Vegetables, Frayne Mathijs, Coronado Function, Arts Festival, Phishing and a Fire.

Last Meeting
I stepped into the breech to talk about Vegetables I have Known...well, really to chat about where certain vegetables come from and some of the problems people have had with vegetables in the past.

Romain Lettuce

For example, Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the 6^th century tells of a holy nun who swallowed a lettuce leaf without making the Sign of the Cross over it and inadvertently swallowed a small devil along with the leaf.  Apparently small devils like hiding in lettuce leaves.  The resulting stomach ache was eventually relieved by a priest who admonished the small devil.  The devil was quite unrepentant and blamed the nun for her lapse of memory!  
Naturally the Catholic Church through its monasteries cultivated and developed other varieties of lettuce to make them less bitter that resulted in a reduction in the laudanum content and by the early Middle Ages round lettuces with good hearts had been created.  
The papal exile in Avignon was when lettuce was introduced to France hence the name above.

This Week
Frayne Mathijs will be talking to us about the Rotary Humanitarian Centre and Health Service.  I am not sure what that is about but Frayne is a member of the Rotary Club of Johannesburg New Dawn and they man the centre on Saturday mornings.

This is what she has to say about herself: 

Frayne at Rotary Family Health Day

From working in the metal industry and in timber and growing up in a mining town in Zambia, I have an interest in occupational health, safety and employee wellness. I have worked in regional, provincial, tertiary hospitals and district health services. Having been involved in primary health care in cancer, disability, HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health, I have a broad view of the challenges of transformation and service delivery particularly in rural areas. I have been involved in the SADC Health Sector National Integrated Strategy on Disability, National Cancer Control Programme and HIV/AIDS programmes. As an oncology nurse I have been in education, training and examining and at national level and Director Patient Service and Support for the Cancer Association in human resource development, palliative care and community development. As National Training Manager for St John Ambulance I was responsible for manual development, first aid training and community programmes. From experience in KZN, Western Cape and exposure in all provinces, together with my role in the National Progressive Primary Health Care Network and unification of nursing, I have gained enormously from a network of leaders at all levels of South African society. Working in chronic diseases and HIV&AIDS nationally, regionally and with SANAC has reinforced my commitment to health as a universal right and I am a champion for the NHI and willing to speak in the public domain on "Why we need the NHI and what we can do about it"

Social Function Friday 12th May with Rotary Club of Coronado
There are seven of them coming and they will be going to the Cradle of Humankind in teh morning so a lunchtime braai is not an option.  We could have the braai in the evening but it may be a bit cold and they will have been out for most of the day.  We have given them the option of having the braai or just joining them for a meal out somewhere.  They are having a meeting and will let us know what they would like to do.

Rotary Arts Festival

Costa Qually has been sending round the roster for people to make themselves available.  Today's is full of gaps.  It's in our interest to fill them up as quickly as possible because this one big effort is all we really need to make for fund raising.  If it doesn't work then we will have to have a number of fund raising events through-out the year and that's not easy.

Phishing
Lyn Collocott received a phishing email purportedly from me asking for R3 800.  I don't think it went to anyone else but it's obviously not my email address or my standard of English. I have reported it.

On 28 November 2016, high winds blew through the drought-stricken area around Gatlinburg, Tennessee, whipping a few isolated wildfires in Great Smoky Mountains National Park into a massive natural disaster.

“The whole horizon was aglow,” says Roy Helton, a member of the Rotary Club of Pigeon Forge. “My wife and I were taking turns getting up, checking to make sure the fire wasn’t getting close to our home. We have roughly 100,000 people in Sevier County, and I don’t think any of us slept very well that night.”

 The Heltons were lucky, but many others weren’t. The fire raced through the towns around Gatlinburg, destroying more than 2,400 structures. It spread over 17,000 acres so quickly that 14 people were trapped and killed, while others had to flee their homes. Around 14,000 people were evacuated from the area and not allowed to return for a week. Many lost everything, including their jobs. Gatlinburg, which sits on the edge of the national park, is a major tourist destination with millions of visitors each year

, but in the aftermath of the fires, many stayed away. 

“This wasn’t a regular forest fire,” says Jerry Wear, also a member of the Pigeon Forge club. “It was a firestorm.” Most fires, he notes, leave debris such as charred stoves and cars. But the Gatlinburg fire “was so intense, they melted.”

The following day, Helton, Wear, and other members of the five local Rotary clubs began emailing one another. A makeshift distribution center had been set up in Pigeon Forge, but it was not well-organized.

“I called it beautiful chaos,” says Helton. “But it was chaos.”

A few days after the fire, the Rotarians met with city officials. “I opened the meeting,” says Fred Heitman, then governor of District 6780, “and I said, ‘I’m sorry that all this happened. We’re Rotary. What can we do?’”

Helton had been working at the center. “They asked me a bunch of questions, and I kept saying, ‘You know, I really think Rotary would do a great job of managing this.’ And after an hour’s worth of discussion, everyone in the room said, ‘Yes, they would.’”

Roy Helton

Helton and Wear took over running the center, with Helton organizing the inside and Wear managing logistics. Every morning, Wear would email a list of needs to Heitman. Heitman would send the list on to 200 local Rotarians and to other district governors; each email eventually reached tens of thousands of people. The response was overwhelming: Whatever the center needed showed up the next day, in boxes from Amazon, in shipping containers, in people’s cars. Volunteers traveled to the center from across the country. 

“For the first six weeks, we averaged about 35 Rotarians a day,” says Helton. “One day we had four past district governors, plus the current district governor, working in the center.” All told, 24,000 people volunteered, many of them Rotarians, some of whom had lost their own homes and jobs.

The first day, a man limped in on burned feet, wearing bath slippers and the only clothes he could grab as he fled his house. He was one of up to 3,400 people a day who came for help in the first weeks. Because some victims were in shock and didn’t know what they needed, everyone who came in was paired with a volunteer. The center set up a pharmacy, worked with the Lions Club to procure new glasses for people who had lost theirs, and eventually collected some $4.1 million in mostly donated inventory.

Another thing that fire survivors needed, Wear says, was counseling. “We had children who’d been waking up at night crying because they were afraid the house was on fire and they were going to die. So we gave a $35,000 grant to our mental health organization.” 

Rotary Distribution Centre

Helton and Wear organized the center’s inventory into categories: groceries, women’s clothes, men’s clothes, kids’ clothes. Shoes were sorted by size. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency were impressed. “They marveled at our setup,” Heitman says. “They said, ‘What logistics company did you get to do this for you? Someone with a logistics background obviously did this.’ And Jerry said, ‘No, it was me.’ And they said, ‘What’s your background?’ And he said, ‘I’m a schoolteacher.’”

Says Helton, “People from both FEMA and TEMA told us it was the best-run disaster relief center they had ever seen.” 

After 2½ months, it was time to close the center. Helton and Wear spent two weeks redistributing the remaining goods and began working on long-term recovery with a newly organized nonprofit called the Mountain Tough Recovery Team. 

“Rotarians have the right attitude,” says Wear. “They are willing to put their hands and back into it. That gave people a much better feeling about the situation because there were people here who cared and really worked hard to make life better for people who’d lost everything.”

Jean Bernardo, the Progressive Lunch, Vegetables I have known, Visit by the Rotary Club of Coronado & a Creative Approach to Membership

Last Week



Jean Bernardo talked about herself and said  that she was nervous about doing it!
Whether she was nervous or not it was an interesting talk starting with her birth and ending with the present day.  The most interesting thing was her transition from studying bits of people in a laboratory to becoming a financial advisor at Sanlam.
Judging from the response of some of the Rotarians present you wondered how many of them had been under  her microscope.







Last Saturday's Progressive Lunch was a great success.  We had 5 Rotarians to our house for a starter and the only problem was that we really wanted to keep them but we all had to move on.
We all ended up at Liz and Les Short's for a dessert, coffee etc and as soon as we arrived down came the rain so we had to quickly remove everything from the garden.  It didn't matter as a good time was had by all.  Many thanks, Les, for organising such an entertaining event.  I was too busy enjoying myself to remember to take any photographs....sorry.

This Week

Owing to the hard work that Jean Bernardo and Joan Sainsbury are putting into the Arts Festival with the last minute change of venue I am stepping into the speaker breech and talking about vegetables.  Not how to grow them or even how to eat them but rather how we ended up with the the vegetables we have today.
This weekend is also the Blanket Drive.....don't forget.




Saturday 12th May

Orit Ostrowiak

We will be hosting members of the Rotary Club of Coronado San Francisco at a lunchtime Bring & Braai at the home of Kevin & Liz Wolhuter. Just click on the link to see what they get up to.
Orit Ostowiak who takes over as Director, International on 1st July is former pupil at Greenside High.  It's a very large club, 240 members but not all of them will be here.
I think it will be in the region of a dozen guests but I will confirm that with Orit.
If you will be there please let me know as soon as possible.  I will send round a separate notice.  We will be asking people to bring salads etc nearer the time.
They have already expressed an interest in working on joint projects with us.

When membership dropped below 20, the Rotary Club of Central Ocean Toms River, New Jersey took a leap of faith by offering a radically different membership structure to retain and attract members. The risk has paid off with a membership increase of 61 percent in two years.

The Rotary Club of Central Ocean Toms River, New Jersey, is a diverse club with a nearly equal number of men and women ages 30 to 89. The club has a robust list of projects because members believe it is important to be directly involved in service. Members have tackled nine projects (and counting) during the 2017-18 Rotary year by breaking into smaller groups to work on multiple projects at the same time. Members in 2015: 18; Members in 2017: 29  

When Mike Bucca took over as membership chair of the Rotary Club of Central Ocean in July 2015, he knew the club had a problem. Membership was down to 18 and dwindling. Bucca persuaded club leaders to look seriously at membership. 

The club board held three membership summits where they discussed why people join Rotary and why they stay. The result was a proposal to dramatically alter the club's membership structure to attract new members by lowering the financial commitment. 

“We want members to have a place in this club where they are contributing what they can – in time or finances,” Bucca explains. “It’s really worked.”

The Rotary Club of Central Ocean still has standard and corporate memberships, in which a local corporation or business joins with a specified number of qualified employees serving as its designees. Members in both categories pay $399 in dues every six months. The club also offers three alternative types of membership. The first is an introductory membership. New members can join at the rate of $99 for the first six months and $199 for the second. After the first year of membership, they pay the standard rate.

“When I joined, that was my biggest hesitation – the money,” says Bucca. “For $99 I would have joined the first time I was asked and not three years later.” 

The second membership offering is a discount to family members of existing members paying the standard rate. Family members can join for $199 every six months, and that discount applies as long as another family member is paying the standard rate. 

Again, Bucca drew from experience. “My wife and two other members’ wives wanted to join the club, but the family could not afford it. But half price made sense, so we gained three members.” 

The third type is called a friendship membership. This is designed for members who are interested in helping the club and taking part in projects, but cannot commit to meetings. Friendship members pay $249 every six months.

“People felt guilty about not coming to meetings. This eliminates that,” Bucca says. 

The results are clearly in favor of the new system. Membership climbed from a low of 18 in 2015 to 29 in 2017. Many of the new members are in their 30s and many are women, says Bucca. “In 2013, I was the only member under 40; now we have seven. Our club was No. 1 in the district for the number of women who joined.” 

Most importantly, the new members have invigorated the club. “Our club was dying; we were in trouble,” says Bucca. “We turned it around and are thriving.” –Susie Ma

Lucille Blumberg, the Somme, a Business Meeting and an unusual Rotaract Club

Last Week
I've been in Belgium and France for the last two weeks so I missed last week's meeting with Lucille Blumberg.  I was sorry to have missed her.

Professor Lucille Blumberg is a Deputy Director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, of the National Health Laboratory Service, and is currently head of the Public Health Surveillance and Response Division. 
She is also medical consultant to the Emerging Pathogens Centre on rabies and viral haemorrhagic fevers. 
She is a medical graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand and a member of the joint staff, and is an associate professor in the department of medical microbiology at the University of Stellenbosch, Western Cape. 
She has specialist qualifications in clinical microbiology, travel medicine, and infectious diseases. Her special interests are in tropical diseases, travel medicine, malaria, the viral haemorrhagic fevers, and rabies. 
She is a member of a number of South African expert groups including the Rabies Advisory Group, Malaria Advisory Group and National Advisory Group on Immunisation, as well as the advisory group to the WHO on Mass Gatherings.....and she is also a Rotarian.

Canadian Monument on Vimy Ridge to the 35 000 Canadian Dead

One of things we did overseas, apart from having our children and grandchildren all together for the first time, was to visit the battlefields of the Somme and find the grave of Jean's great uncle who is buried there.  I thought you might like to see a couple of pictures of memorials.

Shell holes and craters at Vimy

Thiepval Monument to the 72 000 British & South African dead who fought in
the Battle of the Somme and have no known grave.

Delville Wood Memorial to the 10 000 SA War Dead

This Week
Jean Bernardo is going to chat about herself as she is our current President Elect and most of us probably only know what we can glean from her email address.

After fleeing conflict in their own countries, a group of young Rotaractors healing wounds and bringing cultures together in a Ugandan refugee settlement

 

It’s Monday morning in one of Uganda’s largest refugee settlements, Nakivale, and the line at Paul Mushaho’s shop is out the door.

Mushaho has lived in Nakivale since 2016, when he fled violence in his native Democratic Republic of Congo. After receiving death threats, he crossed into Uganda and joined a friend in the 184-square-kilometer settlement that serves as home to 89,000 people.  

The soft-spoken 26-year-old, who has a university degree in information technology, runs a money transfer service out of a wooden storefront that doubles as his home.

Business is booming because he offers his clients – other refugees from Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, and South Sudan – the ability to receive money via mobile phone from family and friends outside Uganda.

He also exchanges currency, and his shop is so popular that he often runs out of cash. On this day, he’s waiting for a friend to return with more money from the nearest bank, two hours away in the town of Mbarara. 

Sitting behind a wooden desk, armed with his transactions ledger and seven cell phones, Mushaho grows anxious. He’s not worried about missing out on commission – he’s worried about leaving his clients without any money.

“I don’t like making my customers wait,” he says, looking out onto the lively street of tin-roofed stores, women selling tomatoes and charcoal, a butcher shop displaying a leg of beef, and young men loitering on motorcycles. “There’s nobody else around who they can go to.”

As a young entrepreneur who is intent on improving the lives of others in his community, Mushaho is in many ways the quintessential member of Rotaract, the Rotary-sponsored organization for leaders ages 18 to 30. 

Yet his story and that of his club are far from ordinary. Established in late 2016, and officially inaugurated last July, the Rotaract Club of Nakivale may be the first Rotaract club based inside a refugee settlement or camp.

Its founding, and the role it has played in the lives of its members and their fellow Nakivale residents, is a tale of young people who’ve refused to let conflict stifle their dreams; of a country that sees the humanity in all the refugees who cross its borders; and of a spirit of service that endures, even among those who’ve experienced unspeakable tragedy.

If Nakivale doesn’t sound like a typical refugee camp, that’s because it isn’t one.

Covering 184 square kilometers and three distinct market centers, Nakivale feels like anywhere else in rural southwestern Uganda, an undulating land of banana trees, termite mounds, and herds of longhorn cattle. 

Nakivale blends in with its surroundings in part because it’s been here since the 1950s, when it was established to accommodate an influx of refugees from Rwanda during a flare-up of pre-independence violence there. 

Over the years, its population has ebbed and flowed as it accommodated those seeking refuge from a variety of regional conflicts, including civil war in South Sudan, violent state collapse in Somalia, and rebellions and armed militias that continue to terrorize eastern Congo, the area that accounts for This mindset — of refugees as catalysts for change — ultimately led to the Rotaract club’s founding. 

Mushaho learned about Rotaract after entering a competition in 2016 organized by the American Refugee Committee (ARC) for the young people of Nakivale. 

The competition, co-sponsored by Uganda’s office of the prime minister, challenged young residents in the settlement to propose business plans or innovations that could improve lives. 

Out of nearly 850 entries, Mushaho’s proposal – a beekeeping business that would sell honey – was among 13 winners. They each would receive a small amount of seed money and present their ideas to a wider audience in Kampala, the nation’s capital. 

More than 60 Rotarians attended the Kampala event in October 2016, including Angela Eifert, a member of the Rotary Club of Roseville, Minnesota, USA, and an ARC engagement officer, and then Rotary president-elect Sam F. Owori.

Eifert, who first visited Nakivale in 2014, had previously proposed creating an Interact club for 12- to 18-year-olds to help engage its large population of young people. After the event, she mentioned her idea to Owori, who embraced it with one modification: He believed the 13 winners could become leaders in their community, so he proposed a Rotaract club.

“He told me, ‘I was once a Rotaractor,’” Eifert says. “When he saw these young people on stage, he felt they were ideal Rotaractors. He loved their ideas. He saw they had talent and potential, and thought we should be getting behind them.”

Leaders from the Rotary Club of Kiwatule in Kampala and Eifert’s Minnesota club agreed to work together to get the club started and support its growth. 

The duo then approached Mushaho about serving as the new club’s president. Of the 13 winners, he’d stood out to them. Humble and charismatic, he also spoke fluent English, had helped the other winners communicate their ideas, and appeared eager to assist the wider Nakivale community. Mushaho and another winner, Jean de Dieu Uwizeye, hosted the Nakivale Rotaract club’s first official meeting in late 2016.

“He was really into it,” says Eifert, who began texting regularly with Mushaho. “He was learning everything he could about Rotary. I think it gave him a great deal of reward and purpose.”the majority of Nakivale’s current residents. 

Many have been here for a year or two, others for decades, but most consider Nakivale home. 

Unlike other governments in the region, Ugandan authorities grant new arrivals plots of land for farming, as well as materials to erect a basic house, so they can move toward self-reliance. Refugees also have access to free primary education for their children and permission to work so they can contribute to the economy.

Uganda hosts more than 1.5 million refugees within its borders and allows all registered refugees to move about at will. If they can do business in cities or towns, the logic goes, there’s no reason they should be trapped elsewhere. 

“They’re going about their lives just like you and me,” says Bernad Ojwang, Uganda country director for the American Refugee Committee  (ARC), which works closely with the Rotaract club in Nakivale. 

Although an abundance of arable land allows for the nation’s liberal refugee policy, he explains, the system also reflects a high-level belief that refugees can be assets rather than liabilities.

“Uganda has realized that the sooner a country looks at refugees not as a burden but as an opportunity, it changes a lot of things,” he says.