When we left you, dear reader, we were on a long, slow train journey through the Karoo and on to Johannesburg. We pick up at the end of the journey…..

Arriving at Johannesburg train station we thought “As long as we stay with the crowds we will be fine.’ A tad unfortunately, we had somehow managed to lose our train tickets. When I say lose our train tickets I mean we threw them away. They were not the world’s most interesting looking pieces of paper and we thought that they had served their purpose since the train manager had stamped them 28 hours and 1400 km earlier and now that the train was nearing the station and the chap came round collecting our rubbish we lozzed them in along with banana skins, drinks cans and a couple of pages ripped out in frustration from the Times Cryptic Crossword book my mum gave me as a leaving present thinking it would pass an hour or two. Even working backwards by looking at the answers in the back and then reading the questions brought very little insight.

Also of very little insight was the throwing away of our tickets.

We shuffled along the crowded platform towards the bottleneck at the foot of the single escalator where guards were forcing the flock of hundreds of travellers to become a single line by taking their tickets. Everyone else dutifully handed theirs in and walked off away from the bowels of the station and up the escalator to freedom, looking all sort of happy and smug at having retained their tickets just long enough to give them away to the correct person. Leaving us to discover how rapidly an already unsmiling guard’s face could become an unsavoury mess of gall, bitterness and personal affrontedness. We couldn’t have asked for a more “this is NOT going to end as happily as you naively think it might” look if we had been left to look after his granny and his Porsche for a fortnight while he was on holiday and got the care instructions for the two mixed up.

We were escorted by armed guard to the security section.

On the bright side, we were probably in one of the safest places in Johannesburg at that point so we didn’t have to worry about getting stabbed or mugged (see comment on last blog) – but getting conned looked like it was coming right up. They insisted we buy tickets again even though we could show them our confirming email from their company showing we had paid in Cape Town and the train manager could vouch for us as we’d had several conversations withy them and they had stamped our tickets (albeit 28 hours and 1400 km before). This held as much interest to them as a toothpick to a jellyfish. They wanted more money.

Fortunately, when talk of hand-cuffs was moving from something I had unwisely joked about to becoming a distinct possibility Clive burst through the doors. (I say ‘burst’ purely for dramatic effect as he actually just walked through the solitary door but as he was going to be our saviour he definitely symbolically burst through.

Knight-like.

And unless I’ve mis-remembered there was a fanfare playing.

Clive looks like what he is – a successful businessman, Jo’bg born and bred and I doubt even his mother had ever managed to stand in his way. With an impressive fold of the arms and a stance which suggested he “knew stuff” he whisked us out of there faster than an SAS snatch team. We’d never met him before but, as a friend of a friend of Ella’s sister he had kindly offered to host us for the night when we’d emailed him the week before having decided to stay overnight in Jo’bg and fly up to Harare the next day in case the train was late.

Clive runs lots of businesses and has very cool cars. We told him about what the internet had said about how dangerous Johannesburg was and he said that he has lived there all his life and has only ever been mugged once – and that was in London. Having swam in their pool and giggled about what temperature it might be in England (sorry, England) we were taken out by Clive and Joanna to a meat-eaters’ (which I reckon could correctly have an apostrophe before the s, after the s, or not have one at all and each would be correct) paradise that evening. Not Carnivore, which Zoe suggested on one of the blog comments – but they were fishing in the same pool, or at least hunting in the same reserve. Crocodile tail pie and warthog curry were excellent and very reasonably priced, and Ella had kudu, which I thought was a little dear. (Falls off bed laughing)

Flight from Johannesburg to Harare was uneventful apart from a wonderful moment at the departure gate when we were told the plane was delayed. Someone asked the lady at the desk if she knew for how long and she replied: “I have no idea. Unfortunately we cannot find the plane.”

I hoped we would all be asked to help look for it but that was not to be.

What is it with having to buy a visa in order to be allowed in to a country? You get it at the airport and there may as we’ll be a sign above the booth that says: “licence to print money”. 55 U S dollars each. It’s not as if people coming in are not going to be spending money in the country while they’re here. Oh, and thanks “experiencezimbabwe.com” for stating that Visas cost 50 dollars on your website which you proudly say was updated only last week so there’s me thinking I only needed to withdraw 100 dollars in Jo’bg airport…. Ahh, no – you’ll be needing more than that.

We’re on a 26 hour train journey (someone asked me if that meant it was an overnight train and I wasn’t sure how to answer) from Cape Town to Johannesburg. The Shosholoza “Express”. In fact, let’s go with The Shosholoza “””Express””” as I feel it needs several more sarcastic inverted commas. It will arrive between 2 and 6 hours late if anyone and everyone is to be believed. We have already (7 hours in) had stoppages of over an hour for a broken down train ahead of us to be fixed and signal failure. It is sun-burst-hot in our compact and bijou 2 person cell.

We have a padded bench and a small fold down table which sits on a tiny sink with hot and warm running water, 4 hooks, 3 pegs and, halfway up the wall, a fold out narrow bed to call our own.

The compartment is a shade over 6 feet long by 4 feet wide. A mirror on the door and a small mirror above the sink give the impression, if you sit in the right spot and catch the right engle of reflection that the cabin is actually vast (at least, really really long and thin). But you can’t fool yourself for long. On the plus side, there are excellent showers and proper loos at the end of each carriage and tickets only cost £34. (For the train journey, not for the loos.)

There is a thickish black bar half way down the carriage window separating the top pane from the bottom one – I’m just the wrong height for this compartment – when I sit on the bench and look out of the window it’s like the whole of the South African countryside is posing for a pornographic picture.

The train does have air conditioning but, unfortunately, and sweatily, the train company do not switch it on as it “costs too much to run”. But, on the huge plus side, there is a wonderful breeze in the long corridor which runs alongside the cells – so most of life takes place out there. Ella is in her element! It took the train to come to a standstill in the simmering aridity of the Karoo for the ice to be broken – give people something to moan about and from then on, getting to know one another is easy.

The couple in the compartment to our left are Vineyard Church members, the next compartment on, Pentecostal. To our right an old guy is spending the journey reading a huge old bible and in the cell to his right, a lady who has an itinerant ministry in the Pentecostal church. As a country, it seems that (especially among the poor), faith plays a much larger role than in the U K.

Sitting in our cabin it feels that for the first time since we touched down just over a week ago I’ve got time to reflect on how what we’re doing feels now that we’re so far from what has been our ‘normal’ life for the past many years.

So far, the sabbath year seems like an incredible opportunity – and a real gift. A gift of time. Time to look back on 20 years of ministry and look forward to 20 more. Shedding so much “stuff” and becoming voluntarily jobless and homeless has brought with it a huge sense of release and possibility. We really could do anything. It’s incredibly liberating to know that we would be free to pick many different paths – to choose something we feel would both honour a commitment to living out our faith and using the experiences and wisdom we’ve gained over the first half of life to make the most of the second half.

Many don’t stop mid life and ask – am I doing (or, still doing) what I should be doing or am I simply doing what I do and is this what I want to do for the next part of life.

A fair number of people have bandied about the mid-life crisis phrase and spoken of it as a time studded with and prompted by something negative – but a time of crisis is primarily a balancing point: a point which causes a decision to have to be made. The event or events which bring about a crisis point may be negative or positive (the loss of a loved one, winning the lottery) – it’s what direction we choose to depart down following the ‘crisis’ that matters.

Someone told me that the Chinese word for ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’ are the same. (Trust the deep thinking Chinese to nail it.)

I feel incredibly excited that we have put in place the opportunity to look at the questions that mid-life should ask us all to answer. We spend the first half of life learning who we are – what we can do – what fears drive us – what we are sub-consciously trying to prove/escape from/achieve and perhaps the second half of life should be spent using that experience to live with confidence as the people we should by now know ourselves to be.

And who’s to say that Joseph (previous blog post), who has spent decades surviving on tiny tips from people who he has helped in tiny ways, most recently (for the last decade or so) by watching their cars for them while they shop, a 2 rand (12p) tip is about average. He welcomes all with a huge smile and tells them God loves them and quotes a bible verse or two and in a 45 second encounter has left you 12 pence poorer and a little bit richer.

During his mid life he responded to God’s call to “Go and tell people the good news of my love for them.”

Who’s to know whether his life has had more or less impact than yours or mine. More or less worth.

We”re heading for Johannesburg which is a place where, if the internet is to be believed, you will be robbed, stabbed and conned even as you are stepping off the train. I don’t tend to believe the internet and figure that if you type in “what could go wrong in Johannesburg” you’ve got to be prepared for some scare stories.

But we don’t get there for another 20 hours or so – and a long journey lays ahead, mostly through what we’re in at the moment, a fairly barren area of South Africa called the Karoo – which is probably one of the top ten worst places on the planet in which to play I Spy. Mile after mile after many more miles (about 500 of them) of scrubland and the occasional rock.

We are learning the joys of only traveling with a carry-on bag each: we can take all our stuff with us when we go to the buffet car, and packing when leaving one place to go to another is dead easy. However. It has meant compromising on some things – Ella poses with our only towel. Ultra-Super-Absorbent (or so it said on the pack) but not exactly the kind of thing you can wrap around you and wander back from the shower in.

The train manager just came in to see if we wanted to upgrade to a 4 person cabin as there are some available now that we’ve left the last station we’ll be stopping at today but it’s many carriages away and for all its failings we kind of like our little sauna. And the people around are fascinating. We could have forked out a lot more cash and gone on the premier train but I’m glad we didn’t. I bet out of the two services we’ve got the more interesting travelling companions – the lady a few doors along has brought her two parakeets with her and a shed load of plants – her cabin looks like a jungle.

Inquired or enquired about hiring a car to drive along the Garden Route (well trodden/driven road between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth) from Rent a Cheapie. Their website declares that they offer unlimited mileage on all cars. This seemed pretty good as the hire price was already very reasonable.

It turns out that the mileage is not actually quite so unlimited as it promises. If you go more than 200 km from Cape Town then there was an extra 799 rand to pay. When this became clear during my telephone enquiry it led to the following conversation.

Me: But your website clearly states free unlimited mileage is included in the cost of hire. You make a big thing of it. “Free unlimited mileage”.
Him: It is
Me: No it isn’t.
Him: It is.
Me: O K, we”re going to be driving to Knysna today (several hundred km). Is that free mileage?
Him: No.
Me: Not free?
Him: No. You draw a circle round Cape Town of 200 kilometres and you can drive anywhere in that circle absolutely free.
Me: Most of that circle is in the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean makes up the majority of your free mileage zone.
Him: You can’t drive into the Atlantic.
Me: I’m not going to. I want to drive to Knysna.
Him: That will cost an extra one off payment of 799 rand.
Me: And then the extra mileage is free.
Him: Yes.
Me: That’s really not free unlimited mileage then, is it?
Him: It is if you pay 799 rand extra.
Me: And then I can drive as far as I want?
Him: No. If you go across the border you have to pay much more.
Me: For free mileage.
Him: Exactly.
Me: Why isn’t it called kilometerage?
Him: Pardon me?
Me: Never mind. Could you tell me if there are any other, what I like to call, “hidden costs”?
Him: (in an outbreak of uncharacteristic openness) Yes. Lots.

After a long list of possible extras we could pay for, none of which, thankfully, we needed, I told him I would let him know. It then turned out, having rung several more hire companies, that theirs was still the best deal, even with the non-free free mileage so we went down and hired from them and tootled off in a car in which I can now drive for as many kilometres as I like (so long as I don’t drive across the border, and keep out of the sea).

We headed off along the N2 which is the road that runs all the way from Cape Town to Knysna. It’s one half of what’s called The Garden Route and we were told we would find it stunning. Now, don’t get me wrong, the mountainy bits were pretty enough but most of the rest of the way was nothing to write home about. (And yet, here I am……)

As we got closer to Knysna things got a lot more impressive. Long, curved sandy beaches. Sun-kissed wouldn’t do them justice. More like sun-snogged. Dramatic cliffs. High, steep sided gorges with a picture book perfect river running through them – the sort of river that makes other rivers feel just a little bit inadequate. I’m suspecting there is a lot more of this scenery to be seen.

Looking forward to seeing it.

Bringing to bear all the expertise which comes from an entire three days in a place, for sure, apartheid is a thing of the past; but it’s also for certain from what I’ve seen so far in one small corner of the country, that whites, blacks and coloureds form three very distinct groups economically. Stop and look at who is driving on the highways, who is working where, who has what would pass the test of being able to call themselves free.

Bur, it’s early days and I have no real concept of how things were before – so I’d like to dig a little deeper.

Knysna – Monday Jan 19th, eve

Lack of internet availability in places has caused a couple of minor inconveniences, one of which was that we didn’t know if the people we thought we were due to stay with in Knysna knew we were coming. Minor detail, of course – but Ella had emailed last week to say we would be arriving on Monday, if that was OK, but we had no idea whether they had replied or whether it was still OK for us to come as we’ve never spoken to the couple and correspondence thus far has been a little on the vague side as our plans for this first week were not finally firmed up until the last minute.

Turned up to the address we’d been given in an earlier email. We went up to the big metal gate and peered through and tried to look as welcomable innable as possible. A lady looked at us for a long time from behind the almost closed blinds of the sitting room. I think she thought she couldn’t be seen but with the light on behind her she might as well have been standing outside waving a flag.

We just kept standing there as we didn’t know what else to do. There was no bell to ring. No intercom thing. No side gate to go through. She waited. We waited.

We waved. She knew she’d been spotted and that her non-existent cover had been blown. She snatched up a small scruffy dog and came walking down the drive holding it as one might a machine gun. She was very Dutch.

This became clear when she started talking. We soon discovered, having said “Hi, we’re Jon and Ella: we did email: we hope you’re expecting us because otherwise this is going to be a little awkward……” that it was going to be a little awkward.

She was not expecting us at all.

It was made a little less awkward when we found out that although it was almost exactly the same address as on the email we had – she and her husband were definitely not called Steve and Dee but she thought that there might be another road similarly named to that one on a development the other side of town.

She fetched her husband who was even more Dutch than she was and he took to describing where we should go using a series of noises which sounded like he was trying to shift something stuck to his lungs.

He kept talking and I kept nodding until it seemed a long enough time had passed that I could walk away without seeming rude.

Using my awesome sense of direction and a phone call we ended up in a sufficiently useful place by the side of the road that our correct host could drive to and rescue us.

Early Saturday morning: somewhere quite far down the West Coast of Africa: ten hours in to flight BA043.

British Airways used to have that advert where they sang: “We’ll take more care of you!”

Only if they were comparing themselves to the mafia of this experience is anything to go by….

They are to be commended for managing to defy the laws of physics by crushing 240 people into a space where only 140 people could ever realistically physically fit. The fact the cabin crew were all holding crowbars when we boarded should have been warning enough.

Flying is a little like child birth methinks. It takes a long time, it’s uncomfortable, you accept whatever pain relief is offered and you find yourself repeating “I am NEVER doing this again”
Thankfully, God has given us memories that fade. And often, something beautiful and worthwhile is at the other end.

I’ll bear that in mind. I’m sat next to a rather large lady with a powerful left arm. She’s entirely covering my arm rest. It’s my arm rest. She has a perfectly lovely arm rest on her right. This one is mine. It must be: it’s got the controls for MY light and MY in flight movies and MY music options embedded in it. And they are somewhere under her powerful left forearm. She is asleep and I can’t move her arm. It’s like trying to move the sphinx. We fought over control of MY arm rest a few times while she was awake and she usually won – but you’d think her arm would be more easy to move than this now she’s asleep.

Unless she’s only pretending.

Or dead.

I hope she’s not dead.

I’ll feel bad.

I really want to watch a film.

Monday 19th Jan. Early morning.

It has been an incredible start to the journey. Two days in but many more days’ experiences seem to have been jammed in to the last 48 hours which have been wonderfully busy.

I”m sitting in the courtyard of a beautiful Cape Town home with Table Mountain forming the picturesque backdrop standing as stunning, silent, sentinel. It seems to peer imperiously over my shoulder as I type and whispers to me “don’t write such poncey nonsense.”

But what a jaw-dropping backdrop. I wonder how long you would live here before you start to take such a view for granted. How soon we can all too easily do that in our own lives.

Cape Town is blessed with many things not least of which is the natural beauty of its immediate surrounds. We have driven around and over the mountain several times already and each new angle changes how you see the whole. I don’t think I can pay the city a bigger compliment than to say that in less than a few hours it had already managed to compensate for the 12 hours of misery and discomfort that constitutes long haul flying in cattle class.

We arrived just shy of 8 a.m. and were met by Peter: our minder and tour guide for the next two days.

Peter is nothing short of a phenomenon. He is also nothing short. I’d guess at 6 foot 4 or 5 – a big bear of a man with just the most explosively enthusiastic energy. For the past four years following the passing of his beautiful wife, Bridget, Peter has been both mum and dad to his nine children who range in age from 9 on up. The household, which you might think would have to run with military precision seems, rather, to run on collective caring mixed with a little necessary and wonderful mayhem. They pool resources, look out for one another; the house had a wonderful spirit flowing through it.

Some people are glass half empty. Some people are glass half full. Some people are “Wow, I’ve got a glass! Awesome! And not only that, it comes with liquid already in it. Who can I share it with? This is great – I can not only help someone else to get a drink but I have one more glass than I did yesterday. Does anyone need a glass?” Peter is that person.

We had breakfast straight from the airport at a place just above the Cecil Rhodes memorial which is fronted by a large bronze figure of a naked man looking angsty on horseback which possibly wasn’t the exact manner in which Cecil used to get about. We then dropped bags at the house and embarked on a whistle-stop two day tour. We went down to Cape Point, where the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean meet. There wasn’t a line separating the two to show where they met exactly which would have been nice. We toured Cape Town, we drove over and around the mountain, went to Boulders Beach and chatted to the penguins there: went to Kalk Bay and bought fresh caught Yellowtail to brie – brie rhymes with cry and it’s what they call barbecues round here – and enjoyed a wonderful Sunday afternoon in the garden of Wilfred and Debbie’s beautiful vicarage overlooking the beach. Wilfred is a black Anglican vicar whose church congregation are 60% old-school white Rhodesian. The congregation want ten minute sermons and services to be done and dusted in 40. I’m saying nothing. : ). He tells a great story and bries a mean brie. Though he is currently on holiday there were 5 interruptions to the afternoon with people coming to the front door asking to see the Father. He graciously dealt with each of them, even the one who just wanted to have some of the food having seen that the vicar was having a family brie in the garden. Some were invited through to the garden, some were asked to return later – ah, the trans-national minister’s dilemma how do you handle the balance between public availability and the right to private time?

(I have, since this was posted, been informed via Facebook, the blog, phone, people stopping me in the street, sky-writing bi-planes and angelic visitations about my appalling English spilling of what is, of course, correctly a braai – similar to a British barbecue but without the rain.) Apologies for denigrating an awesome African institution – and for likening it to French cheese.