Z is for Zanzibar

Zanzibar! Tropical island just off the African coast and these days part of the Republic of Tanzania. It is also known as the Spice Island and there are fragrant reminders of this at every turn.

This year I am not only grateful for having had the opportunity to visit this wonderful place but also for  who it reminded me of.............David Livingstone.

I don't think I had thought of Livingstone since primary school and then only in the phrase "Dr Livingstone I presume?" I certainly couldn't have told you why he was famous.

He was of course an explorer. Livingstone was one of the first Westerners to make a transcontinental journey across Africa between 1854 and 1856.

The qualities and approaches which gave Livingstone an advantage as an explorer over his predecessors were that he usually travelled lightly, and he had an ability to reassure chiefs that he was not a threat.

Other expeditions had dozens of soldiers armed with rifles and scores of hired porters carrying supplies, and were seen as military incursions or were mistaken for slave-raiding parties.

Livingstone on the other hand, travelled, on most of his journeys, with a few servants and porters, bartering for supplies along the way, with a couple of guns for protection. He preached a Christian message but did not force it on unwilling ears; he understood the ways of local chiefs and successfully negotiated passage through their territory.

Livingstone was not only an explorer however but a proponent of trade and Christian missions to be established in central Africa. His motto, inscribed in the base of the statue to him at Victoria Falls, was "Christianity, Commerce and Civilization".

Believing he had a spiritual calling for exploration rather than mission work, and encouraged by the response in Britain to his discoveries and support for future expeditions, in 1857 he resigned from the London Missionary Society after they demanded that he do more evangelizing and less exploring.

The British government agreed to fund Livingstone and he returned to Africa to examine the natural resources of southeastern Africa and open up the River Zambezi. Unfortunately it turned out to be completely impassable to boats and he eventually returned home in 1864 after the government ordered the recall of the expedition because of its increasing costs and failure to find a navigable route to the interior. The Zambezi Expedition was castigated as a failure in many newspapers of the time, and Livingstone experienced great difficulty in raising funds further to explore Africa.

In January 1866, Livingstone  however returned to Africa, this time to Zanzibar to prepare his expedition in search of the source of the River Nile. Zanzibar at that time housed the central slave market in which African men, women and children were sold to work in the "civilized" world.

Appalled by what he saw he wrote in a letter to the editor of the New York Herald

"And if my disclosures regarding the terrible slavery should lead to the suppression of the East Coast slave trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together."

David Livingstone died in Chief Chitambo's village at Ilala southeast of Lake Bangweulu in western Tanzania on1 May 1873 from malaria and internal bleeding caused by dysentry.

Britain wanted the body to give it a proper ceremony, but the tribe would not give his body to them. Finally they relented, but cut the heart out and put a note on the body that said, "You can have his body, but his heart belongs in Africa!"

 Livingstone's heart was buried under a Mvula tree near the spot where he died. His body together with his journal was carried over a thousand miles by his loyal attendants and was returned to Britain for burial. His remains were interred at Westminster Abbey.

Livingstone's legacy is to Africa and to the world.

 Memorial to the Slave Trade - Anglican Christ's Cathedral Zanzibar which is built over the site of the former slave market

He inspired the abolitionists of the slave trade, as welll as explorers and missionaries.

He opened up Central Africa to missionaries who followed and who initiated education and health care for Africans, and trade by the African Lakes Company.  He was held in esteem by many African chiefs and local people and his name facilitated relations between them and the British.

Partly as a result, within fifty years of his death, colonial rule was established in Africa and white settlement was encouraged to extend further into the interior.

On the other hand, within a further fifty years after that, his legacy of education paradoxically helped end the colonial era in Africa without excessive bloodshed.

Africans educated in mission schools founded by people inspired by Livingstone were at the forefront of national independence movements in central, eastern and southern Africa.

In addition, Livingstone was part of an evangelical and nonconformist movement in Britain which during the 19th century changed the national mindset from the notion of a divine right to rule 'lesser races', to ethical ideas in foreign policy which, with other factors, contributed to the end of the British Empire.


The David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre, Berkshire celebrates his life and is based on the very house in which he was born and raised, and set on the site of the mill in which he started his working life.

Despite the misgivings of the time David Livingstone has gone down in the annals of history as one of the greatest missionaries who ever lived.

As the words of "O Holy Night" remind us about Jesus

"Truely he taught us
To love one another,
His law is love
And His gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break

For the slave is our brother

And in His name

All oppression shall cease."

 His complete commitment to Christ is evident in an entry to his journal:

 "I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping it I shall promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity."

Y is for yawning

............because yawning is still a wonderful mystery in many ways and I'm grateful for that.

We know a yawn is a semi-automatic reflex that originates in the brain stem in response to a lower level of oxygen in the brain. Yawning does not necessarily indicate fatigue, although people do tend to yawn when they're sleepy.


Yawning is an action that occurs throughout the animal kingdom. Several different brain chemicals seem to be involved in yawning, but the mechanisms are still not understood.

For example, yawning seems to be contagious. Why is that? We simply don't know.

Here are a few things that are known about yawns:

• The average duration of a yawn is about 6 seconds.
• In humans, the earliest occurrence of a yawn happens at about 11 weeks after conception - (yes that's BEFORE the baby is born)
• Yawns become contagious to people between the first and second years of life.

 

So if you are over 2, you will probably find yourself yawning as you watch these videos!

 

 

 

 

X is for Xmas Carols

Yes, at this time of year we can become a little jaded about Christmas carols as we are stalked by them just about  everywhere we go! Nonetheless they are one of the great traditions of Christmas and I am grateful for carols that remind us of what Christmas is all about.
The word carol actually means dance or a song of praise and joy!Carols used to be written and sung during all four seasons, but only the tradition of singing them at Christmas has really survived.

 The first recorded Christmas carol is from AD 129, a Roman Bishop said that a song called 'Angel's Hymn' should be sung at a Christmas service in Rome. Another famous early Christmas Hymn was written, in 760AD, by Comas of Jerusalem for the Greek Orthodox Church. Soon after this, many composers all over Europe started to write carols. However, not many people liked them as they were all written and sung in Latin, a language that most people couldn't understand.

This was changed by St. Francis of Assisi when, in 1223, he started the public performance of nativity plays. The people in the plays sang songs or 'canticles' that told the story during the plays. Sometimes, the choruses of these new carols were in Latin; but normally they were all in a language that the people watching could understand and join in! The new carols spread to France, Spain, Germany and other European countries.

The earliest carol, like this, was written in 1410. Sadly only a very small fragment of it still exists. The carol was about Mary and Jesus meeting different people in Bethlehem. Most Carols from this time and the Elizabethan period are untrue stories, very loosely based on the Christmas story, about the holy family and were seen as entertaining rather than religious songs and they were usually sung in homes rather than in churches.

When Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans came to power in England in 1647, the celebration of Christmas and singing carols was stopped. However, the carols survived as people still sang them in secret. Carols remained mainly unsung until Victorian times, when two men called William Sandys and Davis Gilbert collected lots of old Christmas music from villages in England.

Before carol singing in public became popular, there were sometimes official carol singers called 'Waits'. These were bands of people led by important local leaders (such as council leaders) who had the only power in the towns and villages to take money from the public. They were called 'Waits' because they only sang on Christmas Eve (This was sometimes known as 'watchnight' or 'waitnight' because of the shepherds were watching their sheep when the angels appeared to them.), when the Christmas celebrations began.

Also, at this time, many orchestras and choirs were being set up in the cities of England and people wanted Christmas songs to sing, so carols once again became popular. Many new carols were also written .

New carols services were created and became popular, as did the custom of singing carols in the streets. Perhaps the most famous carol service, is the service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College in Cambridge, UK. This service takes place on Christmas Eve and is broadcast live on BBC Radio (and all over the world). The Service was first performed in 1918 as a way of the college celebrating the end of the First World War. It is always started with a single choir boy singing a solo of the first verse of the carol 'Once in Royal David's City'. http://tistheseasonto.be/carols/once-in-royal-davids-city.html

 A service of Nine Lessons and Carols, has nine bible readings (or lessons) that tell the Christmas story with one or two carols between each lesson.

As for we Aussies we have our own carols that celebrate a hot Christmas celebrated in city and country alike. Here are a couple of my favourites.