Two steps closer to 29 May 2012

We have a wonderful autumn day in Naboomspruit: We’ve got a blue sky that fills the heaven from horizon to horizon. Each evening the sun is a fiery red ball during sunset. And I feel the urge, like the swallows sitting on the telephone lines next to our roads, to get going.

Yesterday at last I found a bike trailer that I could afford. I am going to take to KLR on a trailer to Windhoek for the flight to Berlin. Somehow I get the feeling that I will need all the rubber on the tires this year. The guy that sold the trailer to my, rides a KLR. Coincidence. I’ve never met him before. It was meant that I would buy his trailer.

I had to get documents urgently to Germany to sort out the transport and insurance of the KLR. One night on TV I saw an ad of DHL, “covering Africa”. I remember the DHL pickup driving through yellow savannah. So I decided that I would entrust DHL with the speedy delivery of those documents to Germany.

I called DHL to arrange the pickup.

“Where are you living Sir? Naboomspruit? No, we dont do pickups there. It is an outlying area. You have to take the document to Mokopane.”

Me: “But then your TV ad is then creating the wrong impression. I am living only 160 km north of Pretoria and you call that an outlying area? I refuse to accept it. May I speak to your supervisor?”

After holding for a while the supervisor appeared on the scene and introduced herself as Eloise Trollip, the Service Desk Supervisor. After explaining my problem with DHL and the TV advertisement to her she promised to call back. Ja ja, I’ve heard that before.

She did call back. She did have a solution.

And so DHL picked up my parcle with documents late Wednesday afternoon. 36 hours later the parcel was in Germany! But then I realised that DHL Germany didn’t have an Eloise Trollip in their staff.

For five days the parcel was tramping between Frankfurt and Leipzig and Hamburg and Nürnberg until, al last, it was delivered this morning. And it took only 36 hours to get from Naboom to Germany….

Eloise, DHL South Africa can be so proud of you. Well done! You showed once again there are only solutions and no problems.

Now it is time to start collecting R 10 notes from your friends because we are ready to receive donations to Operation Smile. Remember that 100% of the donations do get to Operation Smile!

To donate go to www.naboom2germany.co.za or www.fsa-youthexchange.co.za and you’ll find the link to Donations there.

I wonder whether DHL in Germany would donate 10 Euro’s for keeping the documents for 5 days? 🙂

Let’s start working!