After visiting Ilkeston, we continued in the trusty minibus even further north up the motorway to the secondary schools’ festival in the diocese of Hexham and Newcastle.
We joined the Youth Ministry Team, 300 young people along with their teachers and chaplains, an ice cream van and a lot of tents in the beautiful (and muddy) surroundings of Minsteracres retreat centre.
Britain is sizzling in a heat-wave. Colleagues and commuters are complaining about the lack of air conditioning.
But while Britons might bemoan the sticky summer, communities living in poverty across the world are facing extreme weather conditions that are putting them on the edge of survival.
Lawrence Kamaya Hasewa, 64 (pictured), points sorrowfully at one of his sheep, too weak now to even drink water. He does not feel hopeful that it will survive.
In the far north of Kenya where Lawrence lives the rains failed to materialise. Again. It’s the third rains in a row that have failed, leaving the land parched without water.
Alice speaking to the students at St John Houghton
Today we started our journey at a school mission at St John Houghton in the diocese of Nottingham.
After an early start from London, I was really impressed with the warm welcome – it was a great one!
I thought the school was very orderly, and the hall was big and nice. We had a good lunch in school and the young people really listened to me.
They were surprised to hear some of the things I was saying, but lots of the things were the same too – knife crime, gun crime, killings and muggings.
“Our chips are the best in town and that’s a fact” is how Natercia Matos da Costa Lemos introduced her kripik (chips) group to the 30 budding entrepreneurs who came to visit her thriving home industry.
The entrepreneurs came from far and wide, and were a motley crew of food processors (jams, tomato sauce, banana chips), coffee and rice co-operatives, fish rearing groups and even blacksmiths.
Arriving from the districts of Baucau, Ermera and Manufahi, the gang visited Natercia’s little chip factory as part of a marketing workshop to improve their own business skills.
The aim was to help each group understand better how to move their product successfully down the chain from producer to consumer, and to identify where problems might occur.
Today we rested. It was needed. We rose for breakfast at nine and met to make sure that we had written up all the stories and to check that we had all of the facts we needed.
It took most of the day: many faces, many places, many stories, much hardship, much hope.
At around ten minutes to six it rained. Proper, big, wet rain, lasting for a few hours.
We were waiting for it to rain so we could see how powerful it was, how big, and to feel its coolness after days of baking heat.
The people of this country were waiting for it to rain so they could drink cleaner water, water their animals and their crops. I think their need was greater than ours.
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All text and pictures (c) CAFOD unless otherwise indicated
