For sale: a bunch of stuff

It was time again for us to empty our garage and pile everything into our friend Clay's front yard. We had the annual Vilakazi garage sale yesterday, and it was great! Even though we didn't have as much stuff, our board members worked and worked, and we made nearly as much as last year. In fact, we brought in enough to pay for about 25 backpacks. Hooray!

South Africa: New World Foundation

Before all the crew arrives, Leigh and I had the chance to stop by a prospective beneficiary for our 2014-ish trip. We visited the New World Foundation, which is in Lavender Hill, a Cape Town community where several of Leigh's relatives live. His grandparents lived just across the park from each other. He would walk from one grandmother's house to another while they both would watch to make sure he made it all right.

It was really special to visit this preschool and see this community. The children were wonderful. They were so happy and friendly. They sang songs for us, and you could see how proud they were to perform. It was so, so sweet.

This little boy stole my heart.

This year, we asked New World Foundation what some short-term needs could be met. The answer was so simple: toys. They have very limited resources, and they focus on educational needs. But problems arise because there are so few toys for about 100 students. They asked specifically for toy cars and some stuffed animals. This boy's reaction to one of the stuffed lions was the absolute best. What a difference something so small can make to a child.

The director, Juna, also took us on a tour of the school, which is part of an umbrella social services group. They kind of partner with other agencies to help families. It's wonderful. Juna used to teach with Leigh's mom back when she taught in South Africa, so it was so cool to meet someone with a history like that. Her school was tidy and efficient. So lovely. The school had access to a lush, green soccer pitch right next door, but Juna told us the children couldn't play there because of the gang gunfire. It broke our hearts. But it was so good to see Juna and her colleagues working to give them a safe, loving place inside that school.

Our new Vilakazi video

These are all our incredible board members. We love them!

Camera shy

We recorded a video for Vilakazi, and Mia was super interested. She wanted to sit on the stool. She wanted to be in front. And then? Total shyness. Maybe she's not ready for her close-up just yet.

Vilakazi and burgers!

Tonight was absolutely spectacular! S&B Burger Joint has a charity day every Tuesday, where the nonprofit gets 10 percent of the proceeds. We were lucky enough to be selected this year! It was so exciting being a part of a business's giving, and it was so heart-warming to see how many of our friends came out to support us.

An update about Vilakazi

I just wanted to give everybody a little update about Vilakazi. Our end-of-the-year email campaign went well, and we raised more than $500!

We started the new year with two new board members - Megan Elliott and Jackie Mania. They're both so smart and have so much experience with nonprofits. We're really glad they've joined us.

We are so excited about our trip in August. We are still working toward our goal of providing 22 schools with first aid kits and sports equipment and handing out 350 supply backpacks to children in need. We're inching closer and closer every day. Thanks to everybody who's donated and supprted us. It means so much. :)

Wine for Wickets!

We hosted our second big wine tasting and it was a HUGE success! We are so excited! Vilakazi raised more than $2,000, which is $800 more than last time. We are so, so humbled by our friends and their generosity. It was really special. We have the best board in the world, and they work so hard for our mission. The wine pull, the auction, the tasting - it was all great. And, not to mention, it was a super fun party. To so many people, things like this aren't that big of a deal. But to the children we'll help this summer, it's a really big deal. And just for a reminder, this is what donations did for children in 2010:

Big Foot sighting!

On Saturday, our Vilakazi board had a booth at the annual Plaza District Festival. Leigh and I took the last shift of the day, and what did we see? Big Foot. Of course.

A big day for Carrie!

Tonight was a pretty exciting night! I had the chance to put my photos up for sale in a real store in Oklahoma City! I started a little side business recently called Africa Affection Photography. I'm selling some of my favorite photos from our trips to South Africa.

This summer, I got some great encourage from my Aunt Barb while we were visiting her and my grandparents in Iowa. She's a professional photographer, and she shot our wedding. She really knows her stuff. She I got some great advice and encouragement from her, and I just went for it.

Long story short, I've sold two photos! ha Big sales! It has been very exciting. (And, as a side note, I've decided to give 10 percent of the purchase price of all my photos to Vilakazi.) Our friend Marc has a booth at this awesome store called Bad Granny's Bazaar in the super-hip Plaza District in northwest Oklahoma City. And he's letting me sell some of my photos there!

I guess that was really a long story long. But anyway, it was an exciting night to put my work up for sale! Fingers crossed someone buys at least, like, one picture. ha

Grandpa and the zoo

Nancy and my dad came to town for a visit this week! I got to take off work, and we spent the day tooling around Oklahoma City. First stop: the zoo. Of course. We saw all kinds of animals, including the baby elephant, Malee. Nancy has a close encounter with the gorillas. Mia, Nancy and I got to even feed the giraffes at the new feeding station. OK, it was really just Nancy and me feeding the giraffes. Mia wasn't sure why the giraffe was so huge, so she didn't want any part of it.

We had the best time with them in town! They came to one of our Vilakazi meetings, which was really fun. We're so pumped that they're going to go with us on our trip in 2012. They'll be teaching first aid classes for teachers and staff at the schools that are members of the Knysna Education Trust. (Click here to read about the trip!)

A big day for Vilakazi

Today was a big day for Vilakazi. As some of you may or may not know, the foundation Leigh and I started earned its official 501(c)3 status a few weeks ago. It was an exciting day after nearly two years of hard work by our amazing board, volunteers and supporters! After that, we felt a little adrift. We'd been shooting for our 501(c)3 goal for so long, it was strange actually achieving it.

So we took time Saturday to have our first ever board retreat. We didn't really retreat anywhere. We actually just went to my office. Our fantastic friend, Kelli Dupuy, was our facilitator and we accomplished so much! We talked about board development, goal setting and fundraising for the next year. We've set a lofty goal for ourselves, but it's going to be so exciting when we reach it! We're going to help hundreds - hundreds! - of South African children next summer. (I hope you will all be a part of it!)


After spending all day together, we decided it would be great to spend even MORE time together. Some of our board members joined up with a few friends to play in this annual trivia night fundraiser that benefits an Oklahoma nonprofit that works to prevent teen pregnancy. (Boy, do we need this group in Oklahoma!) Our team finished FOURTH out of 48 teams! It was incredible, if not overly competitive. We also finished fourth last year. Next year we're totally winning medals. Or stealing medals. Whatever.

It might sound cliche, but Leigh and I count our blessings every day. We have the most amazing friends!

An update about Vilakazi

Exciting news! Our friends at Midtown Rotary secured a $1,000 grant to buy 100 water-filtering drinking straws for the children of Coffee Bay, South Africa. This is very exciting for Vilakazi. We are so, so, so grateful for our pal Megan for her hard work. She's amazing. Seriously.

They labeled all the straws with names of Rotary members and people who've come to speak at their meetings. They also labeled some for Vilakazi people! These are labeled for Leigh and me:

I updated the Vilakazi website with information about the grant and all of that. So if you have a minute, you can check it out by clicking here.

Leigh and I are anxiously checking the mailbox every day for a letter from the IRS. Just to share an update about our 501(c)3 status, we're still waiting. We sent in our application, the IRS had a couple of follow-up questions, we answered them and now we're waiting for their response. So ... hopefully the next letter that comes from them will be our official notice of nonprofit status. We're crossing our fingers and checking the mail!

Garage sale time!

It was time for our annual Vilakazi garage sale, and the second annual might be the last annual. It. Was. Hot. But we made more than $500, which was great!

We spent forever - forever! - pricing things. We were so lucky to have our fantastic board and fabulous volunteers, Jenni and Darla.


Moving everything outside then back and then out and back again was exhausting. But remember, it's all for the children!


Speaking of children, at least one child was grateful for the garage sale. Mia enjoyed touching pretty much everything and wearing lanyards.

Rock-paper-scissors-fundraise!

Our first Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament was amazing! We had 35 competitors and raised $1,100 for Vilakazi! Last night was so, so, so much fun.

Leigh and I pose with the trophy, which I made. If I do say so myself, it's pretty awesome.


Kelli and Andrew go for it all in the final round.


Leigh hands Kelli the trophy after she won it all!

Our board is so, so, so amazing. I can't believe how lucky we are.

Vilakazi in the news

Our big event - a rock-paper-scissors tournament - is coming up, and we've had some wonderful stories done about us. It's been so interesting for me to be on this side of the media. Sometimes it's easy to forget how exciting it is to get your name in print. :) Here are links to two stories and a video:

• A wonderful, wonderful, wonderful story ran in The Oklahoman Gazette.
• The University of Central Oklahoma student newspaper also wrote about us.
• One of our board members, Lauren Dennison, appeared on the KAUT-43 morning show with Lance West. She did great!

Lauren also went on the News 9 morning show this weekend, but I don't have a link for that. Either way, she did great both times!

Vilakazi night

Last night we had a small get-together for a few friends who've been supporting us and Vilakazi. We showed photos of our trip and told everybody about what we did. Here's a short video I made about one of our donations: rain boots. (You can't see it all on here for some reason on some browers. (Click here if you can't see anything to the right of the word "teacher" in the first scene.)

The Mandelas' new decor

For Tanya's last day in South Africa, we decided to visit Soweto, one of the most historically significant cities in the country.

We visited Vilakazi Street, which was neat to be on since we started the Vilakazi Foundation. Things have changed quite a bit. New sidewalks and paint have improved the location, and more vendors were around.

We toured Nelson Mandela's house. Leigh and I went there in 2007, but we returned so Tanya could see it. It was completely changed. Our tour guide explained that renovation began in 2008 to accommodate all the visitors expected for the World Cup. It was quite a lot busier than when we went three years ago. Most of the furniture had been removed from the tiny home to open up the space for more tourists. Photos were now allowed. The price went up. But the tour was much better. We learned a lot even though we'd been once.

We grabbed a beer at a restaurant down the street. We visited "The Koppie," a lookout hill nearby Mandela's house, and got a lovely view of Soweto.





On the way to the car I made two recordings: one of a boy singing the SA national anthem and another of four younger boys singing one of the traditional protest songs.

We wanted to go to Wandie's for lunch but the address we had was incorrect. We asked a group of police officers how to get there. "That guy right there will take you there," one officer said. He was referring to a police truck. Yes, we had our very own police escort.



I think this might have been the highlight of Leigh's life. The officers drove us across Soweto to the neighborhood where Wandie's was. We all felt like kind of a big deal. We debated whether it was appropriate to tip police officers or if that would be a crime. The officers pointed out Wandie's and made sure we saw it. Then they drove on. No tip necessary. Just being super nice.

We were greeted in front of Wandie's by a couple of street performers who could do such fantastic things as lick their elbows. And eat their feet:



Wandie's is a restaurant with traditional SA food. In a word: delicious. We had two kinds of potatoes, beans and chickpeas, beef, chicken, rice, greens, salad, bread and desert. My god. Yes. We also made friends with a couple of guys from Angola eating next to us. It was fantastic.

We stopped by the house before taking Tanya to the airport. Alfie reminded Tanya of her promise to fire the "pellet gun" that I like to refer to as the sniper rifle. No hadidas - SA birds about the size of geese but with short necks - were around, so Alfie had to settle for target shooting. He set up a dog bowl on the grill. Tanya hit it in one shot.

Then came the peer pressure. I caved and said I would shoot the gun, though I refused to aim at anything with a mother. I struck the dog bowl, and just as I turned around Carin walked in the door. "Caught in the act!" Alfie shouted. Carin looked at me like I had betrayed reason. I tried to explain that we were shooting at targets but it was of no consolation. I'd now switched sides from responsibility (Carin and me) to mayhem (Alfie and Leigh). Of course Alfie, Leigh and Tanya thought this was hilarious.

It was time to take Tanya to the airport, and we made a quick stop at a music store to get CDs we couldn't find at home. We followed the GPS to the airport, but it took us straight through downtown at rush hour. Leigh was a little worried Tanya might miss her flight, but we arrived in plenty of time. And we had the great opportunity to view downtown Joburg at sunset. It was actually quite beautiful.

We said goodbye to Tanya and returned home. We all fell asleep watching soccer. Fantastic.

Ikhaya Labantwana Montessori

All the hard work of our friends and volunteers paid off today with a parade of children wearing tiny rain boots. 

We took our donations up to Ikhaya Labantwana Montessori today. (Check out what they wrote on their blog about us!) We took a ton of stuff to them. It was a long journey: 20 hours of flying, 13 hours of driving and then a final hike up the hill from our hostel to the school. Let me just say that the most daunting part was the hill. It was like climbing Mount Everest. We carried all the stuff plus Mia. It was a couple hundred yards and took a couple hundred hours. When we walked through the gate it was so exciting.

All the little ones were running around outside after having finished their snacks. They were screaming, rolling and playing all over the place. Oh, recess. It's universal. Dawn, the teacher, greeted us and we moved everything into the school, which is a rondavel built out of mud bricks and a reed roof. It looks small outside but it's a wonder inside. Everything is immaculately clean and organized, and Dawn has worked very hard to create/find/buy all kinds of learning tools. It's really impressive. 

We discussed our donation with Dawn. The toothbrushes, toothpaste and vitamins would be kept at the school so they wouldn't be lost or taken by someone else. The students would brush their teeth and take their vitamins at school and would take vitamins home for the weekends. The school would keep the books, puzzle and a soccer ball. Each child would receive a pair of rain boots and extras would be saved for children in the future. 

The students came indoors and it was activity time. Each of them had to pick something to do and work on it for a bit. There were only nine students at school that day - the others were sick, unfortunately. But for that many 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds in one hut, the class was surprisingly calm. They all picked up activities, which were carefully separated onto trays, and went to work. They did all the regular things you'd imagine would be going on at a preschool, like practicing numbers. But they also did real-life practical skills, like using a spoon to move seeds from one bowl to another. It was so neat to watch tiny hands practice using a spoon or a sponge or a rolling pin for play-dough. They painted and counted and organized blocks. They were content and diligent. It was a sight to see. 

Dawn worked with one little girl who was working with a stack of numbered squares. She'd ask the girl to find the eight, and the girl would point to the eight, with a wide smile and wide eyes. She was so proud to pick out the number on her own. Dawn asked her to find seven. The children sitting closest stopped their activities, held up seven fingers and smiled like they'd won the lotto. "There are seven!" they sang. Dawn explained that they have a song about the days of the week and it's one of the kids' favorites. She had to calm everybody down with the promise that they'd get to sing the song at the end of the afternoon. I couldn't wait to hear it! 

After they finished activity time, it was circle time. They walked around the room on a piece of tape in the shape of a circle. Everyone quieted down and prepared for the end of the day. Dawn told them to stop and they could sit where they stood. She told one little girl not to push another. "But she's too close," the girl explained. "Then say, 'Could you move, please? You're in my bubble,'" Dawn said. The tiny girl faced her friend: "Could you move, please? You're in my bubble." The children sat and talked about what day, month and year it was. Then they sang the days of the week song. Actually, it was more of shouting than singing. It was clearly the children's favorite; they were awfully excited. 

After some more songs and a book, it was time to hand out the rain boots. Each child could have a pair to keep. Dawn asked us if we'd like to shake the children's hands or give them hugs or do something else. We said we could hand the boots out however she liked. "I've never done anything like this before," Dawn said. "Neither have we," we said. So we decided that each child could get a pair of boots and would give me a hug - something that not all children get as often as they should. 

One at a time the children came up to me as a sit in one of the child-sized chairs in the hut. I handed over a pair of black rain boots to stoic little faces. Some hugged me, others shied away. A couple shook my hand. It was pretty formal but still really nice. They were so sweet. After they got their boots, the children took them to Dawn, who wrote their names on the inside. I looked over at her table and the children were ecstatic. When they picked up the boots from me, they didn't really smile. They whispered thank you. But when they were around an adult they knew, they were beside themselves with joy. It was awesome. 

After Dawn wrote their names on the shoes, they all rushed back to the circle and put their boots on. They giggled and talked in Xhosa with distinctive clicks. 

It was the end of their school day, and Dawn gave them directions on how to leave the hut. Today they'd tiptoe up to the doorway and then sprint out onto the grounds. This was immensely fun, and they were already smiling because of their shoes. As soon as they hit the doorway they screamed and ran wild. As the last of the children ran out of the school, they all began to stomp in their new boots. Stomping is especially fun in boots. Then they all got into a parade and stomped around one of the garden beds. They swung their arms and smiled. It was absolutely wonderful. 

While hiking up that hill, I was wondering if this even mattered. We came from so far just to deliver some rain boots. Was this worth the million-mile journey? Yes. Absolutely. No one else was going to give these kids boots, and they needed them. It was the best feeling in the world. 

Thank you so much to our friends, family, donors and especially our board - Traci Dodderer Bentley, Chad Previch, Michael Kimball, Susanne soon-to-be Kimball and Ryan Reaves. Everyone's generosity and hard work paid off in ways we can't understand. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

A day of firsts

Mia had so many firsts today:

* Trip to the beach. She celebrated by crawling all over the place and eating sand.

* Dip in the ocean. She celebrated by looking suspiciously at the waves.

* Visit to Coffee Bay. The hippies are everywhere, and I'm pretty sure everyone has held Mia.

* Camping trip. She's be wrapped up like a little enchilada and sleep between us tonight. Hopefully it won't get too cold. So far she's been a champ about it - just like everything else.

I also had a couple firsts:

* First drug offer. I'm probably the only person I know who hasn't been offered drugs before, but I remembered what I learned in second grade: just say no. Thanks, Ronald Reagan.

* First time to feel old. All the hippies, stoners and backpackers went to the bar after supper. Leigh and I are taking Mia to bed.

We met Dawn, the preschool teacher we've been coordinating with for Vilakazi. Tomorrow morning we'll go to the school after breakfast and take the children the supplies. One change of plans: the sports equipment will go to an American guy (or maybe he's Welsh?) who is organizing athletic leagues throughout the area. It's something that's needed for sure! Hopefully this equipment that basically has fallen out of the sky will be helpful to him. We're really looking forward to the morning!

Shopaholics

Today was the big day: we spent our Vilakazi money.

We stopped at SuperSpar and Pep and bought the following:

* 20 toothbrushes

* 20 tubes of toothpaste

* 16 pairs of rain boots (every pair that we could find)

* 12 or so soccer balls

* 6 months worth of vitamins

* 3 cricket sets

* 2 basketballs

* 2 rugby balls

* 2 books

* 1 awesome puzzle

We couldn't find everything on our list (namely no raincoats and sun hats) but it was so exciting! We spent money on toothbrushes, toothpaste and extra vitamins. I took a picture of one of our shopping carts. It was awesome!

We - and by we I mean Leigh - drove seven hours from Joburg toward Coffee Bay, and we'll leave tomorrow morning. Hooray! On a side note, I forgot how absolutely crazy awesome rest stops are here. This isn't your regular truck stop with a drive-through restaurant on the side. We stopped at a place with a playground, trampoline yard and a petting zoo (that was unfortunately closed by the time we arrived). Check out the coolness: