POP 185 Tuesday, 15 December 2009

Today’s Pop is from the one and only Shala. If only we could bottle her up and keep her in our drawer…

Hat: The Hat Shop, Dress: Rodarte for Target (only $39.99) Watch: Prada.

Yesterday I felt the urge to buy a hat and so I went to THE HAT SHOP. Linda is the sales woman there, and what a delight she is. The thing is I’m beginning to have a problem with Department stores, only because its too stimulating… I digress. Amid her many stories, one of them explaining why the Mad Hatter is so called, she excused herself to make a very important phonecall. I need to call this journalist she said, and I said fine because I really felt at home at the little shop and didn’t mind, it was also evil cold outside. Her call was to the BBC about Joseph Banda. Listen here. Joseph reminded me a bit of Amelia Earhart.

Here’s our little interview recorded on my iphone.

Linda: After I heard the story I sent the BBC an email, they sent an email to the reporter, she got back to me and said that several people had asked, you know how they could help but nobody really knew what to do. Then because I had experience with the Thorntree Project in Kenya I started to put together a long-term strategy for Joseph because he is definitely going to need help, as he gets older.

The thing to do is to get him into a boarding school. Because at the local school for instance, Chilbolya just had no electricity for a week so he couldn’t read his books at night. So we have donations coming in, people are giving me cash because at this point I don’t have a bank account for him and then I wire transferred the money to the bicycle company, because we bought him a bike. So it went right to the bike company. And the next stage is to set up a trust account for him in Zambia for his schooling and we have to try and get him into a boarding school. So that’s for next year.

Shala: Where is the boarding school?

Linda: We don’t know, I mean I don’t know anything about Zambia, I know a lot about Kenya.

Shala: It would have to be in Africa?

Linda: Somewhere in Zambia, yes, and then what Joe told me in an email today is that they’re doing a follow up story to the one they did in September and that she took him up in a plane, he was completely gob smacked and totally motivated and they’re going to air that story on PRI and the BBC next week. So she’s going to tell me what date and what time so we can listen. And we’re hoping that some how we can get an announcement to all these people who sit at home saying, like my father, you know my father and he’s like oh, its so wonderful, and I say well Dad you’re retired, you spend a lot of time sending emails about kittens and things like that, why don’t you do some investigation and see if you can get in touch with how we can help. And he’s like oh I don’t know how I would do that, and I was just so angry and I said ok I will do it. So a lot of people want to help but they either don’t have the time or the know how to do it. But mostly people are willing to give time or money if you can facilitate it, if you can make it as easy as possible for people. So that’s what we’re hoping the BBC will do. And if you want to get involved that would be great.

Shala: I would love to, in anyway that I can. His voice just fills you up.

Linda: His voice is just so joyous and I think also its another example like the picture that you’re looking at right now, those are the kids at the Thorntree (phone rings).

Good afternoon the hat shop. Hey can I call you back? Yep all right.

That’s friend from Kenya.

I speak to a lot of school groups and I show a lot of photos, and I show a movie about these kids, even though these kids don’t have palm pilots, playstations, iphones all of that stuff, the number one thing all the American kids say is these kids are totally happy. Like Joseph’s story. (Phone rings again)

Good afternoon the hat shop. We do. Well they’re not from Russia, they’re from Canada but they’re the Russian style… all right? Thank you bye.

Upon parting, Linda says: “Thank you for supporting small business”