. If you're seen with a pen in your hand you are apt to feel as awkward as if you had been caught wearing socks and long trousers. On the other hand, Hawaiians love to have their stories told. I sent a copy of a book I had written about the culture there, Walking on Water, to one of my informants. A few months later I got a phone call: ``Andy, that book of yours --- it's great, I love it. But do you think you could tell me which pages I'm on so I can have a look at them?''
![[Surfer]](August/Surfer.jpg)
Sometimes it's tough being Hawaiian. A doctor at a psychiatric hospital on Oahu once explained what she called `North Shore Neurosis' to me: ``In Hawaii you're supposed to be happy all the time. Add to that that it's America, so you're supposed to be rich too. If you're broke and unhappy you're not just broke and unhappy, you're racked with guilt too.''
By way of contrast, I have recently been reporting on the World Cup in France, where it is perfectly normal and healthy to be angst-ridden and Jean-Paul Sartre famously defined the meaning of life in one word: `Nausea'. I began to have an idea what he was talking about after being tear-gassed in Marseilles. Actually, being pursued down the street by a hundred or so riot police is not nearly so bad as seeing mothers remove little children from my path in Paris and telling them to behave or otherwise le hooligan will get them.
In many ways, the ideal place to work abroad is Australia, where I recently spent a sabbatical term. Australia is essentially made up of two beaches, one around the outside, the other on the inside. But only the one on the outside has an ocean to dive into and cool off. In its more subtropical zones, not only does Australia have an optimal physical environment to play in, it has also taken the puritan work ethic to heart, so there is a collective sense of purpose and enterprise. If you start tapping away at your laptop on a café table, you will soon have fellow writers swarming around you anxious to compare notes.
I recall one evening setting up shop at the Indiana, opposite our house in Cottesloe on the west coast, looking out over the sultry Indian Ocean. Within a few minutes a friendly and attractive young woman who had been working at an adjacent table had descended on me and kept me in conversation for a full hour. But she had an ulterior motive: after the first 45 minutes or so, it became clear that she was trying to sign me up for her prayer group in some obscure sect. I told her that one obscure sect was probably enough for me.
I had in mind, of course, surfers. And perhaps this is the right season to recall an item from a service in a church on the North Shore (which also doubled as a gym), when the priest (wearing shorts, I recall) lifted his arms to the heavens and cried out, ``Oh Lord, we pray for some big swells and a neat time at the beach.''
![[Shoe_Making]](August/Shoe_Making.jpg)
Peter Hilken offers an assessment of the issues facing the church in West Africa.
Liberal Christians tend to be embarrassed by the history of missionary activity in Africa. However, such guilt may now distract us from the problems facing Christians in the continent. We are not responsible for the acts of our forefathers; and in any case most of the people I met in West Africa remembered the missionaries with amused affection.
Churchgoing in sub-Saharan Africa is as common as it was in England in the nineteenth century, and congregations are growing. Huge churches spring up even in the poorest areas, services last three or four hours, and membership seems to offer people hope of protection from poverty, disease, war, robbery and arbitrary ill-treatment by police and soldiers.
My impression, however, is that the church may not be equipping itself to transform society. Everyone wants the world to be different, but few consider what needs to be done to effect the change. Could the notion of religion working miracles be to blame? The supernatural events portrayed in the Bible and the claims for miracle cures by evangelists (expatriate and native) may confuse people's understanding of nature and deflect them from reform of the civil service, the courts of justice and business standards.
In 1992 Sahr Yambasu completed a Cambridge PhD in the history of Christian missions in Sierra Leone. Two years later he was appointed Principal of the Anglican/Methodist Theological College in Freetown. He (a strong but gentle and tactful person) told me it was extremely difficult to persuade ordinands to think about the implications of their faith in that unhappy country. They even petitioned to be given a less challenging lecturer!
But there is a great need for hard theological thinking about faith in Africa today. Christianity is very much alive, but is it kicking enough where questions of ethics in politics, justice, administration, business and medicine are concerned?
Christians also have to work out a modus vivendi with Muslims in West Africa. But that is another story...
Peter Hilken has worked for the British Council in educational projects in several countries of Africa.
Isobel Stemp reports on an unusual film she recently enjoyed.
Kundun is a beautiful film, where, in a workmanlike manner, Scorsese explores the early years of the present Dalai Lama's life and his exile from Tibet in 1959. He examines the Dalai Lama's personal doubts and fears relating to his identity, and displays the rich colours and philosophy of Tibet. Many of the scenes are set against the subtle and atmospheric music of Philip Glass.
The film begins with an account of the Dalai Lama's discovery, when, as with Jesus, `wise men' come from afar to seek him out. The journey they have taken has been long and arduous, but in the far reaches of their country they find a child living in modest circumstances. They put him to various tests, which in the end convince them of his holiness. In one of the tests they ask him to recognise the last Dalai Lama's staff, which is set amongst others. He grasps the true staff and rejects an ornate variation which might have been more attractive to a child. By this act all believe that the last Dalai Lama had been reborn into this child, who recognises his own belongings. The boy is taken to the strange and at times eerie setting of the holy court, where he is venerated by all, including his brother, which is a source of great amusement to him. As he matures, so the pressures of his responsibility increase. The Chinese invade, and he has to tackle issues of enormous gravity concerning the future of Tibet, as well as come to terms with his own destiny and the expectations placed upon him.
Scorsese allows viewers to make up their own minds concerning Tibet's philosophy and traditions and to question or accept the validity of the Dalai Lama. The enigmatic quality of his identity is shown at the close of the film when he claims that he is the Buddha in so far as the moon is the moon when seen as a reflection in water. He goes on to say that all the good that a person equates with himself is only an indication of the good within themselves.
The Director uses an all-Tibetan cast, with unprofessional actors. This gives the film an honesty and natural quality which may be lacking in an all-star Hollywood epic.
With thanks to the Cambridge Arts Cinema for the pictures.
Dr Lynne Broughton explains the Christian symbolisms of pilgrimage.
Chaucer's pilgrims, telling stories to entertain each other as they journeyed to Canterbury, are a well-known example of a diverse group of people travelling with a mixture of motives to a famous Christian shrine. What is not so well known is how deeply rooted in Christian history are the concept and practice of pilgrimage. Old Testament Judaism required all adult males, if at all possible, to go up to the Temple in Jerusalem for the great religious feasts; and the Gospels make it clear that Jesus and his disciples conformed to this requirement. The Holy Land has always been the major place to which Christian pilgrims have been drawn, in order to visit the very places where Jesus himself walked and talked, suffered and died, was buried and rose to life again. This pilgrimage was well established by the late fourth century, as we know from the surviving letters of the Spanish nun Egeria, written to her sisters at that time. From these it is clear that the Church in Jerusalem was already geared up to provide for the physical and spiritual needs of quite large numbers of foreign visitors.
For similar reasons the burial places of the martyrs also drew those seeking spiritual inspiration or physical healing. Thus Rome attracted many pilgrims, as did, from the late twelfth century, Canterbury, where the archbishop Thomas Becket had been murdered in his cathedral. In East Anglia Walsingham, with its copy of the house of the Holy Family in Nazareth and its statue of the Virgin and Child, was a famous pilgrimage site; in Spain the reputed burial place of St James the Apostle drew crowds to Compostela. Those who returned from the shrine would wear badges to mark their achievement. The badge of the pilgrim to Compostela was a scallop shell. Surviving medieval images of St James in English churches show him dressed as a pilgrim to his own shrine, the shell attached to his hat. So well known was the badge that it became the attribute by which he could be recognised. Many badges have survived from this and other shrines of medieval Christendom.
Pilgrimage was, and still is, a potent religious metaphor. The Christian life as a whole is seen as a pilgrimage, a journey through difficult terrain to attain a better state. On a pilgrimage people travelled singly and also in groups and processions. The journey was often long and difficult; on the more arduous journeys some might die before reaching their goal, or reach it but not return home. Some pilgrims were more devout than others, but they all travelled in hope and expectation. For those who stayed at home an important part of the Church's liturgy was the procession, which is itself a pilgrimage in miniature. As the procession winds around the church, whether outside or in, we are reminded of the unfinished nature of this earthly life and of the lifelong need to persist in the journey of faith. The wearing of a Christian symbol, perhaps a cross or a fish, is a sign like the pilgrim badges. It marks out one's allegiance, as a pilgrim of Christ. For all Christians are ``strangers and pilgrims on the earth'' [Hebrews 11:13] travelling in hope towards their true home, the Heavenly Jerusalem.
Following last month's account of a medical student's work, Majestas spoke to William Ovenden about the next stage.
![[William_Ovenden]](August/William_Ovenden.jpg)
William Ovenden came up to Selwyn College to read medicine and after graduating he did two years' clinical training at Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Stevenage and Peterborough hospitals. He is now completing his training with two years' hospital experience as a junior doctor before postgraduate exams.
![[Hospital]](August/Hospital.jpg)
William said: ``I'm a pre-registration house officer in general surgery, which basically involves admitting all the patients for routine surgery and looking after them while they're on the ward when they're recovering from the operation. When we're on call we either cover all the patients on the wards or receive all the acute admissions (and we receive between ten and fifteen surgical admissions every day), who have to be seen by the house officer on call first.'' He went on: ``I was working last night. I started work at eight in the morning, got about twenty minues for lunch and about half an hour for supper, watched about twenty minutes of TV in the evening and got to bed at 1.30. I was woken up at 3.00 and got to bed at 4.30. When you are at work you are busy.''
William sang in the Selwyn Senior Chapel Choir and joined the GSM choir when he started his clinical training. ``Socially I do enjoy singing. Certainly what I got most out of Cambridge was the discovery of the Anglican choral tradition. I wouldn't want to let that go.'' William is also keen on food and wine: he was president of the College Wine Tasting Society for three years.
What of the future? ``Whilst I was a student I enjoyed surgery, but the bit that I'm enjoying at the moment is looking after the patients. I'm feeling that my calling may actually be as a G.P.''
All events take place in Great St Mary's unless otherwise advertised.
| Saturday 1st August | 1.05pm | Healing Service | |
| 5pm | Lambeth Conference Special Service | St Mary's, Ely | |
| Sunday 2nd August Eighth Sunday after Trinity | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 9.30am | Parish Communion. Preacher: The Rt Revd Mano Rumalshah, Bishop of Peshawar, Pakistan | ||
| 12noon | Discussion with Bishop Mano Rumalshah | St Michael's | |
| Sunday 9th August Ninth Sunday after Trinity (Services sung by the Northern Cathedrals Singers) | |||
| Sunday 16th August Tenth Sunday after Trinity | |||
| 9.30am | Parish Communion. Preacher: The Revd Ellen Clark-King (Morning services sung by the Northern Cathedrals Singers) | ||
| Sunday 23rd August Eleventh Sunday after Trinity | |||
| Sunday 30th August Twelfth Sunday after Trinity | |||
| Sunday 6th September Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity | |||
| Sunday 13th September Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity | |||
| Saturday 19th | 5.30pm | The Parish Choir sings Evensong at Ely Cathedral | Ely Cathedral |
| Sunday 20th September Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity | |||
| 11.15am | Family Service | St Michael's | |
| Wednesday 23rd | 6pm | Modern Churchpersons' Union Service | |
| Saturday 26th | 12noon | Alumni Weekend Organ Recital | |
| Sunday 27th September Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (Alumni Weekend) | |||
| 3.45pm | The Girls' Chamber Choir sings Evensong at Ely Cathedral | Ely Cathedral | |
| Sunday 4th October Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity | |||
| 6.30pm | Choral Evensong: A Celebration of the Music of Maurice Green | ||
Since this is the same from issue to issue, we have included a single copy of it on the site, as our Who's who at GSM page.
Majestas is edited by Robert Avery, Sheila Cameron, David Hollier, Philip Oswald (proofs) and John Sturdy (HTML) and published by: Great St Mary's The University Church, Cambridge CB2 3PQ, Tel (01223) 350914, Fax (01223) 426555.
Please contact the editors at the above address.
The deadline for the October edition of Majestas is 6th September. Please submit copy to the Church Office.
For further details of the parish, including the regular service times, please see the GSM home page.