From the safety of the distance I always told myself, I am going to have a huge party. After my 40th birthday when I compiled a playlist last minute and got so stressed out over it that it spoiled the whole party for me, I decided to learn from this mistake. From now on, I wanted to choose one song a day for my 50th birthday-party playlist. The playlist is still empty.

Turning half a century old made me recapitulate my life. Was I where I wanted to be with 50? Is there anything I should have put in place until then? A frightening thought.

The reason I started bloging again was to share to first 50 of my life. To be somewhat accountable about changes I want to make. And to pass on wisdom and life experiences I have accumulated together with grey hair and wrinkles through all those years.

I don’t feel very different from 39. No, that’s not right. I do feel very different, but I don’t feel any older. At all.

I always went through life with a feeling of frustration or utter excitement. One of the things I want to change are the frustration periods. What I never want to change until I am very very old is the excitement I feel, when I know something new is about to begin. I am excited right now.

This picture was actually taken on my 48th birthday.

says Ania Noster, who I had the privilege to meet a month ago. She works with Heidi Baker  in Mozambique where she started a prison ministry.
She is an amazing woman, absolutely fearless. She said, she prayed and asked God to send you to the darkest places, where nobody wanted to go. And He sent her to Somalia. She went twice. It is her dream to build playgrounds in Somalia and teach the children how to play again.

Here is an excerpt from a post by Benjamin Church with whom she went to Somalia. I found it here :

In December of 2011 I walked through the hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia where I witnessed indescribable suffering among the people – the results of war, famine, poverty and disease. But the human being is resilient. She can survive even those things. As a lead doctor gave me a tour through the hospital he turned and said “there are people who come here in time to receive treatment to survive and live. We give them what their bodies need, but they don’t live, they die.” As I heard his words, thoughts ran through my mind, “But it doesn’t make sense”, I thought. “They should live. They are getting treatment. They are receiving what they need.”

A moment passed as I contemplated these thoughts then I asked, “Why?”

The doctor hesitated briefly then, with a deep sorrow in his eyes, responded, “they die because they have lost hope.”

They die because they have lost hope.

War, famine, poverty and disease. These a person can survive. A loss of hope, no one can survive. People need hope to live. I think Ania was right… hope is life to the soul.

So today I bring good news.

There is always hope.

Whatever the circumstance in life, no matter what it is, that circumstance can only be seen accurately when seen in the context of knowing that it can get better. That it can be restored. Knowing that it can be redeemed. And that is what hope is – to actively and confidently expect everything to become better.

Everything must be viewed through the lens of hope. Your family. Your health. Your finances. Your city. Your nation. Take a few seconds right now and slow down. Fix your thoughts on the close and personal Holy Spirit who loves and accepts you above and beyond your wildest imagination.  …and breathe in the hope of heaven coming to earth.

There is no place too dark. There is no place too dangerous.

There is hope for every person, every situation, every nation.

Myself and my dear friend, Ania, have had the opportunity to see hope being restored to a nation. We have seen the very beginning of what hope restored to a people group looks like.

And it is beautiful.

The first time we visited Mogadishu, Somalia, was in mid August 2011. We had heard of the despair from famine and war that was mercilessly gripping the land. So we went there. We didn’t have anything. We didn’t have any money. We didn’t have any contacts. We didn’t have any plan. Neither of us had been to Somalia before and we had close to zero knowledge of the land or the culture.

But we did have compassion for the people that were suffering, a discontent in our hearts for the injustice taking place. And above all, we had a belief in the power of the Gospel.

So we went.

When we arrived, the city resembled a chilling, bombed out, war-zone, ghost town under a blanket of death, hopelessness and fear more than an actual city. Because of famine, hundreds of thousands of starving Somalis, who had nothing but the air in their lungs and the tattered clothing on their backs, were risking their lives to venture into the city, seeking help. Try to see that and you may begin to get a small picture of what it was like.

So we began to pray and spread the word. And many of you began to pray. And the Holy Spirit began to move over the land. (You can read more about our first visit to Mogadishu in a previous blog that I posted)

Shortly after our departure we began to make plans to return to Mogadishu. Our hearts had been deeply moved from our first visit and we wanted to help the people in any way that we could. So we organized another visit to the city and this time we would bring food for those dying from famine and anything else we could bring that would save lives and help those in need.

Upon our arrival to the city, we were surprised to see how dramatically it had improved since our previous visit. Among the first things we recognized was a very noticeable change in the attitudes of the people and in the over all spiritual atmosphere. There had been a marked shift. The amount of violence and war clashes in the streets had decreased. The people were less paranoid and fearful. There were many more smiles More shops and markets were doing business and the level of activity in the streets had increased.

A city had begun to be transformed. Hope had begun to dawn within the hearts of the people.

Hello world, I am back. A lot happened the last two years. I joined facebook after I stopped blogging. It felt like coming from blog island to a party where EVERYBODY was. Why did nobody tell me?

Luzie told me years ago, you must join facebook and I said, none of my friends are there, because they are old. And then there they were. Young and old. Almost everybody and even more. I made lots of new friends. Suddenly a hundred people wished me happy birthday. I felt loved and reconected with the world (Germany).

I started to play farmville. Inspired by farmville, I finally started a vegetable garden. I grew tomatoes from seeds. And lots of salads. And herbs. And that was it.

We planned the Sharehouse, we started to build furnitures and sold salads at the market. (about three times).

I became sick and spent 6 nights at the provincial hospital. They released me on Christmas day.

I wrote a new novel and sold it. It will come out in October.

We moved to Hermanus.  (again)

Friends died and became sick and died and divorced.

We experienced the first miracle healings.

I started to knit and crochet.

I turned 49.

We took a family photo for Christmas. We haven’t done this for years. If ever. Only the top one made it.

These are the blurbs. We took about a hundred pictures. I arranged the setting and put up the tripod and Anton’s friend Lorenzo pushed the button.

First test shoot with Lorenzo. He plays the piano since he is six years old and he has the tiniest ears I’ve ever seen. He said, they called him “Shrek” in primary school.

The World Cup was amazing! I didn’t expect it to be. We almost fled to Germany but fortunately it didn’t happen. I wrote a weekly column at the Sunday Frankfurter Allgemeine, which I enjoyed very much, but I said everything I had to say and now you have to go with amazing.

But here are pictures from our trip. We went to Durban and drove Andries Bakkie down via Coffe Bay and the Karoo. We had two season in two days. One day we swam in the warm Indian Ozean, the other day we were snowed in 150km north of Umtata. Was für ein Erlebnis!

We had so much fun on this big swing at the first place we stayed at the coast south of Durban

Rondavels in Transkei

The day before the snow

The best feature of the house in Cape Town

We are staying in Cape Town for a while, with internet, so I will catch up soon!

In movies, this is the part which you always see in fast forward, when they are happy in love, depressed, recover, or just go on with their lives, until something  happens and the story finally continues. In a good story, there is a purpose to every scene. Even when you don’t see it now, it will be revealed to you later. Everything makes sense. The good and the bad. If it doesn’t, it is not a good story.

There is this young Xhosa man, P. He is about 20. A year ago, he had a bicycle accident which left him paralyzed. After several month in rehab, he is back in the hospital for more than six months now. Not because of his accident, but because his operation wounds won’t heal and resulting from that he developed bedsores. We see him every Tuesday. Things happened in these six months. Life and hope came back. He gained weight, he got filled with the Spirit and came out of his depression, someone bought a special bed for him, so his bedsores can heal. Some feeling came back into his legs. Two weeks ago they transplanted skin on to his open wounds and he finally starts healing. Last night he phoned Sven and told him he is allowed to go home for two days. Things are happening very slowly. Much too slow in our opinion, but they do happen.

Sven went to visit him last night. They chatted and Sven told P. about Anton, our son and asked P. if he could pray for him, because Anton struggles in school and life, and P. listened to him and he was so touched, he almost cried. He said, when he was Anton’s age, he felt exactly the same, but he had nobody to talk to. P.’s father died when he was 6 and his older brother’s car was stolen at this time and the brother was so angry and upset about that, he was not available for him. He said, how wonderful for Anton to have a father like Sven to talk about all these things and he P. shared about his life like he never did before, how he dropped out of school in Grade 10 and started to drink and take drugs and have sex and messed up his life and then the accident happened. P. said, it really bugs him that he had never finished school and robbed himself of the opportunity to do something with his life. Sven told him that I also dropped out of school after grade 10 and that I went back to school later, finished my Abitur and studied.

Sven said, it was if a light went on in P., when he told him that he can also finish his Matric if he wants to. It totally shifted his perspective. He thought that he had made a mistake and his whole life is now spiraling downwards and there is no way back because he has gone too far. Suddenly he understood, there is another chance, a life is opening up again for  him. Then P. prayed a long prayer in Xhosa for Anton and when Sven left, he was changed.

Meanwhile, Anton and I sat in bed, watching Nip Tuck. I decided he was old enough and it is time to introduce him to some excellent storytelling.
Nip Tuck is genius. If you don’t know Nip Tuck, please watch the first season.
It is about how people try to find meaning and happiness in a godless world, choosing the obvious like money, sex and beauty, and watching them fail. In a good story like Nip Tuck, the characters are multilayered and this is, where it becomes really interesting.
Meaning and a sense of purpose and truth occur when they for a moment get over themselves, admit that they were wrong and make decisions against their own interest out of love and compassion, only to fall back into their old, destructive pattern afterwards.

When Sven came back late at night and told me about his evening with P., I felt this excitement, which I always feel, when a good story comes together. When people touch each others lives. This is the opposite of a godless world. A world with God makes sense, gives hope and a purpose. Suffering and even death can lead to life and resurrection. There is no such point in life where you can’t turn around. My son’s struggle and my worries about it made sense because by sharing it with P. his perception changed.

If one could just fast-forward the dull parts, when nothing seems to make sense, like six months in a hospital. And yet, this time of pain and being stuck is crafting our character for a new season in  life. And like in a good story, it only makes sense later.

Two things everyone who wants to have children should consider:
#1: They will get sick. A lot!
#2: They will become teenagers.
If you have kids, you will know what I mean. If you don’t, and still want some, you don’t want to know.

We were watching a movie the other day and there was this  scene where the little girl woke up in the middle of the night, holding her ear, crying in pain, when  Sven and I cringed simultaneously.

It is horrible to have a sick child. You think he will die or never get over it and three weeks later you can’t even remember he was sick.
But some Krupp cough nights will stay in your memory, the horror to wake up by this horrific sound of the cough, the sound of desperately gasping.
Calling the ambulance at three o’clock in the morning and calming the panicking child being in utter panic yourself.

But times will come, when they get less and less sick, recover quickly and this is when they turn into teenagers. Suddenly the sweet little child becomes a person you have never known before. Some other being sometimes takes over and then they are back to normal as if nothing has happened. My fear is that this strange, rebellious and completely unrational being will stay one day and my child will never come back again.

I looked at photos of my little children and thought, they are gone, they are dead, they will never come back, lost forever. But I think I wrote this before.
When you have a baby you think this is now your life forever and for the first years it seems as it is, and suddenly they are grown and in five years time they might be gone.
Part of me can’t wait, part of me too. I think I am ready for them to grow up.

Sometimes I love it and then I do it. Other times I don’t and then I don’t. I admire people who have the consistancy to blog on a regular basis. For years and even in two languages. I can’t do that.

Sometimes I think in English, other days in German. Since I am on facebook it is more German because I am more in contact with my German friends and the German world. That’s why I started to write German again. And German is still the language I write in.
But now my English speaking friends can’t read my blog anymore and the views dropped drastically. That’s why I write in English again. For now.

I often ask myself why do I blog and sometimes I know the answer and sometimes I don’t.
I blog because I like the form. This is how I started writing. I was a blogger before blogging was invented. I wrote these little stories into little booklets and I gave them to my friends and they liked it and L. said, it would be really nice if you would write something that wouldn’t be something you stick onto your toilet-wall but something that could be published.

I was very upset when he said that and I wrote him an angry letter and canceled our friendship. But luckily I got over myself and started to write a novel and it became a successful book.
L. is still my best friend and I became a writer. That was in 1998.

I wrote many more books since then, but I haven’t written a novel for more than 5 years. I have books full of brilliant ideas about what to write but they never made it into a novel.
Since the only books that will sell are either novels or short stories, and I don’t do short stories, I have to write novels.
Part of me wants that, part of me doesn’t. It feels forced. I would rather write short short stories about everything around me. And this is why I blog.

I often don’t want to write publically. This is the time when I don’t blog. But since this is the only platform where I can publish this form of writing I come back. The next step would be to combine the two forms of writing. As I did in my first novel. But more radical, I guess.

Pinky ist unsere Putzfrau, aber das klingt nicht schön. Maid, sagt man hier, aber unter Maid stelle ich mir eine zierliche junge Frau mit einem schwarzen Schürzenkostüm und Spitzenhäubchen auf dem Kopf vor.
Pinky ist zwar jung, aber ganz und gar nicht zierlich. Ziemlich wuchtig eher.

Sven hat sie und ihrer Schwester Zimka vor einem Jahr beim trampen mitgenommen. Zimka war gar nicht ihre Schwester, wie sich später herausstellte, sondern eine Freundin, was bei den Xhosa so gut wie das selbe ist.

Da Pinky einen Job suchte und wir händerringend jemanden, der unser Haus  in Ordnung hält, weil wir so schlecht darin sind, arbeitet sie seitdem für uns. Zweimal die Woche, zwischendurch sogar dreimal, weil sie mehr Geld brauchte, aber das konnten wir uns auf Dauer nicht leisten und das war auch gar nicht nötig. Für uns nicht, für sie schon. Wir sind immer noch ihre einzige Stelle. Nebenbei verdient sie noch ein wenig mit Haareflechten.

Wir können sie gar nicht entlassen, weil sie sonst verhungern würde und mit ihr, ihre zwei kleinen Kinder, die bei der Großmutter in der Transkei leben, wohin sie monatlich Geld schickt. Deshalb sind wir in der absurden Situation, dass wir zwar  kaum genug Marmelade auf unseren erstaunlich guten und nahezu deutschen Semmeln haben, aber eine Putzfrau, die zweimal die Woche kommt. Wenn schon arm, dann mit Stil.

Pinky mit Zimkas Baby

Als ich um halb Acht wieder aufwachte, schien die Sonne. Jetzt, um halb ein Uhr Mittags, sitze ich mit T-Shirt im Garten, die Vögel zwitschern, der Nachbar hämmert, in der Ferne Kindergeschrei von der Schulpause und Rasenmäher ganz weit weg. Es ist heiß, richtig heiß. Heute Morgen noch im tiefsten Winter, jetzt im Hochsommer.
Das Licht ist mild und herbstlich. Die Wiesen wechseln von gelb zu grün, der Wein über meinem Kopf wird rot. Jemand sagte einmal, hier kann man vier Jahreszeiten an einem Tag erleben und er hat recht.

Vorher bin ich schnüffelnd auf allen vieren durchs Haus gekrochen, weil es stank. Ein strenger Geruch, wie Jugendschweiß, scharf und beißend, auch ein wenig fruchtig. Ich verdächtige eine unserer Katzen ins Haus zu pissen, doch wenn immer ich mich auf die Knie lasse und meine Nase über den Boden bewegen, ist der Gestank weg.
Sven sagte, neulich saß er morgens auf dem Klo, da kam Lucky (unsere Katze) ins Bad und pisste vor ihm in die Badewanne. Der Urin war erst gelb und dann rot und blutig. Sie miaute und verschwand.

Seit drei Tagen haben wir kein Geld mehr. Am Montag wurde etwas überwiesen, das nach einer Woche immer noch nicht auf dem Konto ist. Vor drei Monaten habe ich ein Sparkonto aufgelöst und meine Rieserrente (die mir eine Bankbeamtin aufgeschwatzt hatte) gekündigt und warte auf das Geld. Täglich rufe ich den Kontostand ab und nichts verändert sich. Als wäre der Bildschirm erstarrt.  Da draußen sind tausende von Euros, die mir gehören und ich KOMM NICHT RAN an mein Geld. Ich kann nicht einmal das Telefon aufladen, um die Bank anzurufen.

Heute morgen kratzten wir 10 Rand für Brötchen zusammen und teilten uns einen Klecks Butter und ein Fleckchen Aprikosenmarmelade. Zum Mittagessen gibt es Nudeln mit Tomatensoße. Tomaten habe ich noch im Haus. Geld für Nudeln  leihen wir uns aus Luzies Geldbeutel.

Es ist ein wunderschöner Tag. Die Vögel zwitschern, die Sonne scheint und der Nachbar lärmt. Ich werde jetzt  das Haus durchwischen, damit wenigstens der Gestank verschwindet. Wenn ich schon nicht die Bank  in die Luft jagen kann.