THIS IS WHAT 100 ABSTRACTS LOOKS LIKE & A BLIPMEET

I was up very early this morning - by 5.50 a.m. and was out walking, as I have been every morning this week, by 6 o’clock and although it was a messy morning as far and wind and drizzle was concerned, it was quite pleasant to be out before too many others.

It also felt strange to know that I didn’t have to be on the lookout for something abstract or something that could be turned into an abstract.  I had decided last night that I would make a huge collage of all my 100 abstracts, but of course, this could only be done TODAY.  

I didn’t stay out walking for long, because it wasn’t that pleasant but long enough to know that my creaky knees don’t like damp weather.  When I got home, I made the collage - on an app called CollageIt - on my computer, so you can see that this is what 100 Abstracts looks like.

As you all know by now, I have been doing this to raise awareness of the Mamie Martin Fund, which gives financial help to impoverished girls in North Malawi, so that they can obtain a good secondary education.

On the MMF website, I have been reading about Wendy Norman, a semi-retired gynaecologist, who visited Nkhoma Hospital in Malawi in 2016 to help with the cervical screening programme and cervical cancer prevention.  She is now raising funds by doing the virtual “Biking to Malawi” challenge and says:

“Since my return we have all continued to ‘virtually’ support work in Malawi and worldwide as much as possible but clearly any plans for return visits to that wonderful country have now been deferred and overshadowed by the COVID pandemic.

Meanwhile it is heartbreaking to hear of increasing numbers of young girls now obliged to leave school due to the economic effects of the pandemic. These young girls then become teenage brides and mothers, thus repeating the cycle of inequity. If we are ever going to work our way towards a fairer world, we have to educate girls and young women. Educating girls allows them to make safe choices about their own reproductive health and, in time, that of their children and families. It also allows them to become financially independent and enter the workforce as the hundreds of nurses, teachers, doctors & scientists Malawians need to become equal partners in delivering anywhere near the standards of health care that we in the UK take for granted.”

If you want to read more about how people are getting involved, you can read an interesting blog for a challenge called Bike2Malawi.  This is a collective effort, with individuals and groups cycling the distances of their choice on any kind of pedal-powered bike/trike, including exercise bikes. Between 3rd June and 3rd August, riders are riding their distances and contributing them to the pot.

I am so happy to be able to tell you that “my pot” on my VirginMoneyGiving page has now risen to £675.25 with Gift Aid - and there are promises of more, so I am well on the way to reaching my target of keeping two girls at boarding school for a year, which will cost £350 for each girl.  There are some truly kind people around - many of them on Blip and other friends and I am so grateful to you all.

Our Blip friend, Heidi, has been in Bristol again this week and was passing by on the M4 motorway on her way home, so we invited her for lunch;  I was hoping we would be able to sit in the garden, but the weather didn’t allow that.  However, having mentioned our new Tilley hats to Heidi yesterday, she said she also has a new hat - so the extra is of the three of us in our “titfers”, which, just in case some of you don’t know is Cockney rhyming slang for hat - tit for tat!  We had a great time with her, as we always do and the reason we are all laughing so much for this selfie was that Mr. HCB was tickling me while I was taking the photograph, which he knows I hate, but I could do nothing about it!

Hope you all have a great weekend - not sure it’s going to be sunny, but whatever you do, stay safe.  

"While we do our good works 
     let us not forget 
          that the real solution lies 
               in a world in which charity 
                    will have become unnecessary."
Chinua Achebe

P.S.  You can still sponsor me for a couple more weeks if you would like to - and you can donate here:

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MaureenIles

P.P.S.  If you can only count 98 abstracts, you are right - one day I did three in one!