It's Friday. Love and peace especially the Ashpital family who need it more than ever.
Yesterday I talked about that wonderful speaker Chris Lubbe who had survived torture, repeated imprisonment and witnessing the murder of a man he was trying to help, rising above retaliation with the help of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, choosing a non-violent path. His generosity of spirit and his words are still going through my head. He said things like "some of you are suffering pain and ill health, but you will get through it." and "if I got through torture, you will get through this" "We do not have to accept the world as it is." "We need to do our part to bring about change". "Don't look back on bad things that have happened." "Find a way to make the world a better place".
And that has given me and I think hundreds of others lucky enough to have been on this cruise so much hope.
Since writing yesterday we have covered another 450 nautical miles, crossed the Equator and are heading North West, from the live info on screen it looks as though we are just south west of Liberia, (Hello Adrienne and Winston, thinking about inspiring people!). Our coordinates are 2 degrees north and 10 degrees west, so as predicted back in the Northern Hemisphere. It's 31C today, and cloud cover is classed as 5/8. The heat has advised us indoors again, firstly to paint a humming bird with a background produced by putting a wet on wet wash under a sheet of Clingfilm. I love the effect the wrinkles make. I went to two art classes actually.
Then we lunched, heartily again, listened to a Historical Murder Presentation, one of a series presented by an ex- policeman who has researched them, and now tells the stories, presents the evidence before the audience becomes the jury and then hears the outcome.
Today at lunch we were accompanied by a pod of dolphins for several minutes. Beautiful shiny dolphins jumping, playing, friends. It was so lovely to see them. I am amazed that considering where we are we hardly see any sea life, so its a real delight when it happens. The flying fish have come back again too, so we watch them from the balcony too, and enjoy beautiful sunrises, changing seas and skies.
Over the course of a lovely dinner we talked to the couple from Scotland we dined with two nights ago, Margaret and Alan. We covered some ground! Family, teaching, South African politics, hip replacements, world travel, this cruise. They were lovely and so easy to talk to. We discovered that Jimmy James hadn't been allowed to disembark in Cape Town to travel on to his next cruise ship gig. He apparently didn't have enough blank pages in his passport.
For a few days we have been back on UK time, but tonight we will put the clocks back an hour, and possibly one more time before we turn right after Cape Verde and head north eastwards towards the Canaries and Madeira. Two more sea days yo land...
Early night for us - all this on board activity and inspiration can be tiring. Bye for now x
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