A fast moving train

If you travel on a fast speed train; the scenery is a blur.  If you travel a bit slower, perhaps even stopping at the stations, you get to enjoy every aspect of all that is going on around you.  The beauty of the season, the rural landscape, the various crops and that old farmer whom you enjoyed wondering what his life might be like.  You might not get as far in a cruising train, but you'll be able to tell a better story about your trip because you would have taken in more.  And so it is with the past 5 weeks for us.  Somehow we accidently stepped onto the fast train, and now it's hard to recall anything.  Thank goodness for photos...but I'll be reading the signs more carefully at the main station terminal from now on.

After months of planning, Lyn Worsley and her husband Neil arrived in Cyprus.  Whilst it was part holiday for them, it was also a prime opportunity to add a human face to this Resilience Doughnut I'd been spruiking for the last 2yrs.  I arranged for Lyn to conduct two public seminars: one for parents of teenagers and a workshop for teachers and the like who wanted to understand more about resilience and the RD model.  They both went off a treat and I felt as though I'd managed to grow a small group of enthusiastic "dough-nutters"in  Cyprus whom I might work with.  It was also a timely message for Cyprus, especially with the current economic crisis and related pressures on community to dig deep and find alternate resources for support. It was encouraging to have some media interest in Lyn's visit also. The best part if the visit however, was having Lyn and Neil stay and be part of our family for the time that they were here.  Sam was asking after them a full fortnight later!

Sarah and Lyn taking a walk in the Old Town

Jessie tries her hand at making ravioli

Straight after we saw the Worsley's off on the plane to Malta, we dashed downstairs to the Arrivals gate to greet Ross' sister Susie and our niece Sally.  What a reunion that was for the 2 cousins!

Aside from the shock of how loud and busy it is living with our family; I think they had a wonderful time.  For Sally to be around her cousins, do some shopping with Jessie and experience a day at school and for Susie to explore a bit of the island and relax a long way from work.

Heading toward St Hilarion Castle in northern Cyprus

Watching a Turkish boxmaker at work

The girls at Kyrenia

They also got to see the children's International Day: by far the best celebration on the school's calendar.  We'll remember Angus in this "extra cute" lion costume (!) and Jessie dancing as a pirate and Anna enjoying the whole on-stage experience with her pre-school "Busy Bees" class.  Sam would have been more than memorable as an arm-plastered Prickly Pear if only he didn't come down with a nasty virus on the day of the show.  No problem for Sam though; he got to sit down the front and watch the whole show next to Sally.  

It's always great to have family and friends come to visit....and that's AS WELL AS the obligatory Tim Tam delivery.  Thanks for coming Susie and Sally!  

Sam has been a real trooper about his broken arm.  Hardly a complaint.....but longing for a real bath and an ocean swim.  His cast comes off tomorrow - fingers crossed.  In the meantime I've taken on a small on-line course through the Australian Psychological Society.  Good to get another part of the brain activated and to force myself to sit still.  Really enjoying it so far; just need to dedicate more time to it.  Another highlight for me was a much needed 4hrs at the Katafiyo Retreat House in a village in the Troodos foothills - oh how I love that house and surrounds in spring time.  Somehow the "fast train" managed to change pace that day.

Ross has just returned from Pakistan, and we're looking to some time away as a family on a beach later this week with Orthodox Easter.  Καλό Πάσχα, or Happy Easter!

Angus and his mate Rashid

Menaka, smiling and helpful as always

Angus tries on his lion costume for the show.  We had to be
quick to get this photo!

Legacy or folly: Saakashvili's glass police stations

Mother Georgia, who towers above Tbilisi.
A wine goblet in one hand, a sword in the
other.  An apt description for Georgia.

Last week I was in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.  One of the first things that strikes you when you travel in Georgia is the amount of glass.  The new airport terminal is all glass, despite the worn runway that makes for a rough landing, even in the smoothest of conditions.  As you drive into the capital Tbilisi, there are modern glass buildings everywhere.  The intriguing fact is that many of these buildings are actually police stations.  The story of how they came to be built from glass is an analogous to the broader journey of Georgia over the past 10 years.  

Georgia has a long history of organized crime activity dating back to the Soviet period and even earlier.  By the early 2000's, Georgia's mob bosses were among the leading crime figures in the entire former USSR.   Following the resignation of Georgia's president Eduard Shevardnadze after the so called 'Rose Revolution' in 2003, Mikheil Saakashvili became the new president.  He remained president until 2012, and was a generally popular, if not controversial pro-west leader who spearheaded a range of sweeping political and economic reforms.   

Upon coming to power, Saakashvili’s first and arguably most dramatic domestic actions consisted of a major crackdown on organised crime and Georgia’s corrupt law enforcement institutions. He used draconian measures to prosecute the organised crime bosses, imprisoning many and driving others into involuntary exile abroad. At the same time, top officials in many security ministries were fired, and in some cases forced to hand back millions of dollars worth of assets believed to have been obtained through illegal activities.

He also comprehensively reshaped the country’s police forces. Thousands of officers were fired on the spot, and the most corrupt police service, the highway police, was disbanded altogether. He also drastically increased police salaries and instituted stringent new hiring and promotion procedures, thereby recruiting into the force a new cohort of officers eager to earn an honest living as police.  As an indication, the average salary of a police officer in Georgia today, is 23 times higher than it was in 2004.

One of the most visible impacts of these reforms has been the reconstruction of many police stations across the country out of......glass.  This is intended to be a symbolic of Georgia's commitment to transparency and to eliminate corruption.  For some this is just theatre, and that the old ways of business still prevail (I heard it said that Saakashvili's relative owns the largest glass company in Georgia, although I suspect this may be more urban myth than fact)!  Whether it's theatre or not, the reform steps that Georgia has taken in the past 10 years would appear to be significant. 

I still remember my first visit to Georgia in 2001, and being stopped several times by police between the airport and the city with an expectation of a bribe payment.  Nowadays you are more likely to be stopped by a tourist coach as it disgorges tourists, stopping to photograph one of the many thousands of churches or new glass police stations!

Banks closed but hospitals open: Three x-rays in a week

Journalists camp outside the Cyprus parliament last week.
Nicosia was hit by a mini dust storm during the financial
crisis, which in many ways felt like a metaphor to the
broader events in Cyprus, and also in our own lives this
past week.

Life can surprise you sometimes.  Just when things seem to all be in place and going well, out of nowhere you can be hit by a series of events that you could never have predicted, but that all have the potential to knock you off-centre.  For us, the past week has been a bit like this.   Just as Cyprus has just weathered a financial storm, it feels like we've had a storm ourselves in which we've had to 'hook in and hold on'.  It all started last weekend, when Sarah and I went out for an early morning ride together.  The weather was quite cold, and Sarah, who was already feeling a little unwell, got some serious cold into her bones and promptly went down with fever and a racking cough.  A day or two passed with no improvement, and at two points throughout the week, the doctor thought it could have been pneumonia.  Thankfully the chest x-rays were clear, and so the most likely diagnosis was then a bad case of bronchitis.  Sarah was put onto an antibiotic, but after a few days the side effects were far worse than any illness the drugs were trying to cure, so she stopped taking it and resigned herself to resting and recovering naturally.  Needless to say, it threw her for six.

Ouch!  Sam's x-rays tell the story

Then to cap things off yesterday, while Sarah was home resting yesterday I was out with the kids at an Easter lunch in a village near Nicosia.  Whilst at the lunch poor Sam took a bad fall whilst on an easter egg hunt and broke his arm in two places.  A rapid drive to the hospital ensued.  Whilst travelling to the hospital a somewhat distressed and shocked Sam stoically said to me "Daddy, it's good that I didn't break both my arms, isn't it?"   Thankfully he was able to be seen promptly at the hospital by an excellent orthopaedic doctor who was able to fix the arm under a local anaesthetic, thereby saving a more detailed operation and a possible night in the hospital.   Sam was remarkably brave throughout, and there was a profound simplicity in how he processed the whole event.  Since getting home yesterday he's has been receiving lots of love and care, and one of his main concerns is how he is going to write at school on Tuesday, as well as how he'll be able to dance in some of his upcoming performances!  

Below is a clip of Sam telling us about his injury only hours afterward.

This confluence of events has reminded us of our frailty and need for God's grace.  There's a clarity in this thinking that can be both humbling and freeing when we realise we need to let go of any presumption that we are somehow in control.   

A couple of other milestones also passed recently: we had a first swim in the ocean for the year, Angus took his first communion in church on Sunday, and Anna finally ate some fruit! 

The family after Gus' first communion

A first swim: Jessie and her friend Iliana

Menaka and Gus

A breakthrough for Anna:)