A Weekend in The Burren - The Aengus Finucane Memorial Walk

Aengus Finucane Memorial Walkers 2012 

Two weekends ago the second Aengus Finucane Memorial Walk took place in The Burren in Co. Clare, organised by a committee of former Concern Bangladesh volunteers from the heady early days of Concern, back in the 70s. Aengus was one of the founding fathers of Concern in Nigeria/Biafra in 1968 and it has grown from strength to strength since. Our lives are inextricably linked to Concern since we met as volunteers in Bangladesh in 1979, and we have a great grá (love) for the NGO that was home to us for over a decade between Tanzania, Bangladesh and Laos.

Jan and me at Ailwee caves

The famous signpost the CoCo shrank!

The Bare Burren Mountains 

Hubby Jan and me were walking for the first time as we had been unable to go the previous year when it was held in Leitrim.  This year I came home from the INMO conference in Killarney a day early and this meant we were able to head for Clare on the Saturday morning, arriving in Ballyvaughan in plenty of time to check into the hotel and have a snack before the walk. We also met some of the other walkers, friends and former colleagues in many instances. Most of the Concern family have met up over the decades at various AGMs and reunions, particularly the 40th Reunion a few years ago in 2008. It was a great weekend and it raised money for a cause close to Aengus Finucane's heart, the Jack Praeger Rescue Project in Calcutta (or Kolkata)

Tanzanian Friends Reunited in Ballyvaughan

The Poulbrone Dolmen - 5000 yrs old or so. 

Jan and me went to the pier where the meet-up was, and it was a bit drizzly at first  but this cleared up in jig time and we headed off to the walk, a gentle 5km out and 5km back the same route. We had a terrific guide who talked for Ireland and gave us a potted history of the Burren, its pots and caves and limestone history which you can read for yourself here. It's way too technical and geological for me, just know that it's the most unusual ecological and geological spot with rare unique flora that grows nowhere else in Ireland. The limestone surface is slowly being restored as trees begin to grow again, now that people are no longer collecting firewood in the hills. Seems like there's a reversal of deforestation going on in the Burren and I wonder will it change the place. The bareness is what makes it look so special, and it's very bleak in places with all the drystone walls and the dolmens or standing stones.

Windswept at the Poulnabron Dolmen

The walk was beautiful as the sun came out and we walked and talked through the path to the Ailwee Caves entrance. The caves have to wait for another day as they probably deserve a visit on their own with all the stalactites and stalagmites. We had a group photo taken at the Cave entrance. and then we walked back, with the view totally different and overlooking the sea at Ballyvaughan all the way across Galway Bay to Connemara. We chatted to various people and it was lovely to see everyone reconnecting, and meeting people we had last  met in Bangladesh over 30 years ago, or Tanzania over 25 years ago.

Limestone Burren landscape

We repaired to the pub when we got back, some of us getting ready for the night ahead first. I went for a very hot bath to prevent any possible muscle ache and it worked a treat, and then we headed out. Dinner was for 7pm in L'Arco Italian Restaurant in Ballyvaughan, across the road from the Burren Hotel where we stayed. There were some moving speeches as Jack spoke about his beloved brother Aengus, and the decision was taken to have next year's walk in Waterford - who knows, it may even be around Lismore!

We had a lovely meal and a great laugh at our table with a mix of people from Bangladesh and Tanzania days. Lots of photos were taken and promises to keep in touch, and we went back to a different pub after the meal where we continued the craic well into the night. Sign of the times and the demographic we all represented, we didn't party like back in the day when we would see in the dawn before hitting the hay, and we were all back in our hotels and hostelries between 2 and 3 am.

Hardy walkers under Bare Mountain on the Burren

One of the rare Burren flowers in bloom

The road back to Ballyvaughan

The next morning after breakfast another old Concern tradition was relived as Jack, a Holy Ghost priest like  his late brother Aengus, celebrated Mass in the conservatory of the guest house. It was a lovely personal and warm ceremony, with none of the distance and reserve that a formal church setting demands, and we all gained from it, whether religious or not. We all headed off homeward bound around lunchtime, and said our goodbyes till next year in Waterford!

Connor Pass, Dingle Peninsula, Kerry.

Jan and me took the long road home, going through the Burren and visiting the Poulnabrone Dolmen for a photo opportunity.We continued on down through Kerry after crossing the Shannon Estuary by the Killimer to Tarbert car ferry, going out to Dingle via Tralee and over the Conor Pass which has spectacular views over both sides of the Dingle Peninsula. We came  back via Killarney and Mallow, and we're still awaiting the summer that eludes us thus far.

And the Award goes to....Me!

I'd like to thank Mimi in Dublin for giving me this versatile blogger award - it's very nice to get an accolade like this and I do appreciate it - though I have to look at what I'm supposed to do with it.

Right - just checked and I have to tell you 8 things about me.
Then I have to pass it onto some fellow-bloggers - the number seems unspecified so I'll just select some random victims but tell you why I chose them.

Here goes!

1. I have lived in three continents in my lifetime - Europe, Asia and Africa. In Europe I lived in Ireland, England and Wales, and spent long periods of time in The Netherlands with hubby's family. In Asia I spent 2 years in Bangladesh and over 2 years in Laos or Lao PDR to give it its correct title. In Africa I lived in Tanzania for 11 years over a 13 year period.

2. I met my hubby Jan in Bangladesh and he comes from The Netherlands; we got married in Ireland and have spent more of our married life abroad than in Ireland. He has lived in more countries than me as he was in the Philippines as a Dutch volunteer before we met. We have never lived in his country, only visited there many times over the past 30 years. I speak reasonable Dutch and can converse and read it easily, a proud achievement for someone who still can't speak Irish after years of schooling and working in the Gaeltacht.

3. I have four children. Two of our children were born in Tanzania, and two in Ireland. The Tanzanian birth experience was far less high-tech and more memorable for many reasons - outside the scope of this list! They are all grown up now - including teen daughter who's taller than me now! The three boys are in their twenties - 28, 25 and 23. I can't believe how the years flew by.

4. I wanted to become a nurse since I was 12 and had my appendix out in Ardkeen Hospital in Waterford. It appealed to my romantic nature and had more to do with Cherry Ames books than the reality I encountered five years later! No regrets though, it's been a career that took me to wonderful countries and opened up opportunities I might otherwise never have had. Certainly life-changing - as if I hadn't gone to Bangladesh to save the world I wouldn't have met hubby!

5. My father died two months before my third birthday. People I went to school with thought I was an only child but in reality I had a sister who died in infancy who was born two months after my father's death. So it was tough on my mother - losing her husband and a baby in the space of four months. Regular blog-readers will know how close I was to my mother all my life and how I miss her since her death in March this year. I am grateful to have had her for so long, and it's a small consolation.

6. My maternal grandfather was a master tailor and I credit those genes with my love of dressmaking and knitting and sewing. We now live in the same house he lived in and practiced his craft - and called it (in his honour) Tailor's Cottage. Any skills I have in this line I owe him. He died when I was six weeks old so I never knew him, but we have his ledgers from the late 1920s for a decade, creating a rich tapestry of social history - all his clients and their suit measurements and the cost of the work is detailed meticulously, and we have fun recognising ancestors of local people from this area.

7. I didn't go to university until I was in my forties - I trained as a nurse under the old apprenticeship system - 3 years hard labour and block study with exams at intervals and finals - and my midwifery was the old one-year practical course - thrown in at the deep end with 90 deliveries clocked up in the course of the year. So I never had to go to college - until I went to do Public Health and became a full-time UCC student for a year and had a ball!

8. I became a granny this year and am enjoying it immensely - all the clichés are true - all of the fun and none of the responsibility of parenthood. I'll become a granny again next March as Sofia will get a brother or sister so happy days ahead. It brings back all the happy memories of my own children's babyhood as I watch Sofia grow up!

So now to select the lucky recipients of this Versatile Blogger Award - and don't worry if you don't fulfil the terms & conditions - it's not a bank loan, you know! So just enjoy reading it and if you feel  moved then by all means do write 8 things about yourself you are happy to share with your readers.

1.Diane @ Adventure before Dementia - she has had a peripatetic life and writes with humour about her life and travels.

2. Rudee @ A Knitting Nurse  - she inspires me with her wonderful knitting skills and her wry take on our shared profession - just what you need in community nursing.

3. Marguerite @ Cajun Delights - she's a foodie blogger and a writer and shares her wonderfully different corner of her world with us - the music, the food, and the atmosphere of Louisiana and Cajun Country comes shining through her blog.

4. Peggy @ Organic Growing Pains - she's a terrific gardener and makes me feel guilty for not being as industrious in the garden as she is - but I live it through her endeavours. 

5.  Lilly @ Stuff I make, bake and love - her gusto for food and innovation are always entertaining and enjoyable - and she writes a funny, quirky blog well worth a visit.

6. Padraic @ Window across Dublin Bay - not merely the token man amongst women but a recent blog for me that I enjoy - plenty of food for thought, and we found some serendipitous links in our past.

That's enough bloggers to target with the award - I just hope you are all happy to receive it and carry out the task of writing 7 or 8 things - random - about yourself. I enjoyed this and hope you do too. It's not meant to be confessional, just stuff you are happy to share with the world.

Just Desserts - having our Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and eating it

I hadn't made this in years until just over a week ago when I was heading to visit a friend in her mobile home in Clonea Caravan Park. My previous post here was on the howler road sign near the park entrance so it's fitting that the cake recipe follow.

It was a very pleasant evening with a group of friends and colleagues and we had a great laugh; it was one of those girly evenings that are just inexplicably enjoyable. Our hostess had laid on a lovely cold buffet - an assortment of delicious salads - which we enjoyed alfresco as it was a warm sunny evening. For dessert we all brought something to the table - including my Pineapple upside-down cake. It was eclipsed by a fab Pavlova laden down with fresh strawberries and raspberries nesting in the whipped cream, and a lovely Swiss Roll. I cheated a bit and bought along a tub of ready-whipped fresh cream on my way to the beach, as I didn't know if the caravan would have the wherewithal to whip cream and anyway it seemed like too much hard work for an after-work get-together.

As we were all driving home (except the hostess who was already home!) we passed on the wine which meant no sore heads the next day. Always a good thing on a weekday. The provenance of this recipe is an old Dutch magazine cutout - I have the original on a pulled-out page from a Margriet (I think 1988 or thereabouts - the date is obliterated) which is tattered and dog-eared, but as it lives inside one of my mother's old cookery books it will last another few decades. I used to make this frequently when we lived in the tropics as we had such delicious fresh pineapples - even from our own garden in some instances - and it's so simple that the ingredients were always to hand. Now I use the canned slices with the hole in the middle - you could use fresh but it's a bit of a lottery how they turn out - sometimes they are just right but often they are either underripe and hard or over-ripe and starting to rot in spots.


Hubby has a theory that I feel has some merit - that it's preferable to eat pineapple that's locally canned close to the source (i.e. the pineapple plots) at its prime ripeness than to eat dodgy "fresh" pineapple that's got huge airmiles clocked up (or shipping miles) after being picked under-ripe on the off-chance that it'll reach optimum ripeness as it arrives on the shelves or market stalls. When we lived in Tanzania the Dabaga Canning Factory was next door to the Concern office in Ipogoro where the most wonderful smells emanated throughout the year, contingent on the seasonality of the crops - this is a prime example of green organic and fairly traded food production and I have a lot of regard for it; you can check out its brochure here.

So give it a try and you won't be disappointed.

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
(translated from the Dutch by me - hope it's accurate enough!)

Ingredients

1. 175g/6oz self-raising flour
2. 200g//7oz sugar
3. 65g/3oz soft butter/margarine
4. 1 egg
5. 1 teasp. vanilla essence or 1 sachet vanilla sugar
6. pinch salt
7. 1 can pineapple slices
8. Whipped Cream or Ice Cream to serve

Method

1. Grease a Springform Baking Tin
2. Line with drained Pineapple slices and half-slices as shown in photo
3. Mix all the other ingredients together to make a smooth semi-stiff batter, more pouring than dropping consistency
4. Pour the cake batter over the Pineapple slices
5. Bake in oven pre-heated to 150 degrees Centigrade/300 degrees Fahrenheit for about 40 mins until baked through and golden brown
6. Cool in tin, then turn out onto serving plate
7. If you want to glaze it after baking, see Handy Tip below and be sure to use ovenproof plate while browning in oven
8. Serve slices with Whipped Cream or Ice Cream

Handy Tip

Instead of greasing the Springform baking tin, you could line it with 50g/2oz melted butter with 100g brown sugar dissolved in it. This will caramelise in the baking to give a nice golden-brown glaze.

I forgot to do this at the start but at the end I improvised (in the manner of the best/most forgetful bakers!) by adding the melted butter to the finished cake and sprinkling over the brown sugar and then returning it to the top shelf of the oven for 5-10 mins until the same effect was achieved.

This is delicious with a nice cuppa tea or coffee, and it has a lovely sticky-pudding-y texture which is quite filling (so you shouldn't over-indulge), yet healthy enough to be one of your Five-a-Day (fruit'n'veg) portions if you are seriously guilt-tripping yourself!

On Colonialism, Craft and Cookery Books - my not-So-Guilty Pleasures

I've been visiting a lot of beautiful craft blogs lately where I am in wonder at the skills of the people who make such lovely things, while thinking "if only I had the time, could I do that?" Well I dabble - that's about all the time work and real life leave me to indulge what is incredibly relaxing and challenging and ultimately extremely satisfying. Making something from scratch by hand or sewing machine gives me a great buzz, and I used to do a lot more of it when the kids were small and I was either full-time in the home or working part-time or home schooling.

I qualify that by reminding readers most of this time was spent in the African bush or a provincial town (Iringa) in Tanzania, or in the backwater quietness of Vientiane in Laos, where we had plenty of support in the form of house staff who did a lot of the work that would normally be my lot. Does that sound dreadfully colonial and exploitative? Bet it did - but I knew it would, and I have defended it so often that I genuinely feel I can stand over it as being neither of the above.

As many of you who live in the so-called LDCs (Less-Developed Countries) of the world will know (Lynda, I'm thinking of you here) human capital is central to the national economy, and people have the expectation that if you come into their country with a foreign NGO (Non-Government Organisation) as we did, that the least you will do is provide local employment. Had we come over all virtuous and insisted on doing everything ourselves we would have found it a lot more difficult to gain recognition and acceptance. We would have been labelled mean and stingy and unwilling to help people help themselves through the dignity of honest work. As the ethos of our NGO (Concern Worldwide) was not to give handouts but to provide sustainabale development for people, it would have sat uncomfortably with that ethic.

As it was, we were blessed with having household staff wherever we lived who were (clichéd though it sounds) very much part of our family, and we still have contact with many of them, via the blessings of Facebook and email as well as snail mail. The children grew up with them and their children, and they were at the various family and birthday parties as guests and friends and I love to follow their children as they grow up. The staff were like any employee of the NGO, with the same terms and conditions - living in Socialist and post-Communist countries ensured that Labour Law was strictly pro-worker and we adhered to it as fairly as we expect it to be here at home.

So that's my little polemic rant- I do tend to digress all over the place in my posts, maybe I should curb the stream of consciousness a little, as I never know when I start a post where it will take me. I hope the readers can cope with this - please be brutally honest if you can't and tell me to stick to the point - I can handle constructive criticism (I think!)

This post was supposed to be about my craft and cookery books - so I will share a few photos of the ones I love, including some new knitting books I got this week - one on Party Knits and one on Knits for Kids - New Knits on the Block. The latter is perfect now that I can indulge Sofia and as the two were for sale at a knockdown price of €6.99 for two - on a BOGOF (Buy one get one free) offer - who could resist!

The other ones are journals - one is a Knitting Journal and has some lovely patterns and handy tips, while the other is a Book Lover's Companion. This was a bit sidelined when I started logging my books on iRead on Facebook and Library Thing online (see the sidebar in this blog) but I do print off the reviews and keep them in the journal. I have to start logging my knits in the journal too, with photos. Do you like the new bonnet I made Sofia? It's sitting on a cushion hand-embroidered in a Women's Project in Saidpur in Bangladesh in 1980!

The cookery books I love are on the bookshelves I photographed here - there are lots gathered over many years and plenty from recent years that were either given as presents or bought in the workplace bookclub sales - these are ubiquitous in Irish workplaces (probably elsewhere) and sales reps deliver a selection of samples to the offices for a week or so and they have wonderful knockdown prices for everything - so a Jamie Oliver marked at £30 can be had for €12 or so. I've got beautiful books for a tenner that would be three times that in the shops, so as I'm a sucker for a good bargain, once again I'm just a girl who can't say no! I love the Samuelson African Continent cookbook - it was a present from Anne in New Jersey, an old friend. Our recent houseguest Tandy (my knitting student!) gave me the BBC Masterchef book - you can see us in the photo. It ties in with the TV series so should prove fun to try out.

As I find all these books as pleasurable to read as to work from I think I'm getting plenty of great value - and I know from looking at those blogs of similar leanings that I'm not alone in that opinion! I actually use them as recipe books too - and as you can see from previous knitting posts - I get through quite a few of the patterns too!

My maternal grandfather was a tailor so maybe I inherited some of the gene pool there, I certainly have some skill in that line despite hating home ec. in school, yet I taught myself on his ancient treadle Singer machine where I made dolls' clothes, then I got an old Brother machine which died after a number of years making maxi dresses and fancy frocks for dinner dances (it was the Seventies after all!) and then I got my current machine, a Singer with lots of fancy stitching, in 1986 when we lived in the bush in Tanzania. It's a testament to the longevity of the brand that it's still going strong 24 years on, as fit for purpose as ever.


Some day I will get back to dressmaking - but I aim to lose about 5-8 kg first to get back to size 12 (no, I don't know what a size zero is and I never met anyone who did or was - but that may be just US sizing! I'm aiming for 12 UK or 40 European size and then I'll get dressmaking again - there's a goal to strive for and I have some classy pieces from my previous size 12 life that I can't wait to get into again. I made suits, skirts, bermudas, trousers, tops, dresses - you name it, I made it.

I even made a safari suit which hubby sported whenever visiting dignitaries like President Nyerere came on project visits.And as my middle son reminded me recently, my kids might need therapy in years to come to work through the trauma of being dressed in chaircovers and curtains - Sound of Music-style - during their formative years in Africa! As our curtains were the colourful "Vitenge" cloths worn by the women they made great curtains and chair covers, and it was a small step to move into kids' clothing. As the son said, many times they blended into the furniture like chameleons!

Our New Bread-Maker - a Paean to Culinary Revolution

Last week Lidl - that bastion of bargain-basement German discounts - had a bread-maker for sale on its deals of the week and as usual I saw it in the weekly flyer a few days before it went on sale. I'd never had a bread-making machine before, always priding myself on being the ultimate bread maker and baker since I'd had no choice in the matter during our years abroad where fresh bread was only feasible when it was home-baked. So it was time to embrace change and go for the techie option.

I think there was a certain element of grandstanding and a little snob value attached to being a slave to the kneading and proving and re-kneading and re-proving and getting a great result wasn't always guaranteed. Certainly in the tropics a lot depended on having quality ingredients which wasn't always a given.

We had flour from wheat that grew in Njombe in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania and a 90kg bag would be brought home whenever we had the chance to visit our Concern friends there in the early '80s (we were then with the Lutheran World Federation in the Burundi refugee settlements in Rukwa Region of Western Tanzania). This sack of wheat had to be sun-dried to rid it of the weevils that invariably invaded the grain. Then it was brought to the local maize mill to be ground into coarse wheatflour. We tried to battle further weevil infestation by milling the wheat in small 5 or 10 kilo batches, and keeping it in the chest freezer. As this freezer tended to chill rather than freeze, as we only had electricity generated for 9 out of 24 hours, it was more a chest fridge than freezer, albeit erratic even at that!

It did keep the flour dormant - or the creepy-crawlies! Nonetheless, we had to sieve the flour prior to making bread or cakes, as there was always the possibility of few rogue larvae camouflaged in the flour. Logic allowed us to eat the bread undisturbed by its parasite potential as we figured it was a) well cooked at high temperature and b) the extra protein couldn't be too bad, and c) lots of people were happily eating such "bush tucker" with no ill-effects and some had a certain cachet in tribal circles - such as the "ssenene" or grasshoppers that were a delicacy ranked with the flying termites in haute cuisine circles.

But I digress - this was supposed to be a post on our new bread maker. Well hubby Jan has taken to it with enthusiasm and it looks like we'll never want for fresh bread again, with all the delicious loaves he's made since Thursday last. I am delighted, as I was always a bit skeptical that a machine could equal or even surpass human endeavour. Here's one big climbdown from this convert - with all the attendant zeal of the convert I am happy to say that I love the bread maker and its produce!

I have watched in amazement at the different through-the-looking-lid stages of the process and it is basically the same stages as human endeavour with all the elbow grease removed. A standard loaf takes about 3 hours to bake from scratch, and includes two or three provings with plenty of kneading; and to my surprise and delight, the wonderful yeasty smell of the rising dough and the baking bread aroma wafting through the house is enough to send any estate agent staging a house for sale into ecstasies!

The machine is programmed to deal with 12 different functions including every imaginable bread type - white, brown, French, gluten-free, sweet, buttermilk, dough, pasta and cake - and then to cap it all it makes jam! I haven't even gone down that route yet but it promises to be great fun trying out all the permutations.

Any of you readers who have bread makers will be familiar with all this magic and have a good laugh at my naive wonder at the scope of our new toy - but I have been enjoying the end results for the past few days, and so too has our old friend Tandy who's visiting from London and Papua-New Guinea for a few days while we bridge the past 16 years since we last met in Tanzania.

She and I (me?) were dab hands at bread baking for all the years it was a necessary task in Africa in the absence of any bakeries in most places, while half-decent bakeries in Iringa were thin on the ground. We had one Greek bakery which made a dense white bread, whose shape was the only resemblance it bore to a baguette. It was nice bread only on the day of baking and didn't reach our exacting standards so our own bread won the day hands down.

Bread is such an emotive food - across religions you have unleavened and leavened bread, Communion bread, bread of life - it epitomises so much and is a food common to all cultures, from the chappati to the tortilla, soda and yeast bread, and breaking bread is a universal gesture of acceptance of the stranger in our midst. Long may it continue to symbolise hospitality and the Céad Míle Fáilte in our house.

The photos show the machine before and after operation, the end product both in and out of the tin and being enjoyed with the ubiquitous cuppa tea, the control panel and the packaging

My Year In Photos on Facebook | View Collage

My Year In Photos on Facebook View Collage

This was a fun app on Facebook that a friend alerted me to - one or two clicks and here it was. The application selects random photos from those filed in 2009 in my Facebook albums and made them into a collage. So I could share them with Blogger readers, I am posting them here as well. Hope you like them - I should really go into detail on each one but many of them appeared here already during 2009 in various blog posts.

There are two from circa 1984 and 1991 that really have embarassment potential - there's a beach scene taken on an island off the coast of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania with some friends who were visiting the Concern (the NGO we worked there with) guest house in Kunduchi, beside the renowned Bahari Beach Hotel, and the other is at an early birthday party of our oldest son, who will become a dad in about two weeks!

This app is one of the more fun time-wasters on Facebook when compared to all those Farmville games - which I just don't get or those games which involve throwing pillows at people. I can confess to doing the odd quiz on Facebook which throw up something unexpected like an IQ of 140 on six or eight multiple-choice questions (which don't impress me much!), or "What type of nurse are you?" and it turns out I'm actually Cherry Ames - a Fifties American nurse whose life seemed light years away from my student nurse years! I like the geography quizzes on capital cities - as long as it's not American State capitals where I fail abysmally - or identifying/locating places on the map against the clock.

I still manage to read a lot and as it's winter I am back to knitting - those bloggers who are avid knitters - fair weather and foul - will be seriously underwhelmed by my poor output on the knitting front as I have only done a few scarves this year and am now making a waistcoat/vest in random-dyed fluffly wool from Lidl, great value and quality. Extremely cosy if not exactly haute couture and I will share it with you when finished.

On that note - I'll say goodnight and I will try to be a more diligent blogger in 2010 - so far not so good, I know, but there's a lot going on right now in the family with (grand)baby imminent in the next fortnight, sons going back to college or in college, and teen daughter being, well, a teenager. She's currently in the throes of drama rehearsals for a March production of The Wiz (of Oz) in the local dramatic society. That and the Big Freeze which I blogged about - and the aftermath is worthy of another post as we have water rationing nationwide in the midst of extensive post-thaw flooding! Only in Ireland as we are all saying, would such a paradox be accepted as the norm.

Goodbye to a legend and an old friend

Last week Aengus Finucane passed away. He was a Holy Ghost missionary priest who helped found what grew to become Ireland's internationally renowned charity, Concern Worldwide, back in the days of the Biafra famine in the failed secession war against Nigeria. We joined hundreds of friends and his family on Friday last to pay tribute to a great man who became a household face and name not just in Ireland but in the many countries where Concern had a presence.



Ironically for an organisation that was founded and headed by a priest for so many years it was the first Irish NGO to be avowedly non-denominational. It worked to benefit the poorest of the poor in all the various countries in which it worked and the beneficiaries and staff were of all religions and none. It never was a factor, nor should it be. Aengus was a larger than life figure, a genuine humanitarian and he made Concern strive to achieve its slogan of the 70s - Love in Action.

Concern has played a huge part in our family's life. I met my hubby Jan when we were both young volunteers with Concern in Bangladesh in the late 1970s and Concern and our paths have been inextricably intertwined ever since. Aengus was my boss when I went to Bangladesh where he was then Field Director, and after Bangladesh he bacame the Chief Executive of Concern in Dublin from 1981 - 1997.



After Bangladesh we got married and went to Tanzania with another NGO, the Swiss-based Lutheran World Federation, which was a familiar career path for former Concern volunteers, as many of them were now working in various LWF fields. After 6 years in Tanzania we took a break while Jan did a MSc in Development Economics in Swansea, and it was Aengus who interviewed him for his next post, as Country Director for Concern in Tanzania.

We spent 6 more fulfilling and happy years in Iringa and Dar-es-Salaam and then transferred to Lao PDR for another two and a half years with Concern . In all that time and subsequently we maintained links with Aengus through our ongoing involvement and interest in Concern and its activities. We are both members of Concern, Jan is on the Concern Council, and we have kept in touch with our many Concern friends over the years, both at home and abroad. Aengus baptised our youngest child 13 years ago during our home leave from Laos, and we have a lovely video of that day.

Last year Concern celebrated its 40th Anniversary with a huge reunion in Croke Park in Dublin, where hundreds of people from all corners of the world gathered to reminisce and remember the wonderful times they had in their time and involvement with Concern. While the organisation was at the forefront of so many tragedies and landmark events in the past 40 years, from the famine in Biafra to the misery of Darfur, and the Rwandan genocide among the most notorious, there are many moments to treasure, whether the impact was on one person or a whole community.

It is true what his brother Fr. Jack said when celebrating his funeral mass - that Aengus was part of three families - his own family, the Holy Ghost family, and the Concern family. His funeral was truly a celebration of his life and the many moving tributes on radio, TV and both the Irish and International press were a testament to that life fully lived.

May he rest in peace, in the knowledge that his impact on the lives of so many people will live on for many years and he will not be forgotten.

The view from my laptop - thoughts from the kitchen table

I was inspired for this short post by Lynda who posted a lovely photo of the view from her desk. She mentions the banana trees on her wonderful African horizon, something that I miss since we left Tanzania over 14 years ago, yet which is still as fresh in my memory as if it were only last week. To bring touches of the tropics into our lives in an Ireland that seems to be in a constant rainy season (to paraphrase Aslan on Narnia - here it's always raining but never summer ) we have some banana trees in our garden and another banana plant in our sunroom. As I use the kitchen table as my desk, this is the view from my laptop. It is incredibly calming to look up and see an enormous banana tree with two suckers, both sprouted since we got the plant about 2 years ago, and we delight in seeing the speed at which it grows. It has nearly reached the vaulted ceiling in the sunroom now, and I am curious to see if it will grow much taller or actually produce a flower and fruit! I know if it flowers that is the end of that plant, so in a way I hope it doesn't until the suckers are much bigger.
The first two photos show the view - standing and sitting - from my laptop

In the garden we have a number of tropical plants in a bed near the patio, just outside the back door from the sunroom. There's a hardy banana tree, again with two suckers, a plant that dies off at the first frost and starts to grow anew every summer. This year we couldn't tell if it had survived the frost and snow of the winter, as it had completely died off, so we were very pleased to see it putting up green shoots around May. The speed at which it grows thereafter is very impressive, and we live in hope of a nice purple flower and a bunch of bananas sometime in the future.

We have two palm trees in the garden and two more in pots. Even though they are hardy, we bring them indoors for the winter, as they are nice fan palms and brighten up the place. We also have various bamboo in the garden, all near the patio and house, and a row of lavender brings a bit of Provence into our lives. It might seem a bit sad and silly to try to recapture our years in Africa and Asia through the plants in the house and garden, it is a very effective way to bring back happy memories and instantly transport us to our bush shamba in Rukwa, and to the banana and coffee shambas of Kagera, near Uganda.

Indoor banana tree, grown an extra leaf in the past week; garden banana - taken today and exactly one month ago - how much it's grown! ...and spot the bamboos
To recapture another aspect of our African lives, strangely enough the Ikea bentwood chairs in the sunroom evoke our early years there just as much as do the banana plants. I wrote about our Ikea - Africa connection in my post here - quite rational, in case you might think all those years in the tropical sun has somehow fried my brain.

The beautiful capiz shell hanging lamp you see in the corner is from the Philippines, where hubby lived before we met. It had been waiting for a home for nearly 30 years before it found its niche among our jungle greenery. At night the light reflected in the glass casts a warm glow over the entire area.

From my laptop vantage point I can see our shelf of African and Asian memorabilia, each piece carrying a store of memories and places, including the Tinga-Tinga paintings which Lynda will know all about - she has even blogged on that particularly Tanzanian art form. We have many more artefacts that have no display space, and I will have to work out some kind of museum-like rotation to do justice to the Ethiopian icon paintings and Bangladeshi brassware and Lao silk wall-hangings that have yet to see daylight in this house.

Perhaps another extension is the answer as the sunroom is maxed out on memorabilia - the struggle goes on as we strive to balance desirable minimalism with an acceptable level of clutter. I hope the photos give a sense of my lovely vantage point as I write this post and browse the web.

Ethnic artefacts - paintings from Tanzania: Tinga-Tinga poster and paintings, village scene and Kilimanjaro/elephant market paintings; batik of Ugandan musical instruments; Lao pan pipes and flute, African mbira (thumb piano) and Rwandan banjo.

The Lesser-Spotted Google Earth Street View Car

Yesterday I was driving on my rounds at work and around lunchtime I was planning a visit to a remote farmhouse down a very narrow country road. Imagine my surprise when I turned into the road to find myself behind a very odd looking car, a brand new red Opel Astra - 09 registration - with a tripod on the roof-rack topped with a weird looking object that I knew to be the Google Earth Street-view Camera.

These strange cars have been spotted like rare birds in the vicinity of Dungarvan in West Waterford in recent weeks and this is the third time I've seen them. This time I was prepared and like a true anorak I whipped out my trusty Panasonic Lumix digital camera and took a few photos.

I have been amused at the indignation that has been expressed over privacy invasion and civil liberties in the UK in recent weeks (where Street View has gone live and been given a mixed reception) by the "victims" of this cruising camera car. There have been some hilarious stories of people spotted where they shouldn't have been, or cars that weren't pixelated out (number plates and faces are supposed to be pixellated but there have been glitches) and identified by spouses as being where they weren't meant to be. Also people have been indignant that their des res isn't all it's cracked up to be on the property pages when the prospective buyers can google earth it in its original street view!

I absolutely adore Google Earth and Google Maps - I think it was made for nosey parkers like me who love to see where places are and how they look, and since discovering it some years back I visit regularly. I know where my friend in New Jersey lives, and what her street looks like, and I also know that my son's rooftop of his apartment block is visible quite clearly on it, and I am annoyed that Lismore is not given an enhanced view, and is quite blurry, unlike other cities and towns of Ireland.

Another thing I love about it is that there are plenty of photos posted by various people, and they give a totally different impression of a place. When hubby visited Reykjavik in Iceland last year I was able to see the places he was raving about, like the geysir and the blue lagoon - hot springs in February snow! In Tanzania I can go on a nostalgia trip through Dar-es-Salaam and track the roads I drove daily to and from the International School, or out to Bahari Beach and the Kunduchi guest house where we spent many happy days on visits from Iringa. I can visit Iringa and my old haunts like India Street, Lulu's, Hasty Tasty, and Gangilonga Rock.

Of course I can also see these places on the wonderful groups that have sprung up on Facebook to celebrate places we love. One of my favourite is the group "I know Iringa inside out" and I have posted a number of photos of the kids in their homeschool days there, much to their cringing embarassment!

So if you haven't already got it, get downloading Google Earth for free and enjoy more time-wasting than Facebooking or blogging combined. You can justify it by its vaguely educational geographical appeal, if you need to appease your conscience or your partner! There's even a blogger widget which might be fun to add.

The internet is a wonderful place to connect and reconnect with people, when it is used as such, and I have renewed links with old friends from years ago through this very modern medium.

So the art of letter writing might be dead but as long as it is replaced by good communication by email and blogging I think I can live with it! It's a paradigm shift as the boffins might say but I am glad to be able to join in and go with the flow, and am heartened to see so many of my generation linked up through cyberspace. It makes the world seem a much smaller and more connected place - a global village in a positive way.

To finish up, I want to share this lovely photo of the cherry blossom in full bloom on the N25 ring road in Dungarvan yesterday. It might even end up on Street View!

The blessings of a nice cup of tea

One of my favourite Christmas treats was a funky teapot, which has brought tea drinking to a whole new level for me. It's like a kettle, white ceramic with red flowers and black leaves.

I have gone back to drinking leaf tea after years of teabags in a mug. In defence of the much-maligned teabag, they are not too bad in Ireland, much better than in other countries I've lived in. It also set me thinking about tea in the various manifestations and its significance in my life over the years, hence this tribute.

Here is my lovely new teapot, and a mug

I grew up with tea as a constant in my life, coffee never intruding in my childhood unless you counted a vile concoction called Irel which was ersatz coffee made from chicory and must have been invented by some demented sadist in the days of wartime rationing. In any case it put me right off coffee until my student days when bedsit Maxwell House made for urban sophistication in those pre-skinny latte and cappucino days! Tea was always super-sweet until one Lent in nursing school in Dublin when I decided to give up sugar and smoking. Well, one out of two ain't bad, and I haven't gone back to sweet tea since. (The smoking cessation didn't happen for another four years and had nothing to do with Lent, but that's another story.)

In the late 1970s I worked in Bangladesh as a volunteer with the Irish-based NGO, Concern. There were the most magnificent tea gardens in Sylhet, which we visited for some of their key social events (see below!). Factory tours there showed us how the tea moved from the bush to the pot, and the process was fascinating. The tea gardens, shaded by a canopy of tall trees, possibly eucalyptus but I'm not sure, were an undulating landscape in an otherwise flat country, and this novelty value alone made them worth a visit, as did the arcane social life. The tea estates were run by remnants of the Empire, either British "Staying On" Raj types, or Anglo-Indians straight out of a Somerset Maugham novel, where full afternoon tea on the verandah was a venerable institution. The social calendar was marked by events like the Monsoon Ball and the Bachelor's Ball...which seemed totally anachronistic to me in a country that was not only post-colonial by (then) 30 years, but newly independent and in search of a strong identity.

Other tea encounters in that era were holidays in Sri Lanka to the Kandy and Adam's Peak area where there were totally different tea gardens, in misty mountainous central highlands. I can't recall the exact location of the tea estates but I remember another factory tour! And it seems the floor sweepings always ended up in teabags, which should have put me off for life, but didn't. (Maybe I have a slovenly approach to tea, and need to become a tea connoisseur/snob like so many coffee and wine "connoisseurs"!)

In those days, I eschewed the ubiquitous Chai of the entire subcontinent as being way too sweet, spicy and stewed to death, the latter being totally unforgiveable for an Irish tea drinker. (The only exception was the wonderful thirst-quenching milky chai on the trains in India, poured from a froth-inducing height into unglazed clay cups, which were thrown out of the train window afterwards - the best recycling ever.) It amuses me now to see how Chai has gained such status among tea aficionados, up there with green, white and herbal tea, and costs a fortune. Earl Gray was the height of sophistication in my younger days, and I ruined the image by adding milk!

Tanzania was our next exotic port of call, for most of the 80s and half the 90s. Another tea country, with tea gardens in the Southern Highlands as well as up North, though I only recall coffee shambas in the Arusha/Kilimanjaro/Moshi area, and in Bukoba/Kagera region. Near Iringa where we lived was a large tea estate at Mufindi, part of the gardens were nationalised and others run by Brooke Bond, part of Unilever, which was another anachronism in such a socialist country. Mufindi Club was a weekend retreat for many wazungu (expats/foreigners) and we compromised our principles somewhat by learning to play golf there on a beautiful course at over 2000m altitude. The estate was run like a company town, with a company shop for the employees where visitors to the club could buy tea from the factory. I was homeschooling our three boys back in those days and a factory tour became a mandatory field trip, where we saw every stage of production right down to - you guessed it - the teabags! Apparently not quite floor sweepings but the finest filtering of the leaves.

This is William, age 7 in Mufindi, sitting near the clubhouse by the first tee, eating peanuts -1994

Then we spent a few years in Laos, where tea was grown on the Bolovens Plateau in the far south, a place I never visited but the tea from there was large leafs, and very smoky. Very much an acquired taste which I never quite did acquire, so there was a lot of Lyon's and Barry's tea smuggled back from home; it became as coveted as Tayto Cheese'n'Onion crisps whenever visitors from Dublin came on project visits. The only "normal" tea available in Vientiane was ghastly Lipton's teabags, which had high-tech strings attached that could actually squeeze the teabag and prevent it dripping all over the floor! Never improved the taste though - a memory perhaps best forgotten!

My myriad tea gaffes are legendary and almost led to domestic diplomatic incidents back in the early 80s with Jan when visiting my future in-laws in The Netherlands. The Dutch do not drink much tea, and those that do drink it black. My persistent request for milk led to much confusion and bewilderment, and I was often given tea with "koffiemelk", which bears no relation to real milk and ruins a cuppa. Such was my desperation at one stage that I resorted to raiding the milk bulk tank on Jan's family farm to sneak in a jug of milk. I dread to think what impression they must have had of mad Irishwomen after that incident. Other cultural divides were in the presentation - a cup of tepid water with a teabag in the saucer was often proferred by friends who had the temerity to consider this constituted a cup of tea!

Apple Tart with Cream

And now we've come full circle - back to where I started tea drinking, in Lismore. There is nothing more relaxing and soothing than a nice hot cuppa at the start and end of the day, and many times in between. A nice piece of cake, a bun or a slice of apple tart with cream is an ideal accompaniment, and for breakfast it goes great with toast. The full Irish breakfast is incomplete without a pot of tea.

This rack of Almond Buns is ready to be enjoyed with a cuppa.

Culturally, Irish people are probably among the greatest consumers of tea, always milky and with or without sugar. This knows no geographical boundaries, as we are always asked to bring tea to Spain for Shayne, to keep him endlessly supplied, and the Irish community of nuns in Kabanga Hospital, where two of our sons were born, made the best pot of strong tea in Tanzania - it would bend spoons and is a lasting memory of our many visits. Not for nothing are ads for tea invariably nostalgic, with a nod to the emigrant and smacking of more than a touch of paddywhackery.

In Ireland, tea is offered to visitors as a default setting, and woe betide those who demur, as the host will appear more offended than an Irish Mammy in full-on guilt-tripping martyrdom mode! The Mrs. Doyle syndrome (see Father Ted) will then kick in and the refusenik urged to "Go on, Go on, Go on!" until he or she capitulates. Resistance is generally futile and the wise guest will do well to remember this particularly Irish tea-dance is all part of an elaborate ritual. The Irish guest expects to be cajoled and the Irish host expects the initial refusal.

I learnt this to my cost in Tanzania, when visiting a Danish friend for a playdate with our sons. She offered tea when I arrived, and I automatically said something along the lines of "Ah no, I'm grand/don't want to be putting you to any bother" - and that was it ! She said "OK, fine" and left me reeling in shock - and gasping for a cuppa! My Dutch husband could perfectly empathise with her response and from then on I never hesitated in any non-Irish situation when offered that nice cup of tea.