Frustration, the child jury system and 100m to fall

It’s been a while since I last updated this shindig so apologies for that but at the same time I don’t feel like much time has passed. Time is a funny thing. Not funny haha, but funny as in ‘it confuses me’. I wonder why we have come to use the word ‘funny’ to describe stuff that confuses us. Last time I checked confusion was pretty annoying. Anyways.

What have I been up to in the last two weeks or so? Well quite a lot now I think about it. Work-wise things are ticking over. My boss Di went away to England. That was pretty surreal. The goodbye conversation went something like ‘have a great time Di, send me a postcard…of where I…err…live…yeh…’ Although one of the weirdest things so far out here is how not far away we feel. I remember at the airport we all talked about when it’d ‘feel’ like Africa and nearly 7000miles away, but six weeks in and I still don’t ‘feel’ like I’m in Africa. It’s strange how big inventions like planes and the internet make big things like the world seem so small. Big + big = small. But back to my original point, yeh Di has been away for a week now and as she basically runs the whole DMPR department there’s not been a lot going on. We’ve got bits and pieces of work to be getting on with but nothing major really. It’s pretty frustrating to be honest.

When we came here a lot of people told us how great it is to have volunteer teams because we were so much more skilled through the UK education system and such like and we could do so much, but so far I think everyone feels like we’re doing bits and pieces, and a lot of it is proactive on our parts. African working life is very much slower than Western life which is nice in some ways, but more frustrating in others. I guess I’m used to the fast paced office style I worked in at the Met Police and that sort of environment brings the best out of me efficiency-wise. It’s hard when you are given a work style that you know is not making you be the best you can. When you know you’re only somewhere for a limited time yet can’t get out of 3^rd gear. I think I’m still very much in that Western thinking of things things things. I mentioned before that we’re told it’s people people people here, and I am aware that we are all a massive encouragement to those around us. We get a lot of thanks and praise for the work we do, but if anything that makes me feel worse because I know I’m not working to my full capacity. So yeh, it’s fair to say work is frustrating at times. I hope it will pick up and I trust it’s heading that way as we get into it more but it’d be no fun if I didn’t talk about the journey would it?

Other work is much more fun though. P.E. is going from strength to strength, indeed last Thursday Jonno and I managed to see a record broken in our Grade 2 class. Unfortunately it was a record for most sets of tears. I think we had 8 sets, and two sets of blood, and I had to send to kids to the side to sit out for kicking other kids. I would quickly like to point out that neither me nor Jonno were the cause of any tears (and for that matter I do have my CRB so don’t go calling no police on my ass) but instead we had a variety of pushing, kicking, punching, falling over and more pushing that caused the incidents. On the plus side, kids would save a lot of money in court cases. I think if our kids went to court it’d go a bit like this:

Judge: ‘Today’s court case is kid 1 vs. kid 2' (ok so I don’t remember what judges say but I can’t be bothered to look it up. Just imagine I got it right).
Prosecution Attorney (PA): ‘I call the defendant to the stand’
Kid 1 walks to stand, crying, snotty nose, and probably falls over again on the way and cries some more
PA: ‘Please tell the court what happened’
Kid 1: (in a quiet voice while looking at the floor) ‘he pushed me’
PA: ‘Small child, is the child who pushed you in court today?’
Kid 1: (nods)
PA: ‘Please point out to the jury who pushed you’
Kid 1: (looks confused)
PA: ‘go on, tell the friendly jury who pushed you’
Kid 1: (points to Kid 2. Audible shock sound arises from likely packed courtroom*)
PA: No more your honour. I would now like to call Kid 2 to the stand.
Kid 2 walks up sheepishly.
PA: Did you or did you push Kid 1?
Kid 2: ‘I said sorr-’
PA: ‘ANSWER THE DAMN QUESTION!’
Defense Attorney: ‘Objection your honour. Clear intimidation of the witness’
Judge: ‘Sustained’
PA: ‘Sorry your honour. Kid 2, did you or did you not push Kid 1?’
Kid 2: ‘Yes’
PA: ‘I rest my case’
Judge: ‘Well in that case I find the defendant guilty. Would the defendant please go and stand in the corner for 5mins?’
Kid 2: ‘Ok’ and walks off.
Outside the courtroom, associated press gather around the defendant, Kid 2.
Press: ‘Will you be appealing the decision?’
Kid 2: ‘No.’

(* Can I just say, I so don’t understand it when this actually happens in court. Surely everyone in the court realizes that the defendant is the one who is being taken to court for the crime so why is it a shock when he or she is pointed at??? It’s not like it’s a flippin’ murder mystery court room party! Now if the person pointed to the judge, THAT’D be funny…funny haha this time)

Point is that children are amazing at just admitting they’ve done wrong and accepting their consequence! It’s great! Makes it a lot easier! Interestingly we had a very unfortunate and horrible incident with a gentleman on site last week which led to him being asked to leave his temporary accommodation on site. On that occasion he most definitely did not admit to doing any wrong or happily accept his consequence. I am going to choose not to expand on that event for sensitivity reasons, but nonetheless clearly we teach kids morality well and then something goes wrong.

We also did an assembly last week which was pure comedy through and through. We were given the title of Peace and free reign to plan a 20minute assembly. We’d been told 3 weeks ago but still by the night before we’d barely sorted any of it! Mental note: seven people do not an effective planning committee make. So we wrote this drama which was good in principle and awful in execution. It involved five of us resolving various disagreements through methods that would oh-so-handily spell out the word PEACE later on in the assembly. It was comedy writing it but when we practiced it in the car park (can I just say, South African’s apparently have no respect whatsoever between cars and pedestrians in either direction. When we were practicing our drama in the car park, this guy literally just drove into us and didn’t even flinch. Then today we were leaving to go food shopping and there was a bunch of people standing in the car park but none of them moved in the slightest when we tried to get out. Even during the 13^th phase of our 17 point turn they just stood there and stared at us, standing slap bang in the way, and then two guys just walked straight past the back of the car when we were reversing, then when we finally made a space to get out, this girl moves out wider and was in the way again! Such a joke! End of rant.) this girl shouts ‘you doing assembly tomorrow? Well good luck, you’re gonna need it’ Excellent. That is precisely what you want to hear on the eve of performing to 247 kids. Anyways, we shambled (I just made that word up but it seems to fit nicely) it together and went to bed feeling rather embarrassed. However in the morning we totally nailed it and everyone loved it! It was hilarious and we have a video of all the kids singing ‘Allelu Allelujah’ ridiculously loudly.

Ok this is getting long and far too factual for my liking so I’ll end with a deep insight into life. This last weekend we went abseiling down a 100m (yes metres, not foot) cliff face next to a waterfall. It was amazing! I wasn’t scared before I began because I’m pretty gung ho these days (hence the running into wall incident), but when I first had feet on the cliff face and 100m drop below me…oh my gosh. I’ve never been so petrified in my life! It took all the courage in my entire body to finally totally lean back on the harness and totally trust the ropes to hold me...but when I did it was the best feeling in the world! I was literally horizontal standing with my bare feet on a cliff with some 90metres of sheer drop below me. I so enjoyed the rest of the time, it was amazing! That night during devotion I couldn’t get that image out of my head. I saw a big parallel with my life and my faith in Jesus. Since I’ve got here and in life generally I’ve never been very good at trusting in Jesus fully. Believing in, yes, living for, yes, but trusting in? Heck no. But as I thought that the best time I had abseiling was when I trusted the guys at the top and the cement foundations (stuff I could not actually see) and just enjoyed using my legs and arms to control my movement, I couldn’t not see the parallel with Jesus. If I can ever fully let go and trust that somewhere Jesus has my back, maybe then I can fully use my legs and arms to walk this life and get the most out of it.

On not wanting to be the spaceman

So we’ve finished our first week of work now and embarking on the second so I’ll fill you in, as promised, on some more details of what I’ll be doing for the next 105 days. My somewhat OCD side compelled me to create myself an all-singing all-dancing thoroughly beautiful and altogether stupendous timetable document. However Abby soon helpfully pointed out that it’s hugely unlikely that any week I ever have here will even resemble my timetable due to the somewhat relaxed planning and timekeeping that is lived out here. So you can add ‘largely pointless’ to my little timetable soliloquy. At any rate, here’s what is included in my utopian week:

Monday

0700 – 0800 Team breakfast and devotion
0800 – 1600 ‘Africa time’

Tuesday

0700 – 0800 Team breakfast and devotion
0800 – 1000 ‘Africa time’
1000 – 1130 DMPR Meeting
1130 – 1230 Grade 3 P.E. Lesson
1300 – 1330 Lunch
1400 – 1430 Grade 1M P.E. Lesson
1430 – 1600 ‘Africa time’
1830 – 2200 Cell group

Wednesday

0530 – 0800 Hospital feeding scheme
0800 – 1600 Admin work

Thursday

0700 – 0800 Team breakfast and devotion
0800 – 0930 ‘Africa time’
0930 – 1030 DMPR Meeting
1030 – 1130 Grade 1Z P.E. Lesson
1130 – 1230 Grade 2 P.E. Lesson
1230 – 1300 Lunch
1300 – 1400 Soccer coaching
1400 – 1600 ‘Africa time’

Friday

0700 – 0800 Team breakfast and devotion
0800 – 0900 Chapel
0900 – 1600 Admin

Glossary of terms

Team breakfast – Cereal. Toast. Fuel for the body

Devotion – Jesus. Prayer. Fuel for the soul.

‘Africa time’ – this is the antidote to my timetable falling apart. It means I am free to do whatever it is Africa is currently doing, not matter how unplanned or unannounced it was. Plus I can also use to for when other things in my week were postponed due to unforeseen African fun. At current rate, the need for help in admin means read ‘Africa time’ for ‘Admin time’.

DMPR Meetings – Weekly exercises in thrilling administration issues of the DMPR department

P.E. Lessons – Jonno and I will become the school P.E. teachers for the next 3 months. It should be a lot of fun. They’ll be 4 classes aged from 5 to 9 so I suspect they’ll be a lot of team games and creative relay races. Jonno and I will no doubt get involved in the games too - for the sake of the children’s learning of course. I shall also win all the time - again, solely for the children’s learning.

Hospital feeding scheme – Get food, go to hospital at stupid ‘o’ clock in the morning, give out food to people queuing for medical attention. Simple and effective.

Soccer coaching – Attempting to teach children how to play soccer. Judging from last week’s session, it will very much begin with teaching kids to run in the right direction. The concept of a goal, or such a miracle as a pass, is currently beyond them.

Chapel – a loud but tender gong is sounded throughout Gateway and all staff assemble in a matter of moments, in chronological age order. We are not allowed verbal communication. Once a month we are not even allowed non-verbal communication. We have drills weekly at random intervals to ensure the upkeep of quality and speed of the assembly process. If we fail them we have to start all over again. Only kidding. We just all meet in the Chapel to sing, dance, pray and learn from Jesus.

So there it is kids, I finally, after 4 weeks, have an answer to what I am doing*

(*I make no claim that what I end up doing will even resemble that timetable. This is Africa).

I have to say though that I did not expect to be doing what I am doing. A lot of my time will be spent in front of this computer typing reports and being the organizational oil that reduces the friction in the Gateway project engine (I had to try really hard not to use the word lubricant there). I work to a lady called Di who is a fundraising giant. She’s been doing it for 27 years and I’ve already been on one of her fundraising courses. Let’s just say she knows her stuff. Although frankly after 27 years you’d be concerned if she didn’t. It would be like Phil Neville being a footballer for his whole life and still deciding to foul a Romanian defender in the box during Euro 2000 and giving away a penalty…oh.

Anyways, like I said I didn’t think I’d be based in an area where the most dirty my hands will get is cleaning the mouse ball and the occasional scratch of my hair when I get bored. Having said that I have never forgotten a conversation I had with a friend called Rob probably about 4 years ago now. I’m not sure how it began but it ended something like this:

Phil: This is dull as. Somedays I wonder why I’m here and not out in Africa working with street kids and the poor and needy.

Rob: I so agree. I think we should just forget all this University thing and just go be somewhere where we’re making a real help.

Phil: Well actually, maybe we’re being really short sighted about this.

Rob: How so oh wise one?* (*dramatization: some detail may not have happened)

Phil: Well when you think about it, we’re probably in the top 0.1% of educated people in the world, if not higher. So who are we to throw away that privilege and go out to Africa, something that thousands of people would love to do and indeed be able to do. What if we should actually be seeing our education as a gift and a talent, a gift and a talent that if buried in the ground would represent a monumental waste?

Now I’ve never been called prophetic, pathetic yes, prophetic no, but looks like my conversation with Rob may have come true. I am indeed in Africa but I am not working on the projects that my hands wish to get dirty on and my heart wishes to be able to see. I am using skills that few people in the world have, and even fewer out her in Africa, to ensure that the body of Gateway functions in a healthy manner so that those blessed enough and very capable of working at the hands and feet can do so in a sustained and effective manner.

Back in the 80s I imagine a lot of kids grew up wanting to be a spaceman. Kids saw humans reach into space and try to touch the stars. One day they said they too would feel moon dust under their boots and plant the national flag into the surface, viewed by millions on TV back on Earth. I wonder how many grew up saying ‘I want to be the guy who checks the fuel in the shuttle before it takes off’, or ‘I want to learn all about the physics of space travel so I can design the flight path of the first flight to mars’. I would hazard a guess, and with fair reason, that there weren’t many. I am however proud to say that at the young kiddie age of 23 I can stand and grin and say ‘when I grow up I don’t want to be the spaceman’.

Juxtaposition is a good word

So it turns out that blog posting resembles the old bus cliché. You sit around waiting for something interesting to update people on and then two things come along at once. However aside from that common ground I should point out that blog posting has nothing else in common with buses so don’t try to get on one to get you to work. You will be fired.

As I have already stated juxtaposition is a good word. I remarked to Jonno just this week that I was pleased to have written juxtaposed in my journal. He replied that he was pleased with my word usage. It was a bonding moment for us both. The reason I wrote juxtaposed in my journal was in light of the daily work schedule it looks like I will be doing, and specifically the day I had on Tuesday (incidentally, the reason I like the word juxtaposition is far to complex and intellectually far reaching to even try to write down).

The first half of the day we went into the rural areas outside the city we’re in, Pietermaritzburg, and visited a crèche that Gateway supports. This was the first time we had really gone outside of the main city and into the communities and for the first time we saw the classic ‘Africa’. That is, dusty roads, mud houses, random animals wandering around and a lot of greenery. To be honest, the place we went wasn’t actually especially poor because Gateway had worked in the crèche for a number of years so it had toys and a garden and a toilet. We’re told that most crèches, like one we’re going to on Friday, likely won’t have lights or carpet, let alone any water, clothes, toys or windows. So I think that while this was something we all enjoyed seeing, it wasn’t the full on smack of true poverty. But at the same time it was a great chance to see the results of working here at Gateway.

While we were there we went for a classic stereotypical gender split. The girls headed inside to bring the colouring-in stuff we brought for the kids, while Jonno and I headed into the garden to plant the vegetables we had brought. As much as I’d have enjoyed playing with the kids, I much preferred being outside and getting my hands dirty (on the most literal level there is, the ‘fertilizer’ here isn’t the chemical form), and being able to look across the amazing view at all the little houses. It was hugely impressive to think that each of them had been hand-built but the Zulus who now lived there.

Equally impressive was the garden we worked in. Compared to most gardens and allotments I’ve seen in the UK, it was so well kept, with vegetables growing most places. And all that from the labour of one woman who ran the crèche. It was very inspiring. The worst part is when she was so thankful to us when we’d finished planting all our plants. It felt like a mother being genuinely and humbly grateful to the kid who came and put the cherry on top of her cake. Whilst it was just a nice thing for us to take a photo of us and the newly homed plants, part of me was thinking ‘what the hell are we doing commemorating our work?’

Oh and here’s a new lesson I learnt. Turns out it’s a bad idea to garden in the midday heat in Africa when you have flu. Jonno and I found out that apparently it’s quite conducive to feinting (ok so before you go mad at me in your head, I wasn’t that ill – Jonno was mind you – and we did get the girls in to help us finish off. At no point did we actually feint, I just had to stabilize a few times…).

So after that morning, which was one of the highlights of my time so far I think, we headed back to Gateway. Then came to moment of juxtaposition. If this were a film script I’d now write something like:



Just to clear up I’ve never read a film script so haven’t got the faintest whether that would actually appear in it.

So yeh, we came back to Gateway about 12.30pm and straight into 3 hours of meetings. Nice. Jonno and I are working centrally with some of our time in the department known as ‘Donor Marketing and Public Relations’, helpfully shortened to DMPR, and subtitled the ‘Try to find as much money as possible’ department. Jonno and I both felt we had skills to offer in this area so we walked into what is already looking like somewhat of a poison chalice. More on that in the blog entry after this one…

The first meeting was about…well to be honest I’ve not got a clue…thing about meetings is that unless you know what’s going on in them, it’s very hard to stay attentive despite best efforts. I’ve been in five hour meetings at the Met Police but they were fine, but this was only two hours yet I lost it after 20 mins. I imagine it is a lot like losing a yellow taxi in New York. Once you’ve taken you eye off the prize, you haven’t got an ice cube’s chance in hell of finding it again (ice cube’s chance in hell, I like that, I just wrote it now. I’m pretty good.)

Also I was more concerned about Jonno being semi-conscious next to me. He had flu big time and had done not much to stop working over the last two days, I had just caught it off him so I was on my way down, but at least I planned to halt my decline. AFTER the working day was over of course.

Anyways, as I sat in the meeting thinking about anything other than the content of said meeting, aside from the odd ‘oh Jonno and Phil can do that’ from my new boss Di, it very much struck me how crazy it was that this morning I was digging a garden for a crèche of orphaned kids, and now I was sat in a meeting about some very administrative and strategic issues.

There’s a joke about David Beckham, well actually it’s a old joke and someone’s applied it to David Beckham because they’re not clever enough to think of an original joke so they pick an easy target (I am unashamedly big fan of Mr. Beckham both for the footballer he is and the man, husband and father he genuinely appears to be). Anyways the joke goes like this:

‘David Beckham walks into training one day and one of his team mates says ‘oh hi David, look at this new flask I bought’, ‘oh what is it?’ replies David. ‘It’s called Thermos flask’ replies his team mate ‘it keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold’. ‘Wow that’s amazing’ gleams David, ‘I’m going to buy one of them myself after training today’. So the next day David comes in with his brand new Thermos flask. He goes up to one of his other team mates and goes ‘hey, look at this new flask I’ve got, it’s called a Thermos flask, it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold. I bought it yesterday and am using it for the first time today’. ‘Oh that’s a great idea David, so what did you bring in it today?’ ‘Well’ replies David, ‘today I brought in it some coffee and some ice cream’

The difference between Mr. Beckham and my Tuesday is that while he would’ve managed to create some kind of coffee flavoured cream concoction, my gardening and meeting duties, as spectrally opposed in experience as coffee and ice cream, both co-exist in the same area and indeed are both required for the continued success of both. Both my gardening and meeting duties cohabitate in the ever more impressive entity that is Project Gateway.

23 on the 23rd Bonus Track

One of my superb friends rightly pointed out that I never updated what my friends were planning when I was banned from the room. I felt it only right in honour of my team here that I informed the wide world, through web-means, of what effort they went to.

I was taken back to the eating arena aka the kitchen and dining room, and they took me into our private team room and they had laid out a whole party table of hats and party bags and serviettes (how DO you spell that word??) and a present for me. And by my seat was a card from my parents which was awesome. Then they brought in a cake that they'd made. It was immense. They'd felt that two layers looked too small so they made four layers!

It turned out that they'd been planning it all since before we left England! All through that week they'd been creeping about buying food here and there and lying to me outright. It was comedy. For someone supposedly very perceptive I had failed to notice, amongst other things:

- the fact that they had left for shopping without me despite me wanting to go
- Jonno had faked a deep and meaningful conversation in order to stop me walking into the room in which they were making my cake
- walked blatant food stuffs for cake making past me without me even noticing
- the fact that everyone on site knew it was my birthday yet I'd told very few

There was also another comic event when I was looking through someone's camera photos and on it was some photos of the cake they'd made, I was two photos away from it when Hannah realised so told me to stop, and then Izzy made up some excuse that there were photos of her doing a cartwheel (which to be fair there were) but that she was embarrassed so didn't want me to see them. So I passed the camera back. Little did I know that at that point their pulses were through the roof!

I would also like to praise Jonno for his genius deception with the insitgation of a deep and meaningful chat about something he was finding hard, just when I told him I was about to go for a walk to a place the guys were cooking in. I was sold like a kipper and I sat there and shared some deep advice from my soul haha. Jonno claims he needed that chat anyway at some point, but he just seized the moment and brought it forward!

So yeh, that's what happened on my birthday!