We were soooo nearly broken into last night. AGAIN. Since I've lived with Daz -3 years, we have been broken into twice and last night was an attempt at number three (don't ever keep your I-don't-spend-$5-notes-I-send-them-to-Africa collection in your top bedroom drawer, hey!)
Anyway, little did the wiley burgler realise that I've been making Daz sleep on the floor with me in the front room. Too many hours at the puta playing havock with my badneckbackjaw. Sleeping on our camping mattress on the floor in the front room is a comfier scenario than sleeping upstairs in a real bed. Besides, good practice for Africa, I tell him. And so there we were, sleeping like babies, when rattle-rattle-rattle. Window talking. Maasai Daz woke with start, clocked a shadowy figure with a torch outside the window, leapt halfway across the frontroom in a single bound, gasped "someone's breaking in", took a second bound to the front door and chased the hooded figure and his assailant down the street. He's upset he didn't have more presence of mind to have kept quiet so as not to alert them before he got to the door. That way, being more strategic, he says, he would have had the element of surprise and would have been able to 'hammer them into the ground". Now the scary part about this is that Daz COULD hammer them into the ground. He's a Kungfu red sash (after you get your black belt, you must get 4 'tips' to the belt before you become a red sash. It takes years to get just one tip...and once you hit red-sash land, your studies delve heaviliy into the metaphysical). Maybe Daz coulda-shoulda just vanquished the baddies like Piper & Phoebe do on Charmed, the world's greatest show.
Anyway, I'm impressed with Daz's presence of mind (I was still wiping dribble from my cheek) and am extremely glad he didn't hammer anyone into the ground (although a vanquish would have lit the street up nicely!). Daz hung around out on the street after the two hooded bandits (Oh, I should have been writing newspapers all these years - so fun!) made their mighty escape. He then returned to the frontroom, where we sat for two minutes before we saw the two figures and their torch pass our home again... So up the self-appointed Maasai Guard gets and he's off out the front door again. 10 minutes later, no catch... just a frozen-feeted boy jumping into bed and me asking, "Are you going to stay put, now?".
Of course, the real thing you ask yourself is why. Why this experience? What's the lesson? It didnt take long for us to jump from being burgled in Australia to being burgled in Tanzania. We've (FWS team) discussed security in Tanzania from day one. We've talked 2 x German Shepherds, Maasai guards, thorn-fences (which manage to look pretty too because they're a variety of bouganvillea that's barbed), manager-on-site, alarm-system inside, steel shipping containers as safe rooms... but one idea I really like is to really focus heavily on involving the community to such a degree that they take ownership of this children's village. That's why I'm so taken with Rob-Not-Dentist's idea of paying locals a small sum for their kitchen scraps (to help run our biogas/compost loos). I was also thinking that we could ask local women to paint the children's village for us - pay them of course, ask them to come in and garden...we buy our milk from their cows, we set some of them up as our local bakers...we hold half-yearly community days where we invite everyone, throw a few goats on the spit, get a few market stalls up, entertainment... there are a million ways we can involve ourselves with our local villagers and become part of each others' lives. While I was in Tanzania in April, someone-forget-who, was telling me how somewhere-forget-where a local community centre was built by the locals - headed up by Westerners - but actually built by locals (like ours)... and that the locals felt such ownership of the place that when someone stole something from it, they all tracked the perpetrator down and gave him a good tribal dressing down. That's the type of security I want to manifest - community-minded ownership. I reckon we can do it.
I also reckon we can host the greatest event ever at this Sydney Kujenga gig. It's shaping up pretty spectacularly thanks to the untiring help of the Workstar girls (Julie Gornall, Jacqueline Musgrave, Kathleen Watson, Alex Ward), The Liquid Ideas team (Emilie, Rowena & Stuey Gregor), Janine, our newly appointed Corporate Sponsorship Liaison who has a bit of a flare for hosting a fundraiser event or 80, Stella of FocusArtefacts (pictured at her recent exhibition - that we spoke at) who's come on as our volunteer curator (go the professional!), Ciggy the Biggy, who always does whatever is needed without any fuss, and Anne, our just-getting-to-know-numbers-but-I-so-prefer-words treasurer! What a go-getting team - we're going off just quietly.
Now, want to hear something funny and how-the-universe worksy? You know how I've been raaaving about the venue? The Argyle at The Rocks, and how it's the most African, most spectacular, most exciting venue we could have ever hoped for?Want another pic? No problem... here we go.
Well we went for a site inspection there last Wednesday. We'd seen photos of The Argyle, but we wanted to see the space in person and meet the team that work at The Argyle - since we'll be annoying them intensely with petty little who-cares-us questions for the next five weeks. So Ro from Liquid Ideas sends across the details for our contact person at The Argyle. General Manager, Dan Rice.
Dan Rice. Dan Rice. I know that name...HANG ON, I'm thinking...if Dan Rice (GM of the Argyle) is the guy I think he is... he is the little bro of Gemma Sisia (of the School Of St Jude in Tanzania - where I volunteered for the year of 2003, the beginning of everything!). I lived with him for about 3 months in Moshono, Arusha. He returned home to work in pubs in The Rocks and was managing one...the Australian or something... and now ... surely it can't be him managing The Argyle.
Of course it was. Danny Dumpling himself. It was fantastic to see him. He was pretty busy but we had a great chat and found out we'll be in Arusha together. He's heading back over there next month to hang out with sister Gemma - and so is his twin brother, builder Paddy Pudding, another favourite of mine. I also lived with Paddy in Moshono - for about six or seven months. He's since been in touch and is keen to help us build when we begin. Awesome as Paddy built Gemma's first school, so he's got a lot of local knowledge we could tap into. Mind, I'm sure his big sissy will have first dibs on him (funny that) - she's building a huge second campus for St Judes, so I reckon Paddy will be tied up there. Still, fantastic to be in touch with Paddy Pudding (pictured below, Moshono 2003) and Danny Dumpling - will be even fantasticah to be in Arusha with them again. They're top blokes.
And finally...we've found that Toni Collette is in Cannes, at the Cannes Film Festival. Allright for some. Anyway, she's hooome soon, say her management, so hopefully she'll be up for singing at Sydney Kujenga and then flying to Tanzania to lay a few hundred bricks or so! Not shy, am I?
Take care, Beck
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