Keep on moving now...

We have done quite a lot of moving about in the last month! After arriving in France we were in quarantine in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine for two weeks. We found a lovely Airbnb - a small house and courtyard - and enjoyed our time there despite not going out for the first ten days, and just having walks around the area the last three (we left on the fourteenth). We organised exercise sessions (PE with Joe for those who know him!) and those of us who wanted to took up a writing challenge - to write for an hour each day and read it out to the others in the evening (fiction and non-fiction). Marc's parents kindly did our shopping for us.


Eating in the courtyard.

Then at last we were able to join Marc's family, safe in the knowledge that we had nothing to infect them with! After two years apart, that was a very joyful reunion!

The week after that, we went down to Orange for our debriefing with SIM France. We always enjoy seeing the team there, and it was good to talk things over. This time even our kids were debriefed separately from us, and apparently that went very well too. We also had a weekend to explore Provence a bit, visiting the Pont du Gard and some rivers.







Back at Marc's parents', we were able to attend their church, which has been able to open again for services - with strict mask-wearing and distancing. They asked Marc to preach, which he found to be more difficult with a mask on!

After that, Marc and I left the kids in the safe hands of their grandparents, and drove over to Nancy, in the east of France. It's where we met, and where we spent a year with our kids 2015-1016. Finding a flat was a bit of a palaver last time, so I was very thankful when we liked and were able to rent the first flat we visited this time! We will hopefully be signing tomorrow or Tuesday.

We made it!

Yes, after two and a half months extra in Benin, we at last got on a plane to France. With amazing timing, Simon finished school the week before we left, and his brother and sister finished four days before we left Parakou. What a weight off our minds! Our suitcases were lighter too ... or they would have been if we hadn't been given presents which nearly filled the space!

Marc's dental treatment was only completed the day before we left - that too was a relief to have done.

We stocked up on masks before we left - some throwaway and some which I made myself. We knew we'd have to wear them all day on the Tuesday as we travelled in a minibus down to Cotonou, and again all day Thursday for our flight.

Here we are ready to leave Parakou:

Here are our washed masks drying in Cotonou:

On the plane:

Marc's parents and sister met us at the airport on Thursday evening, not getting too close to us, to pick up eight of our ten suitcases and to give us some food supplies. Here's Marc eating breakfast at our airport hotel the next morning:

Just after having been dropped off to our Airbnb by a taxi:

Views from the Airbnb:

Simon's writing corner all very well organised;

Technology's getting me down...

Perhaps we shouldn't have got so used to technology. Or perhaps we just shouldn't have believed in its promises of making life problem-free. Because I have to admit that even since I visited Benin in 2002, life has been made much easier because of mobile phones and the internet. In 2003 when I was visiting Pèdè, we had to drive into the nearest town (Kandi) to even be able to use a landline, and even then the call wouldn't go through and I had to call someone else to ask them to pass on a message!

However, these "tools" do depress me a bit when they let us down. During the time we've been living in Parakou, Marc's computer broke down and he had to transfer his emails to my newer computer and use a really ancient battery-less computer for some of the kids' schoolwork. Then my older computer broke down - it's the power cable which is the problem - and so I no longer have my emails on a computer at all. Marc is brilliant at doing back-ups to an external hard drive, so I haven't lost anything, and also we still have the internal hard drive, so it is at least frustrating rather than distastrous!

On top of all of this, there is some problem with Paratext - the translation software - and this week my Swiss colleague hasn't been able to pick up the latest version of our work. But the internet connection is so bad that I haven't been able to get help from Paratext!

The internet connection has also made schoolwork harder, and made it more difficult to organise our travel back to France. But by the grace of God we've had a few hiccups of good internet which have meant we've managed to book our flights and an Airbnb to self-isolate when we get there.

There is a silver lining however, which is that I now won't carry my old computer back to Europe, only its hard drive, which will make my hand luggage much lighter!

"Lockdown"

To be honest, we have never truly lived in lockdown. Benin's government
decided that it was too harsh for this context, and seem to have handled
the outbreak effectively in other ways. SIM France asked us to act as if
we were in lockdown in France, which we mostly did - only leaving the
compound here to shop once or twice a week, to go walking in an empty
forest or to visit the kids' library on the other SIM compound. But we
have interacted with the missionaries and Beninese employees working on
this compound - always keeping one or preferably two metres between us.
However, as the weeks passed and the epidemic didn't explode here, we
did visit a few friends - still trying to keep a distance - which
wouldn't have been allowed in France.

It hasn't been that difficult, because our life up in Pèdè was similar.
Never seeing family, having few regular social contacts, shopping once a
week, nowhere to go out to on day trips...! The big differences were
church services and the handful of good friends we visited or hosted
from time to time.

What will be strange is to go back to Europe and to find things so
different. People talk a lot about "reverse culture shock" when you go
back to your own culture, but whether on short visits or the year we had
back in France, I've never suffered from it. But this time it seems more
likely! It certainly isn't the ideal time to be moving to a new place -
people are hardly in the mood for making new friends, and our own love
of hospitality will have to be inventive to survive!

However, at the moment I'm mainly focused on the short-term challenges
of packing up again, getting to France and finding somewhere to
self-isolate for 2 weeks!

First glimpse...

... at what the Monkolé Bible will look like after page setting. This was sent to me by a colleague at Midi Bible, and it is not the finished edition, but gives an idea of what it will look like. It is very exciting for me to see this!

"Wild" life

Someone who reads this blog regularly asked for some photos of the rabbits and birds, so here they are...!



Both rabbits are white, but Edelweiss is bigger with dark ears and Blanco is smaller with light ears. And they now have a larger cage outside.

We think this next photo is a Green Wood-Hoopoe.



And we think this next one is a Black Kite - a pair of them have a nest in a tree on this compound.

Life in Parakou

When we first arrived in Benin, in 2009, it was planned that we would live in Parakou. We weren't sure how long - I think we said "between 1 and 8 months" - and it ended up being 8. Well, this time we didn't plan to live here at all before leaving, but it's already coming up to a month! It wasn't too hard to get into a routine. The kids have school, and since it is hot season if we want to get any exercise it has to be early in the morning. It would seem a shame not to make the most of living on a lovely big compound, so we all walk or run before school.

I have been able to look at illustrations for the Monkolé Bible, but not get very far with it as my new colleague in Switzerland has been unwell. He is better now though, so hopefully I may be able to get on with inserting them into the text soon. I am also trying to go through old emails so that I can transfer everything onto my "new" (2 year old) computer from my old (9 year old) computer so that maybe I won't need to carry the old one back to Europe with me.

I have been helping out our interim director where I can.

We have been keeping ourselves to ourselves much of the time. When COVID-19 hits here, as it is likely to, we don't want to be part of spreading it around. We are fortunate to have plenty of space and pretty flowers here to console a little us over missing family and friends who we thought we'd be seeing.







This was a walk we went on at a monastery near Parakou.





We were remembering the buffet breakfast we had in the hotel in Casablanca two years ago, and decided to make our own (on Palm Sunday).