First impressions

Day 1 (or day minus one of the build, depending on how you're counting) featured us arriving and getting a visitor's visa at the airport (which of course, struck terror into the former immigration lawyer's heart). More terror followed when they took our passports with our $20. The passport then was meticulously passed down a row of about 8 immigration officials before being returned to us Happily, the dramas ended there and we were met by Habitat folk and escorted to an airconditioned bus which took us to our hotel.

Michelle was conscientious and took the tour of the dump where our families had been living. Many other families still live there.

I stayed at the 4 star hotel and crashed. I'm sure that makes me a bad person.

We also had the welcoming dinner for 300+ global volunteers including Americans, Kiwis, Australians, Canadians, Belgium-ers, Germans, Thai, Hong Kong-ese, Bangladeshis, Cambodians, Chinese, Koreans, Singaporeans, and Malay.

There were lots of speeches, including by government Ministers who informed us that while the population of Cambodia living below the poverty line was previously (when?) 59%, today it was 25% and the government aims to reduce it by 1% per year. There was also some pretty spectacular Cambodian dancing (lots of gold costumes and intricate hand movements).

Dinner was quickly followed by an early night for my 5:30 am alarm!

Transiting

Curiosity has its own reason for existence.
- Albert Einstein


So it's Monday-it must be Cambodia. Yesterday was Adelaide to Singapore. We overnighted in Singapore at the full-service Changi airport. As far as airports go, it is quite a nice one but a bit surreal. It reminds me a bit of Vegas because it is seemingly 24/7 and it's often hard to get a sense of day and night.

I was so proud of myself that (1) I got the free airport wifi to work and (2) I found the energy to blog. Of course, that's where my luck ran out and my blog post got lost in the Ether (not to be confused with the Cloud, which I'm still not sure I fully understand). Very depressing.

The crux of my post was this - I've been so busy over the recent weeks to make sure I get my butt on the airplane seat with all the appropriate clothing and equipment that I forgot about the Why of the build. So now I'm thinking on the Why. If I come up with any profound thoughts, I'll let you know.

The milk of human kindness

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. - John F. Kennedy

In the US, we have a holiday called Thanksgiving. It's celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, every year, like clockwork.  While it probably originated as a harvest festival of some sort, we celebrate it as the story of how Native Americans saved the colonists from starvation during their first winter in North America after their crops failed. 

Nowadays, Thanksgiving revolves around a huge feast where people eat WAY too much turkey and then, in a tryptophan-induced haze, pass out in front of the TV while watching (gridiron) football.  That’s if you’re lucky.  If you are unlucky, you are stuck in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes and packaging up the leftovers for a week of turkey sandwiches.

But there are great things about Thanksgiving too.  In the US, it is a more family-focused holiday than Christmas.  Thanksgiving is a 4-day weekend every year--the only one you can count on in the US - giving you time to slow down and be with your family.

But it is the spirit of the holiday that interests me.  Thanksgiving has evolved into a general, secular time of gratitude where people think and talk about what they are thankful for in their lives - a practice all too rare the rest of the year.

We can be quick to complain or find fault in our lives or with others.  Rarely do we stop and just be thankful for what we have and for the people in our lives who mean so much to us.  And if we are breathing and have cognitive ability, we have something to be thankful for. 

My thoughts turned to being thankful this week because of the fundraising efforts Michelle and I have been doing for the Habitat for Humanity build in Cambodia. 

I had set up my fundraising page on the Habitat NZ site and I got my first donation from Linda, a good friend of mine from law school days.  I graduated law school nearly 20 years ago.  I see my friend, Linda only very occasionally.  And, I am a shockingly bad correspondent -- a fact I know peeves her no end.  In spite of my faults, she made a generous donation and I am thankful.

Then there’s my husband.  He’d like to retire but works like a dog.  Yet he made time to ferry me to and from the Barossa for wine collections; to and from my office, hauling wine up and down, and of course, he came to our fundraising dinner after a 14 hour day.

Or Michelle’s mum, who got into the spirit of the whole thing by baking cookies that became part of the prizes at the fundraising dinner.  Baking is something that the women in Michelle’s family seem to excel at. Between her, her mum and her Aunt Mary (may she rest in peace), I never had anything less than a stunning baked good from her clan. 

Or to Michelle, who organised the dinner, wrangled with last minute drop outs, seating plans and money collection.  Not to mention that she is an excellent friend and travel companion.

Or Larissa, another Yank transplant with so much enthusiasm for our project that she rallied  troops from her government department to come and support us at the dinner, even though none of them knew either of Michelle or I.  They were simply entranced by Larissa and her persuasive abilities.  (She also sold several cases of wine to support the cause!)

Or the Spice Kitchen, who gave us a great deal on a dinner (eight years in a row now).

Or Grant Burge winery and their fantastic wines.

Or people who came to the dinner, even though a couple of them knew neither of us.

Or all the people who came to the dinner on a weeknight, with or without their partners and kids.  Not to mention, how grateful I am to many of their partners who stayed home with the kids.

Or people who bought wine and showed up at Friday night drinks, or just contributed money here and there.

Or my employers who allowed me to tap my colleagues for wine purchases and dinner/drink attendances, to store wine in my office, to use the premises for the liquor license, and to be generally supportive of our Habitat project

To each and every one of those people and organisations, I am filled with gratitude and (cynic that I am) with surprise too - surprise that a sense of community still exists.  I am grateful for the goodwill and support that was directed our way. 

I’m still unsure about what I can contribute whilst on the build in Cambodia, but I know that the money raised will go far.  In a country where a home can be built for about $5000, Michelle and I will have contributed funds for more than half a home - and when I say “Michelle and I”, I mean everyone who contributed time or money to make it happen.  I am grateful.

Preachy blog

Experience is not always the kindest of teachers, but it is surely the best

-Spanish Proverb

You know, you can get so caught up in this fundraising lark that you lose sight of the big picture.

WARNING:  Preachy blog post alert!

So we’ve done really well on the fundraising and assuming everyone takes the wine they ordered and everyone comes to the dinner they RSVP’d to and my liquor license comes through (details right?), we will have surpassed our fundraising goals.

But then, I ran an errand for my husband and met a woman whose husband is a veterinarian and every year they go to India with Veterinarians Without Borders and de-sex dogs to help keep down the street dog population.  She told me that on a previous year, floods came through killing a number of people and destroying homes.  Instead of spending their time de-sexing the dogs that year, they shoveled mud.  She told me that in going to a developing country like Cambodia (or India), I needed to be kind to myself because you almost leave that country to return to your comfortable western lifestyle with a sense of survivor’s guilt.

We talked and I recalled my time from 2004-2009 as a refugee lawyer, where every day was survivor’s guilt.  I could work 70 hours a week and still feel like I wasn’t doing enough.  I finally learned that there was no such thing as enough.  And in that role, I was well-removed from the in-your-face experience of day-to-day life in a developing country.  I just listened, day in and day out, to stories of horror from those countries.  Of course, I would have felt like I had never done enough. 

Those five years took a huge toll on my physical well-being and on my psyche.  It is only now that I had begun to think that I was strong enough to face a challenge like going on a habitat build to Cambodia.

My fellow habitater, Michelle, spoke of a similar sense of guilt upon her return from her first trip to Nepal.  She blogged about reconciling the poverty she saw in Nepal with her life here in Australia.  At the time, I chalked it up to that whole Catholic guilt thing.  But I’m rethinking the issue as my own need to confront it approaches. 

I like my lifestyle – I’ve been wealthier and I’ve been poorer, but it all happened within a pretty narrow bandwidth.  I’ve no doubt that I will find begging children and starving dogs on the streets of Phnom Penh to be highly challenging.  But I think it is a challenge I’m ready to face. 

Weirdly, a lot of the criticism of voluntourism (a category of travel our upcoming trip no doubt falls within) attacks the intent of the participant, as in “voluntourism is nothing more than a way to alleviate guilt”.  In praise of voluntourism, participants say that the experience enables them to better experience the culture they are visiting . So which is it?  And why do you feel guilty after the voluntourism experience?  And is that a bad thing?

Embarrassingly, this conversation with a complete stranger and the thought of whether I could handle my time in a developing country like Cambodia, brought me to tears.  Hell, maybe it is easier to concentrate on the fundraising.

All's Fair in Love and Fundraising, Part 2

 

The eight case “sample” we bought at Grant Burge didn’t last long.  John immediately laid claim to a number of reds (I made him buy them from me), bragging that he was spending evenings with “Elena” (the name of the red wine).  In the first week I received orders for more than I had in my possession.  I also needed to supply Friday night “tastings”, having offered a “try before you buy” option.

I sent around emails offering tastings every Friday night in August and promising that photos of Michelle and I looking suitably disgusting on the build site would be forthcoming.  All the emails had a Bob the Builder theme and urged people to drink for a cause (like you have to urge Aussies to drink).  The first email announcement had this picture attached.

It seemed appropriate.

After having obtained the requisite approvals, I sent out an email to the 400 plus employees at my workplace advertising the wine sales.  

Wine and lawyers go together like Torville and Dean [a famous ice-skating duo], a pie and sauce [meat pie with ketchup for the non-Aussies], Wimbledon and rain … well, you get the picture.  Buy into the stereotype and buy wine for a good cause!

I was sold out of my stock in the first hour.  People forwarded it to their partners, who forwarded it around their workplaces and the orders flowed in.  Clearly, I was going to have to go back to the Barossa soon for more wine.

Things came to a head last week when Heather from Grant Burge rang me to say that they were down to the last 15 dozen of the Elena.  “I’ll be there on Saturday,” I replied.

Although wine fundraisers are great in the end, you do have to carry quite a lot on your credit cards until the payments come in.  In preparation, John and I pooled resources to make sure that one of our credit cards could take the whole hefty charge of nearly $2000 worth of wine.  Credit arranged, off we went to the Barossa again.  The plan was that we would have lunch beforehand, then drive up to the Barossa.  There, we would pick up the wine, drive to my office, and unload the wine there.  After that, we would have time to go to an open house at 5:15.  John had done the photos of the house and it had a Moroccan style that he thought I would like to see.

The first wrinkle in the plan was Missy Kim, our Hyundai Getz.  She is a little car and ultimately, she would be loaded down with 26 cases of wine and two adults.  We weren’t sure that we would all fit or that she would be happy driving with all that on board.  Our backup plan was to go back to Grant Burge the next day if we had to.

We arrived at the winery and were on schedule, but the winery had a tour bus and the nice cellar door folk were run off their feet.  Since we had time, we ordered coffee and cake and waited for the tour bus crowd to leave.  Once they did, Heather came over, comp’d us the cake and coffee and then, went over the order with me. 

I gave her my credit card to pay.  Unfortunately, she initially put through the wrong sale amount and then cancelled the sale by telling the EFTPOS machine that the signature was unverified.  For those of you who have had dealings with American Express, you will understand the significance of this being A NEW CARD.  AmEx is great in a lot of ways, including their security.  But once you have a security flag on your card, it’s not likely to come off anytime soon.  Security flags are common for new cards and cards that haven’t been used for a long time, or indeed any obvious change in your spending patterns on the card.  So a new card coupled with an “unverified signature” had AmEx firing on all cylinders.  Needless to say, when Heather tried to put the correct amount through, we got the nasty “Da-naa” sound, which I’m certain was followed by a “but thanks for playing”. 

Heather rang the EFTPOS people first.  They suggested we contact my bank.  While I stayed on the line through a succession of holds and transfers with my bank, Heather was helping John load up Missy Kim.  John lays claim to his calibrated eye, a result of 14 years in the US military perhaps.  He was certain that all that wine could fit in our little Getz.  Of course, he was right (I hate that). 

I finally got onto someone who told me that Grant Burge needed to send them a fax on Grant Burge letterhead.  The fax needed to provide my account and purchase details and a request that the funds be released, with a description of what happened.  It was to be addressed to “Team Leader”. 

By now it was about 4:30 and Morocco was slipping away.  Letterhead was sourced and the fax written.  When Heather tried to send it, she learned that their fax machine was playing up. 

Finally, the fax machine began to cooperate and the fax was sent.  We waited 5 minutes, then tried our luck with the EFTPOS machine. “Da-naa”.  We waited 10 more minutes.  Morocco was gone and Grant Burge was closing.  Poor Heather looked like she needed a martini.  We tried again.  “Da-naa”.  I rang my bank and was told “Well, the fax machine is on this floor so someone must have it.  I’ll try to find it.” I stayed on the line.  The minutes ticked past.  Heather and I chatted.  She gave me two splits of their very nice champagne to drink with Michelle in Cambodia.

Finally, the bank chick came back on the line.  “Ok, your funds are release,” she said. 

“If you don’t mind, I might ask you to hold the line until this transaction goes through,” I replied.  Both Heather and I let out simultaneous whoo-hoos of victory when the EFTPOS machine made the happy “I like you again” noise. 

The sale finalised, John and Missy Kim and I headed for home with our 26 cases of wine.  Of course, the skies opened and drenched us but we no longer cared.  We had the wine.

UPDATE - ALL of the wine is now spoken for and my credit card STILL has security flag issues *sigh*  All’s fair in love and fundraising….

All's fair in love and fundraising...Part 1

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants

                                                                                    - Isaac Newton

So it was just a few weeks ago when I made the decision to go on this build.  The way Habitat works (see – I’m talking like I’m an expert already!)  is that Michelle and I pay our own travel expenses, but have to fundraise a certain amount – in this case, about AUD 800 each.

Previous builds that Michelle went on were organized through Habitat Australia and all donations were tax deductible for our Australian friends.  We are doing this build with the New Zealand team, so Australian contributors can’t get the tax benefit. On the other hand, the Australian dollar is strong (AUD 1 = NZD 1.24) and it looks really good when you make a donation on the Habitat New Zealand website.  Michelle and I have been welcomed by the Kiwi team with open arms.

Fundraising relies on goodwill – that of your donor base, industry partners and those who have gone before you.  My “giants”, as Isaac Newton refers to them, are Habitat for Humanity and Michelle Coram (they just know what works and have done it all before) and our industry partners, Spice Kitchen and Grant Burge.  My “donor base” is my friends and family, who have been wonderful and supportive.

Michelle has organised dinners over recent years with a great Indian restaurant called the Spice Kitchen (252 Kensington Rd, Leabrook SA) where, on a weeknight, she can book out all or part of the restaurant and people get a generous Indian banquet for $40 ($20 of which goes to Habitat as part of our fundraising and $20 to the restaurant).  The restaurant has been very supportive of Habitat in the past and so Michelle decided to organise another dinner there this year. 

For my part of the fundraising, I decided to sell wine, working on the theory that wine and lawyers are one of the world’s great pairings (and the vast majority of my friends are lawyers).  Fundraising with wine involves getting a one-day liquor license and having all sales take place on that one day. 

A couple of years ago, Michelle’s fundraising included wine from Grant Burge, a very nice winery in the Barossa Valley.  It was very popular and the H4H group ran out of the wine allotment.

Armed with this information, I went straight to the source – the winery itself.  After a few phone calls, I decided a tasting trip to the Barossa was in order (the things we do for charity – *sigh*).  The Barossa is only 30-45 minutes from my house but I don’t usually have a good excuse to make the trip. My husband, John and I went up there a couple of weeks ago (I “forced” John to go with me so he could taste the reds, while I decided on the whites).  Grant Burge has three cellars doors in the Barossa now and initially we went into the wrong one.  I had been told to ask for Caroline and the cellar door folk said that she was at another cellar door.  Apparently, we were at the cellar door that sold the more high the really expensive wines (I seem to always be drawn to the expensive stuff – it’s a talent).  The cellar door folk were happy for me to taste some of their wines, but I declined (not wanting to spoil my taste buds for the affordable stuff).

We continued to the Grant Burge cellar door on Krondorf Road, passing my personal mecca of Rockfords (a winery known for its beautiful Alicante Bouchet Rose, beautiful Basket Press Shiraz, and amazing Sparkling Shiraz – how I became a ‘member’ there is for another post). 

We tasted the cleanskins first, which, as the least expensive, had good fundraising potential.  Not bad, but the next level up knocked our socks off.  We decided on a 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, known as the Elena and a 2008 Riesling, known as the Mariage. Even the more expensive range didn’t sway us. After a small markup (to go to Habitat), the wines were a very affordable $12 (red) and $10 (white).  We bought a sample selection of eight cases to see how they would be received and we resolved to buy more as orders came in.  The winery also offered to ring us if stock got down to about 15 cases of each.

The funny thing about the wines is that they were apparently a cancelled export order – the red was apparently bound for China and the white for Korea.  I assume this because of the back labels, which I reproduce here for your amusement. 

 

Besides the obvious Korean and Chinese characters, I think the red wine label reads as if marketed to Chinese men, using lots of adjectives like “strength” and “intense”; nouns like “character”; and verbs like “bursting” and “dominating”.  I’d say the marketing people were spot on.  Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great drop, especially for the price, but the descriptions just make me laugh.  No doubt the white description is good too – sadly, my Korean isn’t up to the task.

Family matters

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind.” – Dr Seuss

I rang Michelle on Sunday night,  “I’m leaning towards going.  How much were the airfares again?”  She squealed.  I guess that means she’s happy for me to be a saddo tag-along, copycat.

The next hurdle was telling our parents.  Yes, Virginia, you still have to worry about what your parents think when you’re in your 30s and 40s.  Why? Because we love them and want to maintain happy relations with them, whenever possible.  The only difference from when you were younger is that now, you’ll probably do what you want to, despite what they say.

Michelle has a long history of telling her parents about her somewhat unusual travel plans,  going around the world with me for 9 weeks (2000), taking her long service leave to do volunteer work in the US, England, Ireland, Scotland, etc (2002), walking across Spain (2006, I think) - and then the Habitat builds in Nepal.

My mom is gone, as is my brother, but I won’t get into that long, sad tale here.  Suffice it to say that my stubborn (yet loveable) 82 year-old father lives on his own in San Diego.  This is despite that fact that he is legally blind.  Either John or I go and visit him at least once a year, we call once or twice a week, we help out with rent and whatever else we can, but ultimately I live here, in Adelaide, South Australia, and I feel guilty as hell that I don’t do more.  Dad loves adventure and traveling but there are different rules for his daughter and what is appropriate.  I’m pretty sure he would consider any developing country to not be appropriate, but who knows - he may surprise me.  I know that when we were kids, it was Dad’s idea to do an African safari but Mom put the kibosh on that idea.  We also never went anywhere further south than Naples in Italy.  There were limits to the ‘adventure’ to which we were exposed. 

With my current work, I sometimes have to fly on small planes (single-engine) to outback locations.  Although I really prefer to have a back-up engine when flying, it is not always possible.  Whenever I go on these work trips, Dad worries about me and his last words on the phone are full of dire warnings.  I resolve to wait as long as possible to tell him so as to reduce worry time to a minimum.  Ok, so I’m a coward.

Michelle’s parents are pretty relaxed about her going to Cambodia. She has checked out the travel warnings and found that there are fewer for Cambodia than there were for Nepal.  I guess the argument is that she survived Nepal, so she will probably survive Cambodia.  I’m still waiting for the right time to tell Dad – maybe I’ll call him from the airport…