We awoke in the aircraft high over the Southern Sudan, flew parallel to a tremendous red line of dawn, and touched down at Entebbe, on Lake Victoria, to a melodramatic roll of thunder. But the thunder did not quench or contradict the dawn: as even something so commonplace as a bunch of middle-school terminal examination papers goes to show. Perhaps school essays in King Alfred's school in the tenth century showed a similar dawn. Here are some extracts: first from a young girl, who wrote:

‘It is clearly seen that there are very many primitive people in this country. Poor people have no religion and they believe in spirits. Such are the people in my native land.

In 19541 went to live with my grandmother who was surrounded by Pagans. There was a village nearby in which there was a newly-married couple…