were held under a mango tree. Last year she decided to seek funding for the
children to be given a meal of nshima (maize), which has in turn improved
attendance and attainment. Only when the school gets government approval
will it be more secure, but then families will have to pay to send their children
to school. The second school we worked at the following week was nearer
to Livingstone, but bad roads meant that the 17-kilometre journey took the
Book Bus 90 minutes to get there. The Chaba school, like Kamatanda, had no
resources (and only one toilet for the school and the village). The villagers
were struggling to survive, as the lack of rain meant the crops they depend on
to feed themselves and sell in the markets in Livingstone were not producing
enough, hence the children often seemed lethargic. The Book Bus seeks to make
reading and literacy fun with songs, games and craft – and it was lovely to
see these children being able to draw, colour, stick and cut with resources we
had brought with us and which Zambian schools generally lack. The English
and IT teacher explained to us the difficulty of teaching English with no books
and IT with no electricity or computers. Afternoons were spent doing oneto-one
reading with children in two of The Book Bus’s Community libraries.
It was an intense but deeply worthwhile experience which I will never
forget – made more interesting by the fact I was also following in the footsteps
of Waldensians who had left friends and family behind to serve God in a then
unknown far-off land.
*Coisson, La Beidana 70, 2015
Nicky Raddon
Lecture to the Cromwell Association, London, October 2017
Cromwell’s intervention in 1655 to halt the confessional cleansing of Milton’s
‘slaughtered saints’ in Piedmont
(Second and final instalment. First part published in WR 134, Summer 2019)
The Massacre
On 25 January 1655 the Savoyard Judge Andrea Gastaldo pronounced an
Ordinance that the Waldensians who had descended into the valley floors at
Torre Pellice, Luserna and the entrance to the Po Valley, all places prohibited
to the Waldensians under the 1561 Treaty of Cavour, had to return back to
their mountainsides after selling their farms to Catholics.
This legal proceeding seemed the usual diplomatic/judicial dance once
again. However, this time a powerful and determined trio had combined at the
Turin Ducal Court at Rivoli to deal with these polluting heretics once and for
all. The Marquis of Pianezza shared the Counter Reformation repugnance so
keenly felt by also Madama Cristina (Regent on behalf of her son and herself
sister to Charles I’s widow, Queen Henrietta Maria) and her Jesuit Confessor.
Pianezza advanced the 35 miles to Val Pellice on 17 April 1655 with an army
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