Yarrindi

Mahmoud lives with his two unmarried sisters, his nephew and his nephew’s family. An old man, he sits outside his house dressed in a white Jallabiya, watching the world pass by. His chair has a battered metal frame, and is strung with thin plastic rope.  Comfortable and cool it is also getting old and the strings are starting to stretch and snap.  There is a man who goes around knocking on doors offering to restring beds and chairs, but he is too expensive.  In any case, the chair still has some life in it, strings can be tied back together, and Mahmoud is happy with it. On the way to the market my husband, as always, stops to chat with him.   Mahmoud is ill with a nasty cough and cold.  Flu like symptoms.   He allows my husband to pray for his healing in the name of Jesus.   The following day my husband sees him again. ‘I am better,’ Mahmoud announces happily, ‘It is because you prayed for me in Jesus name.’ My husband is amazed, and thinks this is at the least the start of a

I'd never really learnt a foreign language. "I would like a kilo of apples, and a strawberry ice-cream" in French, and "I am 12 years old" in German.  Literally those were pretty much the only 'foreign language' phrases I could remember, so I was excited to be learning Arabic. 'I have a little Arabic'  - this was one of the first phrases I learnt before class started. Trying to cobble together some words I had picked up, I went around saying this to anyone who attempted to talk to me, or who I was trying to communicate with. It was slightly unfortunate that what I was actually saying was "I have a small car". One day I was surprised to hear my Muslim friend say something to her daughter about getting the "pastor on the wall".  Not pastor, but actually a glass bottle - the two words being very close sounding. 'Cat' and 'church' were more close sounding words to my inexperienced ears.  I told the teenag

The electricity cut.  I assumed it was just a normal power cut, that the power would come back fairly shortly.  It didn't. We had battery backup.  I could run a fan and a couple of lights for a few hours, but not the fridge or an air cooler.  I was hoping the fridge would stay cool enough that the food wouldn't go off.  My husband was away for a few days with the car.  Pots, Chops and Moo were aged 3, 2 and 0 - the afternoon went slowly. Later that evening, looking out of the gate and seeing that all my neighbours had electricity, I realised it wasn't a power cut.  Somehow it was just our house that was affected. Maybe the boys playing football in the maydan had knocked a wire by mistake, and somehow disconnected the electricity.  It was a long, uncomfortable night. I wanted to be at the electricity office as early as possible so as to be first in line to report a problem. With the temperature already over 90F and Moo in my arms, Chops and Pots toddled along beside m

When it occasionally rained, the maydan (dirt area outside our house) would flood. People would place rocks to join the areas of dryish dirt together. From their gate women would hoist up their skirts, trying hard to stay clean - washing clothes was hard work, why make more hard work even if you were exposing more leg than was considered polite - and use the stepping stones to get out to the main street. Perhaps to catch the bus, or to go to the dukaan to buy the expected bottle of coke for a visitor. The water dried up pretty quickly and the maydan was soon back to a sandy dry wasteland. One year some of the neighbours were doing construction. It rained hard and Pots was very excited, as were all the kids in the neighbourhood. Pots climbed up the sand/gravel hill with her friends, 2 girls and 2 boys that she often played with. A great adventure.

"Beautiful beautiful. Delicious. Sweet." He's perched up on his donkey.  Small and slim with a wrinkled, well weathered face.  An assortment of (mostly missing) brown teeth. A unusually yellowish jellabiya.  Unusually yellowish because most men pride themselves on having nice bright white jellabiyas.  On either side of his donkey is big metal milk churn.  Our milk for the day has arrived.  I give him my pan and he pours the creamy liquid in. In retrospect it probably wasn't the best idea.  I'd been excited to see him delivering milk to some of our neighbours on the maydan.The milk in the shops was all long life (UHT) milk, not fresh milk, and to us it didn't taste very nice.  I had other Western friends who bought milk for their local milkman.  As long as it was boiled before we used it, the milk (and cream off the top) would be a delicious addition to our meals. The thing was, that when he was saying, 'Beautiful, beautiful, delicious sweet', wh

 "A jaar gubli a daar" We had found our house. Although it was fairly basic we knew it was the one for us! 3 rooms joined together, a separate kitchen off the yard, a small bathroom, and an extra room with an outside entrance. "A jaar gubli a daar." "Choose your neighbours before your house." That is exactly what we had done. A neighbourhood with open gates - neighbours who left their gates open so people could come in and visit.  The gates all exiting onto a maydan - a large rectangular piece of ground, good for games of soccer.  No guards.  Women who knew each other and socialised together.  A neighbourhood that celebrated and grieved together, played and took care of one another. The first night we stayed there a neighbour came around and took us over to visit all the families on the maydan.  Generous, welcoming and kind - neighbours that were easy to love. We still miss them.

I thought the loudspeaker was blaring out a Islamic sermons.  At that point I barely understood any Arabic.  The noise was loud, grating and apparently mobile.  It would start off faintly, several streets away, stop for a while and then suddenly would sound close.  Was the truck in the street outside my house?  Perhaps it was a local politician trying to drum up support?  In any case it was a regular, and annoying occurrence.  I would try to block out the noise, pray and hope the obnoxious noise would move on quickly. Some weeks after I first heard it I was walking to catch a bus.  Walking across the maydan (a large rectangular area of dirt in between rows of houses) I saw a white pick-up truck swing around the corner, and noticed the speaker attached to the top of the cab. It stopped in the middle of the maydan and started blasting out crackly, distorted words that a man in an old white jellabiya was shouting.  The guy speaking into the loudspeaker definitely didn't look like

Whilst the ladies met, 14 year old Adam lined up his two younger brothers and my son Chops (then 6 and having a day off homeschool) on the sofa. Standing in front of his audience, he opened the book and began to talk about the importance of doing what God asks us to do. After 15 minutes of obliging their brother, the younger boys declared they'd had enough, and, with their elder brother blocking the door - his sermon not finished - they leapt out the window, followed swiftly by Chops. Skipping school for the day, Adam had shown up at our house hoping to share with some women who were gathered there.  He was most upset that the women had rejected his request to teach them. His brothers and Chops were an unsatisfactory substitute. Running in circles he chased his escaped congregation around the outside of the house. Adam lives in a country that is almost 100% Muslim.  His mother is doing her best to raise him and his brothers as Christians.  Her husband divorced her because o