Mary Wakefield

We are not made incrementally aware of things that happen incrementally. Though something may have been changing for a while, the realisation comes all at once in a swoop, usually when it’s far too late. I realised that I had become a ‘madam’ last weekend, in the butcher’s. We had a bit of a joke, the butcher and I, over the severed limbs, then as he handed me my bag, he said: ‘There you go, madam.’ Madam? Madam? Madam? What happened to babe? I’m sure I was babe last week. Since the butcher opened my ears, life has become a terrible cacophony of madams: ‘£3.50 please, madam,’ ‘sorry, madam,’ ‘thank you, madam.’ Whilst I was buying mince, my girlhood slipped away.

The Spectator's deputy editor, Mary Wakefield, recently visited Rwanda to investigate the work a charity called Hope and Homes for Children. Her article on the subject appeared in last week's issue of the magazine, but we thought we'd publish it here on Coffee House too, along with the short film that she recorded during her visit. It contains one or two lessons for DfID and our government: Kigali, Rwanda Madame B has dressed up for our visit. She’s sitting on a bench with her back to the orphanage wall, talking about just how much she loves each child, but it’s her get-up that’s most impressive: black silk dress, hair done, make-up just so; finger and toenails painted hot pink, each with an elegant white scalloped edge.

Kigali, Rwanda Madame B has dressed up for our visit. She’s sitting on a bench with her back to the orphanage wall, talking about just how much she loves each child, but it’s her get-up that’s most impressive: black silk dress, hair done, make-up just so; finger and toenails painted hot pink, each with an elegant white scalloped edge. Everything else here, at the Mpore Pefa home for children, is muted: grey walls, grey kids, blurred by dirt. Those toes are an anomaly. ‘My husband and I started this home after the war,’ Madame B is saying. ‘Since he died, it is so difficult.’ Her eyes slide from left to right, checking our reaction.

In single-sex schools girls don’t see themselves through boys’ eyes, says Mary Wakefield I remember quite clearly the moment I first realised how very lucky I was to have been sent to a single-sex boarding school. It was the summer of 1989 and my friends, Becca, Ilona and I were all 13 and arm in arm, collapsing into shrieks of laughter at the drop of a hat. We were at the Newbury agricultural show, as I remember, and still young enough to be thrilled by the corporate goody bags from the Massey Ferguson stand and to think stickers, any stickers, even ones that said ‘Invest with Natwest’, were cool. Down at the far end of the field there were a few shonky fairground rides, and it was there that this revelation took place.

Exactly halfway through my conversation with the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, I had an attack of conscience, a small one, but there it was. Sacks had explained the thesis of his book, The Great Partnership — that religion and science don’t have to fight but can co-exist, as separate strands of inquiry. We’d discussed our respective religions (I’m Christian) and agreed that man will always wonder: what am I doing here? And that science has no answer to this. Then Sacks began to speak about the need for the three great Abrahamic, monotheistic faiths to stand together.

A massive project to change the lives of America’s poorest children It’s raining in Harlem this morning — big fat American rain tipping out of the big gray sky, sluicing down the crumbling brownstones, over the awning of the Manna soul food and salad bar (‘we serve oxtail, collard green, candy yam, fried fish, chips and tea’) and on to the corner of 125th street and Madison in an oily pool of such enormity that the word puddle is no good as a description — you’d have to call it a pond. Each Harlem citizen manages the pond in his own peculiar way. Two gangster-looking guys with hats askew take a traffic-stopping stroll around the outer rim; a man with no legs drives his electric scooter through the middle like a jet-ski.

The adventures of a wrecked ship can be pieced together from entries in its log book. The last moments of some doomed flight can be reconstructed by consulting its black box. If Dominic and I come a cropper here on the hard shoulder of the Cairo–Alexandria desert road, our iPhones will tell our story in Google searches: 23:30: ‘how do you get out of Cairo airport?’ 00:07: ‘why don’t Egypt drivers use headlights?’ 03:00: ‘Toyota Corolla won’t start’ 03:30: ‘How to deactivate Toyota Corolla immobiliser?’ 04:00: ‘Hertz Cairo number’ 05:00: ‘Hertz worldwide emergency number’ 05:14: ‘What time sun rise in Egypt?