Cornishmaninafrica

Income for the borehole this month is £9,624.74. We need £11,500 to get digging! Help us reach our target.

This photo is of Awoéfa Djossou, an Ifè woman who spoke at the dedication of the New Testament in Togo last month. She said: “I regretted so much that my parents were not able to send me to school and that I’d never learned to read or write. So when the opportunity came to take the literacy class in Ifè, my mother-tongue, I did so gladly. And I did well. Before I was blind, now I can see. That’s why my favourite Bible passage is John 9:1-12, the story of Jesus healing a man born blind.” Awoéfa then proceeded to read the passage out loud in Ifè, fluently. A woman who’d never been to formal school, stood there reading God’s Word for herself – a living picture of the fruit for which many have laboured and prayed for nearly thirty years.

Awoéfa Djossou

Compare Joni Mitchell with a thirty year gap between two performances:

Both sides now 1970.

Both sides now 2000.

There’s another recent version, can’t find it on youtube, which ends with an awesome sax solo recalling the cry of some exotic bird in flight.

Listen to Jessye Norman singing Richard Strauss’s Zueignung (opus 10 no. 1). Unsurpassed – the best of the best!

As promised, some photo evidence of me rollerblading. Here I am (a few years ago) with the Lee family in the courtyard of the Louvre.

Rollerblading in the courtyard of the Louvre with the Lees

Thanks to Nick and Margie for digging out the photo!

Here’s the latest monthly update on the income for the borehole. Total raised so far = £8,981.24. We need a total of £11,500 to start digging. But this month’s total doesn’t include the donations from Adrian Hayward’s sponsored cycle ride from Windsor Castle to Exeter Castle. Those should be coming in soon. Well done Adrian!! Help us reach our target.

Borehole income - November 2009

Every Friday night throughout the year in Paris there is the famous randonnée, in which thousands of rollerbladers hit the streets at 10.30pm for a three hour circuit of 30 kilometres, with police escort and first-aiders on hand. Exhilarating. Last time I participated, one of my wheels fell off and I narrowly avoided a major pile up.

There is a similar event, Rollers et coquillages, on Sunday afternoons, but it’s a bit too tame for my liking. People take their prams and poodles.

Visited the Musée d’Orsay last week. They have a new acquisition – Edward Burne-Jones’ tapestry The Adoration of the Kings. It’s always been one of my favourite nativity scenes, but to see the original hanging there close enough to touch was one of those special moments. I had a hard job tearing myself away from it.

Happy Christmas to friends and family around the world!

PS. I fly to Togo on 3rd January.

Edward Burne Jones The Adoration of the Kings (1887)