By mid March 1985 my family were getting really fed up with hearing Do They Know it's Christmas? played over and over again, they weren't quite so enamored with the whole "smelly Geldof save Africa" concept as I was. I wanted to make a difference, but I couldn't see how I could be part of something like that, what could I do? What difference could I actually make? Bob Geldof was rock star, a big name in the music industry, he had influence, he could easily make it happen. It wasn't until years later when I watched a documentary showing just how damn hard he battled to make Band Aid happen that my admiration for Bob Geldof and his team grew tenfold.
As with all obsessions, mine started to fade, life went on, normality returned and I started to grow up, but the desire to make a difference never left, that deep seated need to go to Africa and help in someway never really went away, it evolved, but it never disappeared.
Every so often the spark would sneak back into my consciousness, but I would squish it back down, push it out of my mind. By this time, I was a wife, a mum, training to be an Early Childhood teacher. Going to Africa wasn't doable, it wasn't possible, anyway I couldn't ever make a real difference, could I?
But that was all before May 28th, before I found myself sitting way up the back of a darkened Michael Fowler Centre, on a cold Wellington morning. That was the day it all changed, when I heard Cassandra Treadwell talk about her charity So They Can, when I text that person who kick started all this, who told me to get of my backside and make it happen. So here I am.... It's been two months, and it's taking shape. So They Can have confirmed they want me in the orphanage for December/January, my travel dates are confirmed, the flights are paid for and today I booked a day and time for the first 6 of 9 vaccinations I require.
These children are not like the starving images Bob Geldof shocked the world with in 1984. They are fed, clothed and schooled... NOW!
But that wasn't always the case, once, not so long ago, the children of the Holding Hands Children's Home, called the Nakuru Pipeline rubbish dump home. These children have been orphaned and made homeless by civil conflict and Aids, some as young as three and four years old. Until a couple of years ago, they scavenged for food on the dump, competing for their daily 'meal' against pigs and vultures, grabbing at the scraps they could find, they slept in shelters made from what they found on the dump.
So will I make a difference? I certainly hope so. Will it be of the magnitude of Bob Geldof, I doubt it, but does that make it any less rewarding? Certainly not for me.
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