Sunday 28th March

Definitely a day of rest. I’ve hardly spent any time with the kids today, although they were at both services that I attended. Mum gave the sermon at the first. In the second I sat with Randy and we spent much of the sermon comparing different body tricks – twitching eyebrows, hand clicks, impossible arm movements etc. The illusions he was showing me were good but John’s talk was actually rather interesting and he kept trying to show me stuff as stories approached their punch-lines.

It was mum’s 60th birthday today. She celebrated in her beautifully graceful if slightly understated style. Apparently dad forgot to mention it in his email this morning, so she sent him one back talking about all the cards she’d received. I’m not sure letters and notes play the same role in our family that they do in others. Valarie and Becky spent more than an hour sorting through piles of letters for the children earlier today, which they’d commissioned a local Guide group to write for them back in Manchester. Becky’s also been sent a series of notes and cards from her mum and close friends and relatives. Her family seems to exist under a tsunami of nicknames. At 16, this is her first major trip abroad. It’s the same for 15-year-old Saskia who was particularly quiet this evening. She’s pretty considered anyway but for the first time tonight, I wondered whether she was missing the normalities of home.

Today was the first time I caught myself thinking about normal life since I arrived. I hardly knew any of the songs that the teenagers in the praise band were thumping out, so I let my mind wander a little. I haven’t read a thing since Wednesday morning, so I’ve missed the entire budget and the fallout. It’s the first time I’ve gone completely without news since I arrived at 5 live. I’ve gone so native, I’ve taken my watch off. The heat is causing an irritation to my skin. It’s really weird wandering around not knowing what the time is. I’m taking my entire lead from others.


Early this afternoon we went for a drink at a coastal resort just down the road. Chrissie and Rachel are hoping to take the children for a day out there later in our stay but as it stands, the managers won’t reduce the price to a level they’re happy with. Something that’s surprised me about this project is the amount of money that continues to be invested in it. The set up is not swilling in cash but it doesn’t appear to be as third world as I imagined it might be. On the one hand, Chrissie is clothed in hand-me-downs and the project’s bus sounds like it’s about to stall every few minutes; but on the other the church is kitted out with a full drum-kit, sound-system and PC-based projection system. Money is obviously a major and ongoing concern but it doesn’t stop the children getting a fair standard of living, considering the converted pigsties that their neighbours are housed in just down the road. Part of that must be due to the project’s longevity. Chrissie and her husband have been working at this for more than a quarter of a century. She told me earlier that the long-term plan is for her daughter to take over as its administrator.

This evening my mother was given pride of place at the dinner table. Her advanced protestations against receiving a cake inevitably fell on deaf ears but there was a feast of strange and wonderful fruits alongside the three sweeter deserts. Mandy was late for the meal because she was consoling a girl called Alexia upstairs. By the time the pair of them came down both appeared to be in a bit of a state. Mandy eventually managed to eat some of the food but she and Ian disappeared off to bed soon afterwards. The rest of us stayed together at the table into the evening – for the first time since we arrived. We played ‘Who’s in the hat’. Inevitably there were 3 Gordon Browns but Winston Churchill proved to be the most common name (appearing 5 times) and George Washington also appeared three times. My team won quite comfortably in the end. For the first time, I felt our group was starting to bond.