46 Days to Go

And the anticipation is starting to build........

When I first started out on this journey I remember sitting in a Newmarket cafe early one chilly morning during the school holidays, talking it over (and over and over) with my biggest supporter the HC.  Back then my biggest fear was failure, the fear of letting others down...time and again I would ask myself.

 "What if I tell everybody I'm going to raise this money and people back me, but I don't make it....?"     

...........Well that was wasted energy but those who know me, know that self doubt is one of my biggest failings, though by September 17th my confidence and self belief had grown tenfold, with the sum raised far exceeding the figure I set out to achieve.

I recall a conversation I had with Jamie Fitzgerald the first time we met back in July of this year.  Jamie posed the question

"What would you do if you raised more than what you need?" 

At the time, raising more than what I needed was a concept totally alien to me, little did I know that with Jamie's fantastic support and my "dog with a bone" determination and passion to make it work, the figure we eventually raised exceeded my original target by more than 50%.

But in answer to Jamie's question... I knew that any additional money raised had to be used to help the community of Nakuru in some shape or form.  And until recently I even thought I had that part figured out...

By now I'm beginning to see so many ways I could help, so many things I could do that I'm not sure which way to turn.  Right now I've got more plans formulating in this head of mine than I know what to do with, and to be honest I want to do them all.

With ideas ranging from;

• Generating significant financial support here in New Zealand to enable me to develop a clean water initiative for the Gioto Garbage Slum, 
• To supporting the MicroFinance scheme run by So They Can for woman of the PipeLine IDP camp or 
• Enabling as many children of the Gioto Garbage Slum educated as possible.   

Each and every idea has it's merits, and to dismiss any one of them seems a crime.

At the moment the clean drinking water initiative is holding a real place in my heart, but so too does the education of the children of Gioto. Then I tell myself, surely if I help a woman out of poverty, that helps her children too...... So many decisions to be made, so many things to be taken into consideration, and all need to be based on cold hard facts.  Decisions that can't be truly assessed until I've experienced the culture, the people and the environment first hand. 

Then, and only then will I be truly able to answer Jamie's question.  

Asante
Jacq

"It's always the right time, to do the right thing"