Up close & personal (posted late - written mid-Oct)

It’s a personal blog, so let’s get personal. After all, anyone who thinks there are no emotions involved in building a children’s village in a developing country needs to sit in the room of mirrors. I’m talking about myself, of course. No, strangely I didn’t realise that the building bit would actually be the easy, smooth-flowing part. Who knew so much energy would go into keeping my head straight? And let me be the first to say, that I’m barely confident I’ve even managed to pull of some semblance of sanity.

I felt a little bit saner a couple of weeks ago, when Dad emailed to say that Mum had come of surgery for her second bout of cancer, fairly well. Yes, there are still months and months of chemo and radiation therapy ahead so we’re not out of the woods yet (and won’t be until mid 2009!), but step one is complete. Of course, Mum was supposedly cancer-free (after having already battled and overcome it in 2004) when I left Australian shores to undertake this little adventure. Every time I come to Africa, something heart-wrenching happens. Last time, our much-loved family dog, the inimitable Chevy James Delforce died, the time after that my extremely inspirational grandfather (Mum’s dad) passed away and this time… well you can imagine where my heart and head were going when I read mum’s email last month outlining the less-than-terrific news that she now had a different, new type of cancer, that was…fairly invasive. Anyway, that was then. Now the prognosis is gruelling but better. The doctors are confident they removed all of the cancer during surgery and when Mum asked them to speak plainly about whether she was “too far gone” to bother with the side-effects of chemo, they answered, “You’re very young, in your 50s, and you’d be absolutely mad not to go ahead with chemo. It is our intent to cure you.” So there we are. Mum says I'm not to come home (yet), but to stay in Tanzania, doing this important work and also to stay with Daz to help him continue his side of the bargain. An easier job than it sounds!

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
Which brings us to the second emotional lets-get-personal element of this cozy little blog my keyboard seems to be spitting out. Now you may or may not know, but Daz is the love of my life, my soul mate, the one I was waiting for – all that and more. I first encountered him when I was seven years old, in second class, at St Joseph’s Primary School, Moorebank, NSW. In my young world, he scrubbed up as somewhat good-looking, superbly tall, and suitably cheeky – all good. Actually, I also thought he harboured an annoying tendency towards raving on far too much about trucks but I must have forgiven him this outrageous immaturity because at some point, he asked for a kiss (just a peck, mind – we were 7) and I happily volunteered. Volunteering for gold, way back then! Unfortunately however, my offering didn’t receive quite the humble gratitude I’d expected. Daz, promptly wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and replied, “Ever heard of Colgate?”. Needless to say, Dazzie Pants, who had started off looking like such a catch, didn’t end up being my greatest friend. We went our separate ways for many years – him to Norway, where he met and married a Norwegian girl and had his sons, Robbie, 18 and Daniel, 14, who was here with us in Africa just a month ago. I ran into Daz again a few months after I had returned from my first life-changing trip to volunteer in Africa in 2003, and a few months after he had separated from his wife. He was living at Alexandria and I was living at Surry Hills (suburbs adjoining each other). He asked me to dinner and managed to get through the entire meal without insulting me. Wow, had this boy matured! Over Fu Man Chu Chinese at Bondi, Daz talked about his sons and I talked about Africa. He asked awesome questions and seemed genuinely interested in my experience. We agreed he’d call me the following day. Now, here, he excelled himself. He did something I’d rarely experienced – he kept his word and called. We saw each other again the next night and by the end of the week, we had discussed how long his sons would need to adjust to the emotional turmoil of him having a girlfriend and how long it would be before him and I (and hopefully his sons) would be able to fly to Tanzania to build some type of children’s facility for orphans. We thought the year would be 2009. So, really, if this cement shortage lasts two years, the Kesho Leo Children’s Village could still be on track! Needless to say, we began an awesome life together, with fws starting off as a weird thing that I spent time on by myself. Before long, the fws girls were on board, and then Daz, by osmosis – just like how Ben was osmosis-sed in by Kels – became as involved as any of us. The fws girls and I always look back and laugh about the switch in our lives – you can get a gauge for when the fws bug really bit us if we look at when each of us started checking our fws emails EVERY day. Once you’re checking emails every day, you are bit, and you’ve got the fws fever and so far, there’s been no inoculation. I feel especially proud of our fws boys because they don’t get loads of glory like we girls. Since we’re board members, we show off outrageously and talk ourselves up at every function, speech, presentation, event. But really, our boys don’t get that chance because they’re not often given the podium, since they are not officially "board members". They’re executive members – Ben Schwabe (IT legend who is responsible for our awesome websites – new and old!), Robert Cork (environmental engineer is ensuring all our eco-friendly stuff goes off), Joe Ward (our financial strategist who gives us all sorts of KICK-some-goals advice), and of course Daz (building foreman/engineer/singer-songwriter). We are, of course, very close, to asking our wonderful eco-tect Rob-Not-Dentist Watson if he’s up for taking an executive management role – but we figure we’d better allow him the chance to finish an entire project with us before he commits to another! So for the meantime, let me confirm that Daz, Ben and Corky are checking the emails daily and are an incredible team to work with – a particularly impressive team given that two of them (Ben & Daz) also get the role of supporting their fwsing girls during the highs and lows of fws-life.

Now first, let’s specify that there aren’t too many lows – but yep, they exist. For instance, Daz & I found it fairly easy to make the transition from happy-go-lucky couple with separate day jobs and long-term “plans to do some good work in Africa in 2009ish” to single-income couple with separate day jobs (mine was to volunteer my services to fws full-time). The transition we’ve found hard is the bit where we learn to work together, on foreign soil, in a developing country, while hosting volunteers, while building a children’s village. Why?
1. Well, there’s culture shock number one. It can feel very weird to have an African experience EVERY single day. Most African experiences range from exhilarating to frustrating within the hour, so walking (or stumbling!) through that day in, day out, is always going to be exhausting.
2. We’re both used to being the manager in our day jobs. So it’s been a bit of a case of too many managers in the broth will kill the cake. (That was my Jo Bjelke Peterson impersonation).
3. Putting myself in charge of accounts and Daz in charge of spending was just a stupid, stupid idea from day one. Like a serious Der Freddy decision! As if we weren’t gonna fight about that. “But DARLIIIIING, why does this receipt indicate that the cement is suddenly more expensive this week?”
“WELL BECAUSE DAAARLING, LIKE I EXPLAINED, THE GOVERNMENT SOLD IT TO SOUTH AFRICA TO BUILD THE NEXT WORLD CUP VENUE.”
“Yes, DARLIIIING, but you ordered it before that happened, so I’ll ask again: why are we paying more?”
“BECAUSE DAAARLING of the reasons I just outlined…”
“Well, DARLIIING it’s not ME that cares – it’s the FWS supporters and donors we’re responsible to.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that DAAAARLING, that’s why I bargain hard every single day - but it doesn’t change the fact that cement went up!”
“Goodnight”
“Hmph”

So, Daz and I have come some way towards sorting ourselves out – it’s only taken three months. We’ve worked out that we must:

1. Take a day off, away from everything and everyone – and do something that is relaxing and if possible, Western. Like…having a yum lunch (with no rice in it, say!) or going for a good-old fashioned dunk in one of the hotels’ aqua-glittering swimming pools. This makes us feel like we are a couple, not just workmates, that we deserve some time out from constant fws decision-making, and it also gives us a break from the culture shock. At home, we’d enjoy the odd lunch and plenty of swimming – so why not do some of that here? We’re also thinking we might take a WHOLE weekend off every fourth weekend to ensure we keep feeling on top of everything.
2. Since Shona’s arrival, the two-managers thing has started to sort itself out – now’s there’s three! Hah, jokes. No, what has happened is that Daz focuses more on building – using his team of Tanzanians and volunteers and Shona and I have been focussing on our NGO bureaucracy bits and pieces. It means that in a way, Daz worries about the building stuff and I worry about the non-building stuff, so now we can still be managers in our own areas.
3. Accounts – well Mark Biz has helped us out enormously with this (by setting up great excel spreadsheets during his visit last month) but Daz and Shona have both helped me out as well by starting to scribble the exact info I need onto each receipt before handing it to me to log in.


FWS AUST & KESHO CREW – THE TYRANNY OF DISTANCE

The other unanticipated emotional strain is around being separated from the fws girls. It’s generally accepted that long-distance romances need some serious effort to work out. Why would I think my working relationships with the fws girls would be any different? No, we’re not writing each other Dear John letters – far from it. But we’ve not been able to communicate as effectively as we have in the past. I blame that on a few things – Daz and I arriving here and aiming to get on with the job (at the same time as we were learning to work together) didn’t allow much time for me emailing regular updates to the girls. Of course, we didn’t have an internet connection for a while either so that didn’t help. And then when we did have it, I was spending most of my time trying to settle in our newly arrived volunteers, continuing to learn to work better with Daz, dealing with Mum’s less-than-thrilling news and preparing to welcome Shona who was on the plane already-already! Anyway, the girls and I have come to the conclusion that I’ll write them a weekly update of fws happenings so they don’t have to wait until a blog gets posted, or for spasmodic emails about spasmodic topics! Who knows, I might even delight them with a rundown of my and Shona’s emotional headspace once in a while – I’ve tried to save them the boredom so far, but our resident almost-psychologist Kels reckons she’s happy for us to debrief. I suspect she just wants some good case studies! Of course, everything will be terrific when the fws girls can have one of our face-to-face, never-ending fws meetings again, which we will of course, follow up with a chai and chat about our lives outside of fws (minimal, but still worth a mention!)

AND FINALLY - WE KNEW THERE’D BE EMOTION AROUND TZ BUREACRACY
Well, I also have to mention this one, despite the fact the emotional pull around the two-forward-two-back sort of system here, is one we were all completely aware of and completely expecting. Because we anticipated it, we’ve so far not been too upset by the delays, backtracking and non-advice. But clearly, there’d be less emotional pull if things just went through the wheels of the powers that be the way they do at home. You tick boxes, they tick boxes. Here, we tick boxes, and they untick them. And then we tick some more and they tick one… and then untick two. On it goes, but as I say, we were prepared for it, so this emotional pull at least, hasn’t affected us too much.

Okay, enough of the girl talk. Yes-yes, next blog I’ll update you on building – but I couldn’t this time because we’ve had no cement and plenty of rain so that put a stop to proceedings. Ho hum. No real stress - instead, we employed the guys to build a gorgeous perimeter fence around our volunteer house, to plant a huge vegie garden (which also resulted in us discovering an avocado and pear tree), to clear the grounds, plant bouganvillea, transplant the 135 grevillea seedlings that had popped up on our land, to tier a mountain-viewing area for us to sit after work. Starting to feel like home…

Back soon, beck