Everywhere on twitter now you see “10 reasons you to travel” “14 things a team must have” “7382 Ideas to Get you Growing”
*sigh*
Enough already!
1. They are so over used now it’s painful.
2. All the goodness is lost in the boiling down.
3. You always end up with a weak one that is just in there to fill out the list.
4. They normally have more points just to be annoying.
/rant
On Q&A on ABC last night there were economists, politicians and the president of the Young Liberals.
Boy, I hate partisan politics. The current government says the last government left them in a bad position. The old government just attacks the government and doesn’t say anything constructive. It’s constantly disappointing to me. *sigh*
It’s like question time in Parliament when the parties go at each other like school boys. It’s not good debate. It embarrasses me that these are our leaders behaving like this. Kevin Rudd, I think you’re doing a great job in a tough time, but if you got your team to act more professionally in question time, I’d respect you a lot more.
On side notes, the young liberals president looked lost and like a gen Y girl they picked up off MySpace. The two economists were interesting and constructive (mostly), though I guess they have the easier job.
Another note was the great questions from the audience on priorities, I’ll paraphrase here;
1. Is it OK to do trade with China when they abuse human rights just because it keeps people in jobs?
Great question. There is a line here. No country is perfect, certain not us. USA may well be as bad if not worse than China. Plus, working with countries is the best way to influence them, as opposed to staying away from them.
We didn’t work with South Africa and the influence was bad. We don’t work with South Korea. Interesting…
What if we were offered a million jobs to go work in labour camps or in prostitution in China if we’re paid well? OK, there is a line and it’s grey and somewhere, but tough to get right or articulate clearly.
2. Are jobs more important than dealing with climate change?
No jobs, no life.
No planet, no jobs.
Jobs are needed short term. They are important for feeding people and morale.
But we can’t go on the way we’ve been going and the inertia (i.e. the resistance to changing pace/direction) is massive, and potentially against the basic principles of life - survival of the fittest, which is a short term principle that affects the long term. (wow, that’s whole other blog post…)
Tough challenges, and the priorities are not simple choices, but that is what leadership is about. I haven’t taken the time here to even go close to exploring them enough, but I really wanted to get some things off my chest.
Thanks for listening.
Not that I was going to watch, but now I’m vocally boycotting this year’s Logies, Australia’s awards night for TV shows.
I saw this report on a previous episode of Media Watch, the fantastic program that explores the bad 60% of “journalists” who ruin it for the rest of them.
Basically, The Bazura Project, a comedy show on community TV station channel 31 was rejected from being considered by the Logies because they are on community TV, not one of bigger commercial stations.
What a croc of shit!
So I’m telling everyone to spread the story and boycott the Logies as loudly as you can if you believe that this is unfair - as I do. Any show should be eligible for consideration and indeed the rules state that they should be.
Also, since Hey Dad went off the air, comedy has been going down hill.
Love flying dogs. They can do their own air biting.
These trees of December
Over board,
Why can’t they be like normal trees,
Just be, and eat the co2,
Why do they need much make up,
And inside living.
They are kamikaze though,
Chopped off for the splay,
Evergreen just for twelve days,
Sold by boy scouts and service stations.
And the heritage?
No fir in Bethlehem,
Saint Nick from the North perhaps,
Or Russian,
Yet, we flourish them each year,
And they make us feel all the better for it.
I just reread an email I sent early 2005 about my time in Africa. I’m still inspired and haunted by this time in my life. Such an experience yet still unfinished. Maybe that’s Africa for you.
Anyway, here is the email. Please read it and then do what ever you can to go and spend a month there. Stay in one town the whole time. Speak to as many locals as you can.
—-
(Sent Jan 20, 2004, 1 week before I was mugged and pushed into a car by fake drug police…. now that was scary)
So what happened………
Sponsors Report
Michael Liubinskas in Africa
Sept 18, 2004 to January 24, 2005.
By July 2004, before I left Sydney, with the help of many of you I had
raised $2,240. I was planning to use this money to cover the fees
charged by Mondo Challenge to get me into my project. Due to the
successful budgeting of the rest of my trip, and the very successful
sale of my car (thanks dad) I am now able to cover this fee myself.
With the money raised, I would now like to put it towards a new
project that I’ve been working on, but more on that soon.
If you are busy, and I know many of you are, you can skip down to the
summary, but if you have 15 minutes, I hope you have time to read
through my full account of my time in Africa.
Three, long, fast months.
As I write this, I have two weeks to go before I leave Arusha,
Tanzania. The time here passes differently to anywhere else in the
world. At times it has felt like it was moving very slowly, although
it has gone by too fast, and looking back I know I’ve done more
amazing things than time should normally allow.
On my second day in Africa I saw a tragic bus accident and learned
about the differences in third world standards. On the same day I
walked through villages of mud huts to my home for the next three
months and started to learn about the daily lives in a third world
country. Within a week of working in a non-government organization
(NGO) I learned what it was like to be both inspired by and
disappointed in people. Sitting here now I feel that I know so much
about helping Africa but know surely that I cannot do much to help
Africa.
My Projects
HIV/AIDS Grants Program
I had been arranged to work on a project to evaluate the impact of a
HIV/AIDS family grant scheme that had been running for twelve months.
I spent some time visiting families with a smiley Kenyan man named
Simon Kihiko Kimani. The families where all widows looking after two
to four children in single room homes. The husbands had died of
HIV/AIDS related illnesses, usually tuberculosis, and given the
negative cultural perceptions of wills (they are considered gross bad
luck), most widows had all valuable possessions taken by relatives as
she has no legal right to them. The widow has to start again. The
project I worked with gave widows who wanted to start a business a
small grant to get started.
I saw lots of problems with the program from the beginning. Most of
them went into the same businesses of selling charcoal, kitenge
(fabrics) or chakula (food). Most of them had no business training,
and the NGO wasn’t giving them any despite facilities – this has now
changed. None of them were asked what they were going to spend the
money on. The recording of the pre-grant situation was ad hoc. I
thought the whole program was poorly run.
But twenty two out of the twenty four families that I visited, and
sixty eight out of seventy four families in the program showed
significant improvement in a key area. The family was now eating three
meals every day. Or three out of four children were now attending
school everyday, where only one was six months ago. Or the family was eating meat more than three times each week. Or the family had been able to buy a second bed. The mothers where very reserved, but they had worked hard and made progress.
The houses I visited were one room, sparsely furnished with a cloth
separating the one or two beds that the family would share. I’d smile
at the Titanic and Princess Di calendars, usually old, that were used
to decorate the walls, but I think the colour on the mud walls meant
more than Leo or Di did. The mothers were proud of what they had and
the children wore big bright smiles, especially at the site of a
Mzungu (white person, but also, not so coincidentally, sort of means
dizzy and confused as well).
I really enjoyed the experience, but apart from some general
suggestions I was unable to fully take on the project without speaking
fluent Kiswahili and without a good understanding of the culture.
VISTA
The HIV/AIDS project lead me to a group of volunteers who had been
trying to get all the different health projects together. The group
was lead by Sarah Junker from USA, but included volunteers from all
over the world. The idea was that lots of good work was being done,
but no one knew what everyone else was doing. VISTA would get the
volunteers talking and try to maximize coordination and resources.
Some managers were protective of their projects, but the volunteers
ignored to political positions and just got on with the job. With
everyone’s help, I put together a web site and a Yahoo group together
to help everyone know what is going on and to promote the group. The
site is still being filled with content, but can be viewed at;
http://wheel.blogs.com/vista
Ngaremtoni English Classes
With our country manager out, and me as the next most responsible
(old) volunteer, I was asked to attend a graduation ceremony. I took a
dalladalla (dangerously fast and full mini bus) an hour out of town
and walked with Kiwi Scott to the village. The school was small and
the fields dry, but in the classroom I saw 30 adults, including Chagga
and Masai tribes people, get certificates from their volunteer
teachers. I spoke to each student and I feel that for most of them,
the best thing was to be given the chance to try something and apply
themselves intellectually, which most would never have the chance to
do.
Huruma Orphanage
There are forty children in an orphanage an hour from Arusha.
Volunteers had been lovingly been looking after, teaching and helping
the children for more than a year now. I visited and stayed at the
orphanage a couple of times and loved playing football with the kids
and just seeing how they got on with life. I helped paint the new
swing set that was donated by volunteers, and my shorts will always
bear the rainbow of colours. Some pics from Christmas at;
http://wheel.blogs.com/binary/2005/01/xmas_and_nye.html
Through some unrelated work that my colleague Kevin Bull was working
on, we came across significant evidence to support what many of us had
thought for a while – that the lady who had started and ‘run’ the
orphanage, Mama Godliver, was corrupt and was siphoning money from the
program. Corruption is in a number of parts of Tanzania, both
government and business, and this lady and her husband where not only
not visiting the children regularly, but were also taking some of the
money meant to go to their food and supplies. Also, some of the
children’s relatives had been found, but she had not allowed them to
go and live with them. Without orphans, the money would stop.
The process of improving this situation is messy but passionate, and
unhappy, volunteers were working on it. This was one of the many signs
that I saw in Africa of a dependence upon foreign aid and even
volunteers. It is very confronting when you realize that the work you
do could be doing more harm than good.
My view on some of the ambiguous ‘aid’ situations;
• Clothing – the markets and the people are clothed in free clothes
sent from around the world. I saw a Newcastle Knights shirt and a
Florida Beach Golf Course shirt. The free shirts are sold to
wholesalers who sell them to stall owners in towns who then sell them
for the equivalent of US$1-2 to Tanzanians. The free clothes wiped out
the local textiles industry more than ten years ago. Some tourist
shirts of poor quality are developed here, but much of it is now
imported from India and China.
• Teaching – volunteer teachers have significantly reduced or changed
the need for local English teachers. It has also occasionally had the
impact of frustrating local teachers who get less attention from
children and school management due to the ‘celebrity’ status of
mzungus. From brief encounters, it appears that local teachers are not
very committed to their work, often not turning up and not being
concerned with the progress of their students.
St Judes School
Good news regarding the orphanage is the acceptance of eight students into St Judes School. They will join twenty two students from the Women In Action group (also partners in the HIV/AIDS Grant Program above) in one of the best schools in Arusha. St Judes was started three years ago by an Australian lady named Gemma. The school has grown from three to three hundred students without any help from the Tanzanian government. The school focuses on bright students from poor families and also keeps about 10% of places for orphans.
The school has been run by Ang as head mistress, a 21 year old
Australian who manages 8-10 volunteer teaches from Australia, New
Zealand, USA and Canada. Gemma also employs more than forty
Tanzanians who teach, manage the library, look after the gardens, etc.
The school is very impressive, both in how it is run and the results
it has achieved in such a small period of time.
I was able to connect Gemma with both the Huruma Orphanage and Women in Action management and thirty students start their this week. The students are sponsored by Australians and others for US$380 per year which covers uniforms, books, pens, paid staff and more. Let me know if anyone is interested in sponsorship, I promise that it is money that completely goes to a good cause and that the feedback you get will be astounding.
TCBA
Tanzanian Capital Boosting Association (TCBA) is a small ‘NGO’ run by
a well connected businessman by the name of Javes Sauni. Mr Sauni is a
hilariously energetic man who has his finger in everything. He is a
prime cause of my direct understanding of the potentially dangerous
reliance on aid by Africa and Africans. Mr Sauni appears to be doing
some good, but I am certainly not clear about everything he does and
the motives behind it. I see him moving towards a role in Government
and that scares me a bit. However, maybe Tanzania needs people like Mr
Sauni right now. He is ambitious, he works hard and he gets people to
do things.
TCBA, as well as managing the HIV/AIDS Grant Program for a fee, offer
micro-finance (small loans of about $50-100) to people who already run
businesses. They charge 30% per annum and do not spend too much time
with clients. Mr Sauni and I had some clashes on TCBA. He wanted to
offer bigger loans, I wanted to offer smaller loans. He wanted to get
more money to grow, I wanted to make better use of existing funds. In
the end, he had asked me to build them a web site and it now sits at
http://wheel.blogs.com/tcba My mixed feelings of Mr Sauni and TCBA led me to a new project which I loved.
Loans for Learning
In my second week, during the quarterly board meeting of TCBA (which is held three times per year), the issue of business training was
raised. Many business people wanted to do more training but could not
afford the up front fees of local training centres. I suggested that
they be given loans to allow them to do the training, but the idea was
a bit radical for the board, and they moved on.
But I didn’t. I immediately started researching local training centres
and discovered that they had both capacity for more students and a
history of turning away those who could not afford the up front fees.
The training centres could not afford to offer financial assistance,
however there were more than ten micro-finance organisations in Arusha
who did offer financial assistance, but not for education – yet.
I set about writing a short proposal to encourage the micro-finance
organisations to offer a new service. The proposal turned into a 50
page full operational plan on how to start the organisation, including
forms, how to set up the financials and even how to market it.
My research also included visiting some of the micro-finance
organisations, including PRIDE Tanzania who impressed me with their
organisation and focus. I met with Mr Elias Ntambi, the chief
operational officer of the Arusha office and after an initial
introduction of Loans for Learning, he asked to see the full proposal.
Right now I am arranging a time to meet with the senior management of
PRIDE Tanzania to go through the full plan.
The first step with Loans for Learning is to start a pilot program,
also outlined in detail in the full plan. The pilot program will take
in a small number of students and go through all key elements of the
full program within six months. It will allow for procedural and
policy adjustments before implementation of the full program.
The pilot program will most likely require some funding to get
started. If the program is successful, the pilot funding will be
reinvested into the program and will continue to contribute for years
to come.
Loans for Learning (L4L) Summary
There is a significant number of unskilled or semi skilled people in
Arusha who are motivated to do training and education, but cannot
afford up front fees. There are good training centres in Arusha, but
they cannot afford to offer financial leniency to students. The Loans
for Learning program will offer small loans to students to allow them
to participate in training courses.
Basics of how the proposed program works;
• Students apply directly or via approved training centres.
• Students pay a 10% deposit to show ability to save.
• L4L pay the training centres one month of fees in advance. Training
centres accept only 90% of normal fees to ensure that all students are
not sent to L4L.
• Students pay half of one months fees plus ten percent. Therefore
repayment period is proposed at double the course length.
• Administration and defaulting fees are covered by 10% from training
centres and 10% from students.
What happens next?
The full plan will be distributed directly to four micro-finance
organisations in Arusha, with a focus on PRIDE Tanzania. The hope is
that PRIDE Tanzania will commit to a pilot program in the first half
of this year. A new volunteer from Mondo Challenge will take
responsibility for implementation of the pilot program.
Where will the pilot program funding come from?
You have probably guessed that I want to invest the money raised to
send me to Africa to get the pilot program started. At the very least,
the money will contribute to at least 15 people being trained. Results
of the pilot program will be distributed about seven or eight months
after the start of the program, most likely September 2005.
I would really like to get your feedback about the program and the
idea of investing the raised funds into the pilot program.
African Impact
Regardless of what happens next, I thank everyone for their support
and encouragement of my visit and work in Africa. It has certainly has
had a greater impact on me than I think I have had on it. I’ve loved
getting to know Tanzanian people and in some small way understanding
the culture and way of life.
I’ve eaten ugali, which is a tasteless, gluggy starch that is the
staple food, rolled into a ball and dipped in sauce and sometimes
meat, plus calamari in fresh spices in Zanzibar and the sweetest
pineapples I’ve ever tasted.
I’ve attended a pre-wedding send off where the bride sits on stage and
waves to everyone, a church session of singing and dancing and a
graduation where young men and women sang a thank you to their
teachers.
I’ve watched Masai warriors jumping in an traditional dance, did some
bongo jungle dancing and also not so traditionally limboed under fire.
I watched an old elephant eat a tree, a young warthog wash, colobus
monkeys jump through the trees, lions mating and hippos burp.
I’ve walked to town with a 15 year old boy who is going to be a
chemical engineer, I’ve walked through a village and been the first
white person that a child has seen, and I’ve walked for five days to
get up Mount Kilimanjaro in a blizzard.
I’ve met Mama Happy who is my Tanzanian mother, who looks after a
homestay while her children live with their father while he works in
Dar es Salaam, a tremendously positive woman who loves singing and
dancing in church, wants to visit Australia to meet Aboriginals and is
very proud of her garden.
I’ve met Maro, a twenty year old man, who’s mother has died, but is
taking two courses in the hope that he can one day get into business
and then politics and seemingly heartbrokenly believes that Tanzania
will never have a government which is not corrupt, but who sleeps with
a stick to protect his two younger sisters, Glory and Gladness.
I’ve met Ambrose, a ten year old orphan who speaks English and is
thrilled to be accepted into St Judes school, and takes playing
football in the orphanage field just as seriously – “Micky, you must
score goals from that close. Really!”
Now you can see how the time may have flown, but was certainly full.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Asante sana. (thank you very much)
************ONE MINUTE SUMMARY****************
• Thank you so much for supporting me visiting Tanzania, Africa. I’ve
had an amazing time, met amazing people and done amazing things.
• I’ve worked on HIV/AIDS projects, helped two orphanages, built two
websites, and started Loans for Learning which helps people afford to
do training courses.
• I want to take the money raised for my African volunteer work and
invest it into a pilot program for Loans for Learning – let me know
what you think.
• I encourage anyone doing or supporting aid work anywhere in the
world to consider the long term, broader impacts of what they are
doing. Nothing is simple but no help is good help if it is not run by
local people for local people where they take responsibility for the
results.
• Thank you again.
If someone doesn’t know about this and should, please forward it on.
Tomorrow I catch a bus, then a train, then a ferry to Malawi, then
onto Zambia, then Uganda, then the wild jungles of London, New York
and San Francisco…… Keep up to date on my adventures at;
My old blog
See (most) of you all in April.
Cheers,
Mick
My big mo is gone…….
My 3 day growth is back.
Thanks to all for helping me raise $380!
Our Wedding Cake, originally uploaded by bigmick.
So it’s been a big party weekend.
It started on Thursday with a quick drink at the Mitchel Lake Christmas party on the Glenmore Hotel, then off to a great dinner at McLeay St Bistro which was fantastic.
Then Friday night we went to the beta launch part of Ph.Art Gallery (it stand for photographic art) a new online photogallery for people who have digital cameras and occasionally snap just beautiful photos. It was a great party with lovely people and wonderful wonderful food.
The Saturday night we went to Rowan and Ben’s wedding in Centennial Park. It was a tad windy, but lovely. The reception was also super much fun except when I spilled red wine upon my self in the first 10 seconds. Congrats to you both.
Then on Sunday night Karen and I had our anniversary dinner. Our anniversary was Monday but Sunday was going to be the dinner date (school nights!). I was responsible for dinner and had arranged a special surprise.
But we didn’t nearly even get there. After 3 nights out Karen was all like “*yawn* I’m tired, how about we skip it and go out another time”. So I try and get us back on track without being toooo aggressive.
It works, we’re off.
On our walk up the hill, we see an art piece of a Pelican. Karen sees it and we talk about it for a second.
Then we get to the restaurant, Le Pelican.
“Haaaa, how ironicalism?”
It’s a wonderful restaurant and even more wonderful for what I’ll explain later. It’s a lovely little terrace house in Taylor Square just off Oxford St that does a small but spectacular menu of Mediterranean French food.
Great dinner, then comes the dessert menus. But Karen, having secured some extra little cakes from Rowan’s and Ben’s wedding cake the night before says “I’m too full. I can’t eat another thing.”
*gulp*
“Hmm, how about we share something?” I suggest.
So we order some dessert and wait a bit.
Then all of a sudden, the song we danced to at our wedding starts playing.
Then the waitress brings our dessert, but it’s not what we ordered.
It’s a replica of our wedding cake!
You see, on our wedding night, we were having so much fun with all our family and friends - dancing and laughing and chatting - that we didn’t get any wedding cake. And we foolishly didn’t ask the restaurant to keep it. Bummer.
So I decided to call up the company that made it, and got them to make a mini version. Just one level, but with the same design on it.
Karen’s eyes got real big.
“Wha? What’s this?”
“Surprise!”
“Wow!!”
We cut it (again) and the waiter comes and takes it to cut us a piece each.
Lots of fun, and lots of points scored for being a nice guy.
But I must say that the team at Le Pelican were just fabulous. Talk about ABCD (above and beyond the call of duty). They actually went to the bakery and picked up the cake for me on Saturday. Then they coordinated the night perfectly. They gave us dessert menus, let us order and went along with it brilliantly. They also got our wedding song and set it up to play at the crucial moment.
They were polite, considerate, fun, welcoming, helpful, friendly and a great example of service that can make you take deep breaths of pride.
To all of you there, thank you so much for helping to make our first wedding anniversary a special one.
And to my wonderful wife, thank you for making me laugh every day and loving me the way you do.
