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Buckden Roundabout
August 2017
Weekly Prayer Roster
Each week during the year the Churches, in their prayers, remember the residents of particular streets in the village, those who
work in the parish and village organizations. Those to be remembered this month are:
6th August
Scouts, Cubs and Beavers, Guides, Brownies and Rainbows, Playgroup and Day Nursery, Buck-
den out of School Scheme, Buckden Towers Youth Retreat Centre
13th August
Mayfield, Springfield Close, The Osiers, Stirtloe
20th August
Vineyard Way, Burberry Road, Swan End, Lark End, The Library and its librarians
27th August
The churches of the village: St Hugh’s, St Mary’s, Buckden Methodist Church, also Offord and
Perry Baptist Churches, members of home groups from these and other local churches, minis-
ters and all who make our churches welcoming and worshipful places
Church News & Writing Competition
The Journey
By Gayle Olsen
W
alking the children to school, looking out for baby chimpanzees, I had no
idea what was about to unfold. We were living in a remote mine com-
pound in the Sierra Leone bush. We never made it to school; some minework-
ers told us that rebels had forded the river and had nearly reached the plant
where my husband worked.
Back home I boiled water and cooked chicken and rice in case the mine’s gener-
ator was blown up. My husband arrived shortly before the rebels attacked. Re-
calling my MOD training, I secured our curtains with heavy furniture to protect
us from shrapnel. Soon bullets were ricocheting off our roof.
After the rebels retreated we inspected the damage. Cars and buildings had
been blown up; the reek of cordite was everywhere. One serious casualty was the Malay chef who had fallen on his own knife.
Speaking Bahasa Indonesia, similar to Malay, I was able to calm him, while we patched him up until the Belgian doctor could
treat him.
After a very nervous night, we were joined by three English nuns (and their short wave radio.) The rebels had closed the only
road to Freetown, so evacuation had to be by sea. At the mine’s wharf there was a small tug and a barge, normally used to carry
titanium ore to ships in the Sherbro estuary. We took with us another child whose mother had recently died; his father had
been taken hostage by the rebels. Willing hands helped us scramble up the side of the barge. I almost threw the children to the
men leaning over above me. I was hauled up by my shorts. I clutched handfuls of my daughter’s hair as we edged our way to
the stern of the barge. On board there were more than 500 frightened people of many nationalities: Finns, Portuguese, Ger-
mans, Malays, Sierra Leonians and British. As the tug pushed the barge through the mangrove swamps, many settled in the hull
which was dank, dark and smelly. After an hour French speaking soldiers came on board and examined our papers before head-
ing upriver.
In the estuary were two more barges with about 1,000 people evacuated from another mine and the surrounding area. The BBC
World Service’s report that, despite the attacks, the mines were still operating provoked the laughter of 1,500 people. The day-
time temperature had exceeded 38 degrees. At night it was freezing. We had only shorts, t-shirts and flip flops. One of the nuns,
an expert astronomer, distracted the children by describing the night sky. The tug’s single toilet was soon overflowing.
After 22 hours we arrived in Freetown. We had not eaten for 28 hours. A bus took us from the dock to the Mammy Yoko hotel,
where we showered off the red, African earth. While the children played soldiers and rebels, the adults relaxed, knowing that a
chartered plane would fly us to Europe. We arrived in Brussels, in the snow, still dressed in t-shirts and shorts.
Writing Competition
This month, we publish the winning entry in
our writing competition. Congratulations to
Gayle Olsen. The judge had this to say about
Gayle’s entry:
“I chose this as the winner
because it has a very strong sense of place
and of real events. The opening hooks the
reader in with its contrast of the ordinary
'walking to school', with the unusual 'looking
out for baby chimpanzees', and the danger
underlying all the events keeps the reader
interested throughout.“
Runners-up will be
published in later editions