A Grand Summit

Before we left for our trip we contacted as many people as we could in Coffee Bay. Our host here at the Coffee Bat hotel was gracious enough to set up some introductions for us upon our arrival. She had told some of the schools about our plans and notified the community leaders that we were on our way. Great, we thought, we could hit the ground running. Today when we heard that there were people here to see us, we thought we would be meeting a handful of people then head off to visit a school or two. Instead, we walked into a conference room filled with about 35 people. It seems that the news of our mission had spread and many local leaders were anxious to see if we were indeed there to help.

We were quickly introduced to Sanele who would act as our guide and interpreter. The three of us walked into the packed room not exactly sure how we were going to handle this meeting. There were the expected school teachers and principles from local education centers, someone from the Youth Project, Medical clinic, Woman's Project, a few tour guides, a businessman and a about 15 local community farmers dressed in traditional clothing and painted faces, some carrying freshly grown produce each as uncertain as we were of how a room full of people such as this could agree on a common interest.

To make the situation more difficulty, less than half the room spoke English and half of them spoke it only slightly. The rest of the room spoke the beautiful language of the Xhosas (pronounced K-osa). The room was hot and the meeting started with a lot of nervous confusion by ourselves and our young and very exuberant guide still unsure of how to facilitate such an affair.

After about ten minutes of getting our bearings, we started to move ahead. We outlined our purpose of creating a project with the community involving as many local hands as possible. We would speak, Sinali would translate, someone would respond, Sinali would translate...etc. The meeting really took off in a positive direction when we asked each project represented in the room to describe to us how they worked, what was successful and what was not successful. This was the kind of feedback that we thought would take weeks to set up and now we were getting it in one giant overwhelming dose.

The meeting lasted about 3 hours and ended with us thanking them for their patience and interest in our ideas. What was the outcome of the meeting? We set up a full itinerary for the next week where we will be taken to the location of each project represented in the room as get to spend many hours with each watching what they do and listening to their stories.

Both of us walked away with some very stark impressions. The most prominent is that in a room with 30 people, there are 30 amazing projects deserving of our help. It will be one of the hardest decisions that we will ever make choosing where to spend our time. We have vowed not to judge which one sounds better until we meet with everyone individually.

The tour of the village starts tonight as we visit a traditional community dance troupe. More on that later