The Heart & Sole tour Gets an Angel

http://fredhatman.co.za/?p=1833L

ook. I thought that kicking off with a picture of 90s supermodel Helena Christensen wearing only a few watches in my first post on this blog yesterday worked a right treat.

So I’m doing it again…

No, this isn't Helena. And she's not even wearing only watches. This a more beautiful woman. Wearing her heart in the right place. And don't you dig the flowers too?

No, this isn't Helena. And she's not even wearing only watches. This a more beautiful woman. Wearing her heart in the right place. And don't you dig the flowers too? Beautifulnesses.

OK. Let me introduce you to our angel. Annette Oberholster. Netty to her friends. That’s her sitting smiling angelically among those gorgeous flowers above.

So what about her? I’ll tell you what about her. Netty, who gets around our world quite a lot, is currently living in the desert of Qatar while her boyfriend finishes a contract working with a petrochemicals company.

She, being a long-time friend of our Heart & Sole Tour unicyclist Geoff “Heartman” Brink, heard about our little 1,700km jaunt from Durban to Cape Town to raise awareness of the scourge of landmines. And got thinking. About how she could help.

I hope that she won’t mind me doing this but I’m publishing an extract from the e-mail I received from her yesterday:

“hello dear friends,

i have come up with an idea to try and help raise some money for the heart and sole tour, so i am going to run it by you to see if you think it will ‘fly’. i will definitely need your help to pull it off.

in my idleness here in the desert of qatar, i have taught myself how to fold an origami crane. : )

bear with me.

in japanese folklore, if you fold 1000 cranes you get to make a wish. so, i could fold 1000 cranes and my wish would be to enhance the lives of landmine victims … that i would do by selling the cranes and donating the money to the heart and sole tour. the tag line could be this quote: ‘I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.’ - Sadako Sasaki (1943-55).

folding 1000 cranes is a BEEEG job! weeks and weeks and blistered fingers. so, before i begin, i need to know that it is going to work.

the math is simple, sell each crane for R1 each and we make R1000. or better still, sell each crane for R10 each and we make R10 000. but there is a problem, i am going to need your help to sell these guys in south africa.


i am coming to south africa on dec 21 and could bring them with me. but do you think we could find 1000 peeps to flog them to? in my heart i think so, (friends, your church, corner cafe come to mind) and even though it’s a little paper bird, at least people are getting something for their ten bucks and so much better than soliciting a straight hand-out.

in your hands too, mr hatman, we could market the idea nice. i am going to get a quote from my pa who is in printing and see if someone can donate 1000 little stickers with the heart and sole tour logo to stick on the birdies’ wings.

so, what do you think? should i start already?

have a happy happy day.

love netty x”

OK. So I ended up publishing her whole e-mail. I couldn’t help myself. This offer had me in tears when I first read it and when I read it again five minutes later… and 20 minutes after that. It’s just done the same to me as I copied and pasted. This, and I’m sure my lovely Hatpeople will agree, is what makes the world go round. Well, at least my tiny bit of our world. In fact, Netty’s beautiful offer has shaken my world.

She has already started on making the first batch of the little origami cranes and her pa in Vryheid will print the stickers at no charge. He wants to his bit to support our cause. How much of loveliness is that, hey? Lovingness.

So we will be at the gig at VMac’s in Pinetown on Saturday, December 19, when our Heart & Sole ambassador and rock vocalist Toni Rowland will perform with Supernova Rockstar\’s Dilana… and we will be selling Netty’s “paper birdies” for R10 each. The proceeds will help pay for fuel (for the back-up vehicle) and food (for The Heart & Sole team) as we wend our merry way down to Cape Town over a period of six weeks to two months (or however long it takes) so if you feel moved to give us a little more, we would love you even more.

Coolness. Netty’s offer has blown us away. It is easy (or you think it would be) for a large company to sponsor or loan something to help us on our way – and we are immensely grateful to our tour supporters, whose logos you will see to the right of these words – but for an individual to offer to blister her hands in a desert far away to produce a simple gift like an origami crane warms our hearts beyond belief.

Now. Please hear this. The Heart and Sole Tour\’s negotiations with a large national to procure the loan of a back-up vehicle (a four-berth motorhome to be precise) has, er, broken down. They couldn’t see any “value” in lending us a vehicle for two months in “this harsh economic climate&rdquo.

So we are not going anywhere until we have secured the use (we will pay for the fuel) of a lekker motorhome in which the four of us can sleep and keep all the stuff we need. And from which I can blog and tweet and message on facebook and send photographs to everywhere and film to YouTube and contact the newspapers and radio about how The Heartman is doing and how wonderful you were in lending us a motorhome. Check?

So, if you can help – or know somebody who can lend us a cool back-up vehicle – please mail me at f...@fredhatman.co.za or use the Contact button at the end of this post.

Lekkerness. And, oh, we would prefer it to look something like this…

That'll do nicely, Sir!

That'll do nicely, Sir!

… rather than this…
I mean, where exactly would our unicyclist sleep?

I mean, where exactly would our unicyclist sleep?

And he’s going to need lots of it. Sleep. And we need quite a snazzy motorhome in which he can get it. Can you help? Like Netty is. Please.

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Posted by The Sole of Africa at 27 November 2009, 7:20 AM
Categories: Mineseeker Technology, Maria's Diary, Get Involved, Victim Assistance, Speak to Oscar Pistorius, Your Stories, General
 
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