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Topic: CHILL (11/24/22)
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TITLE: The Winter of Nicosia Palace. | Previous Challenge Entry
By Robert Rutaagi
12/01/22 -
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I have never and will never forget that evening when British Caledonia Airline landed at Lanark International Airport, in Cyprus in 1977. I was ill-prepared in every way. My upbringing in a tropical country, seeing the sun rise up in the morning at 7am and setting at 7pm, experiencing constant temperatures, sunny and rainy days or months in predictable patterns without extreme variations had all conspired to dull my mind. What my home and geography systems did not teach me was not improved by my educational system that shaped my life experience.
The Mediterranean Institute of Management [MIM], my host, did not warn me about their weather beyond, simply, stating that I should come with warm clothes suitable for winter which I associated with rainy season.
‘’Attention please! In thirty minutes, we shall be landing at Lanark International Airport…please, fasten your safety belts, ready for landing,’’ the airhostess melodiously announced. I was excited. It would be my first international visit to St. Paul’s gospel country I had read about in the Bible.
I will spare the reader all customs and immigration details. By the time the Airport bus delivered me to Palace Hotel, in Nicosia City, I was shivering. My fingers were stiffly bent inwards and almost frozen. My teeth were clenched. Fellow passengers were staring at me like I had committed or was about to commit a crime – in wrong attire!
Noticing my predicament, the Hotel staff, with professional alacrity, whisked me to my reserved room, equipped with central heating system. What a relief this was but only short-lived! It was as if my overwhelmed body sucked all the available heat in the room and it was just enough to absorb all the cold I had accumulated from the airport to the Hotel. Soon I started to experience much cold within and without my-self. Entering the bed did not help either. Food was served in my room. I drank coffee but still the coldness was too much.
Being winter, the tourists were very few, so most of Nicosia Palace Hotel rooms were unoccupied. The Hotel attendant wisely and kindly collected about ten blankets of varying thicknesses from other rooms and put them in my room. I already had three blankets on my bed. I added on the 4th, 5th, 6th…still there was no adequate warmth. By the time I added the 8th blanket, the load was so heavy that discomfort was intolerable.
‘’What can I do?’’ I moaned in my body, soul and spirit. I cannot recall whether I slept or not that night. The following day, I reported to MIM Management who expeditiously processed my scholarship allowances to buy adequate warm clothes as my body, too, acclimatised to the Mediterranean climate, successfully did and completed my academic program, visited all the places where Paul preached the gospel before returning home with amazing life experience which made me realise that different climates have different variables which can only to be managed – more or less like salvation and non-salvation.
All the above narrative happened before I received salvation 22 years later [1999]. Sin is analogous to the tropical climate which engenders complacency to its beneficiaries who endlessly get steeped into sweet allures of life denying them socio-economic development.
Forsaking worldly allures to salvation [the narrow and cold path] needs the warm clothes of Jesus Christ, the word of God and the Holy Spirit. To many people, salvation looks very difficult but when embraced with the full armour of God, it turns out to be joyously livable. Jn. 3:3, 3:16; 1Jn. 5:5.
Non-Fiction.
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