Encounters in Kenya

(If you're feeling lazy, just read the last 2 paragraphs - they're the ones with all my feelings and reflections!!)

I'm a bit behind on blogging, mainly cause our time in Kenya was so busy! I seem to always end up writing blogs whilst travelling - this time I'm on a plane so it's a bit less bumpy than the bus rides! I'm still typing on my phone though, so can't promise any better typing...!

We arrived in Nairobi late on Sunday evening, and went straight to our guest house (which turned out to be a meat and caffeine free guest house - so veggie food & no coffee, tea or coke whilst we were there! But other than that, very comfortable and well located so we could walk to the KCLF office).

On Monday we were introduced to the KCLF team at their office, and then headed off to observe some of the advocates that work with KCLF in court. My group went to the Milimani courts, which is a high court, hearing both criminal and civil cases. It was really interesting to see the procedure (or rather, lack of it) and how different it is to the UK - advocates talking at the side all through the other cases, leaning on the side whilst addressing the judge (almost certainly he'd have been told to stand up straight in an English court!), files not being brought, witnesses not coming and so forth. The judge we observed seemed very reluctant to make any decision of any form, and as far as I could tell all 25 of the cases that were heard that morning were adjourned - although the lack of microphones combined with an extremely softly spoken judge meant you know about as much about what was going on as I do! (Apparently there are microphones in the courts but they never bother to use them - from talking to some other lawyers there, this seems to be an pride thing - 'I'm the important one here, you should make the effort to listen to me, rather than me making the effort to be heard', or 'I'm a lawyer, of course I don't need a microphone'! This is not dissimilar to some of the attitudes that I think are present in the UK legal profession.)

After we finished in the courts we headed back to the office to discuss what we'd seen and be briefed on the prison visits for the following two days. Fiona was really unwell, with a high fever and our partners decided she should get checked at the hospital, so I went with her to the hospital that afternoon. We were there until about 11pm, and thankfully it was nothing more serious than a bad bacterial infection so she was discharged with some antibiotics and a threat that I'd either sit on her or lock her in her room if she didn't take it easy the next few days! Whilst there, we were talking about Romans 8:28, that God can use all things for our good and for his glory, and I think one of the good things that came out of the hospital trip (though I would never say I'm glad it happened!) was a much stronger bond with two of the KCLF patterns who'd come with us - Joyce and Wambui. We had some really good conversation, got to know each other better and laughed together which continued through the rest of our stay. They were so kind and caring, making sure we knew what was going on and that Fiona was being looked after well. God really answered prayers that we'd be seen quickly - on arrival we were asked by security in the car park if we were here for an emergency, to which we replied yes and were taken through a side door. The hospital porter inside asked us the same question and then took us straight to the examination, completely bypassing the registration and waiting area that should have come first. This meant that Fiona was able to have all the blood tests and get intravenous paracetamol within half an hour of us arriving! Getting the results back from things took a while longer, but we were so thankful for this initial stage being quick! Fiona's pretty much back to normal now :)

I didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night, so I stayed with Fiona the following day to keep her company and to get some rest, whilst the rest of the team went to a men's prison. The following day was the visit to the women's prison, which I've already written quite extensively about. This was a day when timings were about as African as you get - we were supposed to leave the prison at 12, but we didn't actually leave till about 5pm, without having had any food since 7am that morning! (Worse things could have happened, but I've learnt this trip, with numerous very late lunches, that when I'm really hungry I am highly impatient and quite grumpy!) We didn't mind too much though, because I think this was the experience that impacted us the most, and working on some of the remandees' cases felt like one of the most worthwhile things we'd done on the trip. On Wednesday evening we had dinner at a local restaurant with some of the office staff, which was nice.

Thursday morning was spent in the office talking through the cases we'd worked on at the prison, and just getting to know each other better. In the afternoon we headed out to two schools to do some child rights training. The first was a private high school, and the second was a children's centre that takes in street kids, orphans and drug-addicted kids. Although they had relatively few resources, they seemed to be doing a really good work and this kids were lovely. A little girl called Kimberly attached herself to me within about 5 minutes of us arriving (apparently I have a funny face so she wanted to be my friend...I really hope she was referring to the faces I was pulling at her, and not my actual face, but that may be the case!!), and she gave me her own take on the guided tour as we were shown round. She was trying to teach me some more Swahili, and it came up that I cannot, however hard I try, say the Swahili word for 'cow' (n'gombe or something like that). I had forgotten how much this had entertained people in Tanzania, but it sent Kimberly into hysterics every time I tried ( this also came up at the dinner table when I was staying with Franklyn, again causing much amusement, and resurfacing every time I was introduced to someone after that point!)

[Side note - the kid next to me on the plane has just got a special lunch-box dinner and I'm having serious food envy. I hope my food looks as good as hers! She's got crisps and cheesecake and dairy milk and ribena and everything!]

On Friday some of the team went to a meeting at the legal aid commission and then we had another student conference in the afternoon at Nairobi University School of Law. It was smaller than the conference in Uganda, but their English was better so they were able to engage with our questions better. It was a lot of fun, and a nice way to end the week. That evening, we split into pairs and were taken home for dinner by various advocates who work with KCLF. Cherelle and I went to Vincent's home, where we met his wife (and ashamedly neither of us can remember her name) and their 6 month old son, Tatwe. They were so welcoming to us, they'd prepared amazing food for us and we had great conversation and a lot of laughter. It was an amazing evening and we left feeling so blessed.

On Saturday we went on a safari walk in Nairobi National Park, went to an elephant orphanage and then a giraffe sanctuary where I got to feed and stroke a giraffe - so cool, if a little dribble-y!! Sunday was our last day together as a team - we went to church in the morning at Mamlaka Hill Church which was really great and had a leisurely lunch after. We spent some time reflecting together on the trip as a team which was really cool to think back over how much God has done during our time in Africa - mainly in our hearts, although we really pray that we've been am encouragement to the partners too.

Kenya I think has been the most challenging country for me. We've seen both sides of the injustice - those getting to walk free when even they acknowledge they did it because of a technicality or a failure of procedure, to those held in remand for things they haven't done, for far longer than should be, with no hope of compensation for deprivation of liberty and a bail cost out of all proportion to the alleged offence. We've seen the procedural inefficiency causing so many problems, seen the really wide reaching impact of corruption (whilst I was with Franklyn, it came out in the news that the chair of the anti-corruption commission in Kenya is being investigated for alleged corruption to the scale of about 40 million shillings... I think this sums up the problem of corruption in Kenya, and explains the resignation most Kenyans feel towards the problem.) We've seen the heart and passion of people working to change the system, and been able to understand a little of how demoralising and wearing it can be, trying to pursue and secure justice when it seems like the whole system is against you. And all of this comes in the context of the news that two weeks before, whilst we were in Rwanda, an IJM lawyer (another Christian law organisation, very similar to KCLF but working in slightly different areas - the way the organisations work together from what I can see is really cool!) along with his taxi driver and his client were abducted on their way out of court having won their case, horrifically tortured, killed and dumped in a river. In the original programme we had planned to visit IJM, but with the funerals, investigations and grief of it all, it was decided that the best thing for them was to send our prayers and support but not to visit. The impact of it had also hit home at KCLF and I think some of the staff attended the funerals. It highlights the scale of the fight that is being fought for justice, the serious challenges they face, and just made the realities of the work of KCLF all the more real. I feel so challenged by this - would I really fight for justice in such difficult conditions? Would I be as passionate as they are? Would I be as compassionate as they are? I'm really in awe of their dedication and motivation, and I hope that in some small way that the team have helped them keep going, encouraged them to keep standing firm and not to give up.

Please pray that they will have the strength to keep going, to keep their eyes on the hope that we have in Christ, and also for the family and friends and colleagues of the three who died.

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Ugandan Adventures Part 2!

In my last post about Uganda, I got up to the point where we'd just arrived in Kampala after a very long, uncomfortable journey. I'll pick up from there!

Our time in Uganda was mainly spent in meetings with various commissions, finding out about the work they do and gaining a deeper understanding of how Uganda is working towards improving their legal system and their country. Tuesday was our first day in Kampala. In the morning we visited the chief magistrate's court, and observed a number of cases, including one very interesting one where they offender was being prosecuted for making and distributing a pornographic video. I'm amazed that Uganda has anti-pornography laws, and I think this is a really positive thing that the UK could definitely learn from. We had a meeting with the magistrate afterwards where we were able to aso various questions. One of the most interesting answers was his greatest challenges: the first was security - judges very often feel threatened, and they've started to provide bodyguards for them to keep them safe. The second was the difficulty of handling cases where one party is represented (has a lawyer) and the other isn't, and the judge wants to help the party without a lawyer present their case, or needs to ask questions to find out more but can't be seen to be taking sides. In Kampala, this was about 20% of cases, but in more rural courts its about 80%. Although I'd thought about this challenge from the parties' point of view, I hadn't considered it from the judge's point of view, and I can see how it makes the job so much harder.

That afternoon we went to the Equal Opportunities Commission, who work to tackle discrimination through education and litigation of cased where discrimination has occurred. It had a slightly odd feel to the meeting - they'd forgotten we were coming and so the guy who was told to come and talk to us didn't really want to be there (and didn't really hide that!) and just told us to read some leaflets and that'd tell us all we needed to know. But as we started asking questions, he warmed up and realised we actually wanted to know more about them, and by the end of the meeting it was a much friendlier feel!

The next day was Eid, which meant a public holiday, so we had a much needed day off to recover from all the travelling! We went to a craft market, where we met a lady called Rose who was fascinated by the fact that two of us were called Rachel, and kept telling everyone about 'the Rachels'! It was quite entertaining, and I have to admit she did get a bit more business out of us than she might have done otherwise!!

The next day, we had a meeting with the Inspectorate General in the morning. They work to fight corruption, and although it's very much an uphill struggle, their passion and dedication to the work was really inspiring. They were so hospitable, providing us with tea and coffee, and samosas and sausages (a standard morning snack here!). They have a lot of hope from how Rwanda has managed to significantly reduce its corruption, and they're working hard but in a culture where corruption and bribes are so ingrained (e.g. if you get stopped by the police your first thought would be 'how cheaply can I get out of this') it's going to take a while I think before a significant impact is made.

That afternoon we went to a secondary school on the more rural outskirts of Kampala to do a child rights training session. It was another one of those occasions where more preparation and warning would have been nice (we had a whole 5 minutes to work out what we were doing...!) But God was faithful and gave us the words to say. The kids were really engaged and it was so cool to see them really taking in and remembering the things we were teaching. Chatting to them afterwards, so many of them have a dream to come and study at university in the UK. Sadly, I think none of them will ever be able to, due to the cost being so expensive. It really did make me stop and think just how fortunate and privileged I am to be able to be educated in the UK, and I realised that I really had been taking this for granted. I pray that I won't take it for granted during my final year at uni!

Friday morning entailed a visit to the Ugandan Human Rights Commission, which was extremely interesting, finding out more about how Uganda is working to address the worst human rights abuses. They were saying that the most common things they come across in their litigation department is unfair deprivation of liberty (false imprisonment effectively), torture and parents refusing to pay maintenance payments to support their children after separation. It's now compulsory for soldiers to pass a human rights module before they are fully part of the military, to try and reduce abuses perpetrated by the armed forces, which seems like an excellent idea! It was also quite interesting reading their report to parliament, but I think mainly from a legal point of view so I won't go into the ins and outs of that here! (I've got a copy, so just ask me if you'd like a read...!!)

After the Human Rights Commission, we went to the Ugandan Parliament for a tour round and an explanation of Uganda's political history and how the current process works. In many ways the parliament chamber is pretty similar to the house of commons, but quite a lot smaller. The number of MPs is increasing and so the number of seats in the parliament has long been less than needed. Since independence, Uganda has gone through periods of elected leaders, dictators and military coups.  Although the speaker in Parliament has changed fairly regularly over the last few decades, there's been the same president since the late 60s, and I believe the constitution has just changed to allow him to stay longer. This is certainly not democracy at it's finest, but the other side to that is there have been no military coups as there was throughout the history of Uganda. I'm not going to pretend I have an easy answer to this! Another interesting difference to Westminster is that the military get a number of seats in Parliament - there are not many countries in the world that do this, but the thinking behind this is that if the military have a voice in parliament, when they're unhappy with something they can voice their grievances and views within the system, rather than resorting to overthrowing the system.

After Parliament, we went to the UCLF office where we met the whole team - they're a big group! It was a really fun afternoon, worshipping and praying together, reading the bible and I felt really encouraged by their friendliness and the feeling of community within the office. In some ways it was a shame we weren't able to meet the group earlier in the week, but it was a really lovely way to end the week, and we felt very welcome there.

Our time in Uganda ended with a trip to Entebbe, on the shores of Lake Victoria. We were going to visit the zoo there, but in true Ugandan style, the bus journey there took 3x as long as it should have done, so we ended up just having lunch and chilling by the lake for a bit, before going to dinner at another UCLF board member's house (also in Entebbe). Lake Victoria is so beautiful - I was quite surprised that in many ways the Ugandan side looked really quite different to the Tanzanian part of the Lake, where I spent 10 weeks of my gap year.

Uganda was really very different to Rwanda - both in terms of the country and the work we were doing. You can tell that Uganda is so, so much bigger than Rwanda! The traffic in Kampala is crazy, in a way that Kigali never was, even in rush hour. Driving through the country, there are many fewer hills than in Rwanda, and instead there are a lot of open plains, and big tea plantations (which really smell...!) I understand more of how the Ugandan system works that I do of Rwanda, but less about the work of UCLF than I learnt about Lawyers of Hope. I can't really pick a favourite - they're just different!

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Visiting a Women's Prison

This post comes out of order, because I wanted to write down my feelings and reflections today, rather than leaving it a week until I get to this point in my blog. Some of the names and details are left out, just to ensure security for various people.

I don't know where to start processing what we've seen today at the prison. I know God is a God of justice, and that although perfect justice comes at the end of time, there is most definitely a place for working towards justice here and now. When crimes are committed, laws are broken, lives are taken and so on, there must be consequences, there must be justice. But I don't know if what I saw today can really be described as justice.

The remand section:
In the remand section, we helped with a legal rights and representation seminar. This was done in a smallish courtyard, in the middle of the 'wards' (like big cells where up to 50 women sleep). The women sat in two sections - those charged with capital offences, like murder and violent robbery, were on the right in their plain grey uniforms (just like a thin nightdress - definitely not warm enough for today's weather) and those charged with other offences in striped uniforms on the left.

About two thirds of the women there hadn't been given their charge sheets - one of their constitutional rights, and vital for them to be able to take their case forward. Constitutionally, they must be provided with a lawyer if they cannot afford one. But over half said they didn't have a lawyer. Most of them didn't know they had rights to these. Almost all of them were offered bail, but at such a high price they had no chance of ever affording it - and didn't know they could appeal to the judge to have it reduced according to their circumstances. Some had been there a few weeks, others a few years. It all depends on how long your case takes, and in many cases this is prolonged by procedural inefficiency, witnesses or even advocates not turning up and so on. There may be many hearings spread out over months, rather than your whole case being heard together as it would be in England. Some of the women there have committed offences, but others hold that they have been wrongly accused, and history shows that this is often the case - as one of our partners here says, for this reason 'delayed justice is not justice' - if you are left in remand for two years, and then acquitted, you've been wrongly imprisoned for two years of your life, with no compensation, and that whole time not knowing how much longer you'd have to wait for your case to be completed. The flip side of this is that when we were chatting to some advocates, there's also many cases I feel like the chronic delays in the system are denying justice to both victims and their families, and to the accused - guilty or not.

We also spent some time conducting interviews with the remandees to find out what their cases are, so that they can either be helped to represent themselves, or to be represented by our partners. Charge sheets, witness statements and medical reports are all over the place - some are good, some are not. Some of the women had them, others had half of what they should, and others had none. Reports of malpractice amongst officials at various stages are rife, perhaps influencing people to change their statements or to refuse bail payment.

Although I've studied criminal law, today was the first time I've interviewed someone charged with murder. She's pretty much my age, and was very lively and active in the seminar - knowing a lot of the answers and seemingly pretty bright. She gave off quite a confident, almost sassy sort of front, but once we really started talking, a much more timid and frightened side came out. She admits the act but doesn't seem to have the intention required. I also wonder if there's more going on in the history than she's letting on, which might contribute to a partial defence, but in this initial interview we didn't get further into that. When we started, I initially felt odd and uncomfortable interviewing someone who opened with 'we were arguing and then I stabbed them', but this very quickly changed to anger at myself for judging her. I prayed that God would help me see her through his eyes, and throughout the rest of the interview he really did that. Behind the confident, stand-offish front began to show a softer side, full of insecurities and vulnerabilities. She was deeply sorry for what she'd done, and although this isn't enough to excuse her from consequences for what she did, all of my feelings round this were complicated by the fact that murder still carries the death penalty, which I disagree with (in fact, no one's been executed in about 80 years, but people are still sentenced to death and then stay in prison for the rest of their lives. There are some politicians who want to bring back execution, so it's not really an equivalent to a life sentence, in that it doesn't carry the same security). By the end of the interview, we'd been able to give her some initial advice around some of the partial defences that might well apply to her case, thus reducing it to manslaughter rather than murder, because certain elements of the crime of murder weren't present. I wasn't able to get her to open up enough about things, and I don't know the detail of the case law here so we couldn't come to any final conclusions, but the lawyers will be back in soon and can take the case further. God really answered my prayer, and I was able to see her as real person, vulnerable and insecure, in as much need of a saviour and of love as me. And although this doesn't mean she shouldn't go to prison for what she did, it means she shouldn't be denied her humanity and a chance to hear the gospel and to improve herself when she is in prison. I think this has deepened my understanding of how God looks at us, despite all our sin and the things we do wrong and yet still loves us so deeply. 

The inmates section:
This was also a place of mixed, conflicted feelings. On the surface, many of the women we spoke to seemed happy and pleased to see us. There was a prayer group meeting and worshipping together, there's a bakery where some of them work to improve their skills and there's a craft project, the proceeds from which are held on account so that when the women are released they at least have a little money to help them (I'm a teeny bit sceptical as to whether this actually happens, but it's a really good idea and I hope it does!) There's both a primary and a high school, so the women can complete their education (it's not age specific like it is in the UK - you could start primary aged 40 here) and there's lots of outside groups that come in to do training sessions.  However, our partners explained that under the surface is a lot of resentment and anger. The wards where they sleep are small, and the one we saw reminded me too much of Auschwitz. 66 women would sleep in the small room - mattresses lined the floor both sides of the room, but there were only about 20 of these. We were pointed to the isolation block for high risk prisoners - there didn't seem to be any windows, and this was the smallest of all the blocks.

I think the hardest thing was seeing all the young children - both in the remand section and in the inmates section. If a women gives birth whilst in custody, the child will grow up in prison with the mother till the age of four. There's a kindergarten for them where they mix with the staff children. Once the child reaches the age of four, if the mother's term hasn't ended then they will try to reunite the child with their family, but usually they just end up in a children's home. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of provision or process when the mother has a child before being arrested - so long as the child is past the breast feeding stage, they just get left in the community. The death penalty adds another dimension to this - if a woman is pregnant she will get life imprisonment rather than a death sentence. There are some lawyers actually advising the women to get pregnant however they can in order to avoid the death sentence. This leads to children being born into prison, and then spending the rest of their childhood in a childrens home, and then growing up without ever seeing their mum, because she is in prison serving a life sentence. I find this deeply troubling, and it's a dimension to the problems of the death penalty I had never thought about.

In some ways, it'd be easy to despair, to be paralysed by the whole thing and the scale of the problems in many ways seems insurmountable. However, in looking to Jesus, there is hope: hope for a new creation, hope for perfect justice and hope that things can change. We are called to be agents of change, to challenge injustices we see and to speak out for those who don't have a voice. Although we might not be able to sort out all the problems that we see, we can start to work towards improving one of them. The work of our partners here is really inspiring in this way and it has been a real privilege to work alongside them. My prayer is that I won't forget how I've been moved by this, and that'll it'll spur me into action, into seeking more earnestly where God would have me serve him and the injustices he is asking me to challenge, through the way I live and speak, and through how I use my law degree.

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Ugandan Adventures Part 1!

#'I'm again writing this on my phone on another bus journey, so please excuse any bad typing, the driver stopped bothering to slow down for the speed bumps every quarter of a mile about 6 hours ago! This time we're on our way to Nairobi - we left Kampala at 8am, and it's now 8pm. I'm hopeful we'll arrive before midnight! It's been a beautiful ride and God's been answering prayers so far for the various members of the team who've felt ill at different points on the journey and everyone's managed to sleep and is feeling well at this moment - I'm now praying that typing this won't add me to that list!!

Time in Uganda was pretty hectic so I didn't get a good chance to sit and blog. I've been struggling to fit in regular personal devotions, so any spare bits of time I got this week were used for that. It's been a very different week to the time we spent in Rwanda, on many levels.

We arrived in Uganda on Sunday after a 4 hour coach ride from Kigali to Mbarara in South West Uganda. We were met there by our partners who had hired a driver and minibus for us -  unfortunately designed for 12 people, and were were 15 including the driver. But in Africa, where there's a will there's a way, so all our rucksacks and cases got stacked (rather high!) On top of the bus, and we squashed in for the remaining 4 hours drive to Kassesse. On the way we stopped for lunch (at 3pm...) and had our first true experience of Africa-time this trip. In Rwanda, things were at most 30mins late. At the motel where we had lunch, it took over 2 hours for our food to arrive! We were keen to just finish the journey as we'd been hopeful we wouldn't need to travel much in the dark, so there was a lot of frustration around this - it was good preparation for what was to come! When we finally arrived at our hostel at 10pm, I crashed into bed as I was pretty shattered. The rest of the team were given a dinner of ugali (a stodgy white cakey porridge thing made from maize flour) and plantain (savoury banana) which I did not hear rave reviews about in the morning. Breakfast was two pieces of stale bread and a squishy banana each. I was initially grumpy about this, but actually felt really challenged that my gap year had really taught me the lesson that food is really functional, a part of survival. Anything more than that is an additional blessing, not a right - something I think we've almost entirely forgotten in the UK. When was the last time you at a bland meal you didn't like at all? We just don't eat it, pick something else, or complain until we find something better. There's nothing wrong with enjoying food (I'm a self-confessed foodie, and firmly believe that our sense of taste and ability to make good tasting food is a gift from God!) but I was really challenged about the extent to which we take this for granted, when its actually a blessing the majority of the world won't get tonight.

The following morning, we were informed over breakfast that the programme had changed (not the first or last time we heard that, I can tell you!!!), and that the school where we were going to do a child rights seminar was actually in the middle of exam period so didn't want a bunch of Mzungus disrupting their day. This meant that we would have slightly longer to drive round the national park that morning, and that we'd travel to Kampala that afternoon. No one was happy to hear this - the minibus is so ridiculously uncomfortable that we had all been glad of a day in between travelling to recover some strength before going again - not least because to make your bladder hold out that long on bumpy roads, you have to severely limit your fluid intake - two consecutive days of dehydration was not a fun prospect.

God did answer our prayers for a blessed morning in his creation, though, and we were lucky enough to see a lion, a leopard, a very rare species of forest hog (not to be confused with a wart hog, which we also saw!) Buffalo, Ugandan Jobs, Elephants, Monkeys and Water Buck. Despite this meaning that we spent the whole morning in the minibus, ahead of the afternoon travels, we felt so lucky to have seen all these animals. Its the first time I've seen a lion or a leopard on safari. The leopard was cool, but the lion was about 5m away - its beauty and power were very evident! I think this was my highlight! I feel like I now have a more vivid picture of Aslan in my head for next time I'm reading a Narnia book, or a better understanding of the name 'Lion of Judah' for Jesus. Cool stuffs :)

We then went to visit the Ugandan Christian Lawyers' Fraternity (UCLF) office in Kassesse. It was nice to see one of their regional offices and to meet some of their lawyers. However, this was another case of African time, and by the time our minibus had picked up our luggage and come back for us it was 3pm, and the 8 hour journey to Kampala hadn't started, and we hadn't had lunch! (Cue hungry, tired and grumpy team...) We stopped off for a quick lunch of rice and beans in town and then settled down for the journey to Kampala. We eventually arrived at midnight at the house of one of the UCLF board members, Titus and his family, who had prepared dinner for us. We were frustrated to say the least, because we knew the following morning was an early start and we just wanted to get to our accommodation, but we were blown away by their hospitality. Despite having to wait for us 5 hours beyond the arranged time, they were so so friendly, the food was amazing and it was a real joy to share food with them.

When we got to our hotel just before 2am, we were so blessed to find that there were actual showers, and on top of that, hot water!! For the same price as our hostel in Rwanda, we've been staying in comparative luxury. We'd been praying hard that God would exceed our expectations for Uganda because by this point we were all pretty shattered and demoralised.

I'm starting to get cramp so I think I'll finish this post here - in some ways I didn't want to leave it here cause it's been quite negative, but in another way its probably a more accurate record of how we were feeling at this point in the trip. Spoiler alert - it got a lot better, I've actually really enjoyed Uganda as a whole and we were again sad to be leaving this morning, but also excited to see what Kenya holds!

Prayer requests:
- That we'd settle into Kenya quickly, and that we'd get off to a better start than we did in Rwanda.
- Thanks that God gave us safe travels in Uganda, and this far
- Thanks that the team are still good friends and we haven't had any big arguments despite the tiring time we've had
- Pray that we'd be able to rehydrate properly tomorrow and wouldn't suffer from any lasting tiredness or illness from today's journey
- Please pray that we'd be really open to what God is wanting to show and teach us in Kenya.

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The Remaining Rwandan Reflections!

I'm attempting to type this whilst crammed into a Ugandan bus with my knees up under my chin cause there's no foot/leg room on this seat! So please excuse any poor typing that may occur, the roads here are much less good that the Rwandan roads!

So, to continue my account of what we've been up to during our busy week in Uganda: On Tuesday we were back in the LOH office, and Egide had invited a few people to come and meet us. One of them was a guy called Jackson who was falsely accused of rape and held in prison on remand. When LOH met him in prison over 3 years later, he had no knowledge of where his case was at. The LOH lawyer on his case did some research, went to the court and so on, and found that he had been acquitted three years previously, and had therefore ended up serving 3 years longer than he should have. Thanks to LOH he was able to be released and is now working as a farmer, is married and has a daughter! It was really cool to get to meet him - his case was really influential in helping LOH get funding for their prison work, and it's such a clear example of why their work is important.

We also met one of their community paralegals - one of the big aims of LOH is to create a sustainable system that empowers communities to know their rights and to resolve issues themselves. They do this through training paralegals to know the procedure for different types of case and to work with local leaders to resolve issues.

The most inspiring person for me was Mary, one if the lawyers who works with LOH. When we asked her why she decided to work with LOH, she came alive and was telling us how she wanted to make a difference and be a lawyer that had women and children at heart. This really encouraged me that it's actually possible to practice law and still retain a passion and heart for people!

After another typical lunch of rice, chips (Always chips. With everything.) we got on the bus to Nyamagabe. This has to be one of the coolest bust journeys I've ever had, and God showed me so much of his love for me and his beauty. I was really tired and slept really well for the first hour which was very needed, and I was reminded of the verse from Psalm 27 (I think...I can't reach my bible to check!) that says 'The Lord grants sleep to those he loves'. I was then so amazed by the beautiful, beautiful countryside. Rwanda is known as the land of 1000 hills, and its very obvious why! It spoke so much of God's beauty, and it really struck me that even in a land where there has been such evil perpetrated, Gods beauty and love endures even that. It was approaching sundown, and I was really excited for sunset - there was a beautiful clear sky, and sunsets have always been something that speak so strongly of God's extravagant love and beauty - there was no need for him to make them so beautiful, or to create us in a way that can appreciate them, but the fact he did is, I think, such a sign of his love. As expected, it was an incredible sunset, but just as I was settling down to doze off for the final hour or so of the journey, the stars came out. They were so amazingly spectacular! I was expecting the display of God's beauty to end at sunset, but it's as if he was saying 'my love and beauty is so extravagant, magnificent and never ending that is surpasses all your limitations and expectations'. It was really amazing!

We were staying at another Christian guest house, but before we could go to bed we had to plan our child rights training sessions for the following day (we would have planned them further in advance, had we known about them!!). On Wednesday, after an early start, we had devotions at the world vision office, then headed out to the villages. My half of the team went to an Anglican Church to facilitate a training session for adults in the community. My particular section was around explaining child sexual abuse and the rights and responsibilities surround it. Afterwards we had a time of singing and dancing together in the church, and then headed over to join the other half of the team who had been doing a training session with the local Children's forum (a group of children chosen to represent the needs and voices of children in that community). At the end of that session was a lot more dancing, and then the children called up a family of orphans living in their village and presented them with gifts of soap, food, clothes, school books and so on - each family had brought what they could to help these orphans. It was very moving to see!

Over lunch we met some more people who had been benefitted by the work of LOH in this area, and then it was back on the bus for the 4hr ride back to Kigali.

On Thursday morning we explored the local market and in the afternoon some of the team visited a football project, working with street kids and teaching them the gospel and important skills to help get them off the streets. I was feeling pretty exhausted from the previous 2 days, and so stayed at the guesthouse with a couple of other team members who weren't feeling so well. God answered prayers and refreshed and re-energised us ahead of the student conference on Friday.

The student conference took the whole of Friday, from 8am-6pm. We had about 50 Christian law students there (and a Muslim student!) and we had 2 seminars focussing on a biblical view of law and justice, and then 2 more practical sessions on how to be a Christian law student and practitioner. We had some worship sessions too, and one of the highlights was singing 'Our God is an Awesome God' in English and Kinyrwanda. Karen and I were conference worship leaders, and to our surprise were asked several times if we'd released an album, and where people could buy recordings of us...! It was a lot of fun though, and people seemed to really connect with God, which was an answered prayer!
The conference seemed to really impact them and get them thinking, and it was such an encouragment for me to see, having worked with Claire back in Cambridge to set up a Student Law fellowship - it really reminded me why encouraging students to connect their faith and their subject is so important.

Saturday was mainly saying goodbyes to the LOH team, packing and getting ready for our travel to Uganda. Its been amazing to be in Rwanda, I've been so touched by its friendliness, by the strength of its community and the power of their forgiveness. One of the things that really impressed me, which I forgot to write in the first blog, were the community works that were going on on the Saturday we arrived. On the last Saturday of every month, all work stops and everyone takes part in community work, as directed by their local leaders. There's a focus on reconciliation, unity and pulling together for communal benefit. As a result the streets are so tidy, there's no litter and all the grassy areas on roundabouts and by the side of the road are well tended. I can't help but think we need something like this in the UK to get people working together better in community!

Prayer requests:
-  that we'll settle into Uganda well
- everyone's tired and dehydrated from long journeys, please pray for health and team spirit!

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Hello from Rwanda!

Today is our last day in Rwanda, so I thought I would update you all on what we've been up to whilst we've been here! (having now been sat here typing on my phone for 40mins, I'm going to have to split all we've done into two parts!!) I'll also write a blog on some more reflective thoughts on how I've found Rwanda (we've got a couple of very long bus journeys coming up, so plenty of writing time!).

We arrived here on Saturday morning after a long flight to Nairobi, and a short connecting flight onwards to Kigali. We were met here by Egide (one of the partners at Lawyers of Hope) and Richard, who has been our driver for the week. We headed to our accommodation which is a charity guest house - very African, but comfy beds, fairly clean and usually running water! We spent the day settling in, exploring the area around our accommodation a little and getting our first taste of the traditional Rwandan goat kebabs - really tasty!

On Sunday we went to church at a large pentecostal church called Christian Life Assemblies, which was in many ways like a Rwandan version of City Church in Cambridge. It was very different to my past experiences of African church, but they were super welcoming and we enjoyed it very much! We then headed into the centre of Kigali for lunch at a Chinese restaurant (there's quite a strong Asian influence here which I really wasn't expecting). The centre of Kigali is far more developed than I had expected and there is still a lot of development going on. The roads and infrastructure in the city are pretty good, which is again not what I expected. I was talking to another of the partners, Juve, about why this was and he was explaining the government's Vision 2020 which aims to see the country progress in its Development, providing infrastructure across the whole country, including sanitation, and also free WiFi across much of the country. The finding for this has come primarily from international aid - the rest of the world (rightly) felt pretty guilty about not stepping in to prevent the genocide when they could have done, and so Rwanda has received large sums of international aid. The corruption here is very low, although there has been the same president for the last 22 years, and the constitution has just been changed to allow him to continue, and this means the money seems to be getting to a lot of the right places. There is a slum clearance project which has seen lots of people paid compensation to move out of their slum dwellings to allow development to come in. There seems to be some divide in opinion as to whether the compensation is sufficient or not - I do wonder if this is just serving to push the slums to the outskirts of the city.
On Sunday evening we had dinner at another Charity guest house with the board members of Lawyers of Hope (LOH) - standard Rwandan buffet of rice, chips, vegetables, beans, a meat stew and some fruit. It was really exciting to meet the board members and I had a lot of fun with Grace (see photo - some of the team with Grace!) teaching me some Kinyrwanda phrases which have been very helpful over the week.

Monday morning was our first day at 'work' - we went to the LOH offices where Egide explained the various work that they do. Since starting in 2008, they have been working towards 5 objectives:
- To provide legal assistance and access to justice.
- To help religious leaders to understand laws of Rwanda
- To promote unity and reconciliation through access to justice and international conventions
- To contribute to favourable legislation.

They provide legal information, education, advice, assistance and representation. They have prison projects, community projects, marriage reconciliation projects, child rights projects and so on. All their work is aimed at dealing with the root cause of the problems that come before them, rather than just finding a quick fix. They also take every opportunity they can with their clients to share the gospel. It incredibly refreshing to hear lawyers talk about their work with such a passion and conviction - there is no question of them being in it for the money (they're certainly not on high-flying lawyers' salaries!) but they've seen and understood God's heart for justice and long to be used by him to right injustices that surround them in their societies. It's really challenged me to think carefully about why I'm doing a law degree, and where I go from here.

On Monday afternoon, we visited the genocide memorial. This was incredibly hard-hitting and very moving. It was really hard witnessing the sheer scale and horror of the atrocities that tore through this beautiful country in 1994, where neighbour turned on neighbour, friend on friend, godfather on godson - all over ethnic differences which had caused no problem before the colonialists started dividing and classifying people. The UN general on the ground tried to warn of what was about to happen and ask for support, but it never came. It was so hard to see the pictures and videos of the violence - it wasn't just systematic killing, but it went so far above and beyond that, designed to inflict as much pain as possible - widespread rape, people being buried alive, babies and toddlers being hacked into pieces with a machete or smashed against a wall. It was extremely moving for all of us to see. Putting yourself in their shoes, imaging close friends and neighbours attacking your family and refusing to help you is really shocking. And so much of it started with the media pushing images of the Tutsis taking what was really the Hutus (jobs, wives, land and so on), trying to dehumanise them and encouraging hatred and people to try and find differences between them. I was quite starkly reminded of some of the responses that came out to the migrant crisis, and some of the viewpoints pushed in the run up to the referendum. It's hit very hard - more so than when I visited Auschwitz, I think because its much more recent history (just within my life time), and its a lot easier to imagine the horror of a neighbour or friend turning on you, rather than the slightly more removed Nazi soldiers.

But its also been incredible to hear the testimony of survivors, willing to forgive those who killed their family and siblings, and to see how Rwanda has moved into what appears to be a deep unity once more - there has been a huge effort towards reconciliation, and it's really incredible to see how far they've come in 22 years. The power of forgiveness is so so strong - although this is so central to the message of what Jesus accomplished in his death and resurrection, it's importance hit home on a new level.

In processing and praying through the things we saw there, a quote from Gary Haugen (author of Good News About Injustice) has been really significant: 'Standing with my boots knee deep in the reeking muck of a Rwandan mass grave where thousands have been horribly slaughtered, I have no meaning, no hope, no life unless there is a God of history and time who is absolutely furious, absolutely outraged, absolutely burning with anger against those who took it into their own hands to commit such acts as these.' God is a God of justice - he is a Father to the fatherless, defender of the weak, saviour to the captive. He is not passive when injustice happens in this world, but is present in and through suffering, and is furious when evil is perpetrated. We take comfort in the fact that there will be judgment and perfect justice at the end of time, and that he provides mechanisms on earth through which a measure of justice can be achieved before then.

I've still got a lot to process from this, but I really pray that God would use it to challenge my attitude towards other people, that he would teach me more about his heart for justice, and that he would set a passion for that justice in my heart too.

Prayer points:
- Thanks for safe travels, that all our bags arrived and we were able to get visas sorted.
- Thanks for such a warm welcome here in Rwanda
- Pray that I would be learning more about God and in processing what we've seen here, particularly from the genocide memorial, that I'd be open to what God wants to teach me
- For safe travels over the next few days - we have a long bus journey to Uganda tomorrow, and then on Tuesday another long journey on to Kampala.
- That as a team we'd be growing in our cultural sensitivity towards the partners and that we'd grow stronger as a team.

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Back to Africa!

It's a long time since I've written a blog post - sorry to those of you who've persistently pestered me to do so for the past year and a half! I'm taking it up again this summer cause I'm off to the other side of the world once more, and I've found its a great way for me to keep in touch will all the people I care about back home, as well as a place for me to process some of the things I'm doing and seeing, both in the moment and when I'm reflecting afterwards, its so helpful to see what I was doing and feeling at the time.

So what am I actually up to over my ridiculously long summer break?

First of all, I'm off to East Africa as part of a team called the 'Summer Justice Mission' to work with legal aid organisations in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya (in that order!). I'm going with a team of 11 others from the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship, an organisation which supports both law students and practitioners to integrate their faith and their vocation. The twelve of us on the team range from first year law students, to newly qualified solicitors, to senior partners who are approaching retirement. In Africa, we'll be working with local Christian Lawyers' organisations who work to secure access to justice for those who need it most. In England we have a legal aid system (despite the cuts and so on, it still exists) which still supports a certain level of access to justice. In Eastern Africa, there is no such provision by the state, and so it falls to NGOs to promote access to the courts and educating communities as to their legal rights. We'll be working alongside these NGOs (Lawyers of Hope (Rwanda), Uganda Christian Lawyers' Fraternity and CLEAR Kenya) running community seminars, Christian law student conferences and various other meetings. We have a team blog too if you want to follow that! https://justicemission.wordpress.com/

After the team go home, I'll be staying on in Nairobi for a few days to visit Franklyn and Violet, and Vision Peoples in Mission. For those of you who don't know, Franklyn and Violet are good family friends who run a project in the Korogocho slum of Nairobi, with a church, school, clinic, orphanage and vocational training centre. I've visited them a couple of times in Nairobi before and am really excited to be going back! They are like my Kenyan family!

At the end of July, I'll then be flying to Singapore to visit some of my uni friends out there. This will be much more of a holiday, but I'll probably still blog then! I'm hopeful I will also be able to get my blipfoto photo journal up and running again, but I'm not confident I'll actually be able to upload photos from Africa, so it might be a case of mass updating once I get to Asia. We will see!

If you're not used to my blogging style, I should probably explain that I'm an engineer at heart (see maths and science A levels), who's ended up studying law at uni, so eloquence and flowery descriptions are really not my forte...I just write what's in my head at the time, so I hope you don't mind that too much! I have no idea how often I'll be able to blog, as African internet is anything but predictable!

Prayer requests:

• Thank God for all his provision in trip preparations up to this point, for opening the door for me to be able to do this, including financially.
• That I would have a really good few days at home with family before I fly - that we'd be able to spend good quality time together
• That my final preparations would go smoothly
• VISAS! We've all applied but almost all of us have not heard back, so please pray that we'd hear back before we go, or that it'd all be smooth once we land!

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An Attitude of Gratitude #365reasons

Update: This didn't last as long as I intended, by quite some way! I think it did make me more thankful, but my perseverance leaves a lot to be desired, and I'm definitely still a long way from being as thankful as i could be. Re-reading this has challenged me to think about this again!



No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

'Thanks'. One of those words we say so often it completely loses meaning. Like when you repeat a word over and over until it doesn't sound real any more: spoon. Spoon. Spooon. Spoonspoonspoonspoon.spOOn. spoon. Is that even a word? Point proved. My actual point is, I've been really challenged at the start of this new year to rethink thankfulness. To rediscover the meaning of 'thanks'. Apparently 'thanks' appears in the bible 151 times. It clearly an important topic!

What does it mean to 'always be thankful' or to 'give thanks in all circumstances' as the NIV phrases it? It's easier to be thankful when things are going well than when life gets tough. But this verse clearly tells us we should be thankful in both these situations (and everything in beteeen. Like every theory in Constitutional Law I'm sure this is a continuum and life generally sits somewhere on the scale between perfection and disaster.)  Let's start with the  times when life is going well. Easy to be thankful, right? Or perhaps not... 

I know I'm guilty of taking so many things for granted, for focusing on what I don't have as opposed to what I do. There's been a lot of articles recently calling us the 'entitled generation'. In some ways I think this is unfair - we are a generation that is repeatedly condemned, and this needs to stop. But that's another discussion for another time. I think the problem of entitlement is very real, but extends beyond  my generation to my parents' generation as well. For those of you who haven't read these articles I'm talking about, the problem of entitlement is as follows: We have started to believe we are entitled to the good things in life, that we have a right to them. Entitled to meat 7 days a week. Entitled to a car. Entitled to a foreign holiday at least once a year. Entitled to fast internet and good phone signal. Entitled to nice clothes. And with this sense of entitlement, we have forgotten what a privilege these things are. So we complain when we don't get them, rather than giving thanks when we do. I'm as guilty of this as the next person (you've all heard the rant about internet speed back home in Sheriffhales...!) Why would we be entitled us to any of these? If we look at ancient kings, they had nightly entertainment, luxury bathing, wine, spices from around the world and time to admire the wonders of nature. Is that really so different to our lifestyle? I'm not saying we should throw away these things and adopt a John-the-Baptist-camel-hair-and-locusts life instead. I'm saying we need to consciously change our attitude from one of entitlement to one of gratitude. To intentionally recognise the things we do have, and to be thankful for them. It's all too easy not to recognise how much we have until we don't have it anymore. In the words of Passenger:

"Well you only need the light when it's burning low

Only miss the sun when it starts to snow

Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low

Only hate the road when you’re missin' home

Only know you love her when you let her go"

Consumerism has a lot to answer for regarding this attitude of entitlement and dissatisfaction. One of the biggest myths is that the market exists to create satisfied customers, but if we think about it, it’s actually the opposite. A truly satisfied customer would never return to the shop. Business depends on us being satisfied just enough to appreciate what we've bought, but not satisfied enough to be content with just one purchase. This constant desire for more has spilled over into the rest of our lives. 1 Timothy 6:6 says 'Godliness with contentment is great gain'. Contentment is not having everything you want. Nor is it grudgingly settling for less than you think you deserve because that's a holy thing to do (Holy points are not actually a thing.) Contentment is the attitude of realising how much we already have. When we find contentment, it frees us from the never ending cycle of needing more. Of having to work longer hours to get a better holiday than the last one, which then doesn't quite meet our expectations, so we work even harder to get an even better holiday etc.  This is one of the reasons I think we are told to be thankful - because in giving thanks we are focussing on the good things we have, rather than the things we don't. 

So what about those situations when life seems rubbish. When everything goes wrong. When you're behind on work, missing home, your bike breaks and to top it all off your pick-me-up cup of tea has fairy liquid in cause in washing the mug you only got as far as putting the fairy in... (True story. That was the low point of last term.) Or even worse. Life really can suck sometimes. Surely God can't expect us to be thankful then, when there is nothing to be thankful for? But then if we look back at the verse, it says 'in all circumstances'. That means the low points too. For me, this is definitely harder to fix than my lack of thankfulness in the good times. I think the book of Psalms is a real gift in these situations, and reflect the attitude we should try and take. The psalmists pour our their raw emotion when life went wrong. Yet it is always turned round to praise. Take Psalm 42 - As the deer pants for streams of water, so I long for you. You've probably sung this to the horrendously twee tune we've attached to it. I remember someone saying once that screamo/heavy metal would be a more appropriate genre for this psalm. Deer do not skip around happily when they are dying from dehydration. This psalm is one of AGONY. Of screaming out at God. Yet the psalmist then turns it back round to praise.

v11: 'Why am I so discouraged? 

Why am I so sad? 

I will put my hope in God! 

I will praise him again - my Saviour and my God'. 

In these times, it's ok to scream at God. But we need to remember his faithfulness too, and turn back to praise. If we look hard enough, there will usually be something to still be thankful for. Search for this, and hold onto it. But if we can find nothing else to be thankful for, if everything really has been taken away from us, we know that salvation and hope in our saviour Jesus Christ has not. We can depend on the character and faithfulness and love of God - there are so many promises of this in the bible. The chance to have a relationship with God is the biggest privilege we could ever have been given. We therefore will always have something to be thankful for. And in these low situations, turn to the psalms for support, encouragement and guidance. They have been given to us as part of scripture to help us pray when we can't find the words ourselves. Use them! (Same goes for the good times too - literally every emotion is covered in there!)

To be always thankful is a hard ask, but it's something I really want to work towards this year. I believe in order to do this, thankfulness needs to become a way of life, not just something I do on occasion. I want to have an attitude of gratitude in everything I do. To start with, I'm going to have to be really intentional about this. To purposely look for and make opportunities to be thankful. I hope by the end of the year it will become more natural, but I know it's not going to be a finished work by this time next year. 

I hope that in doing this, I will gain freedom from the pressure to always have the next, best, biggest things, and that it will lead me to live a less self-centred life, where I am not consumed by a desire to increase my own share. That I will find contentment in realising just how much I already have. I love Matt Redman's song, "10,000 reasons", and when thinking about thankfulness at the beginning of the year, I was really struck by the line '10,000 reasons for my heart to find...' 10,000 is a lot, so I thought I'd start with a more realistic target of 365...  I know I missed the boat somewhat with new years resolutions (but since when have I done anything the normal way...!), but each day for the next year I want to post something I'm thankful for on my twitter account. Some days it might be big things, and other days it'll be the little things. I think they're both of importance - God is God in all our life, not just the big things. 

Why am I doing this publically? 1) I hope it will encourage and inspire others towards thankfulness, even if just for a moment in their day. 2) More importantly, it means you can hold me accountable to this much easier than if it was just in a journal. Please hold me to this, and if I get slack please please pick me up on it. You have my permission!! 

If this is something you fancy having a go at, I'd love you to join me in this! Pick whatever number you like -maybe just try it for a week (#7reasons) or take it up for a month (#31reasons) or for lent (#40reasons), or go the whole hog and join me for the year (#365reasons)!! And if you'd just like to follow my attempts to stay thankful, you'll find me on twitter.

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The Reluctant Law Student...

That's me. Can't think of a much better way to sum my position up right now. Not that I can take any credit for that title...but let's start at the beginning and I'll get to that (and why the blog's been restarted and had a face lift)!

20 years and 14 days ago, on 8th December 1994...
Ok...let's not start right at the beginning! Fast forward 18 and a bit years to when I started this blog. I had just finished my A Levels and was preparing to go off on a gap year that would take me to Tanzania and Colombia. And rather disgustingly cheesily I would 'find myself' (or at least find out a lot more about myself). But more importantly I would find God in a totally new way.

Those of you who have known me a while or have heard my testimony will know I've been brought up a Christian, and would have called myself a Christian well before this gap year. I don't dispute that now. But belief in God isn't an end goal - it's a journey. We focus so much on the ends in our culture that it can be all to easy to forget the significance of the means by which we get there. What I learnt and experienced over my time away resulted in a real deepening of my faith and a much clearer understanding of God's unconditional love for me, and what the amazing consequences of Jesus' death and resurrection actually mean for me on a day to day basis, as well as an eternal level. Before you accuse me of over-glamourising cross cultural mission work, I'm not saying my time abroad was easy. In fact if you read some of my blog posts you'll realise it can be demoralising, hard, sweaty, dirty work. But at the same time I found it a lot easier to hear God in it all (and we did have some pretty amazing times too!). Without the comforts of a culture and language I knew, and out of my natural skill area, dependence on God was not an option. It was a necessity.

And then I had to come home and go to uni. It's a good job I applied for deferred entry - there's no way I would have actually applied during my gap year. When I came home from Colombia I spent the weeks counting down, saying 'Come on God, you've got 6 weeks to give me something else other than this uni place'. At Momentum I was eagle eyed for any possible opportunities. And in-keeping with God's beautiful sense of humour, everything I looked at or picked up said 'graduate degree required'. TYPICAL! So reluctantly I headed down to Cambridge to study law.

I expected a lot of work. I didn't expect quite so much work! But I've settled in well. I live with an amazing group of people. The other law students at Jesus College are really great too. As are the CU. And I've found a church home at Eden Baptist, which is full of friendly people. But all term I've been fighting God. I couldn't dispute the fact that he had called me there (although had he changed his mind and told me to fly off to the other side of the world, I'd have been there in a second!), but I was constantly questioning if I'd somehow ended up doing the wrong subject. It's a lot harder to find where God fits into law than it was to see God in my gap year projects. I was praying for confirmation all term and yet closing my mind to every time God answered that, because it wasn't what I wanted to hear. Had I really learnt nothing in my gap year?!

Claire, another law student at Jesus, and all round incredible woman of God, had a vision to create a group for other Christian law students. I caught the vision of this and subsequently we spent all term scheming and praying for how this would advance. We've had endless meetings and coffees with different people, several Skype calls, and lots of connections made for us. It's one of those instances where God just opens doors and things fall into place. Yet despite all of this, I was still adamant that law wasn't really what I should be doing. Two days before coming back home for the Christmas vacation (it's not a holiday - we've had that one clarified many a time!!) we met with Timothy Laurence, from the Lawyers Christian Fellowship in London, who wanted to reach out to law students as well. It turns we've each come to the same vision independently and God's now connected us up in the middle. When Timothy was telling us about his background, he introduced himself as a 'reluctant law student'. Claire looked at me and burst out laughing - it summed up me and all my complaining about having to study law in a nutshell! Timothy's explanation of how Law and God fit together made so much sense, and things began to fall into place. It's not a completed work, and I still fall under the title of a reluctant law student (especially when I'd rather be baking mince pies than reading R v Brown, and my Facebook feed is full of beach pictures from Santa Marta) but at least I'm now a reluctant law student confident in God's calling - even though I have absolutely no idea of the reason why yet.

I've really missed blogging, writing about all the random thoughts that go through my head. So at the request of a few people, I've decided to take it up again. In one of my procrastination sessions I have given it a make-over (complete with background photo from Bogotá - you can't escape Colombia just yet!). I'm planning on writing in 3 main categories: Crime (for anything law related), Corinthians (for anything faith related) and Cake (for all the food related goodness. Let's be honest this will probably be the biggest category...!). All my gap year posts are still on here, should you be sad enough to want to re-read them...And one day I will finish my blipfoto journal!

I hope you find some encouragement (or light relief...) through my blog. Please feel free to leave me comments, and if there's ever anything you'd love to know my thoughts about, send me a message and I'll write you a post (insert legal disclaimer here just in case I don't)!

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This time last year...

A year ago today was my first day in Musoma. So much has happened this year, I can't really believe it!

I've met some truly incredible people who have really challenged and inspired me. I feel so lucky to have had these opportunities and I really want to thank everyone who made that possible - everyone who supported me financially and in prayer, everyone at GoMad, Tearfund and Latin Link who organised the projects, my two wonderful teams and my family. And I am incredibly grateful to God for allowing me to partake in a tiny part of bringing his kingdom closer. It has been a real privilege. And the best thing is, it's just the start of a bigger adventure!

I have learnt a lot about God's love for me, and about my identity in him. It's been really freeing to realise my identity does not rest on my own performance, but who I am in Christ. If you want to hear more about what I've learnt this year, especially in Colombia, you can listen to the talk I gave at my church here: http://www.stjohnsmuxton.org.uk/awe-sermons/21st-september-2014-3/
In reflecting on my year, I was trying to pick my top 5 moments. Not easy! This is what I came up with (no specific order...that's just impossible!):

• Day 4 of Hadrian's wall - the awesome scenery combined with raucous singing, visiting the Roman Army Musuem, jumping over the wall to look round Housesteads and meeting two cool Canadians visitng the entire UK in 4 days, before ending up at the lovely Grindon hostel where the owner snored loudly on the sofa while we watched telly!
• Cooking for over 70 people out of our modest church kitchen (and the caravan parked outside for an extra stove!), with a fab team of waiters and co-chefs. It was a great challenge and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially all the testing of altered recipes beforehand - I think the family had eaten enough pesto variations to last them a lifetime, but somehow they never complained about the brownies...!
• Spiritual Reflection Day in Tanzania - This was SUCH a special day, and one I don't think I will ever forget. It was great to have a whole day set aside to spend with God. It started with an utterly incredible sunrise up eagle rock and we listened to a sermon which has really impacted my faith and my understanding of how I'm called to live my life. It was also nice to have some quality time together as a team, in the midst of the hectic life of Eagle Lodge.
• Street Party at Colegio Filadelfia para los Sordos - The street party we organised to say goodbye to the kids has to be on this list. Whilst it was really emotional having to say goodbye to the kids we had made really good friends with, it was also an immensely special time, reflecting over everything we'd done together through a photo slideshow, sharing the fruit of that week's cooking classes together and then presenting certificates to each pupil to congratulate them on something they had done particularly well during our 8 weeks there. Then to our surprise, the students had their own presentation for us, and really blessed us with their comments and beautiful gifts!
• Beach Trip with Santa Marta Vineyard - The beaches around Santa Marta are stunning. So where better to go for a church day out? The opportunity to spend a day off with the whole community was really precious, playing in the sea together (the concept of hot sea is still weird, a far cry from the beaches of Northumberland where you want your wellies!), brushing up my footie skills, then some great Spanish practice when I was asked to preach at the meeting straight after lunch! Crazy! Another day full of treasured memories.

There are so many more highlights from this year, if you want to hear about them then you're very welcome to take me out for a coffee or even a meal (I love anything Italian...) and I'll tell you more!!! This year has had its tough moments - as in, seriously tough moments, times when you want nothing more than to go home and you just feel like you can't cope with it anymore - but there have been so many more laughs and jokes, I couldn't even begin to tell you (especially as most of them are in-jokes I can't even remember why they're funny anymore...anyone for a game of duck-duck-llama, or would you prefer some carrot cake...?). And in many ways I think it's some of the tough moments that have developed my faith and my character, and brought me a lot closer to the people around me.

But now, the gap year is very definitely over. The car is packed and I head off down the A14 at 8am tomorrow morning, reading for the next adventure. People keep telling me anything will be easy after this year, but I'm not sure. This law degree seems a lot scarier right now...! Once again, thank you so much for sharing this journey with me, it's been such a joy writing this blog! (One day I might complete my Blipfoto...perhaps!)

If any of you are considering a gap-year or gap-week or anything of the sort, whether you're 16 or 60, I'd really encourage you to go for it! Please get in touch if there's any way you think I could help you with this, I'm so excited to see more people have experiences like I've had this year and have the chance to grow in a similar way!

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We Came. We Saw. We Conquered. And then we went on holiday!

Ok, there's so much to write about, but it's already gone midnight here and I don't know when I'll next get the opportunity to write, so it might be a bit of a brief blog post, but there's more detail on a lot of the things on my blipfoto.

So, this is what the building now looks like:

 

 It has a door and a roof and windows and everything! There are even tables and chairs! The terrace still needs to be done and the electricity hadn't been put in before we left, but work is continuing as we speak. Through the remaining project fund we had left and an additional donation from someone in the UK there was enough money for them to finish the building and hopefully to buy a projector afterwards. Josh and I had the amazing privilege of sharing this news with Adelmo and Nuris. They were so overwhelmed they were lost for words for a few minutes. Thank you so much to everyone who donated to support our work here, it will be a huge blessing to the church: you cannot even begin to imagine their joy and excitement at having this practially finished. They have been praying for years for something like this.

We were sent this picture of them using the building with the kids club for the first time on Saturday!

We have done far more than we could ever have imagined or hoped here (reminds me of Ephesians 3:20 -  Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us). We thought we might just get the platform ready for the building to be built on at some point in the future. But look what's there now! And on top of this, just living as part of the community for 2 months has had a bigger impact than we could ever have planned or hoped. Through the way we lived together as a team, the community told us they learnt various things, and we have also learnt so much from them too, about God and about life in general. I will write a separate blog post about all the things I have learnt here in Colombia, because there's just so much to write, I couldn't possibly fit it all in here! We have a huge sense of achievement, especially considering some of the difficulties we faced, including spiritual attack. Massive thanks to everyone who prayed over this, things got much easier and so many of the burdens were lifted which made the last week much more enjoyable. The power of prayer is huge!

We have become like family here, and Adelmo and Nuris are just like parents to us. Leaving was so, so hard. There were a lot of tears! But what I've come to learn over my gap year is that the goodbyes generate some of the most special moments. There are 2 particular times that will stay with me forever from our last week in Santa Marta:

• The surprise birthday party! There's loads about this on my Blipfoto (29th June), but in short, they decided for our last Sunday to host a surprise birthday party for us all because we won't be with them on our actual birthdays. It was a really precious time, and I will never forget the things that were said.
• Our final prayer meeting. Again, loads about this on my Blipfoto (1st July). For our final prayer meeting we decided we wanted to share food with everyone, so Josh and I cooked chili con carne. I spoke from the bible in Spanish at about 2 minutes notice and led my first worship song, which was scary but I'm so happy I was able to do it! Afterwards, everyone stayed to play twister, jungle speed, pass the pigs and uno, with never-before-seen levels of cheating! The fun and friendship shared that night mean I will never forget this.

So now we are in our final rest week, our final few days together as a team. They're like a brother and sisters to me, and it will be tough saying goodbye, but we already have plans for meetups basically every month between now and New Year! We spent the first 4 days of our rest week in coffee country on a beautiful coffee farm, just relaxing and enjoying the scenery and free coffee. We are now back in Bogotá and are looking forwards to seeing all our friends from the first 2 months. And I get to see my actual family in 4 days! Although I now feel like I have other family members out here (the guys in the team and in Santa Marta) it feels a long time since I've seen my proper family, and I really do miss them, and I can't truly replace them with Colombians!

I am now reaching frostbite levels of coldness, despite wearing so many clothes I look like Michelin Man, and it's 00:35 so I'm going to sign off here and go to bed. I hope this fills you in enough on what's been happening since the last update. You'll have plenty of opportunities to grill me in more detail when I'm back in the UK!

Prayer requests:

• Continued safety on the building site back in Santa Marta as people carry on work to complete the terrace of the new room
• Safe travelling for the guys back to England and for me and my fam in Peru
• A great 2 days in Bogotá
• Thanks for everything we've been able to do, learn and achieve. God is so good!

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Gol, Gol, Gol, Caracol!!! (Sorry...watching the match whilst writing this!!)

Once again, my apologies it's been so ridiculously long since the last blog post. The laptop charger completely gave up and trying to write a blog post on the family's laptop is near impossible as it translates everything you write to Spanish as you are typing, which is just the most frustrating thing ever. But today the parcel from 'Jane Preston, London, Telford' arrived with a new charger. So I now have no excuse for not posting!

So much has happened since the last post, so I'll try to fill you in without getting boring! 

The building work: There is now a visible room! We have cut away loads more of the mountain and filled in most of the gap behind the wall at the bottom of the mountain. There is still a decent sized hole though which we will fill in sometime this week. Logic does not seem to apply to the order of things here. The walls went up before the floor, and for one of the walls we had to build up a thin strip of rocks because we hadn't finished filling in the hole behind the lower wall, so there wasn't any land on which to build the fourth wall, but this didn't seem to matter until the other three walls were already up. The floor went down yesterday, and the level inside the building is now correct, but there is still a massive drop to fill in the other side of the wall. It seems a bit random, but the Colombians seem to know what's going on even if we don't! The lower wall has also now been plastered ready for us to paint a mural this week. We've been working alongside a pair of builders for the past 2 weeks, Jose and Jorge. We're not entirely sure who they are or where they've come from, but they now seem to turn up everywhere all the time, shouting 'Josh, Josh!!' (everyone in the neighbourhood seems to have learnt Josh's name and now loves shouting it whenever one of us walks past! We don't always know who they are either...). But this is fairly characteristic of our time here - great fun and lots of lovely people but we don't really know what's going on most of the time! Just go with the flow... Our working patterns have changed. We now work in shifts, working in pairs one day and then resting the next. We get up at 5.30am on a work day and work till about 6pm, with an hour or so off for lunch. Long days but it's helping to get the work done and having a day to rest after is helpful.

There will be a small terrace to the right of the building for the kids to play outside on, which needs to be done, the roof needs to go on, the windows and doors fitted, and the electric cabling done. Although this won't all be finished in the time we are here, they are so fired up about this project that we are confident it will be finished shortly after.

Here are some photos of the progression of the building work because my descriptions probably don't make any sense if you can't see it:

The mountain before we started work

Having cut away a lot of earth and rock, we started building a retaining wall to enable us to build up to the top level. The full height of this wall is up to the top of the wood at the left side of the picture.

The wall now at full height and the right side filled in (the hole on the left is still there!)

The first wall going up,. You can see why we had problems building the wall perpendicular to this...

The walls up to the height of the concrete lintel

The retaining wall being plastered and the room taking shape up top.

The finished walls ready for the roof

The floor going down yesterday

Kids Clubs: We have continued to help out with the kids clubs, normally leading an activity as part of a session led by Gina or Breidys (two amazing girls, 17 & 19, who run the kids ministry here). However, on the 19th June they left for a youth camp in Medellin. Unfortunately they're not back until we have left, which meant we had to say our goodbyes. This was so sad as it felt very much like the beginning of the end. We only have one week left here and we just love this community. Don't want to leave! We had a great final evening with them before they left though, sharing something called pizza vomito (vomit pizza... so named because it's so big you feel sick after eating it!). But because they're not here we've been left in charge of the Saturday kids clubs. Last week we covered Noah and the ark, up to the point where the rain starts. We will then finish looking at the story next week. It was great fun: we taught them some Colombian sign language for different animals - it was really cool to be able to link our two projects somehow- and played parachute games for the first time. The parachute had only previously been used to provide shade over the building site during the middle of the day! But the look on the kids' faces was so precious, they just lit up! Definitely worth the effort of finding one and bringing it out here with me. Next week we are going to attempt tie-dye with them. This will be spectacular - either spectacularly good or a spectacular disaster. We shall see!

Visas: Well, no visa in my passport is without a story! First of all we couldn't find the migration office. When we eventually got there, it turned out the passport Mary needed was in Bogotá. We had thought that our visas were 3 months, so we thought we were going to get them sorted a few days ahead of time, but actually it was only 90 days and we had had 2 months of 31 days, so we actually only had 1 day to spare. The rest of us managed to get our visas eventually, after having visited a shopping centre to get photos printed and photocopies of the passports. We phoned up the school in Bogotá where we've left some of our stuff and had a long wait overnight to see if the passport would arrive. The passport did arrive from Bogotá but the migration system was down all morning. Fortunately God knew what he was doing and the visa was issued that afternoon! Thanks for your prayers.

World Cup: In case you hadn't noticed the world cup is happening. We made the decision to support Colombia, because they had a much better chance of actually getting somewhere. And we would be ripped endlessly if we chose to support England. Looks like we picked the better option - my condolences to all of you who have no legitimate reason for supporting a team who are still in the world cup! (You can all support Colombia now!) But yeah, the atmosphere is crazy here. Colombia match days are just incredible, wherever you go is just a sea of yellow shirts and the noise levels are utterly bonkers. Whenever Colombia score the whole neighbourhood reverberates! Building work normally slows a little during the matches as everyone is gathered round the tv and only going to mix concrete now and then. The only thing is, we don't really want Colombia to get to the final because it's 2 days after we leave and it'd be gutting not to be in the country for such an amazing day...
Oh and just to explain the title, Caracol are the channel that show most of the matches, and this is their slogan which they shout at regular intervals during the match!

Weekend mini-break: As the team were all absolutely exhausted, we had a weekend mini-break to a chalet village 10 minutes down the road about 2 weeks ago. The place we were staying was really peaceful, we had air con in the rooms (which actually meant I was too cold to sleep the first night!) and a swimming pool. We found the Santa Marta Crepes & Waffles in true step team fashion. The weekend was spoilt somewhat when Mary had her bag snatched by a passing motorbike, and we spent 4 hours that evening in a police station filing a crime report so she can claim for the money taken on the insurance. However it could have been a lot worse, she wasn't hurt and she wasn't threatened either. I know we will look back on that night and laugh as we had such a bizarre time in the police station (more detail on this on my Blipfoto if you want!), it just shook us all up a bit. Everyone is fine now though :)

Water: We've had a couple more days of rain, but we also had a scary moment, when half the mountain side just went up in flames because it's so dry. It's getting harder and harder to find water tanks to buy, so the price of these is going up as well. Please keep praying for this.

Ok I'll stop waffling now. I will try to update some of my blipfoto tonight so there'll be some more stuff on there for you if you want more!

Prayer requests:

• Water/rain
• Spiritual protection - we would really appreciate your prayers for spiritual protection over us for this final week
• Tiredness - that we wouldn't get so tired we cannot fully enjoy the end of our time here
• For good progress on the building work
• For strength when it comes to saying goodbyes - that the sentiment would be deep but not too upsetting

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