Category: News

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Don’t look back… but… Kirk Zero by 2037?

It suddenly dawned on me that May was coming round, and for most of the past 8 years that meant there would be some kind of trouble and rumpus regarding the Church of Scotland annual General Assembly. It’s actually a great joy to be able to put all that behind us now. Indeed, Phillip Jensen …

I don’t really understand it so it must be great!

Journalists love writing about themselves and Nigerian journalists are no exception. I came across this gushing report on the Nation’s awesome achievements whilst searching for a turgid (but apparently award-winning) article on threats to Nigerian languages from the dash to English. I’m honestly trying not to be unfair here and to allow for the possibility …

Christmas 2014 Newsletter

Download the printable PDF: Monthly Museletter 40 Christmas Greetings from Jos!  Yesterday we had our office Christmas celebration not just with colleagues but with their families too. Our group has certainly kept growing over the last year. Last year’s party met in our back garden. This time we met in a hall (on the compound we …

BA’s worryingly unreliable baggage allowances for children [UPDATED]

Update 23 June 2014 After posting this to Twitter and Facebook last week I was contacted and told that an agent would get in touch. Eventually that happened and they have told me that they’ve sent £140 by cheque, but without admitting explicitly that anything was wrong, nor giving any clearer assurance about what we …

A Linguist-Geek Riddle

Is “dead metaphor” a dead metaphor? If not, then who killed it? Background: Reading through a colleague’s excellent paper on the difficulty of handling words for ‘angry’ and ‘sad’ in the NW Nigerian language Huba, one section dealt with metaphors that we live by. A dead metaphor is one that has been used so much …

The Rains have Begun!

A week and a day ago rainy season began here in Jos. We had had a couple of rains in earlier April, but a week ago we clearly moved from generally-clear skies to cloudy ones. A slice of bread left out overnight wasn’t turned utterly to crust by the morning as it would normally be …

Full House

Another nice thing about our new house has been having space to have people stay. Recently we enjoyed having the Creighton family stay with us for a week or so while husband Rick was at a conference in Brazil. They’re the British family we have visited in Kagoro and done joint home-school things with recently. …

A home ‘school’ room

One of the exciting aspects of living in the new house has been the extra space, particularly the school room. This dedicated room has made it so much easier for Rebekah to focus on what she’s learning (and increasingly Elizabeth who doesn’t like to be left out). Home educating the girls has also led to …

We’ve Moved

We moved house! Actually we moved just over a week ago and have been unpacking and settling into our new house since. We’re on a compound called ‘Mountain View’, and unsurprisingly there is a large hill just at the back of the compound adorned with water tower and radio masts. Rebekah and Elizabeth have been …

A quick visit back to the UK

Happy New Year! We’ve been on the road the last week, all in the run-up to the family wedding we celebrated on Saturday near Exeter. We left Jos on Monday at lunchtime to be driven down to Abuja with a fairly modest load of suitcases, then stayed overnight before flying to Heathrow the next morning. …