My Beautiful Djembe

I got my drum on Thursday! It cost me R980 which most volunteers thought I was mad for paying such an amount, but in England it would have cost over R3000 so I'm happy. And it makes the most amazing sound. I'M SO HAPPY!

Help me!

This is the 2^nd post I've uploaded tonight so anyone that wants it, there is a long long long post below that is also new!

Ok, so I've been here for about 7 months now and time is flying by. Way too fast. There was a volunteer here until a month or so ago who was from my organisation originally, but liked it so much, he's spent 4 of the last 6 years here I believe. The last stint he did was 18 months long. Now I'm not saying I'm staying here forever, but I think I would definitely love to come back for quite a long time. So in my head the plan is this: I fly home with PT as planned. I then spend a year fundraising again, I think I can do it cheaper than £5000 but I haven't thought it through enough yet. This idea is still a baby. In September 2014 I fly back out here to spend another year volunteering. The main and actually only problem I think I have is the fundraising part. The long-term future plan is plumbing so I have to spend money on a course for that, I also want to learn to drive (hopefully the money for that can come from the parents in the form of 4 years birthdays and Christmases in one).

I already have some ideas:

• A cake sale worked really well last time, so I'm definitely milking the open gardens thing again.
• My local primary school sponsored me in return for me to go and talk to the kids. I could do a similar sort of thing at more schools, assemblies and the like.
• I thought of maybe doing presentations open to the public and charging for tickets. I'd talk about what the children's home does, what role the volunteers have, what I did while I was out here, why I'm going back, etc. and I'd put in loads of pictures of the kids.
• Try and get on local radio stations and do a similar thing as above but without the pictures.
• It's a long shot, but trying local TV as well.
• And of course charitable trusts.

I would love it if anybody that regularly reads the blog could message me if you have any other ideas. I will take any donations: Ideas, money, cake, things I can sell or use as a raffle prize, maybe you know of a place that might be interested in me doing a talk, if you're a business owner you could sponsor me? If you're a plumber you could employ me! I live in Manchester so I'm also interested as to how many people would come along to events I hold and what events you would be interested in.

You can comment anonymously or email me at: damsontregaskis@yahoo.co.za my other email has broken but if you email it, I still get them at my new address. Please do contact me, usually nobody does and it's not helpful! I NEED HELP!

Thank you!

Damson.

Laptop Lows but Djembe Delights!

I type this as my laptop dies a horrible death. That might be a slight exaggeration, but seriously this thing is doing my head in.

I went to Tyger Valley shopping centre today because we want to buy a DVD player for our room so we went to compare prices. Also, I wanted to buy an external hard drive, there's a shop there that sells 1TB externals for R900-basically the same price you would pay in England for a 500gb. I also wanted to buy a new charger, I know my CCW offered me one from her brother, but as awesome as a deal as it was, I felt a bit guilty for taking it for free and she wouldn't let me pay for it. I have a Dell. As it turns out, you can only buy dell chargers from dell. I HATE DELL. I will try and take a picture of my charger so you can see what state it's in. I've re-duct taped the end because one of the wires that should be inside is now outside and detached from where it's supposed to be attached. So I duct-taped it. And that made it a little better. At one point I was able to use the charger, I just had to have it taped to my laptop so it stayed at the right angle. Then it had to be taped and propped on my phone or a couple of DVD cases to get the angle and the height. Now I have to hold it at the right angle and press it together. So using my laptop is increasingly difficult because it's quite strenuous to have your hand in such a weird position. Also, did I mention my laptop is a freaking dell so the battery life is only about 20 minutes now from full charge. Luckily for me one of the other volunteers has a dell so I'm currently charging to full from her charger so that I can balance with mine because last night I was trying to watch a film but because my battery was at 0%, whenever my hand moved the slightest bit, the computer would shut down if I didn't find the right angle within 10 seconds, and you cannot imagine how annoying and stressful that is!

I now only have 2 options: Buy one straight from dell for (I was told) around +R900, or take the charger from the CCW. So I'm going to go guilty option 2 and buy her a really nice something when I leave to say thank you.

In other news Sarah has bought herself a djembe! I know! I'm so jealous. Basically, I was working short week again this week (2^nd time in a row, I can't decide whether it's nice to have so much time off or bad cause I'm bored!) but because on SW you only work Wednesday and Thursday I can't go drumming on the Thursday. I'm allowed to take time off from the house to help with the kids drumming club in the afternoon, but the adults drumming circle-which I love more than life itself-I can't go to because I usually finish at 9pm and it starts at 7.30pm. Now there's a really nice new CCW working in my house (the one that offered me the charger) and she doesn't see the point in making us sit on the mattress for 1-2 hours listening to kiddy-winks sleep, so once they're all asleep, she lets us go. On Thursday, in the morning I was really really tired, it's so hot at the moment (37 degrees on Wednesday, about 35 on Thursday) that even when you sleep through the night, you wake up tired because you haven't slept properly. So my CCW let me finish at 7.30am instead of 10am! She said: “there's no point you sitting in house 10 with 2 other volunteers and 3 kids so you might as well finish now. Go back to bed, you look tired, if you go now, you can get 6 more hours sleep! And we'll put the kids to bed early tonight, they need more sleep as well. They can go to bed early, then we can finish early” I only slept about an hour, but it was enough to knock me from exhausted, to enough energy for the day. Now, I was really hoping the kids would go to bed at 7pm instead of 8pm because then they might well be nearly asleep by 7.30 and I could leave the other volunteer on the mattress and I could go and drum (I bribed her). I felt a but bad for the kids, but in the end, nearly all of them misbehaved anyway so they all had to go to bed early as punishment! So they all went up at 7, but it only began to get quiet at 7.20, it wasn't ideal, but I asked both the other volunteer and the CCW if they minded me drossing (skiving/skipping work) and they said no, so off I skipped to drumming.

I saw Sarah outside the hall waiting for the guy who we borrow drums from to arrive and she tells me there are 3 people here that texted him to ask to borrow drums. Usually he just brings 4 spare drums so we weren't sure if there'd even be a drum for each of us, technically we are supposed to text him every week to tell him if we're coming or not, but we both go every other week when we're not working and there's always enough drums so we just leave it normally. ANYWAY. He arrives and luckily he's brought someone else's drums as well as his own so there's plenty of drums to go around. I call dibs on one with purple rope cause it looks awesome and it had a really big face/skin/top and it was quite tall. Sarah took one of the more normal sized ones. After the break, the guy who brought the drums (I forgot to mention, he's also the guy we're buying drums off) is talking with someone across the circle about the ratios of inner hole and the noise the drum makes and how the skin/top/face can be as big as you like but if the smallest hole in the middle of the drum is too small, it won't make a nice noise (if anyone cared-I think half my readers are musicians sent here by my parents). He then says something about how the drum Sarah is playing is a really really nice one and makes the best sound. Sarah jokingly says something like: “Yeah, I'm keeping this drum, I love it” and the guy who's lent her the drum just looks at her and says you can have it, talk to me at the end.

I think he said something about a guy who was emptying his warehouse and had a load of drums he was selling or something so he'd bought the best ones and that was the only one he'd had time to tune up that evening. Me and Sarah RAN to the petrol station to draw out some money. I should explain, it was 9 at night, so dark outside. It's too dangerous to go outside alone, so I had to run with Sarah so there were 2 of us. We RAN back again and she bought it! He's going to tune up the rest this week and bring them along to Thursdays session so I can try some then, and if I like, then I can buy.

It's funny because me and Sarah had been talking when we were waiting for him to first arrive about getting our own drums. We first asked him about it in December and he said he would get some for us by the end of January. January came and went and different people said to both of us separately that he was very very picky buying djembes and it would take ages for him to find ones he was happy with. On the one hand, it's good because I totally trust him to get nice drums and he takes them apart to check for woodworm and then puts them back together and tunes them. But on the other hand, we were both desperate to get our drums and we wanted to be able to play them while we're here!

Now I just have to fix my computer woes and life will be good again. I want to write something about plans I have for the future that I need help with from lots of people, but this post is long enough as it is so I'll write it tonight or tomorrow. :)

Birthdays.

It was one of the volunteer's birthdays on Monday, so I thought I could do a post touching on what we do for a birthday here. Obviously, most of us are 18/19/20 so have only really spent our birthdays with family before. Or you at least spend it with friends. Here it is different though. Most if not all your friends you have only known for a year at most, although when you spend as much time with someone as we do, when you live, sleep and work with someone, we're all fairly close. Actually no, that's kind of a lie. It is very high school-y here. There is the annex, where all the 'cool kids' hang out. The ones that are all popular and free from personalities. There's flat 2 where next to no-one hangs out because there are only 3 bedrooms there and there's back kitchen where all the quirky weird people hang out (and all the kathi's...seriously there are about 6 girls here called kathi or some variation of).

Anyway.

So when it's someone's birthday, everyone puts some money in to get them a present and often a lot of people go out. On Monday I went to the Art Gallery cafe for breakfast, then a bunch of people went wine tasting before EVERYONE (I think there were 4/5 cars full) went to Moyos for tea/dinner/supper/evening meal. Moyos is really really nice. It's on Blouberg Beach so the sunsets for one are spectacular. And the food is just divine! It was a really nice evening :)

And it cost me less that 10 quid for breakfast and tea! I love this country!

Picture post.

A friend of my Dad's sent me a very nice email saying how much she liked my blog, but that it could do with more pictures. This is going to use up so much of my internet, but hey, here you go!

One of the elephants at Knysna

Chaka, the elephant I got to ride!

Bloukrans Bridge

216m of Pure Fear

Sunset at Blouberg Beach

'The Gang' at Blouberg

Me and Sarah at the Volunteer x-mas party.

Table Mountain from Blouberg

Volunteer Leavers Party

Actually, on the note of internet, I thought I'd be extra cheeky and say that although I am in South Africa and all my fundraising for the charity has finished, if you would like to donate any money (or send me a parcel *hint hint*!) I will gladly receive! All money will almost certainly go to general living things for me, but will mean I will have more money to decorate my room, or go to Robben Island or travelling or what ever. Just putting it out there!

Laptop Chargers:

Me and my room-mate were discussing our laptop woes yesterday at work when the child-care worker comes in and says her brother is an IT specialist and usually has laptop chargers lying around that he doesn't need. She promptly texts him to see if he has one I could borrow for the rest of my stay only for him to text back to say he has one I can keep! YAY And he doesn't want any money for it! I'm so happy!

Desk Officers.

This is typed as my laptop charger dies slowly. It's duct-taped together and then duct-taped to my computer so it stays at the right angle then it's resting in my knee so it has the right height. (it's a standard 19.5v dell charger just in case anyone has more money than me!).

My organisation is here visiting us at the moment which is odd. I know all over my blog screams “I'm with Project Trust” but really I need to change that. I see PT now as less of what my whole year is about and more of just a provider of what I needed to get out here and now that I'm here, they're just a bit of a nuisance. There are so many volunteers here-about 40-that I don't ever hang out with anyone else from PT other than Sarah. They're just not my kind of people. They're very nice and I can spend time with them, I just have nothing in common with them. But my project is unusual in that there are so many other volunteers here, so I don't need to be with PT people all the time. Also, my manager is amazing so if I have any problems I go to her instead of PT. So the fact that there's a guy here asking me all about my year and how it's going and my goals for the next 6 months etc. etc. etc. is bizarre. Especially since we've never met him before now! He's a nice guy, a bit awkward, I think he's trying really hard to get us to like him. And he's buying us lots of food and drinks and things which is baie lekker!

Project Trust has a selection course which is compulsory, a training course also compulsory and a debriefing course, optional. The debriefing course is only 2 days long but is on the isle of Coll (at least 1.5 days travel from where I live) and something like 3 trains and a ferry away. When I mentioned to my desk officer that I almost certainly wasn't going on debriefing, he seemed a little disappointed but undeterred from trying to persuade me from coming. I think of debriefing as a massive pissing contest. It's all the SA volunteers and volunteers from I think 3 other countries and as much as he's being trying to sell it to me, it still seems like a glorified pissing match. Basically from what I've gathered is the volunteers all meet up and exchange stories from their year, and what they've learnt and all sorts. It's also your closure for the year away. But my year away has become more than Project Trust. My year has become the Home and all the volunteers and kids here. It will be the end of my year when I have to leave the Home and go back to England.

I'm so grateful to PT for giving me the training and sorting everything out for my year and getting me out here, but now the only thing that makes me think I'm with PT is that they have my flight ticket back.

And if anyone wants to send me one of them there dell chargers it'll be much appreciated!