Helping out?

I keep getting asked how people can help out raising a few bucks for the orphans..... well, here are a few ideas along the lines of my philosophy of giving folk some bang for their buck - making the donations in a fun environment.

Cards nights are awesome fun. Charge your mates a nominal fee to play. Poker, blackjack, 500....whatever you all know how to play...


 Pool Comp. Everybody thinks they can play, so get them to put their money where their mouth is for the orphans...

Darts...60,120,180! 

Any game that you can play while having a beer has got to be a winner...

Board Games..
Scrabble, Monopoly, Cluedo, Murder in the Dark. Whatever the game, orphans take all........




A Cake Stall or Sausage Sizzle...
 Get some mates and have a stall at school, at girl guides, at soccer, in front of Woolies........
   

Hold a Fun Run....
 Host a run in your neighbourhood and get all the locals and the sports clubs along.....you could even even set up teams event.

 
     Get a group together for Lawn Bowls...

....or Host a Golf Day


 


Whatever you come up with, make sure you let me know and take lots of photos so I can whack it on the blog. We are almost due to have another cards night here in KL and my old mate Filthy Firthy is helping me put plans together for a fun run of sorts.....


Coming up in the next blog will be the tale of UE's 100km hiking adventure and Gilly and Orf's Mount Kinabalu attack....Stay tuned!

Kilimajaro - ni tu ya kilima!

Orf

A bit of History

In October 2010 I packed up my laptop, running shoes and a few pair of togs and flew off to Africa for a month of passing on my 'encyclopaedic' (haha) knowledge of rugby to a bunch of impoverished orphans. Mmmm, even reading it now makes me wonder what the hell I thought I was going to achieve. I arrived to find that the balls I had bought out of SA had gone AWOL, the pitch was just a patch of dirt, the kids mostly had no shoes and on top of all that, they were bloody hungry .....

Livingston itself is a magical place, tucked in beside the mighty Zambezi River and cut off from Zimbabwe by one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World - Mosi oa Tunya 'The Smoke That Thunders', Victoria Falls......

 

As you might expect it was a pretty amazing month of my life. Helping the kids out was very rewarding and it was awesome meeting so many other volunteers and adventurers doing their own thing in Zambia. There was a good smattering of boozing, dancing and Zambezi action mixed in too of course....

So I trained and fed the kids for the month I was there and with the help of a few friends left them with another month or two of supplies and twenty footies (they finally arrived). I bought them grain and seed to plant in their small plot for a season and a mate and I bunged on a Christmas party for them as we left. All good ...Everybody happy....except how do you just walk away from all that and not look back?

And so, after drinking many beers with many folk from many places, I met Rif and then Ben, Jono and Lloydy.....all of whom had come to Livingston after conquering the mighty Kilimanjaro. Well, it seemed like an awesome adventure and possibly a good way to raise some Kwacha for the orphans and the rest is pretty easy to figure out......


My goal is to raise enough money to start to make a permanent difference to the orphans lives and not just give them a month or two of random help. Money to help build some basic infrastructure, to improve their primary education, to sponsor them into high school and to implement some vocational programs to kick-start them in life. And in an African economy, that really isn't a huge amount of money.......

I've put together a short clip to summarise my first experience in Africa.....the orphans, the rugby, the adventures, the parties...... watch it at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhMYfcKOeAI

Kilimanjaro - ni tu ya kilima

Orf

Gentlemens' Cards Night I

Texas Hold 'em for Orf's Orphans!

 I figure the only way to feel okay about taking dough from your mates is to give them some bang for their buck, so, eight of us got together last night for a 'Texas Hold 'em Tussle'.

The concept was simple....everybody in for a RM50 donation to the orphans. For that we each got $5,000 in chips and then it was on.....for pride and bragging rights!

Wilko got off to a blistering start, winning the first few hands and raking in thousands! He was to go on and be one of the late survivors.....The big early loser was Marvellous Ben Mather. Marvellous threw caution to the wind splashing purple chips all over the place! Probably not the smartest move to be betting thousands before the flop - but "Hell it's all for the orphans!" he cried.....
 

Mr Nokia, Ant Wilson joined the table a little late after Angry Bird-ing all day so he was ordered to pay a $400 fine to each of the early losers.......perfect timing for Marvellous but not quite enough to prevent his early demise.... "Hell, it's all for the orphans!" he cried as he reached into his wallet and pulled out another RM50 to buy back in

As Mr Nokia settled back after giving away a substantial proportion of his stash he immediately looked resolutely around the table from one bloke to the next and said...."So, this game is called Texas what??" Ahhhhh, Mr Nokia out lasted a few of the boys but in the end, he mis-read the sophistication of the market and went quietly the way of the analogue phone....

Dave 'The Boss' Kilpatrick looked shaky right from the start when he tried a $3000 bluff with a pair of threes.....it almost worked too but in the end I SMASHED him with my pair of sevens! The Boss's pile never really recovered from that early hit and at 10.30 he was gone......He'll tell you he had to pick up Callum but we all know the truth....The Boss got burned!

Filthy Firthy and Bartman Bartley quietly amassed their fortunes all night.....calculated, cunning they won one stack of $5 chips after the other. And then....Marvellous went out again! "Hell, it's all for the orphans.....I've got another RM50....I'm back in!"

Cool Hand Colbes played solidly but without luck all night....never collecting or losing big and managed to limp through to the final rounds with a few shekels left in his pile.

Around midnight we got to the business end. Marvellous ver3.0 was still in, along with Filthy, Bartman and myself. Wilko had just gone hard 'all-in' and appropriately went 'all-out' but he stayed around to see the final battle.....

In the end, Bartman Bartley took the honours as he managed to muscle the smaller pile holders out of the game.......I followed Wilko going 'all out', Filthy took second place and Marvellous limped into third place.

1. Bartman Bartley - First Place with $27,650

2. Filthy Firthy - Second Place with $12,350

3. Marvellous Ben Mather - Third Place with $1,200

Well done boys and thank you. It was a great night of cards, beers and laughs.

AND we raised RM550 for the Linda Community Orphans

I'm declaring this fundraiser a huge success and recording the stashes for the 'End of Season Trophy'. I will be hosting many more of these nights.....same blokes, different blokes...

"Hell, it's all for the orphans!"

Kilimajaro - ni tu ya kilma

Orf

Training Part I - Tony on the Great Wall

Postscript Note:-
Tony has accused me of being affected by too many Tigers when posting the earlier version....thus the upside down images. To prove it was my fault and not Tony's, he has resent new images, the right way up, that I will dutifully post at the bottom. Can't possible remove the upside down ones however.....Cheers Tone ;-)

Based in Beijing, Tony may not be able to get facebook or youtube, has limited access to google and can only drive his car on alternate days but he does have the greatest wall ever built by mankind to train on......

And so, he has been hard at work, dragging himself up the Great Wall of China a couple of times a week.....at least that is what he says, but judging by the huffing and puffing the hard work has only just begun (see video link below)......

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30805609/GreatWallWorkout.m4v





And for those of you wondering why Tony has decided to share an upside down image of the wall, a sideways image of himself and a video that can't be embedded..........join the club!!

Thanks Tone, awesome stuff :-)










And Tony's assessment of it all........

"Day 1 of Kili-training - 587 stairs (steeper than GitaBayu) climb up to the wall, I elected not to take the tram. Then 3.5K hike on the wall to the top. I was not running but walking at a good pace. Took me 48 minutes to go up from the bottom and remarkably the same to go down but had to wait quite a bit for people at a few intersections. 535 meters in elevation. Stopped and rested once for a couple minutes. Nice to end a long hike with that steep climb. Felt good the whole way. So only 7K total not the 10 boasted earlier. Legs did well, a little quad soreness and calves are good. 100 more visits and I think I might be good for Kili.

Cheers, T.

45RMB to train here....I think I can afford that!"

Cheers Tone, thanks for the good photos this time......



Stay tuned for Training Part II when I feature another team member and his training regime...

Kilimanjaro - ni tu ya kilima

Orf