I Bloemfontein

Eftersom de tre sista bokstaeverna i alfabetet inte finns i SA och jag skriver paa ett internetcafe, skriver jag paa engelska.

It is so nice to be back in Bloemfontein. We lived here four years. It's a rather long period. We arrived late yesterday at 7. We had pizza from Mr delivery in our B&B. We slept well and this morning we had breakfast with Professor Strauss at 7.15. He was happy and now it looks as if everything is going to run smoothely on Monday and Wednesday. We got help from different administrative staff with ordering tea and sandwiches to serve after the defence. I will also get a refund from the University. I have paid a little bit more in tuition fees than necessary.
My wife went to see some old friends at the girls school, St. Michaels, and while I was waiting for her ourside the University building, a young women approached me.
- Congratulations! she said.
She saw my two huge copies of the thesis and understood that I am about to graduate. It hapened to be that she also will graduate on Wedneday. Her name is Anaka and she is from Biafra in Nigeria. She is beautiful and in no way reminds me of the images I used to associate with Biafra when I grew up. I thanked her for giving me this new image and also for congratulating me. We will meet on Wednesday. After graduation she will go to Tanzania and take up a post as university teacher in linguistics. We agreed that it was nive to have a fellow graduate who is not South African.
Now we are going to visit our old house and do some other smaller errands. It is nice to be back. When we parked the car outside the supermarket, the person who usually looks after the cars, said:
- Hello Pastor, as if we had not been away more than a couple of days.
Inside the supermarket we got big hugs from Elisabet Kgalane, who works there and is an elder in our old congregation. Wonderful!