Morgan Family Travels - 12

Week twelve - have we really been gone for twelve weeks already?!? We miss all of you lots, but life continues, and it has been good.

Saturday morning we picked up my parents from the airport - they are here in England until the 21st of October (or maybe 20???). At any rate, we found them, took them out to an English pub for lunch and watched the swans on the canal as we were eating. It was very pleasant. In the afternoon the girls stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Morgan and we stole my parents away for a few hours to catch them up on our life.

Sunday we set off to London with the entire gang. Robin took us on a very nice expotition of sites various. I think we disappointed him by taking too long to finish all the sites (having been delayed by an hour by lousy train service), but the things we did see were quite fun, and the weather was absolutely perfect for photography!

As we were going round on Sunday we noticed that St. Paul's Cathedral was putting on a free lecture the following evening by Jeffrey Sachs (an economist at the Earth Institute who wrote 'The End of Poverty'). I have really been feeling as though I want to start stretching my brain again after five years of simply mommy-brain. So Monday afternoon I left Trevor looking after the girls and I went into London, found a university bookstore where I bought a textbook on Development Studies, which I am really enjoying, and then went to St. Paul's Cathedral for the lecture. The cathedral had about 500 people in it - all the chairs were full.

The program was titled:

Global Poverty: A Challenge to the World

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York, and Special Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the MDGs.

Respondent: Rt Revd Peter Selby, Bishop of Worcester, author of Grace and Mortgage: the Language of Faith and the Debt of the World (DLT 1997) and formerly William Leech Professorial Fellow in Applied Christian Theology at Durham University.

(see http://www.stpauls.co.uk/page.aspx?theLang=001lngdef&pointerID=60465B73gevhBnNtYs0FcJJ7fGNpbL9M)

Jeffrey Sachs spoke for about 45 minutes, outlining his thesis, that is basically "extreme poverty can be ended ... we've already pledged enough money to do it, we simply need to actually give the money in question". The main issues he addressed were the effects of poor access to transportation routes, anti-malarial bug nets, and agricultural answers. He spoke about how globalization had helped in some areas, but was not the panacea answer for everywhere, as sub-saharan africa was seeing worsening conditions, as were Central Asia and the Andes Region.

He said that we need to stop blaming the poor for their problems - that good governance does NOT equal development. Furthermore, these areas face specific problems geographically that set them up with problems affecting development from the outside: many are landlocked nations with no roads or ports, but food is grown in interior highlands; savannah climates are very variable, increasingly with current climate change and poor farming methods only extend these challenges; and these regions are gripped by malaria.

The Rt Revd Peter Selby then offered his comments. These comments and concluding statements were followed up by a few questions from the audience. All in all it was a good beginning to mental stretching. I haven't decided yet whether I agree with what Jeffrey Sachs has said, but it was really nice to get out and go to a lecture!

Other events of this week include a fairly conclusive decision that whether it is Celiac Disease or not, Hannah's system does unquestionably better if she is on a gluten-free diet. So, we have stuck with it, and are very thankful (particularly as she's gotten it into her head to take her nappy off whenever she gets the chance!!!) We will be put into the queue to see the pediatric dietician here in England, but it probably won't happen until the end of November. This will be to make sure that she's getting the right balance of food now that she's missing the wheat, and also to discuss whether we should try reintroducing dairy. For now, her little tummy needs time to heal, and we are very thankful to know what has caused to many months of problems.

We also this week had the opportunity to book our next 'trip' - this time to Scandinavia. We will be leaving on Wednesday 26th October and will be gone until Saturday 12th November. We will spend one night in Copenhagen, a week with our friends Laura and Daniel in Sweden (about two hours by train from Copenhagen), a night in Oslo, and eight nights in Bergen (also in Norway, but the other end of the country). Bergen is notably half an hour away from the farm that my great-grandfather left when he was a teenager, and I am very excited to get to meet my (very distant) cousins.