Driving is more like venturing onto a battlefield, only with limited options open with what to do with an aggressor.

The way South African drivers drive would be comic if it were not for all the gory details in the media of head-on collisions, side-on collisions, collisions with pedestrians, trucks, trees, taxis, barrier-lines, buses, kerbs, verges, or simply falling asleep at the wheel.  Death and destruction, grieving families, large funerals, politicians with their platitudes and plans to deal with the enemy – are we talking about war?  No, driving on our roads.

In ten years of the war in Afghanistan there were 2765 coalition soldier deaths.  Over 1000 people have been killed on our roads, so far, this Christmas season.  In one month.  December.  1000 deaths on our roads.

Tips to arrive alive:  Make sure we’re not the ones driving too fast, phoning or smsing while driving, getting aggressive in the fast lane, not strapping our kids into seats, being stupid and treating the rules as starting points rather than limits.  Pray for protection.

This is so unacceptable! We are here to relax and in the process we spend a lot of money to boost the area’s economy. Getting this kind of treatment in responce is BULL S#!T  South Africa is falling apart thanks to ANC INCOMPETENCY!

So let’s pass the bucket (seeing that it’s water we’re talking about):

Blame I-The ANC Government.  Our government needs to take a proactive lead on water and related infrastructure issues. (Service delivery, especially at a local level, is the elephant in the room that people don’t vote on but will march on.)  But we can thank the previous government for a water supply philosophy that makes us think building more dams, bigger reservoirs and larger pipelines is the answer to all our water problems.

Blame II – Umgeni Water. If the problem is all at the top, then Sembcorp/Siza Water shifting the blame onto the bulk water supplier, Umgeni Water, is valid.  It’s all Umgeni Water’s fault because they should put in bigger pipes and build larger dams.  But it’s not so simple.  We’re running out of sites to dam and the dams we have are silting up at a concerning rate because of rapid soil loss in our catchment systems.  So this is really a land management issue as well as a water management issue? Yes, but… But maybe it’s more complicated.

Blame III  - Sembcorp/Siza Water.  Sembcorp/Siza Water should surely have more to say than act surprised at a 300% increase in demand over this festive season.  The influx of holiday makers to the coast is an annual event.  (Ballito has been a known holiday destination for a long time.)  The difference is that the baseline of people living, and not holidaying, here is mushrooming.  It’s not rocket science, nor difficult hydrology, to project this type of crisis.  And it will only get worse!

Blame IV – Planning and Development.  The finger also has to be pointed somewhere between planners and developers and those who set it all in motion.  Approval is being granted for all manner of commercial, industrial and residential developments.  The massive airport hub has come online in the region.  More is yet to come.  Electricity, water and sewerage services are having to play catch-up and adding pressure to municipal systems, which already aren’t coping (See Blame I).

Blame V – you and me. (This is the least spoken of.)  Whenever we point a finger at others there are always three fingers pointing back at us. Supply management can only take us so far.  Demand management – what you and I consume – is soon going to be the road we are forced to go down.  Water efficiency. Lifestyle changes. Appropriate technology. Self-reliance (rainwater cisterns).  When I was doing postgrad work on this stuff, a friend from Eritrea on the same programme laughed at us South Africans.  He chirped that our country is classified as a “water scarce” country but he doesn’t see anybody acting like it is!  And he should know.  Eritrea has the same classification and his people have a very different attitude to the use of water…

By now most of you will be aware of the water problems, some areas more severe than others.  After speaking to Sembcorp/Siza Water, I thought it would be useful to the area generally for us to spread the word as much as possible.  Those of you who have mailing lists, kindly help!

The problem is that the inlet pipe into the Avondale Reservoir which supplies most of the area in the South, i.e. Ballito, Chakas Rock, etc. is not big enough to supply the huge demand which is presently being placed on it. (At times this week this has been up to 300% above our usual average use).  It is an Umgeni Water (the bulk supplier from whom our water is purchased) problem and Sembcorp are managing as best they can, sending water to the various reservoirs.

The areas in Salt Rock and Sheffield which get their water from Tiffeni Reservoir will therefore probably only experience low pressure, but not actual ‘no supply’ problems.  The areas in Ballito which are highest (e.g. Patricia, Elizabeth Roads, top of Leonora Drive, etc.) will be hardest hit because the water runs out for them first.  The lower areas nearer the beach need to save water as well, because the more they use, the faster the levels drop!  Siza Water have tankers available and they will be sent out if people are desperate. (032-946-2088)  Remember, the tankers also have to supply to Business Park and Shopping Centres, so residents will probably have to wait a while.

Sembcorp/Siza are going to give us updates, but at the moment are doing some pretty dexterous juggling.  In my home we have filled a couple of buckets and 2litre water bottles, just in case!  The problem is probably going to get worse before it gets better, so the sooner we get the word out for people to use water only when absolutely necessary, the better.

See the article at http://www.northcoastcourier.co.za/2011/12/21/brothers-in-christ/.  The only corrections are that Michael’s surname is Bishop, not Bishops. And neither of us were 16 in 1992!  If you want to see our knees, follow the link to http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/1cbd5866#/1cbd5866/10

We had to have a four phased approach – stuff we could have in storage until April when we moved into the rectory at my new church, stuff we needed over the December holiday for holiday purposes, stuff we needed to have in hand from January 2011 and of course, newborn stuff we needed once our baby girl was born sometime in February.  Stuff.  Moving always makes me realise how much stuff life generates.  I am always deeply sympathetic when people have to move homes no matter what age or stage. It is a major upheaval.

I can only look back on this year and say, wow!  Wow, I’m glad I survived it.  (Thank you, Lord.)  My family got through a difficult life transition.  And more than that, we seem to be thriving.  I’m enjoying ministering here. My family has settled down quickly and a myriad of connections have been made in a short space of time.  It was my birthday recently and I was touched by people’s responses.  I had to work my way through a very delicious chocolate cake.  Oh happy days!

(That will be some extra work for me at Bob’s Boot Camp at Umhlali school…)

The Great War as it was first known became the First World War when the world went to war on an even larger scale with the Second World War.   By the end of the second Great War belief in the inevitable march of human moral and humanitarian progress lay shattered.

While there has been no Third World War, the world has been continuously at war in more subtle forms.  Economic wars, with takeovers, strategic advancements, and conquests.  Environmental wars where the casualty is the earth itself and the collateral damage is from the least to the greatest of all species.

Yet there must still be a small part of us that puts some hope in humanity’s self-improvement.   So we seem surprised when an end-game scenario resolves itself with the brutality of a slain Gaddafi or when leaders in the 21^st century turn out to be corrupt.  Recent riots in Rome over economic issues echo bread riots in Rome with the Romans!  Is the world a better place?

As a well known, but not so eloquent, leader once said, “The pendulum has swung full circle.”  And it continues to do so.   “Lest we forget,” is the poignant phrase used on many war memorials since the First World War.  And we just keep on forgetting.

He who said the words, “I have come that you may have life and life in all its fullness” is needed now as much as two thousand years ago.

I spoke about baptism and death.  Baptism is all about death and death is all about baptism.  In baptism we remember the Exodus when Israel found their freedom as they passed through the Red Sea from slavery and death to freedom and life.  We affirmed the link between the wandering people in a wilderness where water was a matter of survival, the provision of water by the action of Moses, and Jesus – who invites us to drink of the life-giving water he provides.   Added to this in Christian baptism is the idea of dying to self and rising to new life in Christ, of putting off the old and becoming a new creation.

Death is the last great passage, from inescapable ageing, dying and decaying – the old order – to eternal life with God in a new order.  A passage of scripture frequently read at funerals is from Revelation 21 where the truth is affirmed that there is a greater reality where there will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain; where the old order of things has disappeared and Christ makes all things new.

This is the language of both baptism and death.  After my sermon I asked my lay minister to light a small candle from the Easter candle as I read out each name.   For the benefit of non-Anglicans, the Easter candle is lit on Easter Sunday with the words “Christ the Light” to resonate with the words from John 1.  The Easter candle is also lit at a baptism and at a traditional funeral.  At baptism the focus is on the new life and light that Christ brings into our life.  At a funeral the reminder is that in the darkness of grief, a light still shines in Christ, and the darkness will never put it out.

So this was the profound symbolism I was hoping to capture as the small candles were lit from the Easter candle.  And for a while it seemed to work.  That is, until the candles melted into the wooden sand-box I had used for the occasion, and joined together to form a single flame about a hand’s width wide and half a meter high.  This seemed to climax in the latter part of the communion liturgy, when I glanced across and saw my lay minister was now hovering over the miniature bonfire with a jug of water.   Talk about an idea going up in flames!

I envisaged having to explain to my bishop how it was that that our newly dedicated church building had been razed to the ground.  Thankfully the flames resided.  Over tea someone commented that they’d never seen that happen before.  (Neither had I…)  But she said it brought home how those who have gone before us come together to form the great cloud of witnesses.  God works in mysterious ways.

It is not only the Roman Catholic church that is struggling with vocations and an aging clergy profile.  At the provincial synod of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa last year it was noted in a motion to do with youth ministry programmes that the average age of the members of its provincial pension fund was 57 years old.  In plain speak, your average clergy person is looking down the home straight!

I suspect it will take a lot more than an Anglican vocation doll to change this scenario?

Speaking of birds: In the three years we lived in Polokwane we managed to record a remarkable 36 species of bird that visited or flew above our tiny urban garden in the CBD.  In the few months our family have been on the coast, especially since the arrival of spring, we’ve bested this previous record and identified over 40 species already.  What a place of abundance!

Our bird list for the twitchers who read this blog: African pied wagtail, Barn owl, Black bellied starling, Black collared barbet, Black eyed bulbul, Black headed heron, Black headed oriole, Bronze manikin, Brown hooded kingfisher, Cape glossy starling, Cape robin, Cape turtle dove, Cape wagtail, Cape white eye, Crested barbet, Dusky fly catcher, Eagle owl, Egyptian goose, Fiscal shrike, Fish eagle, Forked tailed drongo, Greater double collared sun bird, Grey heron, Hadeda ibis, Indian myna, Kurrichane thrush, Laughing dove, Natal franklin, Natal robin, Olive thrush, Paradise fly catcher, Pintailed whydah, Plum coloured starling, Purple crested turaco, Red billed hoopoe, Red bishop, Red winged starling, Southern black tit, Southern grey headed sparrow, Speckled mousebird, Spotted backed weaver, White-eared barbet, Woolly necked stork, Yellow billed kite