The Jabulani Rural Health Foundation

Kim is doing amazing things at the hospital after week one. She comes back for a cheese toastie at lunch and tells me about ladies with half an umbilical cord hanging out and the guy who wheeled her here in a wheelbarrow. Most people don’t know their date of birth and more than half have HIV. The doctors are really supportive and realistic about what is achievable, whilst being ambitious to make continual improvements.

But enough about Kim. Let’s talk about me. What am I doing here? Well, I am running the Jabulani Foundation (which has an awesome website: www.jabulanifoundation.org). In fact I am sitting in my new office (in your face, DfT open planners) at my new desk on my old computer, typing this. Yes, some of my time will be spent driving a desk again, but at least I have an office (the spare bedroom) and I can listen to music. Queen’s Greatest Hits, if you must know. I will also be out and about in the community trying to fill the shoes of my decidedly intimidating predecessor Becky.

The doctors here are not content with helping out 5 billion TB and HIV patients per day, so they are determined to make a difference in the wider community. Because they are fairly busy running the hospital (and I do not know one end of a stethoscope from the other end of a catheter) I am going to be running the show day to day.

Becky was an uberperson who did masses to set up the Foundation. I don’t know what I expected, but there is a clear audit trail of funding and project work as well as business cases and research projects into demographics etc. In short, a professional operation and I am going to do my best not to cock it up. The most impressive thing is the far-reaching vision and ambition that I keep seeing in the paperwork.

The first priority is to set up a pre-school to give the snot-nosed little buggers in the village something to do before they go to primary school at 5yrs. I need to get more materials, a structure for the day, a syllabus and other minor details sorted before it opens in April. Following this we are looking to set several up all over the region.

Stand by for me coming a-begging for funding and support/advice. We have £0 for this pre-school project as I type this so any donations are most welcome. The Foundation has a UK arm so you can get GiftAid.

At the very least I am going to run an ultra-marathon (the 55ish mile Comrades Marathon) for sponsorship. So I will be asking you to fork out. The cause is good (small, money goes a long way in a place where it is badly needed) and the run is hard (humidity being the worst thing) and it is nearly a year since I last came cap in hand...