This blog post is quite random, inspired by driving through the Notting Hill area yesterday.

Being in the area I took a little detour down memory lane to All Saints Road, which is a little street two blocks up from Portobello Market, and this is where Ali & I rented out first one bedroom flat in London (after first renting a room in Tulse Hill, and house-sitting in Fulham). This was also where we had our first church gatherings on Sundays. The tiny lounge was large enough for when the crowd of 6 arrived!

I recall being surprised that when telling our friends we were moving to All Saints Road, many of them knew exactly where it was, even though it is barely 3 blocks long. We discovered that the reason for this was that this little London street was a centre of the organisation of peace-full anti apartheid protests in London!  We only realised the full significance of this when in April 1994, only a couple of weeks after moving in, our new street became one of the centres of celebrating the New South Africa and the election of Nelson Mandela as the first black president. Was there some significance that we had landed right here to start our new adventure in London?

It was a very special moment of course, but we couldn’t help being somewhat amused at the Rastafarians doing the “Amandla” (The Xhosa and Zula word meaning “power”) salute to celebrate the occasion!

Much has definitely changed for good in the land of my up-bringing since then (I was born in Namibia/ South West Africa), but 20 years on there is still such a long way to go for so many. I guess the walk down memory lane is quite short, but the walk to freedom is a definitely a long one…