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’.