Success

Congratulations everyone we have done it! In under 5 days we managed to raise the £800 required to fund my impending trip to Rwanda, thank you to everyone who made this possible. Not only to those who gave but to everyone who helped to support me with their time, talents and willingness.

During my 10 weeks I am hoping to update this blog regularly (hopefully once a week) though that will depend on my internet access and time constraints.

Needless to say the hair removal process was both amusing and painful, the issue now is living with scarily smooth legs and a permanently chilly head - fortunately it is hot in Rwanda!

Gatekeeper

 

Who are the gatekeepers, the guards at the door of your life?

Who are the stoic fortress wardens, armed with wisdom?

Who stands watch, remains vigilant through the night?

Who sees with perspective, the inside and the out?

Who are the key keepers that discern, to enter or not?

Recently my life has come under a certain amount of trial. I say 'my life' meaning more than simply my immediate experience, because while this trial had me at the centre it affected the majority of the people connected to me.

While trials in this life are both inevitable and uncomfortable they are also often moments of decisive clarity. They provide a unique perspective on ones view of themselves but also give an opportunity for us to see how our friends and acquaintances will respond.

Jaffa Gate - Jerusalem, Israel

To borrow a parable it is often not easy to tell whether we have built our house on the rock or on the sand until the rains come down and the floods come up. If your house is still standing by then end - you built it right.  It is the storms of life that are proving of our relationships.

If we take Job as an example (no I am not likening myself to Job) he experiences a trial the like of which most of us will never have to endure, unfortunately for him the people surrounding him were less than perfect in their response. Even his wife (one of his few remaining relatives) tells him to just give up and die! Hardly the kind of encouragement needed to persist through life's trials.

Abandoned Syrian Bunker - Golan Heights, Israel

Thankfully my story is very different! Over the past few days it has become blindingly obvious how well 'insulated' I am by a great number of people around me who care, pray for and support me, often in ways that I never even see. Many of them will in fact be the ones reading this and so to you I say thank you.

Among my friends and family there are a few who have the position in my life to speak louder and clearer to me than many others, their position in my life is decided by me. They may not even realise it but they have more influence over me than most other people. They are in many ways gatekeepers that have the power to discipline, correct, encourage and shape me in ways that most will simply never be able to.

Derelict Shack - Gloucester, England 

The truth is that we all have people like this in our lives, the question is whether they are good gatekeepers or not. Are they wise, discerning, kind? Do they have your best interests at heart? For most people when they are born it is at least initially their parents who fulfil this role - they protect, nurture and direct their children. Or at least they should. Because we are all human we have all experienced disappointment with our gatekeepers, times when we needed them to be looking out for us but they were absent. Or for some of us we found out the hard way that someone we had given the role of gatekeeper to was toxic. They did not have our best interests at heart and they did not just not protect us but attacked us.

What do we do when our gatekeepers fail us? - We fall onto God.

Jobs gatekeepers were pretty useless but he cried out to God and while the response he had was not what he had hoped for it was exactly what he needed. You may have been let down by your parents right from day one but God is the father in heaven who never fails to love you. Your friends and colleagues might be like sand around you but Christ is the rock on whom you can build your life. You may be in the midst of a storm but He can be the anchor.

You may be under siege from all sides but God can be your gatekeeper.

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Woodland

Walking under a canopy of green, taking deep refreshing breaths of the pre-autumnal forest air. Meandering along dirt roads, strewn with fallen pines, taking in the familiar smell of the forest that evokes childhood memories of Sunday afternoon walks.

Dappled sunlight breaks through the canopy, dances on spiders webs, casts a rainbow.

The ground littered with life; bugs, fungi, spiders - the longer I look the more I see. Passing patches of ferns the aroma shifts, the next course of the sensory feast is served.

The aged and weathered trees stand firm, gnarled roots stretch deep into the ground, the trunk clothed in lichen and branches draped in Ivy.

The noise of the world outside is dampened, absorbed in all the undergrowth, the serene call of birds is carried through the woodland and the soft scuffling of unseen animals emanates from the road side.

Blackberries on the verges are sparse enough to make it feel like an earned reward while snacking on them through the journey.

A yearning grows, the desire to remain. To rest in the lush, vast green of this sprawling world. The urge to sing, to smile and enjoy the creators handiwork, to revel in its beauty and celebrate its complexity.

After a thoroughly enjoyable perambulation we headed back home for a cuppa. Thanks to you my friends who organised the trip and drove us to the forest of Dean.

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Cider

There are a few avenues that can be used to justify the brewing of cider... The fact that the colleges alcohol ban has just been lifted, I come from the west country so it's almost mandatory, we were given a crate of pairs for free or the fact that brewing alcohol has been a tradition within Christian institutes  for centuries. But the fact that it is just an interesting/amusing thing to do was probably a more significant factor in this evenings activities.

It takes a surprisingly short amount of time to conceptualise, plan and execute the production of cider. From the discovery that a crate of pears was up for grabs to sealed jars of pear juice waiting to ferment was no more than an hour. Tidy work for a Wednesday evening.

While making cider is an art form; developed, tweaked and perfected by professionals (monks) over the years it is actually very simple to make a plain old brew. With a 5 minute google search it is easy to find a recipe that involves less than 3 ingredients (results may vary)

Of course when a whole crate of fruit presents itself, it comes with the opportunity to experiment! For the first batch we decided to go purist - no added yeast, nothing fancy just pear juice and touch of sugar... okay a fist full of sugar.

Things seemed to go our way, we happened upon an old juicer (it required a thorough cleaning) which saved us the curfuffle of pressing the pears by hand. In hindsight it would have probably been a pretty spectacular fail if we hadn't found the juicer.

Juicing pretty much anything tends to leave one in possession of rather a lot of pulp, we have thought about it a bit and a few ideas have been banded about including pear flavored home made sausages, pear jam, pear cake?! Anyway if you have a good idea for what to do with it and better still if you can provide proper instructions/ recipe then maybe we will make it ... maybe.

Until then David is going to have to figure out a green solution for disposing of it.

This is the slightly disgusting-looking result of 'juicing' the pairs... then just to sieve and store it

In other news our South African got bored of waiting and raided our warm dry cupboard full of meat ... the results were rather enjoyable...

So now you can know that the instructions in my previous post do actually result in delicious biltong. We now have room to experiment with some more exotic recipes.

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Biltong

My time in South Africa gave me a taste for a number of different things but among the most treasured flavours lies biltong. South Africa is famed for its love of red meat (something that I get along with just fine) and it is therefore unsurprising that they have managed to produce some of the more creative ways of preparing it. At its invention biltong was purely a practical solution to the problem of storing meat for long periods of time without the ability to freeze it. What it has now become is something of an art form of infusing meat with the richest and most mouth watering flavours. 

For this reason when a friend at college asked me if I would be interested in constructing a 'biltong box' it didn't really require much deliberation. (Yes he is a South African)

While meat in the UK is still WAY more expensive than it is in SA it is still significantly cheaper to make your own biltong than it is to buy it from a south African food dealer - plus it is a lot more fun.

So before term started we decided to get the real work out of the way first and construct ourselves a biltong box and put it to use. As I type 2kgs of beef is gently marinating in the fridge patiently waiting to get strung up and dried out. 

Making biltong is actually very easy and taking inspiration from another friend who likes to blog about her recipes I though I would give you a little run down of how to produce this legendary snack ...

Constructing the box:

• a cardboard box
• some doweling
• some form of hook (we are using paperclips) 
• a fan
• a dry, well ventilated room
• some duct tape (endlessly useful)

The idea is to construct a small structure that allows you to hang pieces of meat that will be able to dangle freely without being contaminated with bugs, dust or any other less tasty substance.

We simply poked doweling through both sides of the cardboard box and taped up all the joins to make it more stable.

Cutting a hole that the fan will blow through to circulate air

Preparing the meat:

Beef is a pretty safe bet and you should probably stick to that, get as much or as little as you want but it is likely that whatever amount you buy you will later regret not getting more.

• Salt (really quite a lot but it depends on the amount of meat you have)
• Spices - this is where it gets fun because you can really do whatever you want, whatever you think will taste good as a marinade then you can use that. A fairly safe bet is to go for black pepper, whole coriander and chili powder but many will also add vinegar sugar and a whole host of other ingredients.

First cut your meat into ribbons, the size will probably depend to the size of your box but a decent steak thickness should be about right. Place the meat into a tray for marinating. Rub the salt evenly into the meat, now take your various spices and rub them in too.
If you do use black pepper it is best to get the actual seeds and crush them with a pestle and mortar rather than using a pepper mill as this will be too fine, the same goes for the whole coriander.

Put the tray into a fridge (cling film it unless you want your fridge to stink of meat) and leave it there for a day or two. Now take it out and hang it in your box and leave it to dry for between 5-10 days depending on how dry you want it.

You can also simply search for others biltong recipes to find one that takes your fancy more than this one - there are a whole host of them out there.



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Family

We are all stones but some are gems, a gem is a precious and rare stone and that is how I would describe the group of people that I am currently living with. This last week I have seen a new side to the people here - their dedication, passion and frankly out-right abandonment for God.

It is both challenging and encouraging to be with people being stretched in  faith and growing in maturity. It is a rare thing in life to see a group of people from so many different places and pasts united so firmly.

On the 18th of April we remembered the lives of 3 martyrs who were killed in Turkey for their faith in Jesus. It was a rude awakening to the fact that the beliefs we hold are not welcome in this world and not just un-welcome but actively opposed in many countries, yet despite this we remain steadfast - knowing that the persecution is no reason to drop the truth - on the contrary it is all the more reason to take it with you wherever you go.

This past week has been so busy that I have not even had time to pick up my camera so these are largely from the archives (a wealth of pictures are tucked away in there). In other news winter is beginning to encroach on SA. The 5.30am rise is now a very cold affair, especially with no central heating of any kind - the walk in fridge is actually warmer than the outside air temperature though I am yet to see frost.

The weather is a welcome reminder of England with the bite of cold as you breathe in and the warmth of a cup of tea in your hands brings back a cosiness that simply cannot be replicated in warm weather, made all the more comfortable when surrounded by the ones you love, the people whom I would now consider family.

Title font used 'louis Ann'

Edits

Sitting in front of a laptop for several hours trawling through thousands of photos to try and whittle the number down to a manageable collection of pictures from an event or season that tell a coherent story is not always as fun as it might sound.

I know this because I have experienced it many times and especially over the last week. Having taken 12 days out (mentioned post before last)to go into rural south Africa and taken aprox 1,200 photos of ALOT of African kids I felt a little photoed-out so when this was immediately followed up by a trip to a national park (last blog post) where I was also official photographer for the group - (this basically means that you are obliged to take photos of anything that is even remotely interesting because if you come away from a national park without photos then your trip there was wasted) meaning that I racked up another 800 photos in a single day only 3 days after getting back from the photo-thon that was rural.

So after filtering through 2000 photos to produce around 20 that can be used for blogging and facebook purposes I was tired of photography. This happens sometimes and it is largely because I am dealing with photos that I have no particular interest in - why do I take said pictures in the first place? Because being the 'photography guy' people inevitably (and actually multiple times a day) will ask me for my photos. In principle I have no problem with this. I love to use my ability, equipment and time to bless other people with photos  the problem arises with quality. My definition of a useable picture is very different from that of most people. They would prefer quantity over quality and therefore I end up processing lots of frankly lame pictures.

So I felt photoed-out and could not be bothered to take any more pictures, I was quite happy to leave my camera in my room and forget about it for a while. So typically the following day a friend asks if I will take some photos of him for his news letter. So I oblige and as I am taking the photos the difference hits me like a wet fish - when the photos have an intended purpose it is so much easier to both take and edit them. My friend also wanted to be shown  what software I used to edit my pictures so I gave him an overview of Adobe Lightroom 3 by editing the pictures of him. This was a joy rather than a chore - actually taking the time to make good photos great and turning them into something that perfectly suits the intended purpose. So now I know how to cure photoed-out-ness, ironically it is to take more photos.

So these are the edits of some more of those 2000 photos that I took in the last 2 weeks - Enjoy!

This is the friend who wanted the profile pictures taken so if you can read Spanish go check him out... http://diegocaceres.org/

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