Tony Idle: Before coming to Lewes

Transcript:

Tony, would you like to say a few words about what you did in the past?
Well I was trained as a structural engineer, and we went out in the early 60s to the Southern Sudan to work with the Church Mission Society – helping to build a cathedral – which we did manage to do, because at that time the church had no permanent buildings of any kind, and unfortunately the enemy tribes would come down, and they would burn all their thatched roofed buildings including their churches, so they were very glad to have a solid cathedral built.
So we were there for a little while, then we moved from the Sudan to Kenya, where we spent nearly 20 years working and training young artisans – young boys who didn’t have the money to get to school but nevertheless had quite a lot of skill.You would often see them trading in little toy cars that they’d made, and you could see they had great ingenuity.
So we would train them up to employable standards. The government – at that time the Kenya government – were looking for young artisans with skills that were nationally recognised, so we trained them up in what was called the Christian Industrial Training Centre.
I worked there for quite a while, but then after a couple of decades we felt that it was right for our family to return to England for schooling, so we did, and we went to work at the London City Mission where we looked after their hostel for a number of years.
OK, thank you Tony!
Thank you Hilary.