Writing material for a blog certainly affords me the time and space to do some introspection, reminiscing, remembering people and past events that randomly pop up. It certainly is also a time of deep reflection.
People, events and situations merge together and take new directions.
Towards the end of 2019 I was approached by John Lombardo to raise much needed funding for an afterschool arts project situated in Joe Slovo Township. Fundraising is one of my strengths and over the years I have successfully worded towards raising much needed money for many organisations and NGO’s, although at times it can be thankless, it is also very rewarding.
I am going to digress for a moment, many years ago I worked as a live-in Carer, I had the good fortune of spending time with a wonderful woman and was privileged to meet and spend time with her very lovely and loving family. One of her daughters, in collaboration with a group of kind-hearted people run a charity shop, all the proceeds of that business assists and funds various projects in Africa. Interestingly, my UK friends decided upon funding some projects in South Africa, and because of my relationship with Tessa and her family I was asked to recommend two projects in Gqeberha.
I recommended ArtWorks for Youth and the SHINE Literacy project.
Both projects afforded me wonderful opportunities to meet and work with fabulous folk, like the kind-hearted and generous Chantal Harris. Chantal assisted in overseeing youngsters from Slovo who were attending and online school.
Covid was a devastating event in the lives of many families residing in areas like Slovo, suddenly, churches and NGO’s were confronted with families who could not support their families, let alone buy food. Fortunately, I managed to raise funding to buy essential and basic foodstuffs for the families of the ArtWorks or Youth Project.
In the meantime John had returned to the States, life ticked over, and muddled along. Very sadly John passed away. I don’t want to dwell on this.
So there we were, the two of us and a group of young folk.
Now what?
After a very long telephonic discussion Chantal and I decided to stay and fight so to speak. I recall saying to her: “Chantal when this is over, we will write a play and call it The Wit and Wisdom of Two Foolish Woman”.
We survived, all of us, the youngsters, Chantal and me. Our UK funders still assist us, as well as a kind and generous American family.
Therefore it gives me great pleasure to share Chantal’s story…please join me in celebrating Chantal Harris, The Oldest New Comedian in South Africa, author of “ADHD, the Bottle and Me”. You can read her very inspiring and humorous story here.
