Progess Continues!

The progress continues in Waku Kungo, with good news all around.

First, pictures! As you can see, they are making excellent progress on the building. I thought they had the roof up already, but that is actually the next big piece they will take up. These pictures are interesting because they show a little insider's view of their construction methods. Because rocks are a local material and cheaper than cement, they fill in everything they can with rocks before using cement. The bricks for the walls look pretty "rough," but as you can see, when finished, both floors and walls look great.

Second, the donation total is now up to $61,457, which means we were able last week to send another $10,000 on to Waku Kungo. They have had a brief stoppage of work due to lack of funds, but that $10,000 will get them working again very soon. Just about $8500 to go.

Third, I have been invited to be part of a three person delegation to go to Angola in October. While there, we will have a dedication service for the new school, and visit several other areas as guests of I.E.C.A. I am looking forward to the trip with great anticipation! It will be so wonderful to see Waku Kungo and the school building, and meet the people who have made this all possible, as well as meet some of the students who will be using the school.

I have a received a detailed accounting of how the money has been spent. The project team in Waku Kungo, and Luis Samacumbi, the national project leader, have all been wonderfully transparent in their dealings. I am not sure whether our $70,000 (i.e. $10,000 more) will complete the project, so I will have to ask what they think about that. I sure hope so!

I must confess that I do not have a great plan of how to come up with the remaining $8500. I am sure we can get there eventually, but to be fair to the folks in Waku Kungo, it really should be sooner, rather than later. I'll be pondering these things!

Grace and peace!

Fundraising!

Wow. You put a bunch of talented, thoughtful, compassionate people who are generous with time in a room and great things can happen. Today I gathered a few wonderful people together to help get the fundraising part of this moving along, and we made great progress in just a couple of hours. These folks were very confident we would be able to get significant publicity, in Rockford, Chicago, and maybe beyond! We have some jobs assigned, and will soon be making calls to some key people and businesses, trying to get seed money to enable more serious fundraising. Anybody like to donate $2000 to help make the $50,000 possible??? If so, click here! (And then click the green button on the left hand side of that page.)

This blog will hopefully soon expand into a fundraising juggernaut, with more information and a broader audience in mind. But I'll still keep the personal touch, as this whole effort to raise money for the school in Waku Kungu is deeply personal to me!

Peace!

A Sign Post

On January 1st, I met a mid-term goal I had set for myself and swam 16,000 yards (9.09 miles). The Channel is just about 38,000 yards (21.65 miles, or so). To maximize the fun (ha!) I swam in the YMCA 25 yard pool, as I usually do. That's 640 lengths. It took four hours and thirty six minutes, including a couple stops to chat and unhurried feeding with E-gel.

It feels good to meet a goal, a sign-post along the way. Just 12 miles more! But the distance isn't the only consideration, perhaps not even the most important one. That's 12 miles more through 60-degree-salt-water-with-waves-and-wind-and-currents-and-darkness. So although it is good to be 42% of the way there distance-wise, I'm probably only 20% of the way there difficulty-wise. Good thing I don't swim for another 9 months - plenty of time!

The fund-raising is progressing. In the next week or so, I'll come up with some sort of visual to track the donations. This month I will be meeting with a committee of people to plan the fund-raising in earnest and begin to get the word out more broadly. You can be an early supporter! Donate here (click on the green button on the left side of that page).

A blessed new year to all!

Just Keep Training (and encouraging donations!)

First of all, Merry Christmas! May the Prince of Peace bless, guide and strengthen you.

Second, how about a Christmas gift for the kids in Waku Kungo, Angola? Of course, I am doing this swim to raise money to build a school in Waku Kungo, and your gift would be a great help! Donate here (click the green button on the left side of that page). Of course the economy is bad, and we might think finances are tight right now, but for a little motivation do two things: go visit GlobalRichList.com. That helps put things in perspective. Then consider that the average "real purchasing power" of people in Angola is about $3,000 a year. Imagine trying to survive, and house, and feed, and educate yourself and a large family (the average woman in Angola has six kids) on $3,000 a year. Puts our "recession" in an interesting light, no? But you can make a real, long term difference by supporting education in Angola!

So, swimming the Channel: the last few weeks have been mostly about getting in as much training as possible. Swimming 10,000 yards in a 25 yard pool isn't exactly entertaining, but it must be done. I've been trying to mix up long sessions at "forever pace" and faster training. Especially in the early phase of training, the long, relatively slow sessions should be about 30% of total yardage, and swimming faster than Channel pace with a little bit of rest should be about 60% of training. The other 10% is really fast with lots of rest. I probably don't do enough of that, and should fix that. A normal training session at this point lasts from one and half to three hours. I am building up to do a four hour continuous swim on New Year's Day.

The President of the Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation (Mike Oram) runs a Google Group for Channel swimmers (successful, experienced people, and newbies like me). It is a great source of information, and the successful Channel swimmers are wonderfully willing to share their experience and advice. They all just want to get the next person across. I've been reading past notes and getting good information through emails. Some of my most important recent learnings:

** I really, really need to get salt water experience as soon as possible. Salt water is hard on you - both skin and digestive system. You naturally swallow some water when you swim and your stomach generally doesn't like it. You have to get used to it. My experience in salt water amounts to playing at the beach in Florida, so I have a lot to learn here.

** There are more open water swimmers in the midwest than I would have thought. I have made contact with some successful Channel swimmers from Chicago who swim in Lake Michigan as soon as it gets warm enough (sounds like they consider 55 warm enough!). That should make for some excellent open, cold water training.

** The best place to train in conditions that are similar the English Channel is San Francisco Bay. There is a great open water swimming group there (the Dolphin Club), some of whom swim year round. I am hoping to get out to SF in June for a "Channel Swimming Camp" they have. Sounds like it would be invaluable experience.

** Here are two interesting photos that Mike Oram sent me, to make the point of how unpredictable the Channel is, thus how thoroughly prepared you have to be. The first picture is of the Dover Harbor on a, shall we say, "challenging" day (yes, the Harbor! And note the sky is even blue in the background.). The second is in the middle of the Channel on a perfect day. (No one would actually attempt a swim on a day like the first picture, but it does make the point.)



Also, at the top of this post is a picture of the Anastasia, the boat that will escort me across.

I also learned recently that my pilot, Eddie Spelling, had 19 Channel crossing scheduled for 2008. Fifteen of those were successful, three were unsuccessful (got tired, then cold), and one was not able to make attempt due to extended bad weather.

Not much is new on the Waku Kungo school front. Donna Dudley, my main contact person in Angola, was here the States recently and I gave her a digital camera to give to someone in Waku Kungo. So hopefully in a month or so, they will be able to send me pictures from Wake Kungo. That would be great!

Remember, donate now to help the kids of Waku Kungo, Angola, get a decent education and grow up to contribute to well-being of others in Angola.

Peace and a Merry Christmas to all!