"Oh the Sexy Goats pictures..." - A snapshot of Nabuur Camp weekend

Nabuur Camp wasn't all work and no play. We laughed, we joked and we nearly cried in some situations and realistically we were here to get a good neighbours input into the Nabuur webs.

The first ever Nabuur camp kicked off with nothing more than an ambitious team with an even more ridiculously ambitious agenda and the day ended with outcomes that exceeded all our crazy expectations put together. The event drew participants from various diverse backgrounds, all with the aim of building a bigger and better Nabuur site to cater for the needs of the different Nabuur users. Next to that was an equally important discussion concerning governance issues in the future as Nabuur has grown bigger over the years and quality control and integrity among other things become a bigger concern.

The web design component of the programme began with participants being split into 4 groups concentrating on different aspects of the current pages on the website, namely the: homepage, volunteer page, local representative and facilitator pages and identifying areas of improvement. A team of developers was on standby to receive input and transform it into actual web content. By the middle of the day, the developers were flooded with wish lists from all parties- which had to be refined and specified more- before they started working. As the developers worked hard at making those wishes become a reality, focus shifted to the first governance discussion and refinement of multiple aspects of the new website including text development and defining search criteria. We enjoyed the idea of being able to raise expectations about the final outcome of the website because it is being developed by skilled participants, many a keen eye and above all passion as well as dedication that are hard to miss.

But on a “Fun Note” we noticed a running theme we all noticed was the number of very happy photos of villages displaying some very luscious, sexy goats. Now for some of us that means wealth generation, local empowerment and a source of sustainable income but for others the responses were:

"I love those spotty goats."
"They are Somethin Sensational"
"They are sooo...hot, their outfits...wow....!"
"Look, I've tried this before, trust me I am a professional."

"What, you want me to strip?"
"I think of a Film..." (Smiling)
"They don’t look like they want to be there..."
"Weird questions...I am flabbergasted, but I will give it a go..."

"I don’t want to be that excited about it, is that an okay answer?"
"Look, I think its a acrazy idea, but it might just work!"
"Awkward..possibly some shooting might be involved..."
"What on earth is this?"
"Stutter...stutter...my mind goes berzerk and steam comes out of it..."
"I am more into Brunettes."
"I cannot describe to you the image I have in my head right NOW!"
"Fluffy or cheesy...its a tough call."
"It doesn't rock my world."
"Hey, talk to the Hand."

It is interesting that these responses in some ways also represent a microcosm of opinions that different people from different cultures around the world feel about coming together to collaborate on an online volunteering project. Diversity is a wonderful thing. So much has been learnt just by sitting in the room with one another instead of always connecting only via email. Friendships had been forged online and
nursed for years via Nabuur.com without anyone having ever met one another. With that, also comes diversity of opinions and even disagreements. That is life in any collaborative project where people care and feel passionate about social issues. The good news is that such diversity of opinions is needed to successfully confront the challenges we are faced with in our world today.

Governance was split into 3 sub-topics. At the top of the agenda was the question of who would decide if and when the new website will be ready to go online. Naturally more issues were raised that indirectly affect this questions and a more concrete proposed plan of action is expected to be in place by the end of the day today. There is a possibility that a task team will be assigned to look into the issue taking into account the points that were raised and overseeing the implementation of the action plan through to the end. Other issues to be discussed today are about who Nabuur can potentially partner with in the future and of course how the entire Nabuur will be governed in the future. In fact, these discussions are in progress as we write this so expect better news on this later!

The discussion continues and it is a pleasure to watch the participants across the room from where we sit- clearly everyone feels strongly about one thing or the other but progress is being made. Most of us at the camp do not imagine the task accomplished over 2 days would be easily done. We do not imagine that the world would just be fixed. But maybe...for the chance to create neighbours and connections in a part of the world that we may not know very much about to start with....2 days out of our lives has been well spent.

There were impressive synergies but also incredible diversity gaps to overcome. The point is, we tried to generate something new and different. There aren’t any models we could copy from, so everyone kept an open mind and got on with it. Our styles were very different. Some of us wanted to build "fun" and "trust" and others were very task focused and still others more process oriented. It takes more
than a village, it takes a neighbourly gesture and generous attitudes to create a meaningful online volunteering experience and that notion came instinctively for us. From the village representative level, we were profoundly influenced by one representatives concepts of "trust"...he said, "For money would do a lot of things, but for unconditional relations that are built over time and a willingness to support one another, as human beings we would do everything in our power."

by Nonhlanhla Dube and Cecilia.W.Yu余詠詩