tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42605966488927846552012-02-17T03:53:37.811+02:00Raymond Perrier is now working as the Director of the Jesuit Institute of South Africa. This personal blog is for family and friends met on previous parts of the journey: London, New York, Uganda; Interbrand, the Jesuits, CAFOD; Oxford and LSE.Raymond in South Africahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04409347516757147595noreply@blogger.comBlogger141100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4260596648892784655.post-81901450622321720082011-05-18T15:37:00.001+02:002011-05-18T15:37:46.535+02:00

Curious how we still assume that these are the climactic words in a wedding ceremony – when any one of the millions who like me were watching the Royal Wedding will know that the words are actually ‘I will’.  A modal verb of desire rather than one of action.  The recent Royal Wedding was shown live on the main South African TV channel and watched – to my surprise – by many of my South African

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When I was living in Northern Uganda you might have justifiably felt sorry for my cultural deprivation.  The music life was what the kids created in chapel; the theatre scene was our back-of-the-truck drama group; the art-scape limited to what we could do with a few coloured pencils.  No wonder I got parcels containing theatre reviews, ballet brochures and opera DVD’s.  But Jo’burg is a very

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Having not posted for several weeks, I hope that a few of you at least were wondering if I had run out of things to say.  In fact, my excuse is the opposite – I have been too busy writing for other outlets to sit down to tap out a specific piece for my friends and family around the world.  You see, I have entered the world of official blogging. When this mailing started almost 10 years ago, as I

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Christmas is coming.  The days are getting shorter, the afternoons darker, the wind colder, and sooner than usual, the streets whiter.  However, down here, 26 degrees South of the equator, it is 26 degrees plus - and none of the above applies.  Our days are long, sunny and hot.  And getting longer, sunnier and hotter.  Because, of course, in South Africa Christmas is not mid-winter but mid-summer

Raymond in South Africahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04409347516757147595noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4260596648892784655.post-26694912619777944922010-11-19T18:11:00.001+02:002010-11-19T18:29:37.453+02:00

Some of you living in the UK have been watching ‘The Big Silence’.  (If you have not, or could not, you can ‘tube it up’ in 12 x 15 minute episodes at www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5AhtmlL81U or see www.growingintosilence.com/ ).  This BBC programme followed on from the hugely successful ‘The Monastery’ in which 5 unlikely men agreed to spend 30 days living and working in a Benedictine Monastery

Raymond in South Africahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04409347516757147595noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4260596648892784655.post-13434671033671503342010-11-01T18:40:00.000+02:002010-11-01T18:40:38.958+02:00

September provided 3 distinct opportunities to reflect on the concept of pride: not the personal pride that is among the 7 deadly sins. Rather I mean the collective pride that comes from identity; a group knowing who they are and presenting that publicly. I started the month with a visit to the UK – timed not to coincide with the Papal visit but rather for the Bat Mitzvah of the charming

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Let me defend this blog about India by drawing 2 important links between South Africa and India.  It was exactly 150 years ago that the first Indian workers were brought to Natal by the British, confident that they would be as happy to work for low wages in one part of the Empire as in another.  And it was in South Africa that the young Cambridge lawyer Gandhi had his first experience of racial

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And in a real sense it is.  It is now 7 weeks since the end of the World Cup and the place is more or less back to normal.  But I am conscious that I did not give you (gentle reader) any live commentary at the time so, before I move on, let me return for one more blog to those extraordinary 30 days in which South Africa was at the centre of the universe.  I don’t know how much hype there was

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Some of you might be surprised that I can even spell football, let alone write about it.  But in fact – who says miracles don’t happen? – I am as excited as everyone else in South Africa about the World Cup.  I have even given the staff a holiday so we can all go and watch the opening match. Win, lose or draw on Friday, South Africans really feel that we have won already.  For the first time the

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Recently, a new young thrusting Oxonian prime minister has been offering the British public negotiation, negotiation, negotiation.  But 13 years ago the dawn rose over a previous young thrusting Oxonian prime minister and the solution he offered was the three-fold mantra of education, education, education.  It is a truism that education is key to unlocking potential and 3 years at Oxford has

Raymond in South Africahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04409347516757147595noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4260596648892784655.post-2660772787306574372010-04-09T10:08:00.001+02:002010-04-09T10:57:52.598+02:00

One thing that religions, and especially the Catholic Church, have tended to be good at in previous centuries is communication.  Whether through printing or music or art or architecture or just good stories, the Church has often been admired (or feared) for her ability to get her message across.  However, curiously, in the modern age – the age of communication! – this has been proven to be less

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Desmond Tutu, the retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Prize winner, and high priest of national reconciliation, was once accused of making the Bible political.  He replied: “I don’t know which Bible you are reading but mine is already political!” The claim of Tony Blair’s spin doctor that ‘we don’t do God’ would make little sense in South Africa.  Tutu was not the only hero of the

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Two weeks in to the great African adventure and a chance to reflect on what has happened so far.  A fellow novice once commented that I had the great ability to feel at home wherever I was – whether living in designer apartments in London or New York, or in the shadow of a Victorian church in Tottenham, or in a refugee camp.  And the same seems to be true once more.  I have slipped into life in

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Just as you are enjoying the nice cosy bit of the Christmas story, don’t forget that the next instalment has Jesus fleeing with his parents to start his new life on a new continent. In an age where most people seem to be travelling ‘out of Africa’, I shall soon be following Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the donkey - by moving in to Africa. So that is why, after a two-and-a-half year silence, you

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