Graham & Sandra Duncan 56 Daphne Road, Maroelana, Pretoria, 0081 South Africa

Dear Friends,

We need to first of all apologise for taking so long to send you a newsletter. We have been very busy but realise this is not a good excuse as we are sure that all of you who read this also lead very busy lives! There was one serious problem, Sandra’s computer crashed in early June and she was told that it could not be repaired so was without a computer for several months as we could not afford to replace it. Then a Korean student she had assisted offered to look at it for her and managed with parts from other broken computers to get it going again so here we are!

She has however lost her address book so, please, if you have not heard for a long time, please contact her (details above) so that she has your email address again. So no more excuses – let us just get on and share our past news with you all.

As you will remember from the last correspondence Sandra no longer works at Sedibeng, yet despite being “retired” she has found herself to be just as busy as ever. Some of you may remember the Zimbabwean refugees that she had helped with the assistance of donations from some of our partners? After she left the person who took over did not want them living at Sedibeng any more so they were once again to be made homeless. This was quite a challenge for us to find them somewhere else to live and, because the place we found was far from the jobs they had (most of their income was eaten up by travel costs), Sandra had to find alternative work for them both as well.

She eventually found a family who were willing to provide employment for both of them, Gift in the grounds of their property and Regina in the house and, with the jobs, accommodation was provided so after some time of stress and worry this problem was eventually resolved.

A former student of Graham’s was called to St Andrews congregation where Graham had been interim moderator for the past year. This was a great moment for us and many of our colleagues as St Andrews is a historically white congregation and this is the first white congregation in our church to call a black minister. Zwai Mtyhobile, the minister in question, some of you may remember him also as he was assisted in his last charge by money donated to SA Link where he had a very successful project running with street children.

There is a project that we are involved in which uses St Andrews hall as a soup kitchen some days during the week and, through this, Zwai came across a family of refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - a husband and wife with two children aged 2 and 4. They were coming for food and sleeping in the streets and he asked if there was any way in which Sandra could assist them as it was still winter and very cold. We took them to our own home where we have a room and bathroom unoccupied. They moved in and with some money donated by Cumbernauld Old Parish Church Sandra managed to get them some essentials such as a wee stove for cooking, some bedding, and clothes for the children and groceries.

Our daughter and her husband run a guest-house and they agreed to give the husband a job as a gardener/handyman and, since he had a driving license, gave him use of the guest house bakkie to save him travelling costs to work. We managed to keep them going with groceries until he got paid at the month-end. It was still a financial struggle for them despite the fact that we were paying for their water, electricity, etc, and we gave the wife some work helping in our house but it was difficult with two small children.

They wanted the children, particularly the older one into a nursery so the he could learn English and have other children to play with. When Marguerite (the wife) got the chance of a job Sandra went to a local nursery to negotiate with them to assist this family by giving them a reduction on the fees; they agreed to take both children for the price of one. Again with assistance from Cumbernauld Old who paid the first 3 months nursery fees Marguerite was able to take the job and they have now managed to get on their feet and put their lives together. The children have benefited so much from going to nursery school and they are speaking almost fluent English already after only 4 months!

The situation in the DRC is even worse than it is in Zimbabwe (if that is possible?) and thousands of refugees are flooding into South Africa every day from these 2 countries. We cannot help all of them but feel that if at least the lives of one or two families are a little improved then we are doing something.

In addition to this Sandra has still kept her involvement with students in another area. She edits and proof-reads the manuscripts for those doing Masters and PhD studies as most of them are working with English as their second or even third language. This can be a very arduous and time-consuming task and since all the theses had to be submitted by the end of September for the next graduation she has been inundated with them for the past 6 months with a great deal of pressure on her to get them completed for the deadline!

We have also had a few visitors since we last were in touch. During Easter, Sandra’s aunt and her friend came to visit for a month from London. Unfortunately her aunt was not very well during her stay and is still receiving treatment back in the UK. Then we had a visit from the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland! This was not a planned visit; we only heard after his arrival that he was “officially” visiting the UPCSA. He and his wife went on a tour of the Eastern Cape where we had worked for many years with the then black church before coming to Pretoria. Apparently they had heard so much about us and the work we had done that they had contacted the General Secretary of our church to request that they meet us. And so they came and had dinner with us in our home which was a great honour particularly as they had taken time out of a very busy schedule to spend with us. The Moderator has insisted that we meet with them again on our next visit to Scotland.

Then for the past three weeks we have had very good friends from Cumbernauld visiting with us; they just left last night to go back to the UK. Irene and Duncan Whyte, as well as being friends, were and still are elders at Cumbernauld Old Parish Church when Graham ministered there before returning to SA and have always been very interested and supportive of our work here in SA. It was great for us to be able to show them some of the projects which they have supported and to meet many of the people who have benefited from the support that we have had from Scotland. They were able to join in African worship at Mamelodi congregation as well as with a more western type of worship at St Andrews.

It happened to be Heritage Day and after the service at St Andrews the youth had organised a cultural lunch where we had food from all parts of Africa, Scotland, England and Holland, demonstrating the diversity of our church as well as of the nation.

The Whytes have made many friends in their short time here and they have had a great experience sharing in the different cultures which they said they would never have had if they had come as just tourists. Next week we are having a visit from Joyce Bell and her husband. Many of you will know of Joyce, she is one of the nurses from Alva who has been doing voluntary work with us for the past few years.

Graham’s life has been as busy as usual. This past Easter he conducted services at the Congregational Church with the Tennebrae service on Maundy Thursday, the Good Friday service and on Easter Day the Communion service. He then rushed to our Atteridgeville township Thumedi Makhgahlela congregation where he had been invited to preach and celebrate Holy Communion.

On 16th April he gave his inaugural lecture as head of department. It was entitled ‘Church discipline – semper reformanda (always reforming) in a time and space warp’. It was well attended and received by colleagues from the Pretoria University, the University of South Africa and colleagues and friends. For the past few months he has been looking after our SAINTS (Saint Andrew’s in the south) congregation while the minister, Glynnis Goynes was on long leave.

In addition, he has been quite involved in problems in the presbytery which are affecting our men's and women's associations and are encroaching on the peace and unity of the denomination at the point where we are celebrating ten years of union. He heads up a commission of presbytery which is struggling to resolve these issues.

And in his spare time (!) he is getting on with his Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education course. It is quite demanding but very enjoyable and is being tested out in his teaching practice. He completed the modules in Curriculum Development and Educational Technology with distinction in June and is trying to complete modules in Professional Development, Facilitating Learning, Assessment Practice, Research Supervision and Mentorship this semester. That will leave two modules for next year.

He will be returning to Scotland from 10th November until 9th December and you will be hearing more about that in due course.

Our family is all well. We have a new grandson called Kairn who was born in July. Michael, who is Kairn’s dad, is our son who is in the army. David, our other son, has had his job with Thomas Cook made into a permanent appointment which is a relief for us all; he had been with XL, which collapsed at the beginning of last year making thousands unemployed. Susan and her family are all well and we continue to have great joy from our grand-daughter Nicole who still wants to spend a lot of time with us “oldies”!

We hope that we will not leave so much time between the next correspondence, and hope that this finds you all well.

With lots of love
Sandra & Graham

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