DAY 38 to 42

As the title indicates this week was a little monotonous.
On Monday Johanna and I spent most of the day in the MC-house reviewing and adjusting the agenda of the upcoming training day on Saturday.The funny thing was that we arrived at 6.30am so Nyala, the MCP, had to get up to let us in and instead of talking to him I asked for a bed to sleep once more. After this refreshing nap Paul, Johanna and I discussed the plan for Saturday and changed it completely. The reason or the dramatic change was a lack of skilled trainers for each portfolio so we decided that the VPs themselves should give the training (an alumnus should still be there to help) which was supposed to be more like a kick-off team meeting. Once we were done writing a generic agenda and several mails to the team leaders and the alumni to announce the change, I downloaded language software from byki.com (the free version) which is pretty cool and I used the opportunity to watch the one hour Naruto special.
The next day we were back in university but we didn’t have a key to the office so we chilled the whole morning till noon walking around the beautiful campus, playing footbag and reading stuff. Once we had the key our meeting with Precious and Thoko started. We discussed the changes for Saturday and I was pretty impressed by the material that Thoko had created during the holidays and we mixed it with the one from Johanna, Paul and me. This was also the first time that I heard about problems of the training day because Mbali couldn’t be there so her team won’t get trained and Precious will be arriving at about 11am and the day was supposed to start at 9am. In the evening we took Johanna to the airport which means from now on things will probably get more boring again. Really sitting alone in a basement watching movies and waiting for other people to do their work can be annoying sometimes. To avoid that, on Wednesday I started to spend more time outside hanging out with some AIESECers and their friends and it is really way more fun. Now I write all the important mails in the morning and cope with my assignments so I can enjoy the sun and only have to go back to the office once we have a meeting.
Today I found out that some people are pretty pissed with the allocation of the team members, which Johanna and I proposed and the reason was that one guy only had 2 (actually 3 since Tuesday) members in his team and that team leaders were appointed without asking them ….AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH those bloody friggin assholes, bastards, fuckheads which never showed up to a single of maybe 6 meetings where these things were discussed and now complaining about work that other people did for them! Okay this is over exaggerated (you know my very bad temper) and I can understand that you get pissed once someone doesn’t consider your opinion esp. when it comes to such important decisions affecting the whole EB. But when somebody says:
‘You know Baloo, even a CEO consults with his managers before they appoint new managers.’ I freaked out a little (inside my head) because usually the managers (the leaders which means the people being most responsible) are showing up to the meetings with the CEO.
These guys don’t even read their mails in a whole week if they don’t feel like it, they never answer them and the same goes for SMS´s so how are we supposed to work properly? Face to face appointments! Yes this works and I just found out too late meaning it’s also my fault and I’m very sorry for that. At least Manti, Bix and Mitchell showed up regularly (almost), went through their material and started to prepare their sessions and Thoko did a great job as well and I think this is also a great success. But now a new problem occurred Thibose has to leave at 12am on Saturday and Man can’t come at all…WTF! I was happy to hear that Thibose will still prepare something and try to make the best out of it. What the best means is what I found on Thursday when I asked him whether he already contacted his members: ‘I didn’t have airtime.’
Let’s take a look into Baloos head during that moment…’ Didn’t have airtime, didn’t have AIRTIME , DIDN’T HAVE AIRTIME!!!!!!! Fuck! AHAHHAA%$%£$$£”%^$$ that can’t be a problem for a fucking, bloody team leader ! PUNK!’ ‘How will you manage a project if you don’t have airtime?’ ‘How will u manage you’re life if you don’t have airtime?’ ‘Have you ever heard of facebook or mail or asking Baloo to send messages for you?’ ‘Have you ever heard of the AIESEC slogan of: think outside the box!’ ‘How small is you’re bloody box?’
Fortunately I learned to handle my temper a little and didn’t go on a rampage killing all the people around me. It’s just that I hate the feeling that I’m more attached to AIESEC UJ than people who are actually part of it. So we started to think about a possible delay for the whole training day or how we can change it into something that won’t piss off all the alumni we already invited, but we didn’t come to a conclusion today. Before I went to bed I spent some time nerding the net and guess what I found out how you can build your own vaporizer for free…this saved my day.
On Friday I spent loads of money trying to reach Manti who I was unable to contact since yesterday but no luck. I watched Crank 2 which I love because it’s pure trash and Fearless with Jet Li which is a pretty damn cool martial arts movie you should definitely not miss if you like this genre.
I met up with Thoko and Precious (now she also can’t come tomorrow) and we came to a conclusion regarding the training day. We’ll have a meeting with team leaders (those who can come) and alumni only to exchange experiences and figure out the future relationship between alumni and AIESEC UJ. After that Mitchell, Thibose and Man joined and we discussed how we can overcome the friggin problems holding UJ back and guess what? These guys are not as lazy and incapable as I almost thought!
They’re just damn busy with their studies, suffered under loads of misunderstandings and didn’t use my help when I craved for it because to them it was not clear what my job in UJ is. As you can see this involves loads of mistakes from me too so I have to work a lot on my own skills and qualities. We set a meeting for next week where all 8 members of the EB will be around and we’ll talk about:
-mistakes in the past (when did u get pissed?)
-decision making
-communication
-commitment
-way forward
By the way these are topics which should’ve been discussed during the team building this evening which had to be delayed because of a lack of attendance. But still I’m very happy that we’re finally on the same page and progressing.
Furthermore, I met some new guys and girls on the campus (guys: Avery, David, Mojo, Jami girls: fuck I forgot) and played a hell lot of footbag with David. That’s actually how it started, he approached me to give him some information about it and I just invited him to join in and after that he introduced me to his friends. Really this is one of the greatest things in SA: people are soooo open and friendly can’t be compared to Germany, not at all. So if you problems getting friends just come here^^
Mojo was pretty interested in footbag as well and got excited and loud (not in a bad way) about it and his friend teased him which was so funny because every time they raised their voices David started to play a song on his guitar (yes people play guitar on the campus) creating movie background music and singing stuff going like this:
‘Look in my eyes
and tell me that you love me
no one said it will be easy
our way to paradise’
Over and over again I laughed my boner off, ahem I mean ass.
So now I’ve got some more people to hang out with next week when I’m stuck in the basement.^^
In the evening we fetched Johanna’s mum from the airport and when I was about to sleep in the car (because I was very tired) Thoko sent me an SMS asking whether I could prepare the new agenda for tomorrow. I was not super excited about it but this girl worked so damn hard to make tomorrow happen so I couldn’t say no. So I took a short nap and figured out a cool program for tomorrow. Before I went to bed I watched loads of loads of Boondocks and tried to reach Manti again because she doesn’t know that the team training was cancelled but no luck again. Ahh almost forgot this, on our way to the air port we’ve been driving through Hillbrow and this is really like a Mexican ghetto from the movies: Smacked windows, waste on the street (waste industry is striking), hijacked buildings, loads of crime and a tense atmosphere in the air which you can feel even in the car. I was excited and maybe I’ll check this place out if I find a local who knows the area. Furthermore we passed a huge building the Berea tower where people had to live like in a bee hive and it was hijacked as well. So the police took it by force after a while because loads of foreigners (Africans) used to live there and like in any other place some people considered these foreigners as a threat to their living standard so it became quite common to kill them by throwing ‘em down from the top floors (it's like a pipe so hole on the inside)…CRAZY SHIT!