Ambitious Development

Hi team,

How are you all? I don't really know why I'm asking that but it seemed like a good idea at the time. 'The time' being 3 seconds ago. People often say that communication is a two-way process, those people didn't account for travel blogs. Idiots.

Anyways, it's been about 11 days since I last wrote to you fine people and it would be very dramatic to say that it's felt like either 11 minutes or 11 months but I'll be honest. It feels like 11 days ago. Time is a funny thing. Deja vu.

So what have I been up to? Well quite a bit actually. I said before that my boss in admin had been away so not much happened here (as if anything ever happens in admin. Admin is just a synonym for steady as she goes. I prefer 'admin' as a phrase because whenever I say 'steady as she goes' I feel like I should have an eye patch and say 'Arrrrr' after it) however the school was all systems go. We had a special founder's assembly at the school because Pastor Jabu (the head honcho of Gateway) felt very strongly that we needed to be remembering our founding fathers at the present time. So they had a set of awards made and invited a lot of old principals and teachers along and honoured them. It was a very impacting time simply because although we 'knew' the school had begun with nothing, when we saw the tears of happiness in some of the original teachers' eyes, it was only then we truly knew. I will get some photos of the school in due course, either on this or on facebook, but suffice to say it's very impressive considering it came from nothing and has had no major financial backing. Some people call that good work. Others call it God work.

You see, crazy ass stuff isn't that crazy here. In the last few weeks the following three things have happened:

1. Mama Dorah's Comrades Ticket. This thing is entirely non-understandable and I still don't know what happened and what the outcome is going to be. Anyways, there is this Zulu lady who lives on site with us called Mama Dorah (all Zulu ladies of ripe age are called Mama) and every year she runs the Comrades Marathon. However 'marathon' is a deceptive term. This is no London marathon. This is a double marathon. 50 miles. Between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. It's insane. And of course during the day it will likely hit 25degrees here and clear skies aka hot weather for running. I suspect you are imagining Mama Dorah as a slim twenty something. Nope. She's between over 40, pretty short and pretty wide. Anyways, Comrades is her life. And last week she got a call from the Comrades people saying they didn't have her qualification details. Oh dear. I've never seen her not smile until now. She was proper devastated. Like seriously, you can tell from other people's faces how upset someone truly is. She was upset. So Lorne, another lady who works in admin, asked Jonno and to investigate and so we did. I personally spoke to her club manager to told me she had run the qualifying race but not in the qualifying time. I asked if there was anything we could do. He said no. I put the phone down. Not good. I told Lorne and she told Dorah. Dorah was evenmore devastated than before. There was genuinely an awful mood over the admin block that afternoon.

Cut to two days later. Mama Dorah comes towards me waving some post and grinning. I assume it's some amazing mail for me from my amazing friends (hint hint). She showed it me and I didn't have a clue what it was. Someone with more braincells than me pointed out that it was her details for her entry to the Comrades Marathon; start time, jersey number, starting place, the works. Makes no sense at all.

2. School fundraising. I said already about this assembly that the school did. Anyways they also mentioned that they are looking to raise R100,000 (about 6 thousand pounds) for a sports field for the kids but didn't actually ask for it. The assembly was about honouring those who had built the place. But by the end of the assembly the school had two thirds of it, from only two sources. One was a R50,000 donation. That's insane. That's a LOT of money in this country. Much more than the 3000pounds it equates to.

3. The Community Care House. This one is particularly crazy. Basically a project that use to be under the Gateway ownership is going solo because it's gotten so big, and they need to move buildings. So these two guys went out to look, seperately and unbeknowns to each other, and ended up at the same house at the same time. But when they spoke to the lady selling the house, she said there were already two bids in above and beyond what these guys could offer. However she then asked what is was for and they said a church-based care project. She then testified that that morning she had felt God saying it would be a good day and she sold it to the two guys then and there for way under the bids already lodged. It's just non-sensical this stuff.

This place continues to amaze me. I have just finished this fundraising course my boss in admin was running and it's been a massive eye opener. This place, although very much Christian-centred, isn't a poverty-pleading and poorly thought out venture. This project has so much fundraising going on as such a high standard. We have a UK trust that gathers UK donations and we call it over in lumps so to avoid international charges, we have a crafts business that sells in New York and Europe to generate income, and are about to launch a massive tourism initiative that will turn our site, while we still work in it, into a tourist location. From that we are already on a publicised 'freedom route' which includes attractions of both Nelson Mandela and Ghandi (the latter being rumoured to have stayed in our very prison block). They may be Christian here and focused on aid and community development but we certainly do things to a very high standard of work!

Interestingly I asked Pastor Jabu (the head man) about the relationship between trusting God in and for all things, often a nice Christian catch phrase and excuse for laziness, and working hard at the practicalities of, say, fundraising. He told me that we write proposals for funding as if God doesn't exist and then send them off as if we didn't make any effort! He went a bit further and cited an example of Jesus back in the day. In the classic Jesus turning water into wine incident, Jabu said that Jesus didn't do it all himself. He asked the people to fill the jars with water, then Jesus did his bit i.e. we do what Jesus asks and then he (may or may not) do his bit. It's a very interesting balance to me, but I do beleive both in good quality hard work, and an ultimate trust in God and his promises. I plan to ask many more people the same question before I leave here!

In other news, I have just finished writing a newsletter for Project Gateway. It was a good learning experience for me. I worked out that in a month, we impact, through all our projects, over 17,000 people. That's 200,000ish a year, and nearly 2million since we began in 1992ish. And that's not including the 2million fed in a feeding programme that ended a few years back.

4million people in 15 years. And this place isn't done yet. It's growing and becoming self-sustaining (we hope!). This is no small fry. This is ambitious work. Ambitious work in developing the community to not just comfort the poor, but to develop people and communities and remove poverty altogether in Pietermaritzburg. This place is so me.

p.s. (and in saying this I am breaking my cardinal rule of writing i.e. when you've built a rhetoric, don't ruin it by changing tone. Oh well. My rule breaking will be very ironic when you read what I'm about to write) anyone who reads my blogs can probably see I love to write and people say I am good at it. About five years ago my dream job became a speechwriter (thank you Sam Seaborn, Toby Ziegler and Aaron Sorkin) and I have grown in my love for writing ever since. Today I finished writing that newsletter I mentioned and Pastor Jabu (the head of this place, you should know that by now) was so impressed that he's asked me to be his personal writer for all this letters and memos and important messages. I can't tell you how excited I am.