Releasing potential @ Jambo Toto

There is something sweetly liberating about letting your life go 'off piste' from time to time. I’m talking about letting life rattle you off-tack a little, slipping yourself into neutral, ready to have fun with whatever happens on the way.

Children at Jambo Toto school

I have to admit that my melancholic streak (that, ‘little miss worry’ part of me), can become a pest at not letting me find neutral and I feel that it should definitely be on my agenda to kick up my heels more as I tip-toe up to 60.
My natural temperament is, unfortunately, happier with to-do lists, rather task driven and trying to manicure my moves on the main runs, afraid of what might happen if I chance life on more challenging slopes.




But hey, there is always opportunity for change, especially if you travel with an ‘off pister’.

The past 9 months have seen Trevor and I living like focused nomads - hotel hopping and learning to make home wherever we found ourselves. And yesterday we returned home with 4 scruffy suitcases full of battered TOMS (Blake Mycoskie’s amazing shoe company), warn out clothes, a pile of much adored books (more like comfort blankets), shells from far off beaches and a thousand memories tucked into every item. Yes, memories too numerous to fully chart. Memories of adventures and happenings that have shaped and shunted us into becoming slightly different people than the ones who left Oxford months ago - certainly inwardly.

What I have learnt is that life will do its work if you let it. Life has a way of not letting you off the hook if you put yourself in the path where your passion and skills meet.

Jambo Toto school, Nairobi

Our last weekend in Nairobi saw us visiting Jambo Toto school in Nairobi.
Some of you will remember that we raised, with the help of many of you wonderful friends, the funds to build a school for the children of the stone quarry mothers.  These women had their little ones with them each day wandering amongst the flying flints and abusive practices of that environment (they earn $1 a day for their punishing work).

We're thrilled to be able to tell you that Jambo Toto has now been running for almost a year, with 50 students - from tiny tots (with nowhere to go) up to 12 year olds.

Rose, supported by 2 other teachers is caring for all aspects of the children’s lives. They feed them breakfast and lunch each day, often wash them when they come filthy and wrap them in blankets when they arrive cold and shivering. They provide after school care for up to 100 children sometimes and have created a ‘safe haven’ for these vulnerable children.

In the past 4 months Rose (and Charles) have been able to build much needed toilets - at last!!
 (2 composting toilets, which the children had fun learning to use!!)

.......and 2 eco stoves and a small rabbit farm (part of their sustainability plan, which has a way to go)

...2 ego stoves

It is deeply moving to visit the school and to realise that this is the vision of 2 people who, ‘lifted up their heads’ and saw the great need. Who allowed themselves to be moved with compassion. Who did not look over their shoulders, waiting for someone else to step up, but made the responsibility theirs.

Chief John, William, Charles, Jane, Rose...and rabbits too pretty to eat!!

They have brought hope, not only to the children, but the knock on impacts the whole community.

The mothers have been asking for a while if Rose will teach them to read and write too and we’ve now supported them to build a small outdoor classroom for the women and Rose had already started teaching 2 groups of 10 (even though the builder has got distracted and left the pavilion unfinished).
In these afternoon sessions Rose intends to teach life skills, crafts and bring in help for sexual health clinics.


All this will enable the women to make better choices for their lives and an opportunity to leave the ’slavery’ of the rock quarry.

“Leadership is not about title/post, it’s about unlocking the potential of others. It’s about motivating, challenging the order of things, since everyone has potential and human potential is limitless” 
- Carly Fiorna 

Potential is all around us, but so often it's lying dormant, or squashed, oppressed, or ignored, un-challenged, un-warned, un-released or un-discovered.



Our job is to release our own hidden potential and then help others to release theirs and find their bigger self.

JB

“First we’ll take Manhattan..."

Leonard Cohen is a poet. At least I think so. His song title above makes me think about constantly moving on from one place to another. It’s like the film from the 60’s “It’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium”. Well, last Saturday we were on Cape Town’s Waterfront, Sunday we spent the day on airplanes flying to Kenya in stages. On Tuesday night we fly back to the UK. Wednesday until Sunday we are in UK and then on Monday it’s off to Peru for 2 weeks. Hence the feeling “It’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium”

Our group of CBO Leaders from across Kenya, working for World Vision

Kenya is so different than South Africa. We feel very different in both countries. The past week has been full on and head down, training 90 local leaders of community based organisations from across the whole of Kenya (it took some of them 2 days to get to Nairobi from the North –remember The Constant Gardner film? Lake Turkana?.....it’s a long, long way from Nairobi). These were people we first trained in Leadership for Hope in August and this week we were training them to take that training back to their communities.

Tea break for the attendees

Some of our Team of certified trainers
 - from left:Vincent, Stephen John, Millicent, Purity (up), Anna (down), Peter

When life gets so busy it is easy for the nourishing things of life to go by the way side. After a few days of no journaling, reading, table tennis, meditating, walking…you really begin to feel yourself bending out of shape.

Happy attendees

Today (Sunday) we stopped. You can feel balance returning as those important parts of life get rediscovered. I have long believed in reading widely and deeply. Reading what will stretch and challenge my perspective on any aspect of life. What I noticed today was how everything I am reading at the moment is so different, such different schools of thought. And yet everything seems to be saying the same things from different perspectives.....
- Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond
- Russell Brand’s Revolution
- Deepak Chopra on Consciousness
- Ken Wilber’s One Taste


They all seem to exploring how, in the first half of life, we build up a version of ourselves that makes sense according to our parents, culture, schooling, environment, careers etc and yet there’s a more true and lasting version of ourselves that sits patiently awaiting our discovery. Heavy? No, actually the more I read, the lighter I think I become, the more I realise there’s nothing I need to defend.

Anyway…..remember our table tennis idea. Remember the photos of the wine cellar? We are back under ‘house arrest’ in our hotel in Nairobi because there is no where we can go, no where to walk, no street we can easily browse the shops, no games room and no table tennis table (yesterday saw another pointless massacre in northern Kenya) …….except that there now is! I asked the concierge Angelina if she could work a miracle and find a rectangular table or bit of wood and set one up some where. She’s sorted it!! A table in a little tent in the hotel grounds….but today it’s our table tennis room!!
(and Jane thrashed me….again)

- TW

Perspective

 Perspective changes everything. If I put my hand up close to my eye I can see age and wrinkles. If I move my hand as far away as possible I can see a hand that can write and the landscape behind it.

This past week we finally went up Table Mountain, one of the new 7 wonders of the world. It was everything the adjectives suggest ‘awesome; wonderful; amazing; stunning’. Words are never enough.


But it was also a symposium in perspective.

Yesterday we finally bought a new camera. (Our old one has been worn out by our incessant ‘clicking for the past years and had got to the stage where it was taking a little afternoon nap between pressing the shutter and taking the photo).
And, predictably we took loads of photos from Table Mountain, but I was struck by two photos in particular.

Here is Jane sitting at the top of the mountain looking out to sea. In the background is a tiny, benign looking island. Green with white sandy bays and a bright white area inland. But actually it is Robben Island. Nelson Mandela’s prison for 18 of his 27 years.

Viewed from those years of mindless labouring in the lime quarry on that island it only looks like a prison sentence that will last a lifetime, eyesight destroyed by the glare, a world contracted into a few acres. But, from the top of Table Mountain it is just a small part of a much bigger landscape, a dash between the Atlantic Ocean and the ‘new world’ beyond and the ancient shores of Africa beneath us.

Here is a photo of a boat in the distance. So many boats sail on these seas. But this isn’t just ‘any boat’. It's the MAPFRE boat, finishing 7th in the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. A team of 9 people, knitted together as a seamless unit of human potential, racing the ocean for the past month from Alicante to Cape Town. Each of the crew are away from the people they love and the people who love them, the people who are knitted into their life tapestry, who they will be separated from for the next year.

When we spotted them they were just being joined by a tiny flotilla, escorting them into the celebrations awaiting them in the harbour. From the isolation of the “team of 9” amidst a seemingly endless ocean, to the bustle, hype and carnival that awaits them on the shores of the Victoria & Albert Waterfront. From a micro community of the wild sea, soon to be absorbed into the macro community of the worlds media. And then they suddenly go away on their own to their own private room for the first time in a month. But in this moment of the photo, from this perspective of Table Mountain,  just a faceless boat on silent waters.

And then there’s this photo. Not taken from Table Mountain. Jane and I have set up a table tennis table in the wine cellar where we are staying so we can have some fun amidst the seriousness of life. Here is me, in the wonderful chandelierd-space of this very old wine cellar, now boutique sought-after wedding venue, losing all perspective down in the muck and dust under a cabinet trying to find a lost ping pong ball.




Life is like that.
Life is actually like all three photos. It just depends where I’m standing at any one time as to what life looks like in that moment....zoomed in: I’m in the moment, focused, intense, narrow gaze and poised for action....or zoomed out: I’m open, un-fettered, holding few answers and seeing the ‘bigger picture’. Life needs both.


- TW

Shawshank Redemption

View of the Fair Valley - where we live

This film is rated as probably one of the most watched films ever. And I can see why. It is a triumph of hope against hopelessness. The hero of the film Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) says to his fellow prisoner Red (Morgan Freeman)


“Remember Red, hope is a good thing,
maybe the best of things,
and no good thing ever dies”


This morning was our second time in prison since being here in South Africa. The first was to visit Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent around 18 of his 27 years in prison.

Today was for real. We were invited to spend a morning in a prison in the Western Cape. It’s a prison built for 250 inmates, but this morning, as with every morning 392 prisoners were present at roll-call. We were simply full of admiration for the head of the prison and what he had done there. It is a disconcerting thing to spend a morning being introduced to prisoners, shaking their hands, looking at what they are doing to keep themselves sane, knowing that some are in there for life because they murdered people.

The highlight was being put into a room with a group of the prisoners and being asked to talk to them.
What do you say to men who are in prison for life (min 25 years)?
So I talked about hope.
I talked about potential.

As I looked at these men in front of me, all in orange overalls covered with those little arrows that prisoners always had on the cartoon figures of my youth,  I was flooded with fresh clarity as I spoke to them..... that these guys weren’t born to end up in a prison. They were young guys full of potential to be musicians, artist, engineers, firemen, taxi drivers, fathers. Not murderers. That wasn’t what the seed of their potential was designed for. And that potential for who they should have been was still there, sitting there, unrealised.

Children are full of hope, curiosity and playfulness (they wanted to know about our training)

I told them that Mandela had entered prison as an angry young man. Labeled as a terrorist. But he used the time to lead his own life. To work on who he was. To end apartheid within his own heart, because if he didn’t do the work in prison on leading himself then he wouldn’t have been able to lead anyone to a place of hope when he was released.


I talked with them about hopelessness and how poverty gets inside the head. I talked with them about that hopelessness feeling like an impossibly high wall, how after a few generations of that kind of hopelessness they lose sight of who they could be. I talked about how leadership is like getting the pen back to write your own life story, not letting others write it for you.

We chatted together about the power of gangs to write a story that causes harm, but the potential power of gangs to be a force of good in the community.
They sat transfixed. One guy told our host, in tears, that if he’d just known some of what we were teaching he knew he would have made different choices and not ended up in prison where he knows he didn’t do his victim or his family any good.

National flower of South Africa - the Proteus plant (it grows everywhere)

On our way to Robben island

Jane & I stepped out of the prison three and half hours later into the burning sun of the beautiful Western Cape. Free. But we were on fire in our hearts. We have had to work through some challenging things in the life of Emerging Leaders in the past few weeks but one thing has become clear – we are on a mission, to the best of our small ability….and it’s a mission of hope.
Napoleon said that a leader was a ‘dealer in hope’. In the midday sun you just say to yourself ‘if we could have just left a little bit of hope inside that prison how amazing would that be.

-TW

In the Living Years

Why have I never come to S.Africa before? – What a truly stunning country it is! We’ve spent the past 3 weeks marvelling at the jaw-dropping beauty that every vista affords.  A country of scorching diversity: in the landscape and in the rainbow-people groups that weave a complex and often disturbing tapestry around each other.

The prison yard on Robben Island 

Apartheid, like an unsightly scar is still easily visible – inequality reigns, segregated townships abound, dulled eyed coloured and black workers toil in fields and in menial jobs where no white person is every spotted earning a crust. 

I see and feel the often subtle oppression, that continues to rob people of their dignity and teaches them to expect so little of themselves.

The cell that was Mandela’s home for 18 year. 

On our getaway journey north from Cape Town yesterday, while listening to Mike & the Mechanics singing ‘In the Living Years’, (YOUTUBE it), I soberly started a conversation with myself about what I’d want to teach the coming generations to help them to live an, ‘eyes wide open’, ballsy life. What nuggets have I mined from my life’s-journey that I’d want to pass on to my grandchildren? What has life taught me, either the hard way or with just with the passing of many tides?

And this is the imperfect list that Trevor and I came up with over a coffee in a hippy-café on the road to the stunning Paternoster coastline

1.     Open your eyes & ears to what’s in front of you – Life is an adventure, it’s a play being acted out and you’re in the drama of it all. So stay awake through every scene.

2.     Don’t be afraid to let life get to you. Let life prompt you to ACTION

3.     Stay connected to the people that matter to you and don’t let anything get in the way of those relationships

4.     Learn to spot your Ego and then laugh at it – don’t take yourself too seriously, because life isn’t about you, ‘You' are about Life             

                

5. Stay curious about everything. Get addicted to asking questions. Don’t get fixed in your thinking. Stay flexible in your living.

6.     Practice STILLNESS at least once a day, so that you can connect to the divine within you

7.     Make peace with your shadow side – you don’t have to be best friends, just foster a healthy respect

8.     Learn that suffering is a necessary part of your inner growth – it has the potential to make you a bigger person, if you let it do its work in you

9.     Don’t look for comfort constantly; look for being in places that stretch you. Seeking ‘comfort' as a goal will make you weaker & duller as a person

10. It absolutely matters who you travel with in life, so take your time and choose wisely

11. Make joy the compass of your life – when you lose your sense of joy be sure something is not right

12. Invest in LOVE and PURPOSE as the 2 pillars of your life – keep them in equal balance and keep them strong.

-       

I dedicate this imperfect offering of Life Lessons to my 2 grandsons Max & Digby

JB

The Strandloper Beach Cafe on the Paternoster peninsular 

South Africa - A day in the life...

Cafe view across Gordon’s Bay to Cape Town

JOURNAL ENTRY Grabouw, S. Africa (1 hr east of Cape Town)  - 4th Oct, 2014

8am - We're sitting in the garden of our cottage in the hills, outside the township of Grabouw. Needles of strong light are piecing through the alpine-like trees, trying to find their way to us as we sip strong tea, our bodies cupped inside old basket chairs. The air is cool, but we are promised a hot day. 6 days ago, when we arrived from Kenya, it was more like 5 degrees and I was longing for my cosy ski hat. What a change.

We're mostly silent, both of us reflecting on the past 3 days and the energy it has sucked from us. We've run a community Leadership for Hope in a church hall in the middle of the township. We had hoped for 150-200 people, but only 40 attended. Two weeks ago ANC provoked riots rocked the community here and the police arrived with rubber bullets and showed no mercy. Buildings and homes were trashed and burnt and those with thoughts of boycotting the protests and going to work or school were threatened with beatings and death.

We were invited to Grabouw by Tim and Maz Walker from the Thembalitsha, "Village of Hope". They, and their amazing team of 40, care for children with HIV/AIDS, TB and cancers. They run a wonderful residential unit as well as clinics, support groups for sick adults in the community and a whole network of sports outreach for the youngsters....and much much more. This is serious stuff and the impact on the community of 60,000 is awesome.

Maz & Tim Walker from Thembalitsha, Grabouw

Above photo: Click on the link below to hear Vivian’s story

http://www.thembalitsha.org.za/


It's hard to get your head around the devastating impact that HIV/AIDS has here...and I mean devastating!! ....a scary 33% are infected (a mind numbing 6 million across S. Africa) and the rates of TB are the highest in the world. The un-employment rate among youth is 50% and the population is growing exponentially with services that are busting at the seams.


This is what hopelessness look like: tough, gruelling, bitterly cold, friendless...nowhere to go, no one offering answers, no possible chance of change, no one bringing answers... it's a cauldron of complex needs. So tensions rise and the people perish in their own bitterness, anger and frustration. There is no vision for a better life... all hope seems dead.

11am - We're now in a beach cafe in Gordon's Bay (on strong coffee now), the tension of the past week is slowly ebbing away.

The sky and the sea are competing for who is displaying the most exquisite show of beauty. The mountains of Cape Town in the distance keep the heavens from losing themselves in the ribbon of turquoise below. No words come close to expressing what we're gazing at.  The homes banked up the hillside with prime views of the bay are immaculate, the flora and fauna stunning - like a Chelsea Flower show exhibit. I'm hit by the contrast.

Coastal drive through paradise

This is a country dripping in contrasts, like an unhappy bride. It is entrenched in cultural strife and division still. Black people hate Coloured people and 'Colours' detest 'Whites' (I can't believe that I'm writing using such labels, but that it how people speak all the time here). Is apartheid still an issue?...YES, of course, it yells at you everywhere.

Leadership for Hope group (Leroy is centre of front row, crouching in white hoddy.

I'm wondering what part we have to play in this country's struggle? Or am I being just pretentiously naive to even think such a thing?

Grabouw, an often forgotten and dismissed township, a place of discord and tension, poverty, sickness and fear, needs a revolution of change - Change of Mindsets (a radical change of thinking), Change from Hopelessness to Hope, Empowerment and Liberation.

Is this possible? .... I choose to say YES, for we know that it is possible for small sparks to set a whole forest on fire.

2pm - While eating lunch this email arrives onto our iphone:

"I was really blessed by the training. The knowledge imparted was so highly valuable. I really needed it as a booster to fuel my faith so i can move the mountains out of my life. Indeed something highly spiritual was released and not just a mind shift but a change in what one's heart beat should be as a leader. It also had profound things hidden in between and breathed life into my life to raise my spirit up again, so i can put up a fight for my life. I'm surely not gonna give my pen up again. 

God indeed sent you be a light, impart the spirit and personality of hope as a living entity that can transform the world through leadership designed for the full development of the human potential. Also to be truly human one must lead life in a way that it benefits those around and by giving them the pen of their lives back to them, their life story comes to life.

Simple lesson! we all need each other to complete our life's story and write the story of this world. In a way that we can plant trees of hope in the earth that can bare much fruit a for generation to create a type of lifestyle where strongholds of poverty and its mind sets can be broken in this world. I will now use this to transform my community, other communities, my country and other countries. I did not come all the the way from Hout Bay, a fishing village on the coast, for nothing. It was worth travel and 3 days out of work

Thank you Trevor! you just gave my pen back to me. You are truly a gift of God to the nations of this world. May you continue to impact the world with your gift. May the doors of the nation open to you and say come bless our hearts with the wells of wisdom given to by God. May the waters that flow through quench the thirst of those so desperately needing hope and may it cause the seed that people have within them to come to life as you inspire-(breathe life in it, as you said) May it cause an exponential growth unheard of in the earth. May all the high hills become a plain, every rough path smooth. May you fly over the wall and even as you continue with the dispensation of the grace you possess to change the world. 

I was truly blessed to hear you speak life into others. You have awakened the lion in me once again. I will not give my pen away to people and the issues of life. I will fight till my heart stop beating." 

Leroy Sias 

Baby whale in the bay (mother basking by its side)

4pm - We’re watching Whales in the bay at Hermanus in the dazzling light of a low sun. They have come here to meet their big chums, play, have calfs and mate (all the good stuff of life). On the coastal rocks we're watching them and feeling a silent electric energy of deep wonder.
Again, we’re lost for words...


“Come to the edge”, he said.
They said, “We are afraid”.
“Come to the edge”, he said.
They came. He pushed them...
And they flew” (Apollinaire)

 - JB

What Matters is...

When the final tally is made
...I don't want to know....

- That you left your family financially secure
- That you climbed all the Munro peaks in your 60's
- Or you won a National Bake-Off competition

...I'm not interested if...
- You built an eco friendly house or left your body to science
- Or you worked every hour to win souls for your God

...I'll shrug my shoulders if I hear that...
- You brought 3 beautiful, talented children into the world
- Had a handicap of 4 or had your crib featured in Homes&Gardens

...I don't care if...
- You collected an impressive fleet of model vintage cars or rare stamps,
- Gave blood once a month or wore Botox well

IT MATTERS NOT!

What matters is...

- You rose to challenges that scared the shit out of you, but you stepped up anyway

- You didn't live with compromise or sell yourself short emotionally

- You knew how to have fun and how to laugh easily, even in the tough times

- You learnt about yourself from the agony of broken relationships, by allowing yourself to fall apart and trusting yourself to mend one day

- You had a mentor and fed on the wisdom of the elders you pulled close to you in your life, because you knew the danger of your fragile ego.

- You took risks to dare greatly, in order to learn to live a Brave life





- You wrestled with self doubt that threatened to bury you alive, but you found a way to say,
"I CAN....I WILL"

- You waited when the way ahead was un-lit and peppered with un-certainly; waiting without hope, waiting for grace to gather you up.

- You had a burden for the Oppressed, the Orphan and the Widow....and anyone in the world who was suffering injustice and misery

- You knew how to hurt & bleed & cry for an aching world, because your heart had been baptised in Empathy.

- You knew you were but dust, but had found your Immortal Diamond

- You had learnt to walk with yourself in honesty and acceptance


- You searched out companions along life's journey that built you up and gave you wings to fly

- You never stopped growing and pushed yourself by saying, "WHY NOT?" ...because you didn't let fear be the author of your life's story.

- You viewed life with excitement and joy and as a bloody-big-adventure.

- You saw your life as an opportunity to be an Asset to the Universe, so you Loved Fearlessly and ran a quality race to the end.....


 - JB