Home Comforts -- Number Two: Friends & Family

April 2013: a rare glimpse of relatives.

As I sat down to prepare this little countdown, it didn’t take me long to realise that the higher up the chart I was climbing, the less Bolivia-specific were my hankerings. And ex-pats the world over will certainly identify with this entry.

Without wishing to seek credit for our decision to come here (we see it as simply having obeyed the Great Commission), there is no getting away from the fact that great sacrifices are involved when you set off for far away lands. And the greatest of these is the emotional wrench of leaving behind loved ones.

Without a doubt, technology has eased the pain somewhat, even within the past decade. When I first came here back in 2000, I mostly relied on AOL Instant Messenger for meaningful ‘conversations’ with family, though occasionally we would treat ourselves to a long-distance phone call. These, however, required no small expense, and the time-delay was so pronounced that it was possible to read a small novel between each exchange.

Nowadays, of course, we can make free phone calls to family and friends via Skype – indeed, a highlight of our week is a Skype date with our respective parents. Facebook is the other web development which has boosted our interactions with loved ones immeasurably, giving us a window into friends’ lives (or, at least, the bits they want you to see!) and enabling us to engage in written conversation instantaneously. In appreciating these tools, our admiration for the missionaries of the pre-internet age has only grown.

But for as long as God permits us all time on this here planet, no matter the great advances which are surely around the corner, there will never be a substitute for face-to-face interactions with our fellow men. In particular, watching significant developments in our loved ones’ lives from afar has been a stretch. Over the last four years we’ve missed several weddings and the infancy of many friends’ children. We had a two-week stop in Canada on our way down here in January 2010, during which time we touched base with one of Amanda’s university roommates, who had just gotten engaged. She and her husband are now expecting their third child! My grandfather’s death was a tough time to be away from home too.

For all the japery of the previous post, this is, in fact, the biggest strain at Christmas time – I just thought I’d save my thoughts on the topic for a single blog entry. Number one is coming up on Friday – forgive me for missing out on the top spot!

Home Comforts -- Number Three: Christmas

"More turkey? Surely you can't be serious?"

It was 13 years ago, but I still remember the first time like it were yesterday. A thunderstorm raging outside, as Bing Crosby did his best to get a word in edgeways. Gifts wrapped in snow scenes exchanged by people dressed in ever-dampening T-shirts and shorts. Every mouthful of turkey requiring its very own serviette, just to attend to the attendant sweat on one’s brow.

You can try all you like – and we missionaries certainly gave it our best shot that year – but Christmas in Bolivia just doesn’t feel quite right. And yet, we never really learn. Every year we’ve gone that extra mile to make things feel as homely as possible – watching the YouTube video of the Queen’s message, importing a turkey from Cochabamba, having someone play the role of a borderline-racist grandparent at the dinner table (OK, I made that last one up) – but when all you want for Christmas is to spend the day in a walk-in freezer, there’s only so far these efforts can take you.

The big problem, of course, is that Christmas celebrations vary wildly from country to country – and, indeed, from family to family. Here in Bolivia, Christmas is definitely in the top-ten of Important Annual Holidays (though they’ve yet to write a series of blog entries about it), but it is relatively small potatoes in comparison with the really big festival here, Carnaval, which in December lurks tantalisingly just around the corner.

Not that a stripped-down version of Christmas is such a bad thing, certainly not for the missionary crowd. Being leaner and meaner definitely keeps the true significance of the season from becoming obscured.

But, like it or not, Christmas and its assorted non-religious traditions become so instilled in us from birth, that a foreign version can only disappoint.

In Bolivia, the major difference (and one which is common to many other countries) is that Christmas is marked at midnight on the 24^th, with a huge meal served and the family staying up till around 6 in the morning. So this year, when your 3-year-old kamikazes into your bedroom, slaps you in the face and demands that presents be opened at 4 o’clock in the morning, the Bolivians will already be celebrating.

Over the years we’ve slowly learned the lesson of 2010, our first Christmas here. Deary-me, was that brutal. We reckoned that, as missionaries, it would be a pleasant gesture to invite some other families in the church, for what turned out not so much to be a Christmas dinner as a buffet for a small army. Still, there was plenty of turkey to go around. I was only just steeling myself for round two at the buffet table (naturally, I also had my eye on a spare packet of serviettes) when a bunch of the Bolivian guys declared that they were going out for a game of football. Did these people just not get it? “A game of football?!”, I seethed, “Why, the whole point of Christmas Day is to slowly but surely resemble a human football!” My pleas fell on deaf ears. I hear the goalie had a particularly accomplished afternoon.

So I am in no small way excited at the prospect of not one but two Christmases in Scotland over the coming year. I feel that after three Christmases abroad, it’s the least we’re due. Watchnight services. Cranberry sauce. It’s A Wonderful Life repeats. Zero humidity. Elderly xenophobia. I’ll save the football for Boxing Day, thank you very much.

Saturday Post -- 07/12/13

Bachelor boys Arnold...

...and Paulo.

It’s high school graduation season in Trinidad and, so far, we’ve been invited to three of them, for various teenagers in the youth group, as well as a lunch on Wednesday for the son of some old family friends. So you could certainly say that the week has been a qualified success. Did you see what I did there?

With so many other things to attend to over the past few weeks, we hadn’t really factored in the usual spate of certificate-bestowal, and so we’re increasingly glad for the extra time that finishing at FT a week ago has afforded us over the last seven days. We have been rattling through a fairly extensive to-do list, with Amanda looking to clear the laundry backlog, I looking to clear out our cupboards, and both of us attending to the presentation we’ll be giving, God-willing, from January onwards – we were keen not to have that hanging over us during the Christmas holidays. In the meantime, I’ve been getting my first emails from Cornhill Scotland indicating the arrangements for the new term in January. It’s starting to feel very real now.

A fair few pictures which will be included in our presentation were taken on Sunday, which was another really encouraging day for us as a church. As mentioned last week, a course called ‘The Culture of Blessing’ was organised and overseen by a couple in the church in the afternoon. Between the morning services and the afternoon event, we had a big lunch together. And the course itself was of great benefit to us all. It focused particularly on the huge impact, for better or worse, that our words can make. It was a great message for the church to hear, in a culture where people can be a little less restrained with the tongue than back home. Inevitably, the last exercise required us to act on what we’d been learning, so I ended up having to telling a chap how much I loved him and listing all the things that were so great about him. At first, the two of us could hardly have been more petrified if we’d been forced at gunpoint to attend an X Factor finalists concert. But we got there in the end – and some kind of wonderful it was, too.

Sunday capped off another busy weekend at church, which on Saturday included the end-of-year party for the Bible Explorers’ Club. However, Amanda always prefers to go that little bit further, and so on Wednesday evening she took her teenage girls’ class out for a meal. Indeed, our evenings have more or less disappeared as we aim to spend a last few hours of quality time with as many people as possible. Last night we were out with our Bible study companions Carlos & Carla, tonight my bandmates have invited themselves over after youth group for some pizza (in fairness, they’re bringing the pizza) and tomorrow we’re planning on a meal with our fellow youth leaders. From Monday onwards, we’ll doubtless have to tell people to take the musicians’ approach if they want to see us, as we have a lot of packing to do.

One item we were delighted to stroke off the to-do list was the installation of the church’s new air conditioners, supplied by LAM Canada, which had been purchased about a month ago, yet had lain dormant in the church for nearly two weeks since their delivery. Wednesday afternoon proved a useful ‘test event’ (Brazilian football tournament organisers, take note) in the shape of the end-of-year party for the Community classes. 40 screaming, kinetic kids proved no match for our new walk-in freezer. Attending church will never have been such a refreshing experience.

Prayer

• Right. Things are now, as one might put it, very much 'on'. We have six days to organise our house, get round all the people we need to see, and pack our possessions into four suitcases. Pray for good progress and for patience with one another – these things can get a little stressful!
• On Thursday, we begin our long trip to Scotland with a bus trip to Santa Cruz, whence we hope to post one final entry on this here blog (our flights to Brazil, and then the UK, are on Sunday and Monday, respectively). Pray for safety on the road.

Praise

• Amidst the busyness of all these graduations, end-of-year events and special times at church, we’ve had really tangible reminders over the last week of the special relationship we have with our ‘faith family’, if you like. Life here can be pretty challenging at times, but the closer we get to furlough, the sadder we feel about saying goodbye to so many dear friends for a year. And that’s a happy problem, in our book. 
• Give thanks, too, for the resolution of the air conditioner situation. We hope these will be a great help to the church, where Sundays can at times be oppressively hot. Pray too that the more pleasant conditions will encourage more people to come along and be part of our community in Christ.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda

Home Comforts -- Number Four: The BBC

The stars of Gardeners' Question Time

Let’s face it, when it comes to television, the BBC is increasingly losing the argument as regards its worth to the licence-fee payer. There is still great programming to be found – better than most stuff you’ll find in the UK – but Lord Reith’s three-pronged founding principles of educating, informing and entertaining have long since been abandoned in favour of making cheap reality shows, blitzing ITV1 in the ratings, and running said mauling as a headline on the ‘news’ website the next morning.

The TV licence agreement is up for renewal in 2016 and, if Cameron & Co. are still in charge by then, further cuts are surely in the pipeline. And yet, this would be a great shame. Because the ‘TV licence’ is in itself something of a misnomer. Indeed, a significant chunk of the TV licence is spent on the last division of the BBC where the Reithian principles are proudly upheld: BBC Radio.

I subscribe to a podcast from BBC Radio 4 called ‘Documentary of the Week’ – hardly requires much of an explanation, but given the wealth of factual output on Radio 4, choosing the week’s ‘winner’ is surely a tall task. Over the last few weeks, I’ve enjoyed programmes covering topics as many and varied as C.S. Lewis, the Gettysburg Address, a survey on the way we use our time, and a history of the computer password. That’s right, a history of the computer password. And every last one of them has been utterly fascinating. Yet this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Tune your UK car radio to Radio 4 and, depending on the hour, you might get a comedy show, a play, an in-depth news programme (which, unlike its television counterparts, doesn’t talk to its listeners like 3-year-olds), ‘Gardeners' Question Time’ or, of course, the shipping news. On what other radio station in the world can you hope to find such variety?

Then, if you’re a sports obsessive like me, you have 5 Live, which covers most major events in the UK and abroad, with the aid of an intrepid army of commentators, whose words could paint a thousand pictures. These guys can describe the ebb and flow of a tennis rally shot-for-shot in real time and fill 90 minutes of a one-sided Formula 1 race with wit and authority. They even sometimes make cricket sound exciting.

Oh, and, as a wise man once put it, do you like good music? The Beeb has five stations covering pretty much era or genre you could shake a baton at. And that’s not to mention the high quality of programming on offer on the BBC’s network on local stations throughout the UK.

I have relatives in the US whose first move in the morning, after getting the kettle on, is to go straight to the Radio 4 website and listen to the Today programme. The poor internet here forbids me such a luxury. But such is the esteem in which the BBC is held by expats – and, indeed, armies of non-Brits. Moving abroad only reminds one all the more forcibly that there is no broadcaster in the world that comes close to matching its variety, objectivity and authority. I am very much looking forward to having Auntie back.

Home Comforts -- Number Five: Food & Drink

Fuhgedaboudit.

Ask the average expat what they most miss about home and, chances are, they’ll be drooling all over you within 30 seconds. At the same time, if they retain sufficient power over their bodily functions, you might be able to pick up strange utterings like “Irn-Bru” or “maple syrup” or “Irn-Bru bars”.

“Oh, here we go again,” I hear you cry, “another whinge about living in a place where the sun shines for more than two weeks of the year!” But this goes beyond Bolivia. Food is self-evidently a big part of what ‘home’ represents for us as human beings. And, as far as Bolivia’s concerned, this very blog has paid ready testament over the years to the world-beating quality of the steak in this corner of the world.

Beyond the steak, however, the range is somewhat limited. Red meat dominates and everything – everything – is served with fried rice. Indeed, Amanda’s first dish here went down in local infamy when she made the fatal oversight of neglecting to serve a side of rice with her pasta. For Bolivians, only two food groups exist: ‘high-carb’ or ‘very high-carb’. High time, then, that we at last returned to Scotland…where it’s potatoes with everything!

Hmmm. What we do have in the West, though, is ready access to a sufficiently wide range of cuisines. We’ve uncovered a few half-decent Asian restaurants in the bigger cities of Bolivia, but that’s about it. And worst of all, no Italian. So if you’re looking for me in about three weeks’ time, chances are you’ll find me at Sarti’s on Bath Street, doing my best Tony Soprano impersonation. After all, if you’re going to live according to the Bolivian food groups, you might as well make it tasty while you’re at it.