The end of school and a family visit

Sarah and Roger at St Hilarion castle

Summer has well and truly arrived in Cyprus, with the thermometer topping 40 on most days last week.  School finished a few weeks back and the kids are all slowing down for the long summer break.  Over recent weeks we have enjoyed the regular end of school activities with various concerts and presentations. This year-end was a more significant one for Jessie with her graduation from Year 6, and there was a great show and presentation to mark this occasion.

It has also been very special to have a visit from Sarah's brother Roger, his wife Bonnie and their two boys Ben and Bryce from the US.  The cousins reconnected quickly, and spent some great time together enjoying the various sites of Cyprus, including climbing castles, ancient ruins, medieval harbours, swimming at beaches, diving off boats, rocks and cliffs, watersliding and mountain visits. An action packed week was had by all, and many good memories for the cousins together.

Birthdays for both Ben and Bryce

Some jumping off boats. First Angus......

Then Ben....

Then Sam....

And Anna also!

Clear water around the caves at Cape Grecko

Roger, Bonnie, Ben and Bryce at Salamis ruins

OH&S Cyprus style!

A walk around Konnos Bay

It's never easy to get the Piper kids
to pose for a photograph!

Waterfights at home!

A great time together for the cousins

Primary school finished!

World Cup Fever

The picture says it all, Angus and his good mates Clemens (German) and Repe (Finnish, but part Chilean) staying up late to watch the Australia vs Chile match.  With timezone differences the games here have been on each day at 7pm, 10pm, and 1am, so plenty of late nights and much discussion and post match analysis going on each day.

I'm in Lebanon this week, and there is a strong following for either Brazil or Germany here, the latter possibly for less than noble reasons which are better left unsaid.

As for Angus' prediction, it will be a France vs Germany final, and France will come up with the goods. Time will tell! In the meantime sleep deprivation will be the order of the day for many of us.

Flag fever in Beirut

The split realities of Nicosia

Since Christmas the downtown area of the Nicosia is going through a resurgence of sorts. It seems that new cafes and restaurants are opening up each week, along with a plethora of frozen yoghurt shops which are a current craze. Restoration and gentrification is changing the face and character of some areas, and there is a growing sense of economic optimism on the back of the old city's newfound popularity.

However you don't have to walk far from the bustling tourist areas to find a very different reality. As with the whole of Cyprus, Nicosia continues to be a divided capitol and the line of division (known as the green line or buffer zone) runs right through the middle of the old city.  In the old town itself, the UN controlled buffer zone is only 5-10m wide in parts, with Turkish and Greek Cypriot soldiers manning posts on either side.  It has been this way for the last 40 years, and positive progress towards any meaningful resolution of 'the Cyprus problem' seems more distant than ever.  

Arabahmet neighbourhood in the Nicosia old town

Even after three and a half years here, it can still feel surreal at times to walk the bustling streets or sit in one of the many new chic cafes drinking a 'cyprus (not Turkish) coffee' or frappe, whilst just metres away armed soldiers on both sides of the divide keep a watchful eye from their posts along the buffer zone.  We often walk in the old city, and a particular favourite for Ross is to enter the north at the Ledra Palace crossing, and then wander through the rundown streets of 'Arabahmet' (the Arab quarter) and then along the buffer zone to re-enter the south at the main crossing in the centre of town. Especially in summer people live very much outdoors, and as you walk down the narrow streets you can find yourself immediately outside the open entrance to someone's living or dining room as the family sits together drinking tea or playing cards or backgammon.

The clip below is filmed in the old city, and shows something of the 'other reality' of a divided Cyprus.

And the following pictures give some more perspectives from the Arab quarter in the old town.

Football pitch between Arabahmet and the Ledra Palace
crossing point.  Angus has friends who live nearby so
they have enjoyed the occasional game here

Near the Armenian monastery under restoration
in Arabahmet

A view to the 'Pentadaktylos' in the north

Beautiful Ottoman architecture

Just in case you forgot which country controls the north!

Sarah's Two Trips in Two Weeks

As always for us in Cyprus, May is a busy month. In addition to many music and school events, and also Ross' travel, I had the opportunity to take a voluntary work trip plus a small holiday with an old friend.  In keeping with making the most of our final year here, I jumped at both offers.  

In mid-May I travelled to Turkey to assist with some staff care work.  The town of Gaziantep is located in the south and is less than an hour from the Syrian border.  Gaziantep serves as a hub to support World Vision's emergency response program in Northern Syria. It's a challenging program because many components are currently managed remotely. In other words, international staff cannot currently enter Syria country due to security and other related restrictions. The program relies on local Syrian staff to actually implement program activities in Syria, with leadership and support provided remotely by the team in Turkey. Remote program management presents a number of challenges, particularly with management of cash and project monitoring, but the team are doing a great job in working around these issues. The overall program includes a range of large scale health, education, water and sanitation projects. 

Since I couldn't photograph the staff....I've put in a pic
 of the market I visited after hours. It was great to
be in a non-touristy town of Turkey.

As with any challenging humanitarian aid project in the midst of war, the effects on the staff can vary from none at all to complex and diverse. World Vision operates a staff care program around the world, taking its promise of "We Value People" seriously. My role was to provide psychological and general staff care support to those who needed to debrief or just talk things out; providing them with the time to reflect on how they may or may not be coping in their given role and in the challenges of operating remotely. Many staff and two and a half days later...I was..lets say...all listened out.  What a privilege though, to understand the work better and to witness people's approach to the day to day uncertainty of working with people in a war zone. It was humbling to hear their contentment simply for 'today', especially the Syrian staff who had left family in Syria to get work in Turkey so they could live.  "We don't know what will happen tomorrow, but for now, for today my family is alive".

Gaziantep

Not long after that, a date in the diary had been set: for two Mums of 4 to get away and have a mini-holiday in the sun.  My very dear friend of over 20yrs (who's counting?) Fiona Prior, flew out from the UK to spend some time with me in Cyprus.  Something spoken of for ages, and for a number of years with babes-in-arms, it seemed only a pipe dream. But, as we said together many times on our first day of meeting up, "we did it!". Heck, it wasn't like we climbed Everest, but for each of us in this season of life - it was something to be celebrated.

It was a great weekend away in Paphos, staying at a hotel, lying by the water, taking morning bike rides, and reading books completely uninterrupted. Of course the latter was only possible when we managed to stop talking....recollecting memories and making new ones all at once. Filling in the years that passed in which we were just too busy to stop and share.  I came away so thankful for old friends. No, correction, thankful for Fiona. Still working on one more sighting before departing the northern hemisphere.:) Love to get the families together somehow!

Aquamere Hotel just out of Paphos on the west coast of Cyprus

Great bike path...

Dinner without kids at Aphrodite Baths!