A year in review... Month 1 - 6!

Start January 2009, it's me, myself and I, in a very large, very white office with a crystal candelabra... Naspers moves offices and it becomes me, myself, and I in a very larger, very white office with four orange desks, 2 long desks that look like the colours of some university and every phone call reverbetating in triplicate as we continue the journey of working out the detail of what the Cape Town Carnival is supposed to look like.

February 2009: Head off to Rio de Janeiro.... the Carnival of all Carnivals. Arrive with Fritz, Neil, Koo, Helen, JP, Lobo and go visit Samba City, and the Sambadromo. It's cooking hot and Neil is not convinced he's going to survive the heat.

The Brazilians are even hotter and I am amazed at the beauty and ease of the people. The Carnival is overwhelming and mind-blowing at the same time. Colour and music and rhythm and enjoyment. An inspiration for the years to come! After meeting with the organisers of the Rio Carnival, I get into bed at 19h30... totally bushed....

March - May 2009: With the skeleton of the Carnival taking shape, we realise that it has become essential to get a team together to achieve all but the impossible through lots of grace from above. Naspers donates our operating capital as increasingly we need to get a team to take on this venture full-time. So I write Job Descriptions, put together a dream team list, whittle it down to a recession team list and start interviews. Stephen and Robert, from RAINN, really impresses us and we get the go-ahead to appoint them as community facilitators. So for now, the Carnival goes a bit silent so that we can work out the exact model for the Carnival. It is at this juncture where we realise that the Carnival will always be a work in progress, a melting pot of different groupings, structures, communication channels etc. etc. This is not Rio baby! (different cultures, different languages, different styles of music and performing arts.... - a pure fruit salad of Cape Town).

June - July 2009: With Stephen and Robert onboard, the team suddenly grows with another three people in four weeks. In Afrikaans you would say "my koker is vol :)". Edmund joins as logistics manager, leaving Die Burger to take on this adventure. Dezre with her calm collectedness decides that she needs to venture away from the tourism industry but brings with her that experience... As office administrator she assists with the financial and admin processes, but more over make my life a lot easier in helping with setting up appointments. And Kelli the "hottie" with the bright smile bowls us over with her mock media release, that thinks out of the box and joins the team as marketing & PR co-ordinator. We are moving forward!

For the record, we restage a media stint - taking over the city council meeting and snipping the speaker's tie and challenging all councillors to somehow get involved. We get ETV coverage which we are very happy about (Unfortunately MJ steals our thunder... who could have known that he would pass away the next day - talk about bad timing...)

And then most important part of Carnival starts. Getting the buy-in of the most important people - the performing groups. And within 2 months we have 8 main genres that have bought into this new platform for Cape Town's talent, bringing people together. They include: the minstrels, Christmas choirs, Malay choirs, marching bands, marimbas, african drummers, western cape dance teacher's association, african choirs on board. Our main stakeholders and partners have bought in... WOW.

Zillions of cups of coffees, talking to people, igniting the passion. We now can truly say the Carnival is happening. We get to meet the coolest people... we are excited!