The Story of the Desks

Over the past year, Focal Point Aid has tried to find a way to help out a few schools in need.  Some things we have found remarkably easy, like meeting new people in a community a half world away, learning how and when to trust strangers, and seeing how even small gestures of help can change desperate situations.   On the other hand, some things we have found needlessly difficult, such as actually starting our charity, dealing with large government bureaucracies, and convincing people that even small gestures of help can change desperate situations.  Through the entire process, from researching a region, meeting a community, pinpointing a viable project and raising money, we thought the simplest aspect of our program would be the moment that all that other stuff was completed and we could just go out and purchase what we had promised to deliver.  Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

This trip to South Africa was centered around us purchasing well-needed desks for the Madakeni and Bekisizwe schools.  Along the way, we intended on buying other supplies and materials, but the desks were the centerpiece of our aid package.  Sounds simple enough, right? Several weeks before leaving we started our search for school desks.  We asked the principals of the schools to get price quotes for us, but little news came back our way.  Then we solicited the help of 2 woman working in the South African Embassy in New York. They spoke Xhosa (K-osa) like most people in the Eastern Cape, and they offered to help us translate with vendors while we were still at home.  The prices that we were getting however, were sometimes 300% higher than  we knew they should have been.  We suspected that the vendors heard that an American group was the buyer and they thought they could make more money from us (later we found out that they will raise the price for any reason at anytime, a very frustrating trend considering the amount of improvement that all the schools in the area need).

Meanwhile, we were getting a little nervous.  We had promised the schools that desks were on their way, and we promised our supporters that their donations would be put towards these desks.  So, with some discussion and a little bit of faith, we decided that the best way to negotiate was face-to-face. While waiting for new quotes, we headed to South Africa ourselves.  Along the way, we met with the mother of one of our embassy friends who lived in East London, the South African Board of Education (twice), both schools, another NGO who had purchased desks in the past, and then rechecked our initial contacts.  We were neck deep in price quotes from several different sources, sometimes 3 different prices from the same company.  Some included tax, but charged delivery.  Some offered free delivery but only if we ordered twice as many.  Some vendors were near by but would have taken a very long time to fill the large order.  Some were seen as very reliable but were 300km away.  Who knew that it would be this confusing just to buy desks for a school?  In the end, we chose reliability (free delivery didn't hurt either).  

We are happy to announce that the desks have been purchased!  Along with this order, we had enough money to also buy a school full of chalkboards and dry-erase boards for Bekisizswe.  We will remain in South Africa for a few more days to tie-up some loose ends and then we will return to New York.