Highs and lows

As I write, we've had two nights of non-stop music (we've learned that fans serve just as much of a purpose in drowning out ambient noise as in cooling) near our house as Namugongo prepares for Martyrs' Day (June 3rd). Well over a million people have trekked (pilgrimed?) from all over Uganda to remember the Ugandan martyrs of the 1880s at both the anglican and catholic memorial sites just near our house. As always, the motives for this are very mixed - it seems that for some it's just a bit of a festival, Reading meets the Camino de Santiago; for others, it's a chance to show their devotion; are they hoping for something in return? Not sure... Certainly, as is often the case with these things, the businesses that have sprung up around the celebration (huge numbers of jerry cans being sold for holy water, crucifixes of all shapes and sizes) have caused me endless amusement! Anyway, given the volume of both noise and traffic, I shan't be all that sad when it finishes this afternoon!

It did cause me, however, to reflect on some of the lower moments of our trip so far. I realise that we're in danger of airbrushing (instagram-style) our blog so that it seems as though it's been nothing but lions and laughter at all times. Far from it, and in some ways, these can be the more valuable moments as a family...their pain notwithstanding.

D+V has been a rather more regular feature recently than at the start of the trip. Perhaps we let our guard down after being here for 6 weeks or so...or perhaps there was something particular...but either way, both Theo and Nathaniel went down with quite significant stomach bugs that led to some pretty unpleasant situations: one was a night at a pretty run-down hostel with only one grimy toilet with no light in which we were having to swap the two boys on and off for quite a number of hours during the night. The other was a childrens' camp that I was speaking at where my dear and long-suffering wife was trying to juggle children on the toilet, wash pants that had suffered various accidents, and do both these things while looking vaguely like she was enjoying herself! For Theo, we ended up at the local doctor's surgery which was highly efficient and, a round of antibiotics later, he seems much more gastrically robust!

The other aspect of the trip that we've been working through is how all 6 of us deal differently with missing friends and other parts of life in London. Before coming, we talked as a family about how initially everything would seem new and exciting, then parts of life here would become deeply frustrating, and then we'd accept it as the 'new normal'. This has certainly been the case...but at very different rates. I think the kids haven't made friends in quite the way that we hoped they would (predominantly because we just haven't had much contact with other children their age) and so, while they've enjoyed each others' company some of the time, I think they've missed their friends at home more than I had anticipated. Certainly one of our children is counting down the days very overtly until we go home! My parents have arrived this week which has been great and a good change for the kids, so hopefully that will buy us some more time! At risk of finishing with more airbrushing, the positive side of this is that we've had lots of opportunity to chat about how important friendships are...and about how sometimes we idealise things when they're not there, which has led to good conversations about where real contentment lies.

Much love from us all!

Many pilgrims!