Peace and stability must be at the heart of the global development agenda

Looking for Elsie

In the early hours of 11^th August 1948, two lovers stole a 12-foot dinghy from Carteret harbour in northern France and rowed
14 miles through rough seas to Jersey.  The wooden boat bore the name ‘The Elsie’ and the name of her builders who were English:
J Husk Jnr of Wivenhoe.  
 
Eight years later those lovers would become my parents and the story of my father’s  promise to come back for my mother when the war
ended, and his 14-hour battle with that stretch of water’s unpredictability, one of the most dangerous tides in the world, became
part of our history and their strenght our legacy.
 
Sixty-eight years later, I made that same journey my parents did.  What took my father 14 hours though to row, took us barely 2 hours in a Rib,
and Jersey’s Rowing Club’s competitors, just over 3 hours with a 3 man crew in their races across the same waters.  My father’s battle to navigate
Jersey’s treacherous rocks and unforgiving tides that night, to stop the boat from being pushed further off course and out into open sea, was
one my mother was convinced they wouldn’t win at times.
 
“I saw blood trickling from the corner of his mouth” She recounted. “He so was tired, the tide was so strong, the waves so high, and I thought
that’s it!  After everything we’ve been through we're going to die here!"
 
But my father's metal battle with the tides and his own exhustion won through and I have often thought about 'The Elsie’s' part in that journey.  How she came to be there that night and who the woman the boat was named after was.  For while Elsie appeared at the right time on the righ night for my parents to make their escape it was also Elsie’s presence that betrayed them, alerting harbour authorities of her secret arrival on the island.  Having made it to the last piece of land possible before overshooting Jersey altogether, my parents came ashore on a small rocky inlet at Vicard Point near Bouley Bay.  From there the only way out is up.  Forced to abandon Elise in full view, they scaled the Point’s dangerously steep cliffs and made the 5 kilometres into St Helier.  From the moment they left Elsie the authorities began to search for spies arriving illegally on the island rather than lovers looking for sanctuary, to marry and start a new life.  A life that would eventually lead they hoped
to England and settle amongst the British for whom my father had spied for during the war.

Trapped on the rocks where my parents abandoned her, Elise, pounded by the waves, broke up, and all that remained intact when she was salvaged were her ores and pieces of her that revealed her name and builder - not a French boatbuilder as expected along with the name Elsie, decorated with a blue star either side.  An afterthought added later perhaps?
 
John Collins, a key member of Wivenhoe’s History Group in Essex and authority on maritime history, tried tracing a boat named Elsie built
by J Husk & Sons but drew a blank.
 
‘It’s possible she had been built by Husk’s but not the yacht itself.’’ Explained John. 
 
“Husks only built boats and dinghies for vessels that they hadn’t built themselves, often as replacements, and mostly for yachts and
fishing vessels.”
 
He did find one boat named Elsie though, last registered to a Mr Albert Glandas, fils, in Havre.  Could this be Havre-de-Pas in Jersey?   
The Elsie registered to Glandas was built in 1875 but John couldn’t trace her beyond 1899.  That she would have survived the war years
and ended up in Carteret 51 years later is unlikely.

Peter Hall, Chairman of the Wivenhoe History Group, revealed that a fishing smack by the name of Elise was well known in Wivenhoe,
owned and raced by Friday Green, who won the America’s Cap and already detailed on Wivenhoe’s History website. 
 
https://www.wivenhoehistory.org.uk/content/topics/maritime/mike-boats/friday-green-and-elise-ck299       
 
Could it be the name Elsie was recorded incorrectly by the authorities when wrting up the report and was really a second generation Elise from Wivenhoe?  The builder after all is recorded as J Husk Jnr, not J Husk & Sons? 
 
Is there someone out there with clues about the boat, or the name of the lady she was named after? 
 
And my parents?  They were spotted at sea heading towards Vicard Point the same afternoon they beached Elsie.  Quickly found, the boat made headline news
in Jersey’s Evening Post, prompting extra police activity on the island which unlike mainland Britain, had been occupied by the Germans during the second World War. 
 
Three days later, anxious that they would ultimately be identified and arrested anyway, my parents, exhustated after their incredibly journey, having stolen a boat, entered the island illegally and made false declarations when registering at a bed and breakfast, gave themselves up.  They were arrested, held in custody, and 4 days later after a court hearing, deported to a jail in France having been banned from going back to Jersey for five years.

The mystery of Elsie remains unsloved but my parents fight for how and where to be together was solved. They made it to England where they married later that year, in the beautiful county of Kent, after 43 love letters, 1 promise and 9 years in between.  They were together 59 years.

 They never returned to Jersey.


 

Nelson Mandela in his own words

Nelson Mandela's ability to use words to breathe life into his cause was one of his most powerful weapons in the struggle for black equality in South Africa.
Here is a selection of some of his most compelling quotes.
 
Conclusion of his three-hour defence speech at his 1964 trial for sabotage and treason:
"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.
"But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
 
Letter from Robben Island, April 1971:
"There are times when my heart almost stops beating, slowed down by heavy loads of longing. I would love to bathe once more in the waters of Umbashe, as I did at the beginning of 1935."
 
On his time imprisoned on Robben Island (from Nelson Mandela's autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom, 1994):

He was 46 when he was sent to prison
 
"I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's own mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything. Did I make the right decision, was my sacrifice worth it? In solitary, there is no distraction from these haunting questions.
"But the human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one's spirits strong even when one's body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation; your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty."
 
Message read by his daughter Zinzi to a rally in Soweto in 1985:
"In the name of the law, I found myself treated as a criminal... not because of what I had done, but because of what I stood for, because of my conscience. No-one in his right senses would choose such a life, but there comes a time when a man is denied the right to live a normal life, when he can only live the life of an outlaw because the government has so decreed to use the law.
"The question being asked up and down the country is this: Is it politically correct to continue preaching peace and non-violence when dealing with a government whose barbaric practices have brought so much suffering and misery to Africans? I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I, and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated. I will return."
 
Describing the day of his release from prison in 1990 (The Long Walk to Freedom, 1994):
"The cameras started clicking like a great herd of metallic beasts. I raised my right fist and there was a roar. I had not been able to do that for 27 years and it gave me a surge of strength and joy."
 
On fatherhood (The Long Walk to Freedom, 1994):
"Perhaps I was blinded to certain things because of the pain I felt for not being able to fulfil my role as husband to my wife and father to my children.
"It seems the destiny of freedom fighters to have unstable personal lives... to be the father of a nation is a great honour, but to be the father of a family is a greater joy. But it was a job I had far too little of."
 
On prison (The Long Walk to Freedom, 1994):
"A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness... The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity."
 
On reconciliation (on acceptance of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with then President FW de Klerk):
"The value of our shared reward will and must be measured by the joyful peace which will triumph, because the common humanity that bonds both black and white into one human race will have said to each one of us that we shall all live like the children of paradise...
"But there are still some within our country who wrongly believe they can make a contribution to the cause of justice and peace by clinging to the shibboleths [dogmas] that have been proved to spell nothing but disaster.
"It remains our hope that these, too, will be blessed with sufficient reason to realise that history will not be denied and that the new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged."
 
Presidential inauguration speech, 10 May 1994:
"We enter into a covenant that we shall build a society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall without any fear in their hearts, assured of the inalienable right to human dignity, a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world."
"Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another... The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement. Let freedom reign. God bless Africa!"
 
Address to international Aids conference, Durban, July 2000:
"In the face of the grave threat posed by HIV/Aids, we have to rise above our differences and combine our efforts to save our people. History will judge us harshly if we fail to do so now, and right now.
"Let us not equivocate: A tragedy of unprecedented proportions is unfolding in Africa. Aids today in Africa is claiming more lives than the sum total of all wars, famines and floods, and the ravages of such deadly diseases as malaria. It is devastating families and communities; overwhelming and depleting health care services; and robbing schools of both students and teachers...
"Aids is clearly a disaster, effectively wiping out the development gains of the past decades and sabotaging the future... Something must be done as a matter of the greatest urgency."
 
Message to the Live 8 concert in Edinburgh, July 2005:
"Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times... So much of our common future will depend on the actions and plans of these leaders. They have a historical opportunity to open the door to hope and the possibility of a better future for all...
"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom. Of course the task will not be easy. But not to do this would be a crime against humanity, against which I ask all humanity now to rise up."
 
A rare public rebuke for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, speaking at a dinner in London to mark his 90th birthday:
"We watch with sadness the continuing tragedy in Darfur. Nearer to home we have seen the outbreak of violence against fellow Africans in our own country and the tragic failure of leadership in our neighbouring Zimbabwe."
 
At the opening of the 2010 World Cup:
"The people of Africa learnt the lessons of patience and endurance in their long struggle for freedom. May the rewards brought by the Fifa World Cup prove that the long wait for its arrival on African soil has been worth it. Ke nako [It is time]."
 
On his public image (from Mandela's second autobiography, Conversations With Myself, 2010):
"One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint. I never was one, even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying."
 

In our right minds?
57th Commission on The Status of Women

Dr Mohini Giri - Head of Guild for Service, India. Photo by 'ar'

UN Per Carlos Garcia-Gonzales, El Savlador. Photo by 'ar'

Klevisa Kovaci & Sharon Pedrosa, Chair & Co Founders, Student Advisory Board, Montage Initiative.  Photo by 'ar'

Dale Allen - Photo by 'ar'

'The human race has reached its evolutionary limit'

                                                
'We want more mentors and less monsters'