Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Official Report 1141KB pdf

Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. Our first item of business today is time for reflection, for which our leader is the Right Rev Dr John Armes, who is the Bishop of Edinburgh.

I am very grateful indeed for this opportunity to be with you today.

The diocese of Edinburgh has a much-valued link with Cape Coast in Ghana. As it was on many parts of Africa, the impact of the British empire on Ghana was—shall we say it?—ambiguous. Cape Coast castle was, after all, a centre of the transatlantic slave trade.

Yet, my Ghanaian friends point out that alongside that chilling legacy, there are examples of a more benign influence. One such example was told to me during a visit to a thriving neighbourhood called Adisadel. “Let me tell you,” said my companion, “the legend of how Adisadel got its name.”

He told me that many years ago there was a Scottish nurse called Alice. The people quickly learned to love her, and would travel long distances to seek her help for their various ailments. Alice worked long hours to help them, except during the afternoon, because—like many Europeans—that was when she insisted on having her afternoon nap. If you arrived in the afternoon to see the nurse, you would be met by her maid, who would pronounce the familiar message, “Alice is sleeping.” However, the maid could not say the name properly—she said “Adis” instead of “Alice”, and in the language of the place, the word for sleeping is “adda”. “Adis-adda”, or “Alice is sleeping”, became Adisadel—the name of the neighbourhood where Alice used to live.

I hope that the story is true. We all know places—towns, buildings and even rooms—that are rightly named after people who are famous and those who have achieved distinction. However, it is good to know that every so often the efforts of our unsung heroines and heroes are also immortalised—not by a committee decision, but by popular usage, because one faithful person so earned the love of her neighbours that it seemed to be completely natural to them to cherish her memory in that way.

Even if the story is only a pleasant folk tale, we probably know of someone like Alice: someone whose purpose in life is to serve, who earns so much admiration that even their little eccentricities, such as an afternoon nap, are found endearing, and who helps to make this often brutal world a kinder and more humane place to live.

I wish you well as you set about the same task—although whether, as politicians, you want a reputation for taking an afternoon nap is not for me to say.