DAY 22

Big day today and I’ve got the beard of a 14 years old boy…oh boy I just hope the audience will be far away enough. By the way it’s 6 in the morning and we wanted to leave at 7 but Nadia had to prepare her slides and download an inspiring video where kids share their vision of modern teaching including web 2.0 techniques
so we left at 8.15 and were driven by a friend of hers instead of using one of the famous taxis. When we arrived in UJ we were 15 minutes late but fortunately we’re in Africa which means we were very early and only 4 other people came before us.
The Alumnus Aubrey joined shortly after our arrival and I took him to the student centre to get some breakfast for him and a coffee for me which I really needed. When we returned it was time to begin and I announced the agenda finishing with the announcement of the first talk by Nadia. It was much better than her session in Botswana: well structured, no unnecessary breaks or awkward moments (you know when the audience should say something but no one knows what to say and there is this uncomfortable silence), not too long, loads of examples and including the audience into some active work -> PRETTY DAMN GOOD
In my next bigger presentation I’ll definitely try to involve the audience as well.
After her session we showed the Newies our roll call and it was very funny and interesting to see how different people react to dancing and doing something active in other countries. I mean in Germany almost no one would involve the Newies into dancing because some of ‘em might think: ‘What a bunch of weird freaks!’ but in Africa they really enjoyed it, laughed about my dancing incapability and tried to learn the moves. I actually prefer that, even if I hated AIESEC dances a lot and I think in Germany I’ll still do ^^
Being refreshed and able to cope with input again I started my session and it worked out pretty cool which means people listened, laughed and gave me positive feedback when I asked ‘em how to improve my style… I should speak louder!
I was followed by a talk of Thoko explaining which opportunities in UJ exist and introducing the various teams. The people and I liked it.
The program was finished by Aubrey and the first thing he did was making everyone of us get up, face a specific wall, touch the shoulders of the person in front of us and give him or her a nice short massage. AHHH, relaxing!!! Back on our seats he talked about various funny and inspiring AIESEC stories like one when he was elected to lead the exchange team and once the holidays were over their office was demolished (the university didn’t tell anyone), all PCs and folders were gone, the president went to study abroad and the person knowing the second most left to be with her boyfriend in Germany. Yes, yes it’s our fault again^^ Really Germans are pretty hot in Africa because … yeah actually I need to find out why but loads of Johanna’s friends want a whitey. Anyway Aubrey took the position of LCP and got AIESEC UCT back on its feet and even more: most growing LC in SA of that year, best Project in SA in that year and I think they even had most exchanges in that friggin year.
I hope this emphasises the point that each of us can make a huge difference if we work together towards a shared goal.
And I love his style, he said he had basically no clue about his job but he asked people ‘Why did you join AIESEC?’ and then tried to give and open opportunities for the people to do the very thing they were most interested in and this is also my theory, people perform best when they do stuff they love. People empowerment rocks!!!
It makes me think of Gung Ho management which I really love and recommend you to try it out if you lead a team. I know the audio book can be found online for illegal download but you gotta look it up yourself dudes^^
Or just buy the bloody book it’s just 7€ (R70)!
Now that the official agenda was over we started to braai and had a real great time talking and laughing together. Once most of the people were gone Aubrey gave me a ride and took me to North Gate a huge shopping mall. I know the way home from there so I told him to drop me off…that was stupid. I completely underestimated the distance to the Bahai centre and when I arrived I had bristles under both of my feet.
I was damn tired and wanted just to finish the diary entries of the past two days and go to bed but when I was about to get started Johanna came and called me for an emergency. The neighbour’s sister forgot to close a tap and the whole flat was under water so we (Maika, Eva, Johanna, neighbour’s sister and I) drove there to help her getting rid of the water.
I slept on the way to the flat which is located quite a distance from central JoBurg in a more relaxed area.
She lives on the 2nd floor and when we arrived water was running down the stairway and I’m not talking about just a little stream but quite a small river. Two rooms with laminate were 5cm under water and 3 others at least completely drenched. It took us about 3 hours and hell more than 20 full buckets (after 20 I stopped counting) to get it dry again and I tell you it was damn tiresome because when the water was too low to use a bucket to get it out, we had to throw a huge towel on the floor get it drenched and wring it out above a small baby bath tube until the room was dry.
I really pity that girl because the laminate floor is completely messed up and the water got through the ceiling messing up the neighbours rooms as well.
Only good part…free pizza once we were finished^^
We came home late, tired and went straight to bed.