McGregor Waldorf School

Katleen's Travelogue 2

Tuesday 24 April

I went to the ‘Wereldraad’ in my home town of Wevelgem in the evening. There were about 20 people who mostly represent various organizations who are involved with third world countries. They were in the midst of reviewing the requirements for a project to apply for funding. There have been municipal elections recently and the new legislature wants to make changes. They interrupted their serious discussions in order to look at the Power Point Presentation about the school. I also showed them the pictures about the restoration done in the kindergarten since they had given some money specifically for that. Afterwards there were a few questions but I could not go too deeply into anything since it was late and they had to resume their discussions on the requirements. Karen Loosvelt, who in the municipality is responsible for the co-operation with third world countries, said afterwards that the municipality is thinking for supporting certain projects every year for the duration of the legislature. She will keep me informed for we might be able to apply for that. I keep forgetting to take pictures of the meetings I go to and the people I meet so I have no picture of this event.

Wednesday 25 April

Well at 6.30 pm tonight was the press conference to present the school and the art auction that is being organized by my friend. In the pictures you see my friend Luc Lapere again (www.luclapere.be) busy to fiddle with something so he can hang up the paintings. This event is truly growing bigger and bigger. The funny thing is that I am not at all nervous. Since I have taken on the fundraising I am refusing to consider any negative thoughts. So I am just taking every day as it comes and enjoy the movement and the excitement of organizing something completely new. I am also truly grateful for all the help that comes my way. ‘There are no coincidences’ and I am constantly amazed at the so called coincidences. Luc has created a copper sculpture especially for the auction. If you look at the picture you can see how the movement of the woman is upward and flowing

It represents hope and a picture of the ideal. There are more than 20 artists participating; some of them well known. You can see for yourself what there will be for sale.

I had taken Mary to the press conference and when the journalists – two of whom I know well – finally arrived they had only eye for Mary. One of the journalists that I know started of asking quite personal questions. Now anyone who knows me a little knows that I love talking about my passion in life – giving children chances to develop to their fullest potential. I talked about Mary and about the children at our school and how art is a necessity for them to transform into balanced and creative adults. The kind of adults South Africa needs to create a future for its children. Then Luc Lapere talked about the artists and the connection we have. Some pictures were taken and all in all I had a great time and I think they will write good articles. I will try to collect them all and scan them in.

Friday 27 April

Mary and school friends

After dropping Mary of at school and being greeted by her friends with an invitation for her to attend a birthday party next week, I took the train to Brussels. I had a meeting at 11 am with Kurt Degrieck who works for TRIODOS bank. This bank works according to Anthrosophical principles and I wanted to find out if there was a possibility for the school to have a connection with the bank. I had made sure that I had a map of the center of Brussels but of course lost my way as soon as I emerged from the station and at some point had no idea where I was. Very disorientating !! When I finally could find the street I was standing in on the map I could orient myself but realized that I had strayed quite far from where I was supposed to be. I could make my way and was at Triodos bank just at 11.00 am. I then only had half on hour with Kurt in which to explain about the Kampterrein and what we were looking for. Unfortunately they do not give any loans to overseas projects but a branch of the bank does give smaller donations to a variety of projects. So he encouraged me to apply.

When I stepped out of there and started to make my way up the Hoogstraat I noticed in a big window a poster with the words ‘Belgian Development Cooperation Agency’ and ‘BCT supports developing countries in their fight against poverty’ and I stopped. I looked a bit closer and decided to step in. I spoke to a lady at reception and told her that I was from McGregor South Africa and working for a small school there and did they support projects on education…? She explained that BTC – Belgian Technical Cooperation is the executive wing of the Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation – basically they execute the big projects to whom the Belgian Government have pledged their support (sometimes with millions of Euro’s and usually in cooperation with local government). I know that the Belgian government supports education in SA but then only government education. Anyway, the lady wrote down some connections I might look up on the internet for further research.

Next, I needed to be in the building of the Belgian Justice for I am applying for Mary to become a Belgian citizen (she is allowed to stay a SA citizen as well) and I needed to deliver all the paperwork which took me a long time to gather. I could only be there by 2.00 pm so I ended up on a stoep of a café overlooking the flea market in Brussels, sipping a coffee and eating a sandwich. Brussels, as the capital of the European Community is truly a melting pot of all kinds of people – apparently there are more than a 100 different languages spoken there. You can hear that in the street. The only language you do not hear often is Dutch! I was able to refresh my French for an elderly gentleman sitting next to me started a conversation in French. After finally delivering the papers to the Justice building I made my way back to the station without loosing my way and was happy to sit on the train with a magazine called Humo which I was used to read in my twenties. Reading some of the papers here and Humo makes me aware how Europe is struggling to come to grips with the multicultural aspect of their realities these days.

Saturday 28 April

This morning my friends Nicole and Frans (friends from my High School days) and their daughter Lorre, came to fetch us so we could go visit Oostende, which is a city on the Belgian coastline. Earlier this week I connected with Willy Devos, who lived in SA a long time ago and is now an importer of SA wines. I went to discuss with him buying McGregor wines to pour at the arts events we are planning. At the phone he has promised to give me a good price so there would be some gain for the school if we sell the wine.

As it has been exceptionally hot these past 4 weeks, I was expecting it to be hot again but at the sea it was 15 degrees cooler that inland. So there was a cool breeze and a lot of traffic towards Oostende since it is of course also a long weekend here and people traditionally want to go to the beach. We finally found our way to his home and he immediately started speaking Afrikaans to Mary. She was a bit taken aback but willingly went with Willy in his car to the wine shop.

Once inside we started talking about SA, education, import, weather etc. Willy seems to run a thriving business in importing and selling SA wines. He was very generous in ensuring me that he will sell the wine to us at a low price so that we can make about €2,80 profit (about 28 rand) per bottle we sell. He will also deliver the wines to where we want them and take back any left over we have. He is also a travel agent who takes small groups of people to visit SA. He ensured me that next time he would love to come visit our school with a group of Belgian tourists. Of course I ensured him that he is very welcome. Upon leaving he gave me several bottles of McGregor Colombard and a few small bottles of Muskadel (which I am tasting right now – it tastes very sweet) and a few bottles of red. Very generous of him indeed. Then we drove towards Blankenberge to visit Fabienne, whom a few of McGregor people surely remember from her visits to McGregor and our school. Fabienne is now 7 months pregnant. Her partner Tony works as a kindergarten teacher and studies to become a Waldorf kindergarten teacher. But before we found their apartment we stopped for some lunch and went to the sea !!! It was freezing cold but Mary braved it to go in the water with her feet. Mary in the sea

The school where Tony works is interested to take our school as their project to focus their yearly fundraising on so I left copies of the DVD’s after showing them to Fabienne. She suggested that I would need to stay on longer this year since school start planning in September their programme for the schoolyear which runs from September to June. It would be during that time that I would have to present the information and give background info. A thought!!

........... and coming soon ...........

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