Are you on my team?

I love a good story, especially one with a moral. As a child, I treasured my beautifully illustrated book of Aesop's Fables. I would happily read the stories again and again. Well-known tales include 'The tortoise and the hare', 'The boy who cried wolf', 'The crow and the pitcher' and dozens of others.

Three months ago my mom was hired by a small company to sort out their bookkeeping and accounts after business partners - who had their hands (up to their friggin' shoulders) in the cookie jar - had created a financial nightmare.

In response to my story about an incident related to FEAT, my mom told me a tale. Three others follow.

The boss and the accountants

In this story, my mom's boss' accountants contact him to say that he must pay R100k in tax to SARS. Ja, just like that. My mom asks them for the assessment where she finds various late-submission penalties, which were incurred because the accountants had not submitted in time, and other errors. She tells the accountants to submit a query to SARS and that the penalties are not for her bosses account, but for theirs - afterall, he pays them to handle this stuff for him.

My mom then turns to her boss to explain the situation saying, "These people are not on your team". He employs these accountants to fulfill a much-needed task and he trusts them to look out for his best interests. None of us are experts, qualified or even interested in things we have to do - like tax returns and plumbing - and so we hire people to do these things for us. And, we expect them to take care of us and to do the best for us. Someone who is on your team looks out for you and they do their best for you too.


The woman and the little pieces of paper
Yesterday evening I went for a run, taking to the roads and hills of my suburb. The weather is perfect - not too hot, not too cool - and the trees are dressed in the freshest green. It is a wonderful time of year for evening runs.

A woman, who had been sitting on a grassy verge, stands up just before I reach her. She picks up her backpack and I notice a number of little pieces of paper lying on the lawn. I stop and begin picking them up.

"Are these yours?" I ask.

"Yes," she says.

"Well, they don't belong here. These belong in the rubbish bin, just like the rest of the litter lying around these streets."

I gesticulate, pointing at a coke bottle, discarded packaging and other lumps of litter.

"I live in this suburb, I run in these streets and this filth is disgusting. And do you know why it is here?" I ask. It's a bit of a rhetorical question because she'll get an answer whether she responds or not.

"It's here because people don't care. I do."

I turned around, continuing with my route up the hill.


The bakkie and the parked car

This morning I spent over an hour standing in a queue on the pavement outside SARS, attending to an IRP5 query on my assessment. A guy in a bakkie pulled up, parking in a spot near the front door. The spot was vacant because yellow lines (and a sign) have designated this a bus parking area. He pulled up right up the ah-sss... err... bumper of a parked car, so close that I would not have been able to squeeze my shapely leg between the two vehicles. The parked car didn't have much space in front of him either; more, but not much.

I left my spot in the queue to walk out on to the road and around to the bakkie driver's window where I pointed to the parked car and asked, "How is that guy meant to get his car out?".

"I'm just going to pay," he replied.

"I've been on this section of pavement for an hour," I told him. "And you have to stand in the queue too so this is not going to be a quick process."

I suggested that he reverse a little to give the guy in front some space. I walked back to my place in the queue, next to a friendly lady.

"I'd like to think that someone would do that for me," I explained to her.

The bakkie guy drove away, put off sticking around either by me or the prospective one-hour (or longer) wait.

He-who-would-have-been-parked-in returned to his car not three minutes later.

The printer and the brochures

After deliberating for a few weeks whether to spend R1500 to R2500 on printing 400 brochures for FEAT next week, I decided to go ahead because they will be really special to the speakers and sponsors. I put in a couple of late (very late) nights to work on the design, layout and content. Last week I dropped the artwork at the printers. A friendly call this morning announced that my brochures for my FEAT event were ready for collection.

If there is one thing I love, it is seeing something I've written or created in tangible full-page colour. It's one of the reasons I so love writing for magazines... that smell of fresh printing and the delight of colours on the paper... After 10 years I still rip open packaging to get at my articles, just to see what they look like in print. I'd been waiting for that call for a week.

The lady hands over the box and my heart drops. In that first glimpse I notice a patch of streaky printing. "Maybe it's only that one," I think. I pick up a few more. Same. I open up the brochure and notice a white border at the bottom despite the 5mm bleed that I'd included in the artwork; a trimming problem. I detect more streaky printing where the 'FEAT green' should be solid and there are streaks across Pierre's face on the back. Yes, the whole box of 400 brochures and the event takes place in exactly one week today.

The lady calls over the graphic designer, who submitted my job. I ask for the manager/owner too. They offer to trim the white line from the bottom, if I'd like to wait. I'm not crazy about this solution. I notice that the logos on the front fold are almost on the edge of the page, when they should be centred. It turns out that instead of printing on a large sheet and trimming to A4, they printed to A4 without resizing the artwork accordingly. I mention this. And that's to say nothing of the streaky ink. "That's the printer," says the lady.

Hugh, the manager (or owner) apologises for the trimming errors saying that my job should have been printed large sheet and then trimmed. "So, why wasn't it," I ask. He offers me a 20% discount on my next print job. I pay the balance and walk with my box to my car. I put the box in the boot and walk to my door.

I hesitate. I walk back to the boot to grab a brochure. I walk inside again, asking for Hugh.

"I have a story to tell you," I announce.

I tell him about the one about 'The boss and the accountants'.

I then explain what FEAT is about and why I created it; because I love adventures and expeditions and I have such admiration for adventurers, many of whom I know; because I believe that these brave and courageous people need an event like FEAT to bring them together to share their tales; because they are important to me; and because this event is something that I have created and that it is special to me.

"Every one of your staff here are on your team," I add. "They work hard at their jobs to make this business a good one. I come to you with something that is very important to me and I am spending what I consider a lot of money to print this brochure. When these pages started coming out of the printer why didn't anyone notice these things that I saw in seconds? Why are none of you on my team?"

I continue: "I walked back in here because even though people at my event may not notice the streaky printing, the off-centre folds and the white line at the bottom, I did. These brochures, the speakers, the event's sponsors and the audience are very special and important to me and I expect this to be important to you too."

Hugh is reprinting my brochures, on large sheets - trimmed to A4. I'll collect on Monday.

Hugh - thank you for listening. Thank you for caring. Thank you for being on my team.

Readers, care. Care enough to stand up for yourself, for things that are important to you, for people who are important to you and for things that you would like others to do for you. And the people or companies in your life who are not on your team? Replace them whith those who will support you and everything that is important and special to you - not because you are paying them to do something but because it is important and special to them too.

Seeking greater challenges

In a final comment from the Richard Burton book that I have been reading... (I've finished it).

The guide is discussing the difficulty of the journeys (he went on four in total with Burton, Speke and other explorers including Stanley). He speaks of suffering and wonders how they all endured it. He also questions how the Englishmen endured the conditions when they came from a place where the heat, animals and sicknesses were so different (both Burton and Speke suffered terribly from malaria and other tropical fevers which nearly killed them).

"It was only at the end of that first journey that I realised what I should have known from the beginning: without this suffering the wazungu do not feel alive. Just before we reached the coast [returning after finding the lakes], I understood that they depend on suffering the way others depend on alcohol or khat or ganja. So it was no surprise when I saw the wazungu again, less than two monsoons later."

He goes on to say:

"Even the others, Bwana Stanley and Bwana Cameron, kept coming back, drawn to their own suffering: all of them did, except the ones who did not survive. They only had to get back on their feet and they were already planning their next journey. It did not have to be easier or more comfortable, the next one. Eh, far from it. They sought out more pain next time, they sailed even closer to death, like a fisherman who is not satisfied with surviving the reef but is compelled to try ever more impossible channels, channels where is boat can only be dashed to pieces."

It's not so different where modern adventurers, mountaineers, climbers, kayakers and, indeed, adventure racers are concerned...

Kayak hoist

A few weeks ago I made a kayak hoist in the garage. For months before I had to ask a security guard, who is conveniently based on the corner nearby, to help me lift the double on to my roof and the off it again after paddling. This has been an irritation because the guards knock off at 6pm... What then? I'd then phone a friendly neighbour to assist.

The hoist works brilliantly because I can drive in, undo the tie-downs, hook the rope under the kayak and clip the loops (carabiner connection). The kayak is suspended a few centimetres above my roof rack. It's as easy getting the kayak on to the racks.

I keep wondering why I didn't do this earlier... and then I remembered that my house people had so much stuff in the garage that there wan't even enough space to wheel the lawnmower through it!

It takes me five minutes to rack and load the kayak, which is too heavy for me to lift on my own from the floor to the roof. Easy-peasy. Simplifying things like this makes disciplines more accessible and less hassle.

More from Burton: hearts, paths and firsts

I've only got a few pages left of my book on the explorer Richard Burton. In the last few chapters a number of comments have caught my attention.

Burton and Speke have a massive caravan of people, porters, slaves and goods for trade moving from the coast of Zanzibar inland, in search of a great lake they'd heard about, which they suspect could be the source of the Nile River. There seem to be over 100 people.

Many of the porters come from the Nyamwezi tribe. They seem to have been a tribe of hunting people until they began earning a living carrying loads on their heads for traders and explorers like Burton. Only half would make it home alive and with a wage in their pockets. And after returning home, they would have to soon set off again "with a bale of a bundle on their head and a good view of death. And they couldn't always stand that view. So they fled."

The narrator of this section, a guide who led the caravan, goes on to explain what happened when these porters fled.

"They ran away in the night, and sometimes we went after them and sometimes we let them be, and sometimes they were caught by another caravan and brought back to us. Then they were whipped with a koorbash, a scourge plaited from hippopotamus hude, a terrible weapon, especially when it was new and as honed and sharp as the blade of a knife. Or they were hanged. I tell you, whoever invented that punishment couldn't tell cleverness from stupidity. There is no lash of any whip in this world that can prevent you taking the path your heart has set you on. When your fear or despair or anger or longing grow too strong for your reckoning, weighing mind, then you do what your heart tells you to do, even if all the torments of Hell in this world and the next are waiting for you."

We are not unlike the Nyamwezi people. We are contracted to indoor jobs to earn money we need to support ourselves and families. That view of sitting under neon lighting, behind a computer, within a screened cubicle is one that not many manage to successfully flee. But, ultimately, the ones who listen to their hearts do make it because nothing can prevent them from taking the path that their heart has set them on. They find a way. You'll meet some of these brave 'escapees' at FEAT.

A decade ago, when I was in turmoil and at the point of making a decision to walk away from 6.5 years of studies, I went to see a psychologist - uncertain whether I was crazy and impulsive (this had been building for many months) or making a sensible decision. I clearly remember him telling me, "Lisa, follow your heart; it knows what you want to do". The next day I handed in my deregistration papers and I have not for one day regreted it.

I liked something else that the guide says a few pages on about Burton and Speke setting their eyes on the first great lake.

"At the beginning, none of us knew what was in store for us, none of us could imagine what we were going to experience, and if we had been able to, none of us would have embarked on that path of scars and suffering. [...] and the wazungu [white men], my brothers, are strange creatures. I can recognise them, I can tell them apart, but I will never be able to understand them. They think a person's highest calling is to go where his ancestors have never been before. How can we, who are afraid of going where no one has been before, understand that? How can we understand their happiness at performing a task they have set themselves? You should have seen the expression on their faces: they were as happy as a father holding his newborn child, as happy as someone who has just falled in love when he sees his sweetheart coming... [...] This was the look on their faces when they reached a goal that no other wazungu had reached before them."

I read a release today about a new expedition called the '737 Challenge'. According to The Adventure Blog, "Welsh adventurer Richard Parks plans to reach the top of all of the Seven Summits, as well as both the North (last degree) and South Pole (last two degrees), in just seven months - starting December. He's calling his expedition the 737 Challenge, which stands for 7 Summits, 3 Poles, 7 Months. Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world, is sometimes called the 'third pole'."

Ja, another first, if he gets it right.

It's nice to be first to find, discover and do things. This is motivation that has driven not only exploration, but also science, medicine, technology and other research. Thank goodness. Long live the desire to achieve personal goals whether they are accomplishments just for your own pleasure or feats that change the way we see our abilities and the world.