Africa: The Final Year

Hello again!

It's been a long time. How have you been?

Sorry about the long absence - I've been very busy. Also, I had some personal issues that prevented me from writing blogs for a while. I suppose this is me moving on, detaching myself from the past. That's what life's about - everything ends, and it's always sad, but everything begins again as well, and that's always happy. By the way, if anybody gets the reference, put it in the comments! Also, my sincerest apologies to those who have been excited to see how I've adjusted to university - you'll have to wait until next time. This week, I'm returning to Africa - I will be discussing the final year in CAR. Inspired by a conversation with a friend a while back - he mentioned that my previous Africa blogs alluded to some pretty interesting stuff, so I decided to write about my final year in Africa. We left when I was in Year Six - for that reason, my sister and I had an impromptu leavers' ceremony at the end of the previous academic year. However, we did not actually depart until October of that year, so we were tutored in England for a few months by the brilliant Sarah Haggie (now a Hogan). She was doing a gap year between school and university - what better way to spend it than tutoring missionary kids?

Sarah staring pensively into the distance

Me and Karys trying to get out of learning by pretending it's too cold...in CAR.

Sarah was a fun tutor - in addition to being very clever, she's kind-hearted and funny. She's also very go-with-the-flow; if you say strange stuff, she'll go along with it, though not without cracking jokes. I once invented 'palfing' - you flap your arms in reverse, as the word itself is the reverse of the word 'flap'. Sarah went along with it, and it's a bit of an in-joke now. I also remember spending 15 minutes derailing an English lesson by going on about a picture of a sheep that looked like it was dancing; I called it a mad dancing sheep. Later, I asked what the title of the lesson was, and Sarah shouted 'The title is mad dancing sheep!', before realising what she had said. We looked after a friend's cats while in Africa that year - I discussed them in my blog on pets. They were called Lucy, Tom and Mont-Morecy. Lucy and Tom were mother and son, Mont-Morecy was unrelated. Lucy disappeared during the Christmas holidays, while we were in Gamboula - I later wrote a fictionalised account of what might have happened to her. Essentially, she was taken in by the rebels (the Seleka), but was killed when they found her too troublesome. She then kept herself alive through sheer malice, resentment and force of will, until the power of love dissolved her. I was not kind to her in that story. In fairness, she did have a habit of crawling into my sister's bed then biting her feet. Besides, the story wasn't about Lucy being evil - it was about Sherlock, the puppy, discovering what had happened to her.

Tom and Mont-Morecy snuggling

Tom forgetting he's a cat and can survive falls

Lucy, queen of all she surveys (Sarah's room)

I don't remember too much about the first part of Year Six; I do remember I had a Dalek cake for my birthday. My mum and sister (and possibly Sarah - I can't quite remember) made me an invisibility cloak. Obviously, it doesn't actually turn me invisible; it's nice though. I still have the cloak, though I don't really fit anymore.

Dalek cake!

We were in Bangui up until around Christmas; for Christmas we went to Gamboula, which is a town/city close to the CAR-Cameroon border. We ended up leaving because there was an increasing amount of unrest in the area. Gamboula is also where the Turks lived. The adults had lots of meetings for Bible translation stuff; the children (me, Timote, Karys and Kylie) were babysat by Christi, Sarah and Timote's brothers, Benny and Bobby.

It was in Gamboula that we (me, Karys, Timote) came up with the play about Landrius and Shiran; it was a lot of fun, though as I've mentioned in previous blogs it is a lost play. Like Love's Labours Won. Another Sarah-related anecdote: she made me and Karys an omelette for lunch one day; it was somewhat burned. I commented that humans look at the outside, but God looks at the inside. She asked if I meant the omelette or her: my response was a mumbled "the omelette..."

Kylie and the baby gorilla

Murrell-Turk-Festen swim in a river. Christi, aunt Maria and two of the Turk boys are in the centre.

Kylie and Christi collecting water

We also spent quite a lot of time around the Turks' various rescued animals. I remember my mum and Sarah spent an afternoon playing with a baby gorilla. For supper, Mum made me an avocado sandwich, forgetting that she hadn't washed her hands after playing with the gorilla. I, being a dramatic 11-year-old boy, immediately declared that my Mum loved the gorilla more than she did me. 

Sarah and the baby gorilla

Before heading back to Bangui, we went to Bilolo one last time. However, the place we had lived in before was rented from a friend; by the time we returned he was either renting it to someone else or no longer renting it. So we stayed in a small building next door to the Festens' old house - it had previously been where Kylie and Christi's tutor, Miss Becky, had lived. Being back in Bilolo was interesting. It kind of felt like I no longer fitted there - I had moved on. 

We also obtained Sherlock in Bilolo; he was one of Maddy's puppies. Maddy was one of Charlie's children, from the same litter as Alex. We don't know who Sherlock's father was; in fact, I'm not sure Maddy's owners did. We came full circle in a way; our first dog in Africa was Charlie, our last dog in Africa was a descendant of Charlie.

This cute little face is the reason I spent a year and a half bugging my parents to get another dog after we returned to England.

Sherlock, being a young puppy, had bladder control issues -  we joked that his motto was 'Puppy Power- I wee everywhere!'. He had a contentious relationship with the remaining cats. They enjoyed bullying him, though equally he enjoyed playing with Tom's tail. On one occasion, he fell down some steps; he was cured completely after spotting Tom's tail.

He was also scared of thunderstorms - though most dogs are. One time, we went out somewhere in the afternoon; during the course of the afternoon there was a thunderstorm, as well as some flooding. We came home to find that Sherlock had shredded several toys, belonging to me and Karys, on account of being nervous.

Jaloux and her puppies, cause why not?

We came back to Bangui in February - discovering Lucy's disappearance in the process; she never met Sherlock. Thankfully for them both - she could be quite antagonistic.

The civil war started late in March 2013. I don't remember knowing too much about the increasing tensions, but then I was only 11. 

It started with the power staying off for longer than usual. CAR is quite poor, so the electricity is often off during the day to conserve resources. Usually, the electricity comes back on around 4 or 5 in the afternoon; on that occasion, it didn't. Apparently, that was the opening salvo - rebels had taken control of the power stations. We were supposed to stay away from the windows, in case soldiers fired through them; as a result, we slept in the corridor between the bedrooms. 

We also had to be very quiet, in case rebels found us. I remember I appeared very calm during that period, while Sarah  and Karys weren't as calm. That's actually carried over to later life; once, after doing something that upset me, my friend Jed noted that my voice sounded angry, but my face was almost expressionless. 

Incidentally, during those days in the corridor, I had two books with me: Anne Frank's Diary of a Young

Girl and a less well-known autobiography - Zlata's Diary. Zlata Filipovic was a young girl who lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia, during the Bosnian War in the 1990s; she wrote about the civil war in her diary, just as Anne Frank wrote in hers about her experiences. Luckily for her, Zlata eventually escaped.            I've always thought it's interesting - when I was stuck in a corridor while a country fell down around me, two of the books I read were the authentic experiences of other people in similar positions.

We ended up waiting 5 days before we were able to leave - we left on the 28th of March. We received an escort of soldiers. Karys, being nine and therefore too young to wear a bulletproof vest, got bodyguards! I remember seeing people on the streets watching us as we drove past; I've always wondered what their thoughts were - a group of white people getting an armed escort out of Bangui, while they got to stay behind in a collapsing country.

After moving back to England, we had nowhere to go, as our house was still occupied by the people we rented it to. We initially stayed with Granny, but eventually went to stay with the Hogans. They have a whole mini-apartment in their house, which we stayed in while our house was occupied. My parents stayed with the Hogans when I was born - for similar reasons, actually. They'd spent months in Kenya beforehand, so didn't have their own house.

I owe Jenny Hogan my life, literally. When I was 6 months old, due to a hole in my palate, my tongue blocked off my airways and I nearly choked to death. She applied emergency resuscitation, saving my life. 

I was home-schooled for the remainder of Year Six, as I had already left my previous school, St Peters' Cassington. Karys, being in Year 5, was able to join the local school for the rest of that year and for her Year 6, though our parents chose not to have me go to the same school, as I only had a few months left of primary school.

We're still in contact with Sarah - she's like a sister to me and Karys. The feeling is mutual - a few years ago, she posted a picture of the three of us, and tagged me and Karys as 'littlebro' and 'littlesis', which is nice. She got married the summer I left Year 11 -  incidentally, she married Geoff and Jenny Hogan's oldest son, Harry Hogan. 

The third time this picture has featured on the blog!

This picture was taken in Spain

 

By the way, for anyone who's wondering, the robot at the beginning is GLaDOS, a character from the Portal games. She's a robot - the fusion of a living consciousness and artificial intelligence; her name is an acronym, standing for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operated System. As for the quote - she says that to the player near the beginning of the second game.