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.