Swamped

Hehe. Oh joy. Oh joy. Am I ever having a laugh. A hysterical one. I’m swamped. Completely, utterly, swallowing-water-and-choking swamped. How did a little art exhibition ever turn into such an extravaganza? As if it was ever little. Why would I even pretend it was ever meant to be little? It wasn’t. See, I’m in full denial, hysteria, whatever you want to call it, I’m clearly a madwoman.

Anyway, I’ll try and find a point to my madwoman ramblings. Sydney Kujenga is going to be fantastic, but my, what an emotional rollercoaster it has been. I’m so incredibly lucky to have the Workstar girls and some great old and new mates on this SKOCommittee. Yes, yes, they’re putting in the hard yards, cold-calling for prize and artwork donations, answering my every nitty-gritty question, emailing ‘about fws’ info to everyone they ever meet/haven’t yet met, negotiating banking set-ups, finding dramatic, exhilarating African entertainers to donate their performances, IT issues, come-to-my-house-every-Monday-night-or-else commitment… but I’m MOSTLY appreciating their calm. They’re working to get the job done and they’re not getting in flap. And that’s such an incredibly comforting thought when it seems like there is so much to do, nobody could ever do it. They respond to my manic, stressed, panic-stricken emails with a simple clarity I can only admire. Thank you girls – any sanity I have at the moment is based purely on your calm support.

Look at this for a list of jobs: create a database of people to invite (sound easy? Where would you start? I mean who has 200 friends to pull out of their backpocket! This took approximately 2 weeks of hands-on googling from a team of 9. We have 400ish names!), create the events for the night, bring in heaps of exotic, sort out food and drink, get some media happening, unusual artwork from strangers who have never heard of us, ditto prizes, create all the paperwork for the evening (bidding forms, programs, wishlists, rah-rah), build an enticing, evocative Audio-visual display for the entire evening, find brilliant entertainment and then convince them to perform – for free…okay I’m starting to repeat myself.

Breathe.

So yes, the point is emotional roller-coasting. Some things are sooo exciting – getting Senegalse drumming sensation, Pape Mbaye [pictured with his son Yacou] to play for instance. Some things are sooo stressing – will people come? What if they don’t? What does an empty room at The Argyle look like? Shuddup. Some things are sooo disappointing – we ask a very successful organic food franchise for a prize donation – we wanted 6 months (not a year, just 6 months!) of free groceries at one of their stores. Yes, yes, they’ll donate – they’ll give us a whopping (not) 10% discount for six months. Here’s their logo, here’s their website address, be sure to give them heaps of publicity on the night. Mmm, I don’t think so. How is a gift a gift when you ask people to pay for it? Call me greedy, but for these Tanzanian kids, I am. I don’t want your half-baked donation. I want you to give – truly give. Freely and open-heartedly. Just as Workstar, Liquid Ideas, the Argyle and the SKOC girls have. It’s an attitude.
What about this: we received a classic reply from an art gallery when we asked them to donate a piece. “We don’t do that”. What, you don’t give to not-for-profit causes? “No.”
Another annoying one is the airlines. Why won’t any airlines come to the party with flights for our fabulous Serengeti trip? How hard can it be? This is our big-ticket item… We could raise $15,000 from this prize if it had flights in it. But don’t go thinking we’re giving up on it just because we’ve had no ‘giving’ from any airlines… We’re thinking we just need to find a corporate willing to ‘give’ us their corporate-card frequent flyer points.

So you see, the ups and downs. One minute, you’re blown away by people’s generosity and the next you’re befuddled by their total lack of it. Anyway, in the midst of all that you’re too busy to focus on any disappoint for too long anyway!

Soooo busy? How do I find time to write the blog, then? Oh, well because, you know, the internet’s down. I would, of course, in other more opportune circumstanced, spend this morning trying to push the invite out the door. Yes, the invite that was to go out at the absolute latest – last week. Yes, we’re onto our third designer. Yes, it looks great, but embedding the links to Moshtix (where people purchase their tickets from), well that’s proving problematic. In fact, there isn’t much about the invite that hasn’t proved problematic. I partly love the invite (looks/reads gorgeously) and I partly hate it (why won’t it JUST WORK? And does it really think people want to receive it the day before the event?)

It’s also a little heart palpitating not to have any time to do stuff for the organisation called Food Water Shelter. You may have heard of it. You’re unlikely to have heard of it if you were standing near anyone involved with this Kujenga fundraiser. FWS is hardly mentioned. We don’t have time for it. What’s that actually mean? It means that I’m not finding the five minutes it would take to call our lawyer in Tanzania and tell him to draft up the contract for the Utopia block purchase. Some might see this call as a priority. I would happily be included in this ‘some’. FWS website? Forget it. Haven’t had two seconds to call the guys redesigning it to say “Please finish”. Corporate sponsors for FWS? Forget it. Not in this lifetime! Haven’t made one phone call, sent one email, met one potential backer. Decided I’d just invite the corporate sponsors I’d like on board to come to … Kujenga.

See? It’s all leading back to Kujenga. Nothing else exists except Kujenga.

And that’s all fine. Just as long as Kujenga fulfils its ambitious role. $100,000.

Breathe.