Visited by Aussies, Ausies, we love Aussies!
We are beaming! Why? Well, you will of course, by now know our feisty, vibrant, sassy lass, our one and only corporate sponsor liaison, Ms Janine Moodley (oh, and she’s my old school captain as I love telling everyone)…well, well, what a feat Ms Mooders has pulled off for FWS this week.
Yes, yes, who does she send to the Kesho Crew’s doorstep but Australia’s most generous man when it comes to giving overseas aid? I’m not going to name him, but suffice to say he spends his life traveling the world, hooking up with and funding philanthropic projects he likes. Don’t get too excited – while I think he and his lovely wife liked us, I also think he’d like to see how FWS travels a bit before he whacks out his chequebook and we whack out our armchairs! Fair ‘nuff! He is, after all, a businessman (and we are, afterall, unlikely to enjoy living life from an armchair!). But imagine, what a verging-on-hilarious situation – our very first visitor to the project! I soooo thought I’d be welcoming Corky’s mum to Tanzania well before I was welcoming [warning: name drop coming up] … Tim Costello’s mate. But there you go. [And I’m sure I’ll enjoy welcoming you Mrs Corky just as much as I enjoyed welcoming our celebrity visitors).
Now, apart from all that money rubbish, part of the fun revolved around us finally having an opportunity to show someone – anyone! – our work so far. We were asked some straightforward questions: what plans do we have in place for one half of our mammas turn out to be ‘bad’? What will our running costs be? What ratio of mammas to kids are we going with? Who will be the male role models for the kids? Why do we think Tanzanians will afford to buy their own rainwater tanks at $180USD a pop when the Tanzanian GDP is bloodyhell-cant-remember-but-a-whole-lot-less-than-180USD?
And we mostly had answers…
• “bad” mamas. Well Shona reckons given she was interviewing them all individually and taking much time to get to know their life situation, getting them to gossip about each other (true!), that’d she’d have a higher success rate of getting great Kesho house-mums, even an 80% success rate, say. Rebecka added that it’s also about determining what a ‘bad mother” is anyway – is most ‘bad mothering’ coming from a psychological place? Yes – and the Kesho Leo manager, Kelsey Wilson is a social worker doing her psych major… so it’s just a matter of nuturing and counsellling…not of hiring and firing…
• Running costs: $30,000, why haven’t any of you asked us this one? That $30K is one of the fantastic figures Mark Biz helped us come up with his stay here in August. That’s why we call him The Bizness.
• Mamma to kid ratio is 1:5. Which our visitor thought was pretty good, saying research shows 1:4 is perfect…
• Male role models – Mudi, who is remarkably Nelson Mandela despite his 28 years, has always been our showcase here – what a spiritual, honest, compassionate man and what a love of children he has. We will go out of our way to make sure the other men we employ at Kesho – gardeners, farmhands etc are of the same mould.
• Water issues - Corky reckons the argument for promoting individual water tanks for each household in the community revolves around convincing farmers that the long-term costs of treating health issues offset the loss of purchasing a tank. He says 20% of income in developing countries goes towards health and a very large percentage (he forgets how much) of health issues are water-related. Cost wise, he says that a practical savings scheme (where FWS might match the savings of locals) would ensure our neighbours could buy the $180USD tanks. We’re gonna continue doing our sums on this one…
Admittedly, it was also pretty exciting that our visitors were Aussies. Man, we love Aussies. You forget how much you love Aussies when you’re actually at home, being one. But it’s my experience that it only takes a short trip away from home to remind you!
Now you heard me mention NGO status… And you may have been wondering why we would be raving on to Seleina and Ron about how to get there’s when we hadn’t even got ours yet. Well, no we didn’t have ours when speaking with Seleina but… we do now! Official, official, official! We are legit, legit, legit!
Global Fund For Children Grant - Letter Of Enquiry Finally got this application for cashola off. Very excited. Next week is “applying for solar panel grants” week. Then the week after annual report.
Kesho Walls The Kesho walls can continue to rise (see pix – and note too the special pic of the rubbish ply and how it’s turned into a wafer in the rain!)…
Kesho platforms Daz has laid a few of the concrete sleepers as pathways around the early-learning room to see if they work. Affirmatory, as our greatmate Coolio likes to say (often!). Affirmatory because: they look fantastic - really strong, really neat. At first they bowed the timber a little bit but Daz has fixed that up by bracing the timber (the bowing was expected and unavoidable - it happens because there is no grading system of timber's strength in Tanzania like there is at home, so different planks are different strengths, and you don't know what you're getting.) Very exciting to see these pristine concrete moulds actually start working together to make something - our pathways! (see pix)
Shona Sorts Herself for 2008 Shona realised that she will need a job next year and has begun asking bold questions of those she has working relationships with - she's designing herself the perfect job that will fit nicely around her real job - fws-ing.
Corky's Volunteer Huts Corky' (he of the shaving with my kuku friend Kelsey fame) got the foundations down, with the steel safes securely inserted. He's laying the first row of bricks this morning (sounds easy - but you cannot imagine what he's been thru to actually get those bricks to the site! Picture this: bricks at bottom of hill, truck at top, brick quarry owner wanting an extra 20c per brick to get them to the top of the hill…oh the negotiations took an age – all the while the owner threatening to kiln the bricks so he didn’t lose them in the rainy season which is upon us – we don’t want them kilned – we’re keeping it real & local…but truly, what price for sanity?). So delighted that the mud bricks actually went down today, Corky took off into town this afternoon to do a spot of window shopping...literally. Seems he can have windows any size he wants, but he just has to wait a bit for them… No probs he reckons, he’ll lay the concrete foundations for the third and fourth huts, for his open-air showers (yes, they’re gonna be interesting!) and his compost loos… not like he’s short of a job!
Well that’s about it, except for my strong but polite demand that all our thoughts be with Mum, Dad and Little Bruvvy Joshbo this week as Mum’s just started her chemo. I know you’ll oblige me – and I also know that as mum wryly put it in a recent email she’ll “probably survive”… [you have to say it as if you are dragging your feet around the house and have just slumped in the lounge chair – there must be NO ring of confidence – or even joy in it - at all]. She obviously doesn’t want us to get our hopes up! Well, bad luck Jill, our hopes up. Till next week, Beck
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