More than a million persons were dis­placed by the war. Many thousands fled to the cities; almost 300,000 made their way to neighboring countries and tried to survive, and 700,000 were placed in “protected villages”—the equiv­alent of strategic hamlets in Vietnam. Many of the people outside the country had debts to cover and still looking for help. If you have many debts and loans and you are looking for a way to consolidate them, try a debt consolidation calculator and check out what interest rate can be saved.

 

They began to return home immediately after the election of Mugabe. In August 1980 the Department of Social Services estimated that it was bringing 10,000 persons a month back to their tribal homes.

“We left everything full, but we came back empty,” Mrs. Theresa Mandeya said to me. We were in Chiduku TTL near the town of Rusape. With her nine children she had fled to Mozambique when her husband was killed after police had accused him of using his bus to ferry guerrilla recruits.

 

Tall stalks of corn dwarfed her. Behind the house stood a small grove of orange trees. She and thousands of other returning refugees had been given packs of seed and fertilizer by the United Nations High Com­missioner for Refugees. The Department of Agricultural Development had instituted a major training program to accompany the seed-pack distribution. Using simple visual materials, staff workers were teaching prop­er planting procedures in the TTLs.

 

Ironically, while the training program was available to all, the seed packs and fer­tilizer were available only to refugees. As a result, many of the best crops on TTLs were found among refugees. Of greater long-term significance is the interest other government agencies are showing in the department’s teaching methods, which in their most so­phisticated form involve bringing people to centers to watch lessons on videotape.

 

For all of the new techniques aimed at increasing food production, the land in the TTLs won’t support the population. It is the issue of land that has most divided whites and blacks in Zimbabwe. Chief Rekayi Tangwena and his people, a Shona clan who live in the beautiful Inyanga Mountains, symbolize this agonizing conflict.

In August I found them clustering around the shell-shattered buildings of Nyafaru Mission School in tents that offered small protection against the bitter cold of the  homeland, which years be­fore had been declared a white farming area.

 

In the early 1970s, when they refused to leave, police and army helicopters swooped down. Land-Rovers and bulldozers leveled their huts. Most of the clan fled into the hills, but some were caught, including Raymond Masonga, 72, and his brother Tiki.

 

“After they arrested us, they took us to In­yanga and tried us in the magistrate’s court.

 

They said we were refusing to leave a white-owned farm,” Raymond told me. “I said it’s not a farm, it’s our own land! I asked the po­lice, ‘Who is the older in this country, Rhodes or my two grandfathers? My great-grandfather never saw Cecil Rhodes.’

 

“In court I said, ‘You got this land to graze, not to own. If you can tell me where the Nyamagaya and Jora Rivers meet, take the whole land.’ He couldn’t,” Masonga said, laughing. “They’re the same river. Up there it’s the Nyamagaya, down there it’s the Jora.” Still, he and the others went to jail. “We might have won the case on facts,” Masonga told me bitterly, “but the magis­trate decided an African is an African.”

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I met Khorram, a 35-year-old captain and jet pilot, through the courtesy of the Imperial Iranian Air Force. One morning, with special permission, I joined him at Mehrabad Air Base west of Tehran for a view of his country from the rear seat of an F-4 Phantom jet.

Like most Iranian pilots, Khorram trained in the United States and speaks fluent English. He checked via the intercom to see if I was safely belted in, then rolled the Phantom smoothly down the runway and climbed to brilliant sunlight at 28,000 feet.

Through scattered clouds below I could see the great upturned saw blade of the Elburz Mountains, still covered with late snow and dominated on the east by Mount Damavand, Iran’s highest peak at 18,606 feet.

Crossing the range northward toward the Caspian Sea, Khorram indicated a gray-white scallop shell lodged in one of the passes. “Amir Kabir Dam,” he said. “It’s one of a dozen hydroelectric and irrigation projects in the Elburz and the Zagros range to the south. Mountains are the only real reservoirs we have to store a scant foot of rainfall a year.

“Ask a hundred Iranians what their country’s biggest problem is, and ninety-nine of them will tell you, ‘Water.’ “He suddenly laughed. “The hundredth one will probably say, ‘The high price of caviar,’ and he has a point—I’ll show you why.”

Beyond the mountains we streaked over the country’s 400-mile-long Caspian Sea coast, now paved almost end to end with crowded resorts. Here the great barrier of the Elburz strips the Caspian winds of moisture, carpeting the northern slopes with lush forest and blocking all but the meagerest rainfall beyond. Khorram followed the shoreline west, gradually letting down to less than 1,000 feet, and tilted one wing over a busy port.

“Bandar-e Pahlavi,” he announced, “the center of the sturgeon fisheries. Time was when you could pick up a pound of fresh caviar there for less than $10. Now the price has shot up to $32. Part of the reason is increased demand as well as costs, but another part is pollution—look there along the coast.” In other companies such an increase can cost the company itself, which means they will go out of business or bankrupt if can’t cope with the expenses. Learn more about chapter 13 bankruptcy.

Rinsed by the caramel-colored waters of the Caspian, the graveled beach below wore a yellowed fringe of foam with an inner border of scattered debris.

“A lot of that’s our own doing,” Khorram admitted grimly, “but the Russians don’t help matters. They have huge industrial plants that dump tons of waste into the sea. And their offshore wells occasionally produce an oil spill. Russian caviar production is already suffering, and for us it’s only a matter of time.”

In a final sweep we flew southeast across Tehran over a fringe of the vast desert plateau that makes up 85 percent of Iran’s territory. Here Khorram spends a good deal of his flight time over the aerial target range in a salt desert called the Dasht-e Kavir.

Heavy clouds were rolling in. “You must come back one day when it’s clearer,” Khorram said as we landed back in Tehran. “We’ll take a look at the area to the south. You won’t believe it’s the same country.”

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The London Olympics were a fantastic success. I was lucky enough to make two visits to the Olympic Park, and was impressed by the slick organisation and friendliness of all the volunteers. And in spite of the criticism ahead of the Games about over-commercialisation, I didn’t feel that prices were half as bad as I’d feared. Bottles of water were available for £1.70 – not cheap, but less than the £2.50 that I’ve been charged at festivals and sports events in the past.

But the one commercial element of the Games that seemed contrary to the spirit was Visa’s deal to ensure that only Visa cards could be used at tills and cash machines within the Olympic Village.

While it’s true that most people have a Visa card in their wallet – as Visa dominates the UK debit card market – this may not be people’s card of choice for spending. Furthermore, a small minority of people, for example Metro Bank customers, may not even have a Visa debit card, potentially leaving them unable to make any purchases or cash withdrawals while in the Olympic Park (from which you were not permitted to leave and return).

 

The principle of allowing a company to buy themselves a temporary monopoly in payment services did not chime with the spirit of the event. Limiting people to buying chips from McDonald’s is one thing, but restricting access to their own money is quite another. If Visa believed this would be a boost for its reputation, it was misguided. From what I saw, people were simply left frustrated when they were told they couldn’t use the card of their choice. Check online how to order secured credit card.

 

When the Olympics go to Rio in 2016, I hope that the organisers can resist doing a similar deal with Visa or any other card network.

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The system of administration of Methodism devised by John Wesley in 1744 was adopted by the churches of the 19th century and maintained by the United Methodist Church since 1932. The Annual Conference is the principal decision-making body of the Church and still confirms the stationing of ministers for the coming year. The Methodist Church is divided into Districts, Circuits and individual chapels. Of most importance to family historians are the records of the circuits (a grouping of the system of administration was devised by John Wesley in 1742 churches in a particular town or locality) and individual chapels.

 

Over the years they have produced a mass of archival material which largely to be found at local record offices, although more recent items may still be held by the chapels themselves.

The early Methodists began to build preaching houses in the 1760s and soon afterwards Methodists began to baptise their children in these meeting places. After the introduction of civil registration in 1837, the Methodists deposited 856 registers with the General Registry Office, which are now on microfilm at the Family Records Centre (with another set in the Microfilm Reading Room at the National Archives in Kew) in series RG 4, transcribed in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) or online at www.familysearch.org.

 

The FRC also has a microfilm copy of the 10,341 baptismal certificates registered at the Wesleyan Methodist Register Office between 1818 and 1840.

 

Since 1837 baptismal registers have been kept, similar in format to the Anglican ones. Two kinds may survive: the Circuit Baptismal Register and the Chapel Baptismal Register. Unfortunately some early registers have been lost or are in private hands, but most are with county record offices or with the chapel itself.

 

The holding of marriages in Methodist chapels was legalised in 1837. The local civil registrar had to attend and record the marriage in the Chapel Register, which was kept at the Register Office. The Marriage Act of 1898, however, allowed Methodist ministers to conduct and register marriages in licensed chapels without the Registrar’s presence and to keep separate Chapel Marriage Registers. Where a chapel was not licensed the Registrar had to attend, as still applies today. Where a licensed chapel has closed the Chapel Marriage Register are at county record offices. Where the chapel is still in use, the marriage regis­ter is kept on the premises.

 

In 1801 the Wesleyan Conf­erence ordered that a Register of Deaths should be kept in a Circuit Register. This was not strictly observed as most Methodist burials took place in Anglican churchyards. In addition few chapels had a burial ground adjoining, so only a small number of burial registers were deposited with the Registrar General in 1837 — mostly from chapels in Lancashire, Cheshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Where Methodist burial grounds are still open, registers are kept by the chapel. Where the chapel has closed, the Register of Burials should be with the county record office. The best known Methodist Burial Registers are those for Wesley’s Chapel in London, where John Wesley and 5,451 others were buried between 1779 and 1854 and for Englesea Brook, near Stoke on Trent, where Hugh Bourne and other early Primitive Methodists are buried.

 

Local newspapers can provide fascinat­ing profiles of prominent Methodists. My favourite reference comes from the Retford and Gainsborough Times for 1894:

 

“There was one man in Furiey’s employment [a local shipbuilding yard) who was rather noted. That was Thomas Hopthrow, ship carpenter. When a young man, he was seized at Stockwith by a press gang and being taken aboard ship, he served in the fleet at the bombard­ment of Copenhagen, 1801.

 

For many years at Pulleys he worked with only one hand, having lost the other by accident, yet he always turned his work out very correctly: Thomas was a member of the Wesleyan body and when the cholera epidemic was so bad in Gainsborough in 1847 and 1848, he was always ready to go out and perform the last kindly offices for the dying and thus he went about with his life in his hand. Mr Charles Shipham also attended cholera cases. Both Mr Shipham and Mr Hopthrow were teeto­tallers, but I believe that after the first case he attended Mr Shipham occasion­ally took a little brandy when going out to a patient. As for Mr Hopthrow he made a mixture of his own consisting largely of whisky and cayenne pepper.”

 

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By Richard Radcliffe

On the evening of 24th April 1738, John Benjamin Wesley, ordained minister in the Anglican Church and Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, attended a meeting of the Moravian Society in Aldersgate Street in the City of London.

From that moment, Wesley set out to reform the Anglican Church, challenge the evils of the Poor Law, the Penal Code, prisons and the exploitation of labour in factories and mines. Over the next 52 years, Wesley travelled the length and breadth of the United Kingdom and his preaching had a huge impact on the lives of people in London, Cornwall, Yorkshire and the industrial centres of Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle upon Tyne. It is estimated that he travelled 250,000 miles on horseback and preached 40,000 sermons, many of them at open air services. By the time of his death on 2nd March 1791 at the age of 88, the Methodist movement within the Anglican Church claimed to have 70,000 members and half a million adherents.

At about quarter to nine I felt my heart strangely warmed’

Barred by many Anglican clergy from preaching in their churches, Wesley encouraged his congregations to build `preaching houses’ where they could meet for worship, Bible study and prayer meet­ings at times when there were no services in the local Anglican Church. His first preaching house was the New Room Chapel in the Horsefair in Bristol, which opened in June 1739.

In the same year Wesley bought the remains of the Old Foundery in Moorfields, refurbished it and made it his London headquarters until Wesley’s Chapel in nearby City Road was opened in 1779. The Foundery was more than a chapel — it was a free dispensary, a school for pauper children, an almshouse for widows and a lending bank which helped people get started in business. It was here in 1744 that Wesley held the first of his Annual Conferences. He and his helpers discussed which doctrines they should preach, which disciplines they should follow and where preachers should be sent. After each conference, minutes were published. These volumes, which are still published each year after Conference, are a valuable source of Methodist history and biography.

The Methodist movement finally split from the Anglican Church when the Annual Conference of 1793 agreed that where the sacraments were unanimously desired by a Methodist meeting, the preacher might administer them.

Several groups, all of which kept the name Methodist, broke away from the Wesleyan Church over the next few years, usually over organisational matters rather than doctrinal disputes. The first group, led by Alexander Kilham, formed the Methodist New Connexion (MNC) in 1797. The MNC came into being after the refusal of the Wesleyan Conference to discuss the times of Sunday services or to appoint laymen to share in the administration of the Church. The MNC quickly took root in the north of England. By 1847 it had 20,000 members in Britain and 30,000 in Canada, 141 ministers, 334 chapels and 38,000 Sunday school scholars.

 

The second group to break away was the Primitive Methodists (PMs). Led by Hugh Bourne and William Clowes, two Wesleyan ministers who held open air camp meetings at Mow Cop in North Staffordshire, they left the Wesleyan Church after the Annual Conference refused to recognise the mem­bership of converts at their meetings. They opened their first chapel in Tunstall in 1811. The name ‘Primitive Methodists’ came from an address by John Wesley to his preachers in Chester in 1790: “go out into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind and this is the way the primitive Methodists did.” The PMs, nicknamed ‘the Ranters’ because of their sing­ing in the streets, soon spread to Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Liverpool, West Yorkshire and Essex and later into Cornwall and South Wales. By 1849 the PM Conference reported 104,762 members, 519 ministers, 8,524 local preachers and 5,170 chapels.

 

In 1815 the Bible Christians were formed in Cornwall by William O’Bryan, a Wesleyan local preacher who had been rejected as a candidate for the Wesleyan ministry. By 1865 they had 750 chapels, 2,000 ministers, 26,000 members and 40,000 Sunday School scholars.

 

Several smaller groups also broke away including the Protestant Methodists, the Wesleyan Methodist Association and the Wesleyan Reformers, who eventually merged in 1857 to form the United Methodist Free Church (UMFC) with a combined membership of 40,000, 110 ministers and 769 chapels.

 

The main Wesleyan Methodist Church continued to grow. In 1839, when it cele­brated the centenary of Wesley’s work, it had 420,178 members and 1,635 ministers. By then laymen had been allocated places at the Annual Conference and at District and Circuit meetings and after 1818 the ministers were authorised to use the prefix ‘Reverend’.

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