Category Archives: New Zealand Travels

So, what do you do actually do for a job?

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Here we (Shaz and Liz) are in the last week of a month speaking tour in New Zealand (NZ) before we head to Aussie to do the same. We’ve been in schools, unis, Rotary Clubs and had lots and lots of coffee catchups with people.

In this month alone we’ve slept in 12 different beds.

Besides the question of corruption the other question I mainly get asked is “So, what do you actually do for a job?” So here’s what we actually do, although every day is different.

 

Sharon

I try to be in the office by 8.45am but it depends on traffic. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes, other days 30. Basically in the mornings I volunteer with an organisation called Afri-Lift which works with children and youth for very poor backgrounds. On Mondays I’m in meetings until 2pm, Tuesdays I write grants for fundraising, Wednesday’s prepare for a 6 hour teaching day, Thursday teach, Friday do marketing.

 

The afternoons/evenings are taken up with work for BeyondWater (the Aussie charity we started in 2007), writing LOTS of emails, blogging, social network updates, looking at projects and every now and then taking Pete out for a coffee. I work till about 9pm most nights with my other spouse – the laptop.

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Some of the great kids we get to work with.

Three out of four weekends we also have programs on. One Saturday we train youth leaders, another we have a tuition program in the Kibera Slum and the third Sunday of the month we assist with the Riziki Childrens Program. That leaves us one extra Sunday to meet up with some young couples we are mentoring.

 

In addition we host lots of international visitors, sometimes go to the Kibera Slum with food packages or randomly do things like have the odd day off.

 

Pete

My days are certainly never dull and boring. Like Sharon, on Mondays we have a staff meeting for a couple of hours but every day/week is different. Sometimes you’ll find me tiling a kitchen, fixing a tractor, buying a truckload full of seeds to transporting tomatoes. You will also see me working with teenage boys training them on the ‘how tos’ of farming. This might mean pulling apart something that doesn’t work and showing them how to fix it. A lot tends to break down and it’s giving the locals the skills so next time they can fix it themselves. When I say things are varied, it’s a slight understatement. One morning I might be trying to find a market for the produce that the trainees grow and then that afternoon helping to install a water tank.

pete

Pete showing one of the boys how to use machinery.

I try and spend 2 – 3 days out at the farm which is about an hours drive. But I also need to be in town to work out all the other stuff. I’m not confined to an office or computer but every couple of days you can’t get away from paperwork. I work with a small team of people who have different roles but one thing I’ve learnt is that you can never over communicate.

Here in Kenya things are complicated and take much longer than say in Australia. You can’t go to one hardware store and get everything you want. Just because they say something is definitely in stock doesn’t mean it’s actually there.

This year I’m trying to take a couple of afternoons off a week. So far I’ve failed miserably.

Every couple of months we get personally involved with our water projects. That might mean driving a few hours to meet up with the community to make sure they’re on track.

That in a nutshell is our life, but it’s much more interesting in reality than in print. We meet amazing people, every day is a challenge and there is lots of work yet to be done.

 

Why not join us by:

  1. Giving (ask me how)
  2. Joining us (long or short tem)
  3. Find out more (shoot me an email – thewildcreanberries@gmail.com)

The Expat Dilemma

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I’ve read about it, but experiencing it is quite different. I haven’t lived in New Zealand for 12 years and Australia for 16 months. We’re on assignment in Kenya (East Africa) and this visit was to make connections and raise much needed funds to keep us in Nairobi.

Firstly of course is the reverse culture shock – where you return to your home of previous residence. The only chance on our 4 flight trip to exit an airport was in Singapore where we went to my cousins for the day. I’d never been to Singapore so everything was very cool until I spotted a sign that said ‘Be considerate of other drivers and indicate’. I just started laughing in the back seat, I’m not quite sure if it was the 2 sleepless days catching up with me or the thought that this would NEVER happen in Kenya. When we arrived in Sydney there was the increase in early morning train rides that were a shocker and where you felt like an idiot for not knowing. One of the things that really bugged me was the lack of free wireless on offer at the malls. Every mall in Nairobi has some form of free wifi. Because labour is so cheap, toilets at the airport and malls leave for dead the quality of toilets in Aussie. I was so disgusted with Sydney airport toilets but I did appreciate those hand driers that are supersonic and dry your hands with just one pass in the drier.

liz surfing

Liz boarding. The bonus of NOT being 9hrs from the nearest beach.

The biggest sense is that of not belonging. I miss the familiarity of Nairobi and how Kenya works. Sydney is definitely not home anymore. Partly because Pete isn’t there and partly because we have moved on. Liz and I even went to a leaders meeting at our local church and my thought was ‘It’s great here but man would we be bored if we returned’. While it was great seeing friends and family, I also have friends and family in Kenya.

We were only in Sydney for just under 2 days to fly to NZ for a family reunion and then kick off a 6 week speaking tour. The last time I was at a family reunion I was 8 and our family lived about 4 hours away so we didn’t see the others very often anyway. So here’s this bunch of total strangers spending a weekend together at a remote beach that only those 60+ really have memories of. The rest of us sort of knew each other but it was just a matter of who are you, whose your parent and what have you been up to for the last 36 years? The saddest thing about choosing to live overseas is the lack of connection with family. There’s no holidays together, no shared memories. It doesn’t sound much, but it is quite a huge thing.

ang n shaz

Downside of 8 weeks on the road – wild hair.

In Kenya, customer service is a top priority but obviously not here. A taxi driver said about our one suitcase “I’m not lifting that into the car by myself”, hmm, don’t become a cab driver then!

I keep reminding myself that it is just different and we are not here forever. It’s not all bad. Family go out of their way to make you feel welcome. People are interested in your story and so far the weather has been good.

It’s early days yet but I think this trip will be worth it. I hold my breath and hope that we raise the necessary funds because we really do want to stay in Nairobi and work with the most amazing young people on the planet.

 

 

 

What a Blast!

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We’ve just spent 11 days in chilly New Zealand. For those who don’t know much about the country, it’s only a 3 hour flight from Sydney, and our homeland. We left there 10 years ago, tired of being broke youth pastors, started our lives all over again and now we’re off to Kenya for the next 20 years, how crazy is that!

Our time in NZ was primarily to say goodbye to Pete’s parents (mine have passed on) so we thought we might as well fit in as many people as possible. We quite literally ate our way through the week, with everyone saying ‘Let’s have a cup of tea and a meal’. I think we rolled off the plane last night!

The coolest thing was that we met up with lots of people who had a significant impact on our lives while we lived there. The downside was that there were also lots of people who we missed out on visiting simply because of a lack of time.

It was great to be able to be prayed for, sent off by our old church and blessed by so many people. It certainly wasn’t a holiday though, one day we had 5 back to back meetings. We could’ve been there for 20 days, but I still think we wouldn’t have seen everyone. We traveled 1600km’s just in the central North Island.

It makes you realise that you don’t do life by ourselves, that was never God’s intention. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, so it takes a whole community to raise an adult. Our destiny is wrapped up in the lives of people we actually do life with.

So while we consider ourselves honorary Aussies, we thank all the Kiwis who put up with us, loved us, disciplined us, and helped us along the way.

To us people matter the most and we’ve had the privilege of spending some time with just a few of our Kiwi family. See you all in about 3 years.