In a cou­ple of days we’re going to move out of Gilling­ham. Fred­dy is start­ing his field­work in July, but we can’t stay till then because our ten­an­cy con­tract only allowed us to stay for a year or leave after 6 months. So we chose the sec­ond option. We will be in Hol­land until we go to Kenya.

The oth­er rea­son why we want to be in The Nether­lands, is the abdi­catie. This is a word that until recent­ly was fair­ly unknown to the major­i­ty of the Dutch. In Eng­lish, you would say abdi­ca­tion and after the expect­ed reply “What?” you would go on and say ‘the Queen is resign­ing’. This is of course a major event. The cur­rent Queen is called Beat­rix, and she has been in office from 1980. Her son, Willem-Alexan­der, is going to be our new King.

Our trav­el­ling scheme is as fol­lows: On 2 July we fly to Kenya. We’ll be there for 4 months and then from 26 Octo­ber to 10 Novem­ber we will short­ly be in The Nether­lands. Until 2 March 2014 we are stay­ing in Madagascar.

We have had a very good time here. Yes­ter­day we said good­bye to the house­group from church. Of course we hope to come back to Gilling­ham next year, because Fred­dy will be work­ing on his PhD at the uni­ver­si­ty. In the mean­time we are pack­ing again, mov­ing on, till we find our place…