I am more than confident that Bunambutye is a place you have never heard of. I certainly had not. The closest recognisable place (Mbale) features on Daniel Craig’s first outing as James Bond. Anyway, I digress. Although a great film, it is not the reason Animate wants to support Blossom Africa. Bunambutye is a rural community of villages with no running water, sanitation or power supply.
A holiday just wasn’t enough
A few years ago, Aimee visited Bunambutye for a two-week adventure / charity holiday. By all accounts those two weeks flew by, but by the end she had realised that it wasn’t enough for her, it wasn’t enough to affect any real change, to leave her mark and improve the lives of the people she had met in any meaningful way. So, after deciding to live there on her own for 12 months, Aimee founded the Blossom Africa charity.
Now, I should probably take a step back and explain that Aimee is a school friend of my wife, Julie. Aimee would send my wife and I emails whilst she was away detailing the work she was doing, the great people she met and the struggles of the area. The more we read, the more we wanted to help. Seeing our friend do this amazing work inspired us. So, we raised money at home, collected clothes from friends and set off (very underprepared) to go and help.
No safety nets
We had a few teething problems, our plane landed in Rwanda at 2am, we were supposed to be in Uganda! That was a little frightening. Next, the airline lost all our personal baggage, no water purification tablets, no underwear, no sun cream, malaria tablets or anything of use. It was a great start!
But then Robert met us at the airport and from there on in it was a wonderful, heart-warming and educational experience. The next two weeks contained some of the most rewarding and sobering moments of my life. One thing I took from Bunambutye is that there just aren’t any safety nets. The seemingly smallest issues equal death. Such as the toddler who lost his life the day before we arrived. It had rained and he fell into a ditch in the muddy road.
A sense of perspective
However, the thing that will always stay with me was the positive attitude. Everyone we met had so little but would give you their very last morsel of food, never had a complaint and always preached positivity. What we found is that they were not asking for handouts, they want to be self-sustaining and the way to enable this is through education. Either through schools or through one of the cooperative groups Blossom Africa has set up within the community.
When Julie and I left Aimee to fly home we vowed to continue to support her, Bunambutye and Blossom Africa. To try in some small way to help those people who had welcomed us into their lives, given us gifts, invited us into their churches and cooked us meals each night. So, when Iain and I set up Animate I knew Blossom Africa was the charity I wanted to support.
You’re supporting Blossom Africa
If we can donate enough to set up one co-operative, renovate one medical centre or give food parcels in drought season it will make any ‘bad’ work week for any of us drift away. So, a heartfelt thank you to all our customers, because you are in turn giving money to Blossom Africa and the people of Bunambutye.
Darren Timmins
Written by Darren Timmins
Darren is a Co-founder of Animate Search and Talent Management industry elder (sadly). Living in Barcelona and working across Europe he is inspired by the different challenges the diverse region brings up every day for his clients.If you have a Talent Management challenge and need some advice feel free to reach out on darren@animatesearch.com
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