Full house

And into the little two-bedroom home, they shoved seven people. First came Beck and Daz, who were followed by carpenters Jai and Blair… and now add some Shona and Daniel (Darren’s 13yo son),


and a little sprinkle the singing finance wizard Mark Bizeray and you’ve the melting pot of Kesho Leo Volunteer House.

Daz, Daniel and I are bunking in one room. Shona is kipping at one end of the loungeroom while The Bizness kips at the other. And Jai and Blair remain in their cozy backroom with a new mate – the 8cm mozzie (evidence provided).

So yeah, it’s a full-on share-house set up, but the vibe is certainly not Big Brother (or I’d go home!). I think it’s not BB because this crew are intelligent, open-minded and here to do something for ‘the greater good’. We’ve only had one ‘volunteer house meeting” and it was at my behest. We needed to rejig our eating finances given that some of our funding could possibly/is maybe falling through. Had to ask the team straight up if they minded covering a little bit more or their eating expenses than we’d agreed. Rather embarrassing, but what can you do – if the funding falters, there’s repercussions. This was one. Fortunately, the guys were more than cooperative, so thanks for that, you big legends.








We’re still on track for the Kesho Leo Children’s Village funding – and are particularly proud to announce that Lonely Planet Foundation have advised that they will grant us $10,000 AUD towards the building of Kesho. We’re particularly impressed with that because we reckon they’re tops – so the fact that they reckon we’re tops is a pretty big compliment!

Shona has been busy reorganising us. Seems we are living too flash. Too many meals with meat - a twice-a-year treat for our villagers, but an everyday expectation for carnivorous Aussie blokes who are labouring under the African sun (jury is still out on this one – compromise is looking like meat-based meals twice a week instead of every night. An interesting one – Shona argues we should aim to become part of our village and live on the rice-and-beans type meals they do, whereas Daz argues just because he comes to Africa doesn’t mean he has to pretend he’s African. I’m happy to eat local food – it’s delicious. But I’m certainly not happy to eat backpacker’s meals – cold pasta with tinned sauce. I just feel like I’ve done that, and didn’t find it particularly enjoyable. It seems crazy not to eat well when there are so many fantastically fresh, organic vegies all about, every which-way you turn). And speaking of fresh, Shona’s arranged for our milk to come from our neighbour’s cow instead of the supermarket in town. Another one, I’m happy for despite the fact that at home I’m all about low-fat soy! It’s also been put out there that we should stick with the cheap local margarine not the real butter some of the posher shops import from New Zealand or Ireland (the boys are happy to go with the marg, but for me this one is an outright “no” as I’m convinced this ‘margarine’ is actually the by-product of some el cheapo women’s toiletry. Why else does it like sorbolene cream? Eh? Eh?).

It was great to sit down and nut out with Shona what we hope to achieve individually and as team while here. She’s particularly keen to get out into the village and meet and greet with a view to locating potential Kesho staff members and … ah, orphans. She’ll also be continuing her snappy secretarial duties and pitching in wherever needed in the meantime. Me, I get to continue to update and document our work so that you readers and your friends are kept abreast of how we’re going. I’m spozed to do some other jobs too but they’re a secret right now. Together, Shona and I agreed to research the stuff we need to know in order to get this show on the road. Today, we had our first field trip of researching. We headed out to the lush, Usa River area to Cradle Of Love orphanage, which is run by an awesome American woman, Davona Church (www.cradleoflove.com). Davona agreed to sit with us despite us just rocking up unannounced. She gave us a few hours of her time and imparted all sorts of wonderful advice about how she runs her brilliant home.

Among other things, Davona’s transparency will help us nail some very tight ‘operating’ costs for Mark Biz, who has spent two weeks whipping Kesho accounts (and those that run them - us!) into line. Resultment? We have some seriously spiffy excel files to work with and are now spending our last moments with The Biz fine-tuning the projections we’d made in 2006 for operating costs.

Up at the block, Daz has begun pouring foundations and Blair & Jai have moved from banging up timber moulds for our concrete sleepers in the backyard to working on the block doing set-out and foundations this week. Both are really happy to be meeting and working with our African Kesho crew. They reckon they’re learning about three new Kiswahili words a day.

Oh yes, we’re party animals too. We had a house-warming do and invited all our neighbours last week. We ate 387kgs of pilau (which Agnes cooked – we said make it for 10 people – three days later, we are still eating it!) and gave a quick, impromptu presentation about our Kesho plans – which our neighbours all know about anyway. Shona used her brand-new ‘handy cam’ to record it all but cracked herself up the next day when she played back her filming and related commentary. “Note to self,” she giggled, “I am NEVER to talk while filming…because I am an absolute dork”.


Mark, Jai, Daniel and Blair have begun catching dula-dulas into town, and as you’d expect have racked up a few adventures (and great photos) as a result. Mark Biz, in between setting us up with some slick-as accounting systems, has managed to locate us a local electrician (to fix our darkened loo room) who also makes chapattis (local fried flatbread, not exactly healthy, but certainly yum). Blair, Jai and Daniel have begun an almost-daily afternoon soccer match with the locals on the land we cleared for cropping. Yes, not so much cropping has been done, so why not use it as a soccer field? The local kids are stoked because they’ve no other land to play on (as their parents do actually crop their acreage). They use Daniel’s leather soccer ball or their own soccer ball, a sphere made up from rolling plastic bags together.

Food Rockin Shelter went off so the boys have a regular gig at Stiggy’s on Friday nights. We made Mark Biz get up and sing two songs despite having been in transit for 35 hours. I’ve never actually seen someone nodding off in their chair (those big nods where your head jerks and looks like it might snap your neck in two), be called to the stage by so-called ‘mates’, only to shake off the snores and bleary eyes and render an extremely charismatic rendition of Pearl Jam’s Black. (Hey, wasn’t this crooning, swooning guy in la-lah land just minutes ago?)

An adventurous night to the end. On the way home, Jai, holding his camera in the back of the ute, was accosted by a pretendly-friendly African on the way through the slums. Faking a handshake, the guy ghosted Jai’s hand and made a grab for his spiffy Nikon digital. Stealing Stanley didn’t know what happened to him. Before he knew it, Jai had him in a headlock and was dragging him, limbs flailing, behind the ute. Not sure what the unusual noises were, Daz braked and yelled out, “What’s going on?” to which Daniel, Blair and Jai shouted, “Don’t slow down, keep driving!” Eventually, Stanley let loose his grip on Jai’s camera and in return, Jai let loose his iron-fisted grip of Stanley’s head!

Blair taught Daniel to play canaster in one night-long session, so now Daniel likes to play with anyone who will play him. Which isn’t that many people, given he’s become a self-appointed Card Nazi. Apparently there are many rules to Canaster and you shouldn’t make any mistakes while learning them. Too funny. The annoying part is that Daz doesn’t even listen to the rules, causing us all – particularly Daniel - great distress, and then drives us all mad by winning. We don’t ask Mark Maths-Brain Biz to play any more because he beats us without even letting us explain the rules to him.

And we’ve found Benui a job. Well, sort of. Shona, Daniel and I ran into a lovely Aussie pilot who has been based out of Arusha for three years and is going home, leaving his piloting job behind, in one month. If you weren’t onto it, our lovely IT maestro, Benui Shwabe, yes that’s Kels’ boy, is a pilot looking for more hours during his stay in Tanzania next year. So swapski? Topski.

Next week,
Beck