The Ball and All Podcast

Our founder Sarah, recently chatted with super friendly crew over at ‘The Ball & All’ Podcast.

At its core, The Ball and All is a podcast aimed at normalising adversity. From a humble farm shed in Lennox Head, former Wallaby Berrick ‘Barnesy’ Barnes, sports business mentor, Steve ‘Condo’ Condon and former Junior World Surfing Champion, James ‘Woody’ Wood chat community, connection, challenges and of course, a little sport too.From former and current sportspeople to coaches through to parenting experts, artists and musicians, The Ball and All keeps things light while often going deep. Boys pictured below. L-R Barnesy, Condo and Woody.

Sponsors and long time supporters of Rafiki Mwema, Lennox Head Pizza and Pasta were recently chatting to the boys at the Podcast about Sarah and her story. Nathan Mezza suggested they contact Sarah as he believed they would Sarah’s story and he wanted to help spread the word about the work of Rafiki. Nathan’s wife, Nicci is a founding member of Rafiki Mwema and they are both doing all they can to support Sarah and Rafiki Mwema.

They delivered Sarah and many pizzas out to the ‘shed’ to record the Podcast and sat around for the recording as well. The best cheer squad!

Take some time to hear a little bit about Sarah’s story and how she got to where she is today and learn more about the work we do.

“This week on the Ball & All Podcast, welcome Sarah Rosborg, North Coast local and the founder and directer of Kenyan Children’s Charity, Rafiki Mwema. Up until 2005, Sarah’s life was much like most on the Northern Rivers, however a chance trip to volunteer at a Kenyan Children’s home followed by a horrific car accident one week later, changed the course of her life forever.”

Thanks to the wonderful guys at The Ball and All for making me feel so comfortable while chatting with them. I think that is clear from my chat with them as I didn’t take a breath! Such nice guys making change in their local community and beyond.

For those of you who are hearing impaired or prefer to read then listen, you can find a transcript of the podcast below. Please disregard any errors you might come across as this was transcribed via an app and we havent managed to go through it all yet. Sarah spoke a-lot 😬

Transcript of The Ball and All Podcast (from 12min 41sec) with Sarah Rosborg below:

Condo [00:12:41]

So we’re here today because we’d like to welcome another north coast local, Sarah Rosborg. Welcome.

Barnesy [00:12:48]

Welcome, welcome.

Condo [00:12:49]

Welcome to the.

Sarah [00:12:50]

Shed. Thank you very much for that.

Condo [00:12:52]

Is it probably Ottawa? This is a pretty I don’t know. It’s lots of up and ups and downs in your story, but it’s a it’s a pretty unique story. Take us back. Firstly, did you grow up in the Northern Rivers?

Sarah [00:13:05]

Yes, I came from Manly when I was about two years old to Ballina and we.

Condo [00:13:12]

Won’t hold that against you.

Sarah [00:13:12]

Most of my family from Lennox. So you can go with that support mainly. No, I don’t support any sporting. Does that help?

Condo [00:13:23]

What are you doing on our podcast?

Sarah [00:13:26]

Maybe I’m the all, not the ball..

Condo [00:13:31]

Oh, I. Yeah, We like. We think as.

Sarah [00:13:33]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I guess if I went to someone, it would be Manly just for my father. I if I did. But I don’t.

Condo [00:13:43]

Beautiful. And where did your travels take you from the northern rivers to?

Sarah [00:13:49]

To L.A. first. And then I moved to Whistler in Canada for a few years with the rest of Australia.

Woody [00:13:56]

The rite of passage to work in the Agora spots.

Condo [00:13:59]

Whistler. Yeah.

Sarah [00:14:00]

Good. I didn’t scale snowboard. I did plenty of other things.

Woody [00:14:04]

Yeah. The A price stuff down.

Sarah [00:14:06]

That’s right. And I was managing hotels, so I went back there a few times for a few seasons, which is where I met Nike. I knew Nice from when I was a kid with he was best mates with my cousin and yeah, I met them in Whistler and then headed to Scotland, Edinburgh, where my grandmother is from, so ended up in Edinburgh for a year and then that’s when I headed off to Kenya for the first time.

Woody [00:14:33]

So what? Where’s that love of Africa? Where did that come from? Was it your.

Sarah [00:14:36]

Or. Yeah, I think so. My mother has said that I spoke about Africa. My whole life. I don’t always remember. My mom was a single mum and I remember she used to make things and she would just always be doing something with the hand making rugs or anything, and she would always send them off to Africa. And you know, you might remember as a kid before our famine, you know, I would watch that on telly and be fascinated how there was starving children. I just couldn’t get my head around it. And it was always really fascinating. And I just, you know, I have a brain that worries about everybody. And I just didn’t understand why there were children starving in the world. So we did the photo album and, you know, suffered through it completely after 12 hours, you know?

Barnesy [00:15:19]

Definitely, yeah. Did you do it. And then you’re allowed those barley. Is it the. Oh you’re allowed.

Sarah [00:15:24]

To have soup and butterscotch lollies. Yeah. It’s good to have that. They wouldn’t be hungry with that on about.

Barnesy [00:15:30]

300,000 of the out of scotch by the lollies is has gone costly and gone this.

Sarah [00:15:35]

Totally cheating that real estate that.

Condo [00:15:38]

I think it’s still having its impact.

Sarah [00:15:40]

Yeah and sorry so mum said that I’d spoken about Africa my whole life and I was always going to go there and I had always researched how to get there. Like you could have a placement with World Vision or some of the other bigger charities, but they would charge five or $10,000 just for a placement like you’d pay. Maybe that would cover your flights and they’d place you in that community. And I just always thought that I didn’t have that kind of money, but that money would be better off if I could give that to a community itself. So I just never ended up going with any of those organizations. And then I just traveled around the world to L.A. and Scotland and Canada and. Yeah.

Condo [00:16:17]

So your first trip to Kenya? Yes. What, what what sort of sticks in your mind there?

Sarah [00:16:25]

Well. Oh, so many things. It was everything that I had ever expected and more. You can’t really understand what it’s like until you’re there. I was fascinated with Africa, so it could have been any countries in Africa. I only ended up in Kenya because my mother met. She was managing one of the local ARTAS and she a couple came into the RTI with two African children and she said, Oh, they gorgeous children. Where are they from? What’s the story? And I told her that they were starting an orphanage in Kenya and my mum had said, all my daughters always wanted to go, could she come and volunteer? And they said, Oh, we’ve never thought of that. Sure, you can give her an email. So I was living in Edinburgh at that time and my mum hesitated, giving me their contact details and she said to my grandmother, I’ve got a contact for Sarah to go to Kenya, but I don’t want to give it to her because she’s not going to come home. And my and my grandma said, You, you have to. This is all Sarah’s ever wanted to do. You have to give her the details. So Mum gave me the email and I’d left Scotland and I was there two months later, so I stayed for a few months and yeah, it was overwhelming, really, really depressing, but also motivating. I suppose it.

Condo [00:17:42]

Was a safe.

Sarah [00:17:44]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I’m a little not naive. I just don’t really care for my own safety. That doesn’t make sense. I don’t think that I feel safe wherever I go. I really, I don’t. Yeah. If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go. And I was kept safe and there was some instances that weren’t, but it didn’t really bother me. But I was there for about three months and the people who I was there with had never really thought about getting sponsors. They were very religious and they were all about God will look after them. And I thought, I don’t know about that. Yeah, I don’t know how he’s going to pay the bills and I know I can pray for it, but you have to pray for sponsors and you have to. How do you get sponsors? So I had thought about helping them get sponsors, but I was due to leave from Kenya to start with Princess Cruises, the cruise line. That was my next job because I was young and still enjoyed hanging around with people and drinking.

Woody [00:18:43]

What were you doing on the cruises?

Sarah [00:18:44]

What was said? Well, I was going to be a person. So front desk, I think. Yeah. Yes. And it was a really tough job to apply for so many things. You had to do visas you had to get. And I was leaving Kenya, so I was there for three months and when I was there, the Princess Cruises changed my start date. So I was due to fly straight from Kenya to I can’t remember Vancouver where we were going to start the cruises, and they delayed the start date for two weeks. So I had two weeks to spare and I didn’t I couldn’t change my flight and stay in Kenya. And I thought, far out, I’m here, I might as well get somewhere close to Canada. So that’s when I ended up flying to Los Angeles to hang out with my friend from Kenya. And so from Kenya I went to L.A. and he just said, Come and hang out here for about a week and then you can go straight to Vancouver. Yeah. So that was my first trip to Kenya, which was really memorable. And I remember I left on Saturday. I flew from Kenya to however I got to L.A. and then the following Saturday was when I had a really terrible car accident in in L.A. We were going from Colorado River, so it was in between Los Angeles and Vegas, kind of I don’t know if you’ve been there, but in the mountains, it’s like desert, like the drones. Yeah, yeah. Hot, hot, hot. Just like open roads and people flooring it and going really fast. And we went to a casino the night before, were pretty drunk and driving back to L.A. with my friends. And I was in the back seat of the car quite hung over without my seatbelt on trying to sleep. And my friend was in the passenger seat and this guy Dickhead will call me Dickhead was driving the car and we were going. It was an open road. It’s really known to have car accidents on this road. And we were going, you can imagine a corner that has like the arrows and saying, slow down like 60 kilometers. It’s a really sharp corner. So he was going it was 120 kilometers around the corner and we were in a Prius and like a small Toyota Prius. And I remember going over the bumps. And, you know, when you lose your stomach because it’s like, yeah, the weight. And I remember thinking, I have to tell him to slow down. Like he’s going too fast, I’m losing my stomach and I could feel the tires kind of getting air on the back. And I’m like, I have to tell him to slow down. But he wasn’t. My best friend was in the front and this was his friend. I said, I can’t tell him to slow down because I don’t know him and he knows how to drive. He’s not going to risk their lives. And then I remember going around the corner. And he just he overcorrected and he lost control. And then he tried to fix the wheels back up and the steering wheel looked and we just went around the corner and then across the other side of the road. And it’s a road that has huge semis coming the other way. So that’s how a lot of people on this road die because they run into semis. But thank God there wasn’t a semi. But when we went across the road and up a dirt berm could because there was like little hills on the side and we got airlifted and flipped maybe three times. So I remember about two flips because I just remember being thrown around, like just getting hearing a really big bang. And I think first the car went into the side and that’s when my head just hit down into the ground and then it just flipped head over heels three times. And then they think on about the fifth flip, I was thrown out of the back of the car and they don’t know through.

Woody [00:22:26]

The window or something.

Sarah [00:22:27]

Yeah, I think through the back windscreen because there was a dent in the top of the windscreen and we can’t I couldn’t have come out of the side of the cars because I didn’t have cuts like that. So I came out of the back of the car, then the car flipped me out and over and I opened my eyes and then I was here and then the car landed right beside me. Oh, and I just remember closing my eyes and covering my head because I’ve been in quite a few incidents in my life. And Aunty Margaret has always said if they go for your face, you just cover your teeth, we need your teeth. And I’m like, right, cover my teeth. So I just remember going like this and covering my head and then I just woke open my eyes and looked in the car, landed right beside me. And then I looked down and I was in this pile of blood and I was in shock. I mean, the terror and the feelings was like, am I dead on my dying? What? And I wasn’t.

Condo [00:23:27]

The only one thrown out of the car.

Sarah [00:23:28]

Yeah. So so I was the only one in the backseat, so I was the only one thrown out when I opened my eyes and the car was there. Because it’s the states. The driver was closest to me. So he just came out and took off his seatbelt and came out. But he was talking gibberish, like he wasn’t making any sense. And I was screaming for my best mate who was on the other side and I couldn’t see him. But the card flipped so many times that the airbag had went down while it was still flipping. So on the last few flips he hit his head, I guess, on the side of the car in the window or something. And he scalp had ripped off and peeled back and he was passed out. So he said, this driver said he’s dead. So I’m sitting here, I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. And I was asking for Ryan, my friend, and he said, Oh, he’s dead. He’s dead. And I was just screaming for him. People were running in from the road. They had seen the car flipping in May in the air.

Barnesy [00:24:27]

And you saw the main highway, the one that connects Las Vegas to L.A.?

Sarah [00:24:31]

Yeah, it was called Rice Road. So it was the closest hospital that I was airlifted to was Palm Springs.

Barnesy [00:24:36]

Oh, yeah. So yeah.

Sarah [00:24:39]

Yeah. So people were running into me and I’m screaming for Ryan, and he said he was dead and his father and brother were actually driving in front of us. So they got a call from the driver and they said, You need to come back here. And all I could hear me screaming was Ryan’s dead. Ryan’s dead. So they were coming back thinking Ryan was dead, and then he came out of it. So he just passed out, but he couldn’t move. He’d busted his shoulder and his head. So the driver was fine. My best mate had just stitches and concussion and a busted shoulder, but I had torn up all the right side of my leg. I think that was it was road rash. So I had lots of burns on my feet from the tires, we think, because it was like tire marks on my feet and I snapped my femur, a compound fracture, so I’d come out.

Woody [00:25:32]

Small bone to break the hardest bone you broke.

Sarah [00:25:35]

So in two spots it had come out of my leg.

Barnesy [00:25:37]

All that from just bouncing inside the car, do you think?

Sarah [00:25:40]

Oh, I think I must have come out and landed with my feet straight there. So my femur came out of my hip, broke my hip and my sacroiliac joints and my bum and yeah, my family’s hip was dislocated and broken and compound fracture of my femur. And then we found out six weeks later my foot was broken in all my toes, but we didn’t know because my leg was fucked.

Woody [00:26:06]

How did it lose it?

Sarah [00:26:07]

I did. I didn’t. Well, I, I, I lost it later, but I was really in shock. And you’re in pain. But I think the shock is takes over the pain. I guess then because I thought he was dead. I didn’t know. I just remember the taste in my mouth was horrific when I opened my eyes and just thought because I thought I was dying in the car when I put my hand in my head. This is the moment that I think about every day because I think I’m going to die every day. And here it is. And then when I opened my eyes and saw the blood, I like I said, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just thought, fuck, I’ve got my period really, really heavy. What’s going on? How embarrassing, what happened, how that come about. And I’m like, right now, she’s fucking dead. I need a pad.

Condo [00:26:57]

And when did you realize that wasn’t the case?

Sarah [00:27:02]

Oh, when the fire the firemen snapped my leg back in and, oh, they cut my pants off me. And I’m like, These are my favorite. And I had my favorite swimmers, but they cut them off and they just said, You have to hold on. We have to put your leg in and my hip.

Barnesy [00:27:18]

Oh, that’s crazy.

Sarah [00:27:21]

So I ranked and then so then I realized it obviously was my period because they said Fox because then they were saying things like it was code for, you know, her femoral artery could be tricky. We need to take her out. And I’m like, what are you saying? Don’t use code, use real words. And then there were people praying beside me. They’re on their knees. I’m like, Get off your knees. What the fuck are you doing? I’m not going to die. Get up. So I don’t want you on your knees. Like, I was terrified. I should have continued to pray. But I was then. Then Ryan’s father and brother came, so it was really nice to have them there. But I remembered that about. I didn’t remember how long ago, but I knew that my travel insurance had expired about.

Barnesy [00:28:05]

And then just about 8.

Sarah [00:28:07]

Hours before that accident on, because I was going from Kenya to Princess Cruises, it was overlapping at the time. But then when they extended my travel, my start date for two weeks, it was like there was about ten days gap. And I’m like, I’ve traveled for six years. I’ve never used it. I’m not going to go and renew something for ten days, you know, I’m only going to be in L.A. what’s going to happen?

Condo [00:28:29]

And health insurance in the US is really cheap.

Sarah [00:28:31]

Yes, exactly. So I said to my friend’s father, like when they were putting me in this thing about to go on the helicopter, I said, I don’t have travel insurance. And he said, Don’t say anything, just shut up, just get on the thing and we’ll we’ll look after everything. Don’t worry. Hold on.

Barnesy [00:28:48]

Yeah. In America, I can remember even wandering in Hawaii like people getting injured in some some of that like hitting the reef in Hawaii or something like that. I think someone I think like I think beads one like he had insurance obviously for sale. But I think a tough.

Woody [00:29:02]

Sell at a certain point, though, doesn’t.

Barnesy [00:29:04]

It? I don’t.

Condo [00:29:04]

Know.

Barnesy [00:29:05]

To pay depending on your insurance but tie beads one where he broke his hips like hitting his right. I think it was about 250 grand. Mm. Well if he goes.

Woody [00:29:13]

Bed with yours because he can.

Barnesy [00:29:14]

Grab it just to give everyone a bit of an idea.

Sarah [00:29:16]

Well that was the end, you know, it was 500,000 us for your. Wow. So I said I don’t have travel insurance.

Condo [00:29:25]

Did you say have me box. Yeah.

Barnesy [00:29:26]

And what do you. What you with this event? Look, it is 2005.

Condo [00:29:30]

She, she did a job on yourself. Mhm.

Sarah [00:29:32]

So he just said don’t say anything but we’ll look after it. Because I’d always thought you know what happens in the States if you don’t have money. Well I just, I’m like they’re going to let me bleed out like I’m going to die. And they said, Don’t worry, just go, you’ll be fine. But when I was when I was then airlifted to the hospital. 25,000 us for the helicopter. I was airlifted there and I went straight into surgery for about 9 hours. And before I was going in there, like, could we have your passport? And Ryan’s family were just playing dumb and saying, Oh, we’re just trying to get it. We just we don’t have it yet. We’re getting the travel insurance details from him.

Condo [00:30:07]

Would I American?

Sarah [00:30:08]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew.

Condo [00:30:10]

That. I knew the system.

Sarah [00:30:11]

Yeah, they knew. And they were just playing dumb. And we’re saying we’re just getting the details from her mum’s in Australia. She’s far away. And so they went into surgery and then had to go it, it was a Palm Springs private hospital so just for the hospital room was 6,000 USD just to stay there. And then they charge for each bit of morphine, they give you the gloves. They used the the physiotherapy was 40,000.

Woody [00:30:36]

How bad is it. Yeah, it’s it’s a it’s a up call. So just to be on it, just to be sure, if they’d said you had it on and I realize you didn’t have health insurance, would they have not authorized?

Sarah [00:30:45]

No, I believe they would have, but I would have just had to pay it back or I would have gone into debt. So at that stage, I didn’t have I didn’t have any luck.

Condo [00:30:53]

And I think it ends up like a hex.

Sarah [00:30:55]

Where am I going to get this? So finally we had to say, oh, fuck, we don’t have insurance. It expired. We didn’t realize, sorry after all. And then they went, okay. Yeah. And then they were pretty much they were looking at me, they’re like, okay, you can leave anytime now. And I’m like, and then my friends who are amazing because it was a work trip for him. His, it was his work car and he they did advertising with billboards. So he remembered that we were looking at billboards that weekend when we went to Palm Springs and his family, who owned a business, said, you need to sue us or claim our work insurance because it was a work trip. Right. And you were looking at billboards. And so we then went, okay, we’ve got insurance. We’re going to sue. I’m going to sue them. They’ve told me to I.

Barnesy [00:31:41]

Told you to sue.

Sarah [00:31:42]

Them. So we would say we’re going to claim insurance. But they said, Yeah, you have to sue us. It’s work. He was there for work.

Barnesy [00:31:48]

Well, the alleges legend.

Sarah [00:31:49]

So then I had to. So then I told the hospital, Oh no, we’ve now got insurance again. So then they were trying to keep me in and I said, No, no, I can check myself out. All you’re doing is giving me morphine and I can do that myself. So I took myself out after two weeks and then said, You know, the money will come. I have to sue my friends and I’ll be back later. So I think that the the Palm Springs Hospital was about 380,000. That legislation from the moment in the desert., too, when I got there was about 380 grand. And then I was stuck in the States for two months to have to have a business class flight home because I couldn’t in my leg and.

Woody [00:32:29]

All the talk about recovering from what to get through every injury kind of thing. And like were you close to losing your life?

Sarah [00:32:35]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. If it wasn’t the bleeding out, the car was so close to landing on me, you know, and if I didn’t get airlifted so I was airlifted before my friend. He was then airlifted, but they were really rushing me to the hospital. And, you know, I know people who have had accidents similar and they paralyzed or they die because I was thrown around that carpet from my waist up. I had no injuries, not one single mark. Only my friend flew over from here to Palm Springs and she washed my hair and she said I had like blood in it and sticks and dirt and everything in my hair, but not one mark from my hips up at all. Do you think thrown in?

Barnesy [00:33:17]

Do you still feel it? Do you have any issues, any pain issues now?

Sarah [00:33:20]

Yeah. So I have had so the recovery, as you say, was huge. So I left. They didn’t want me to leave the state for six months because they said, until you can bend your knee 90 degrees, you’re at risk of blood clots. But I thought, yeah, yeah, exactly. But I was I you know, I had huge PTSD after that. Every time I closed my eyes, I just pictured the car. I just kept thinking I was going to die. I just wanted to come home. So I worked really hard. Physio in L.A. and made them like snap my knee. Like, it was just I don’t know if it’s.

Barnesy [00:33:52]

Inspired or something. Yeah.

Sarah [00:33:53]

And we just had to every day, just like I was screaming and they just bending and bending it. So I did it as hard as I could so I could fly home in two months. And then I moved in with my mom in Barcelona. And he pretty much was in bed for all. I treated it as a full time job for about I was nonwhite bearing on my leg for six months. So then you know what that does to your other leg and you know what that does to your back and everything. So they put a 40 centimeter rod in my femur at the hospital and then two screws in my knee and my hip. They didn’t do anything to fix my hip because they thought it would be If I’m nonwhite bearing, it’ll heal. It was the acetabulum that goes around my femur. They thought that it would heal as I was nonwhite bearing. And that turned into like I walked at the pool every single day for 2 hours and I did physio every day. Oh, everything. Osteo, massage, you name it. I’ve done it. And it turned into then the injuries. I guess they got better, but then it turned into chronic pain. So it went into like a neurological thing. I think I’ve been on painkillers for so long that it turned into I couldn’t people would say, Where’s your pain? And I knew that it was from my hip, but I felt pain in every part of my body. Like my hands hurt, my eyes hurt. If you touch me, any noise would bother me because I was just so consumed with pain for so long that I couldn’t tell where it was. And I knew it was a brain thing. And it’s I’ve studied it and I’ve gone to sites and I’ve gone to doctors and I’ve gone to medical school, you know, pain schools and things like that. And it’s it’s a thing that happens after you’ve been in pain, such pain for so long that, you know, the painkillers stop working, but you still need them because your body is addicted to them.

Woody [00:35:47]

What were you sort of take and what did you have to sort of.

Sarah [00:35:49]

Oh, it sort of started with of course in don’t and any well I don’t know what it was in the States Oxy or something and then and done and then tramadol and then Lyrica. I’ve gone on everything to try different things. Only maybe two years ago I went cold turkey and went into hospital and just came off everything because it wasn’t helping anymore. But I needed. So I was taking these drugs, but my pain was no better.

Barnesy [00:36:14]

So even from even two years ago. So nearly 15 years.

Sarah [00:36:17]

Yeah. You know. Yeah. Heavy drugs for the whole time and in pain the whole time.

Barnesy [00:36:23]

Are you in pain now? Like, you.

Sarah [00:36:24]

Know, because I’ve my daughter calls it a magic drug and so do I. Because when I went cold turkey, I went was given another drug to help me in hospital come off that. And that has helped my pain. And maybe that pain was in my brain. It was formed from the chronic pain. That I had. But this drug that I had when they put me, you know, on in hospital has changed my life. Like, I wish the doctors gave it to me eight years ago because I see people break their hips and famous and and they’re okay in two years. I’m like, why am I still in pain? This is not okay. And I do have pain now like I can feel. So I do. It hurts a little bit and my hip, but it’s easy to handle. Like I know I could stand up and stretch it out or some pain cream on it, or sometimes I get a headache and I have a pain it all but nothing like before. Nothing at all.

Woody [00:37:19]

So that drug, what was Suboxone?

Sarah [00:37:21]

Okay, so it’s like they would give methadone to people who would be coming off heroin or things like that. And Suboxone, they give to people who are coming off oxy or morphine or things like that.

Barnesy [00:37:35]

It’s like an opioid.

Sarah [00:37:36]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So Suboxone, it’s kind of yeah, it’s like methadone, but it’s for painkillers and it has completely helped my pain. And I have no desire for because it was it was, it was a dependency on being pain free. Like it wasn’t a dependency on drug, but I guess my body got used to it, but I just craved to not being painful once and from like two weeks after I came out of hospital was on this drug. I just. It’s changed my life for the better. Like, it’s amazing. Amazing. And I have to work to come off that. But I’m just happy to not be in pain for once. Yeah, little bit.

Condo [00:38:15]

So through that period. What I mean, what were you thinking if you got in to the other end of the tunnel of what you might do with your life.

Sarah [00:38:21]

Oh, well, yeah. So that I guess goes back to the car accident. So I left Kenya, as I said, on Saturday, and then I had the car accident on Saturday. And that whole time, from when I was in Kenya to when I left, all I thought about was Kenya and these poor people that I met and how much they struggle. And the helicopter guys and the firemen who came and helped me, you know, they were chatting, as they do, to keep you busy. And I remember saying to them, Fuck, I’m so happy this didn’t happen last weekend. I was in Kenya. I’d be fucked. They couldn’t even get me to the hospital. And I was talking about Kenya to them and all. I kept thinking the whole time I was in hospital was if this happened in Kenya, I would be dead 100% and. When I was having the car accident, I guess when the car started flipping, when I opened my eyes in the desert, I don’t know if I’d call myself a Christian, but I believe in a higher power of something. And I remember saying, please, like, don’t let me die. I will. I will do whatever you need me to do to help these canyons that I’ve met. Please don’t let me die. I will give my life to helping. And ever since then, it’s just been ingrained like I have. There’s not nothing else that I can do. And I don’t know whether that is whoever that is. Are they making me live up to my promise or whether, you know, I. I meant what I said, and I. Now I can’t do anything else because that’s all I have. That’s. That’s what I live for now. Really.

Condo [00:39:54]

So let’s talk about, if that’s. The reason that you were meant to be here. How did you go about formulating sort of getting back to Kenya or making a difference for what you had seen in Kenya?

Sarah [00:40:05]

So when I was recovering, so after that, when I traveled and came back to my mom’s in Ballina, I was like I said, my full time job was to recover. I was going to the pool and doing all of those things, but it was a whole lot of time around that that I was sitting in bed and I couldn’t do anything and I’m trying to get very depressed, so I had to get busy. And when I was in L.A., my friend bought me a computer because thinking back in 2005, not everyone had a phone or a computer back then. So he bought me a laptop and said, Keep yourself busy. So I taught myself when I was in bed, web design and graphic design and just thought these people like God is not going to give them money to run this orphanage. We need to get a website. We need to get brochures on it to get sponsors. And from bed, I, you know, I sponsored a kid. My mum sponsored a kid. It went in the Northern Star like girl has car accident and helps kids in Africa. And then sponsors came from that and then it just kept getting sponsors. So then by the time and I made the whole website, I’ve made huge community of people that are helping. By the time I recovered, I think 18 months to two years and I was ready to go back to work, I had made this huge charity in Australia from my bed and I didn’t have time to go back to work because I was working full time for this organization. Yeah, not this one, but the one that I was working for was in the same town as. My women that I run now. So yeah, I just kept busy and taught myself everything I needed to know to do what I needed to do.

Woody [00:41:36]

Can I just say it is possibly one of the best websites I have been on look of stuff like that. Go through everything. You’re bloody good at what you do on that front. So what you design company. Cool. Turn a website on. Yeah, we need a way to get a website.

Sarah [00:41:49]

Oh, it’s bad to say that. But then Nicholas, I said, no, you don’t have time. Don’t listen to Nick if you need help.

Condo [00:41:56]

Girl, we always need help.

Sarah [00:41:57]

Yeah, but that would be my girlfriend. So I made the website before for the other organization. Our website now is made from a lady that helps us on the board. Her and I make that website so she’ll be thrilled to hear that. Yeah, but the other website was also fantastic to say, you know.

Woody [00:42:14]

Well, dot org. Let us know what that one is. I’ll jump on time. It has funny good but.

Sarah [00:42:19]

My my my web company in graphic design was called castle design. But it’s no longer because I have so.

Woody [00:42:25]

Much.

Sarah [00:42:25]

On it, so I’ve had to I’m shutting that down like in now in this month, next month, the.

Condo [00:42:30]

Castle design come for that quiet period as well.

Sarah [00:42:33]

Yeah. So after I set that charity up and it is looking after hundreds of kids now, but my chronic pain got so much so after, you know, six or seven years of that and running that organization. And I didn’t get on top of my pain and I wanted to have a child, so I really needed to recover. And so I walked away from that charity. I trying someone else up and they took over. And then I really, you know, went into training to help myself recover and get fit to have a baby. And then I needed to work. So then I started Castle Design, which was to work at home with my baby. And I did free websites for not for profits then. And yeah, it went really well. But then I went and did all this free work and now I don’t have time to write. Get my money.

Condo [00:43:22]

But were you working on your charity work at the same time?

Sarah [00:43:24]

Well, not that other organization that I ran, but I was doing free websites for charities, but anyone’s charities. So, yes, this organization, Rafiki, started when my daughter was a newborn.

Woody [00:43:37]

So tell us, what’s what’s the meaning of Rafiki? Why am I going to say it?

Sarah [00:43:40]

Probably way, way, way, way more than just say Rafiki in.

Barnesy [00:43:45]

Kenya is that I speak French and.

Sarah [00:43:47]

Swahili.

Barnesy [00:43:47]

Swahili. What I feel is is there is there a couple other countries that speak French?

Condo [00:43:53]

Plenty of French there as well.

Sarah [00:43:55]

There is Rafiki where my Rafiki means friend, which is what that lion is. So and then Rafiq and WEMA means loyal. So it’s a loyal friend.

Woody [00:44:08]

So tell us, how did all that look? Take us back to the start where you went. Okay. I’m going to pull the trigger on this. This is something I’m committed to and let’s make a go of it.

Sarah [00:44:16]

So it started. Well, I met in the past organization that I mentioned that I helped start. I watched a lady do play therapy or therapy with children that had suffered really horrific abuse. So I had watched her do play therapy and it was working wonders for these kids. So I had met her and helped her with her website for her organization when I was running Castle Design. And through that, she had started a home called She Had a charity. And then that charity started a home called Rafiki Mama. And this home was a rental house that was in Kuru, which is the town that I was in. And it was for girls who had been raped from the ages of a baby to 12 years old.

Barnesy [00:45:09]

What do you mean? Like a kid? Like a toddler? Yep.

Sarah [00:45:13]

Babies like I’ve been with six month old babies. Who? And now we have her, and she’s 17, raped by her father. Because for all sorts of reasons, because they’re mongrels, but because they in some cultures, they believe that it will get rid of HIV if you have sex with a virgin. Or a white woman. Or there’s all sorts of different beliefs.

Woody [00:45:36]

Education based as well as just.

Sarah [00:45:39]

Being a single. Yeah. So I so this house was started because there were plenty of girls who have been abused now from the moment they raped and they go to the police and before the court case, they need to go somewhere before they go to court because yeah, they can’t go home. They’ve got nowhere to go. There’s no homes that will take children who have been raped because for all sorts of the stigma around it. So there was a need for a home for these children because they were putting them in remand centers, which is like a prison for kids. So they were being raped further. And so this home was started and within two weeks they had 23 girls. But the she was not great fund raising money. So she reached out to me to help do a fundraiser with Castle Design and with the local community.

Woody [00:46:28]

We’re just talking around Ballina, Lennox, whole area.

Sarah [00:46:31]

Yeah, we did that with lots of organizations around here, did a fundraiser. It was costing them $5,000 a month to run it and castle design raised $17,000. So we was thrilled. Like here, 17,000. Great, three months running. But by then I was hooked. Like I love charity work. And by then I was like. I love these girls on board. I’ve heard all about them. He’s three months running costs. But what are you going to do in three months? You don’t know how to fundraise. Then you’re not going to know how to fundraise in four months. Then Nikki Mae and another local, we got a little bit drunk on margaritas up at Nikki’s house, and I went to.

Barnesy [00:47:07]

Great White of Brainstorm about it.

Sarah [00:47:09]

And I’m like, Nikki, I wasn’t before. I know how to do it. I know I shouldn’t. I’ve got no time. Like I said no initially to this fundraiser because I had no time with Cosmo Design and a newborn baby. I’m like, I can’t do this, but then how can you not do this? Like, what’s the alternative for these children? So I said, Nikki, I know how to run charities. We can start trafficking women in Australia, we can get sponsors, we can get them tax deduction.

Condo [00:47:32]

Oh so this is how it started. Mhm.

Sarah [00:47:34]

I said.

Condo [00:47:35]

My greatest.

Sarah [00:47:35]

Margaritas and Nikki’s like okay, I’m with you. And then Clay’s like, Yeah, yeah. So maybe Nikki and Clare, we made a pact and that’s how we started trafficking Women Australia. And that was to fundraise for.

Condo [00:47:48]

That doesn’t get a mention on your website. The margaritas and you know.

Sarah [00:47:52]

People get a bit funny as I mentioned it when I speak to her, but I got to know the crowd. Yeah.

Condo [00:47:58]

So how quickly did it get traction, too? Because it’s obviously got a lot of traction.

Sarah [00:48:03]

Yes, really fast. So within I think three months, there was 25 girls there. Within three months, we had the more sponsored way.

Condo [00:48:13]

So we said, yeah. Was that like individually sponsored?

Sarah [00:48:16]

Yeah. So $50 a month is generally child sponsorship.

Condo [00:48:19]

So all in all, good sponsor, kid.

Sarah [00:48:21]

Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So $50 a month is what it is to sponsor a kid. But that obviously I don’t know if it’s obvious, but that does not cover the running costs of the whole house. So that house was costing $5,000 a month to run. So. So our children can have more than one sponsor. Basically, I say 5000 divided by $50. How many sponsors do I need to cover the running costs of this house? But we had different other different programs as well that you can sponsor. You don’t have to sponsor a child. You can sponsor a general sponsorship, education, sponsorship, all sorts of things. And by way back in the beginning, though, there’s a great supporter here. Her blog is called Fat Mom Slim and very Popular. Yeah. And so when Fat Mom Slim was helping with our supporters says, oh, well, some top people read Fat Muslim, and she gets really lots of abuse, like saying how racy she’s like slim not fat who Islam and you can see happen.

Woody [00:49:25]

it.

Barnesy [00:49:25]

Happened to me a lot of do the spelling but she actually got very.

Woody [00:49:30]

Close.

Sarah [00:49:32]

She was a blogger and really big on social, so she really had a really big impact before Constantine Celeste came along and yeah, we got heaps of sponsors and it’s just really gone from then like I was also design was covering the expenses of faking where to Australia. So all 100% of the funds could go to Fakih. But then I found myself running council design, newborn baby running Rafiq and women in paying expenses. I got into so much debt like $12,000. I’m like my credit card was maxed and I just had to kind of half my workload for castle design. So there was, there’s a local couple who. Heard about me from that very first newspaper article went Girl has car crash.

Woody [00:50:17]

We’re talking about Kate and Naldo. Yeah. What legends?

Sarah [00:50:19]

Yeah. So they heard about me way back then, and I was still. It was the first time I got in my car after the accident. I had crutches. She said, Come out and talk to me about Africa. So I went out and got my collage. I made a collage and brought it out and showed her and she said, Oh, sponsor, two children. You know, I’ve now got trust funds for these two kids and they don’t know. I hope they don’t hear this. They’ll know when they’re 21. But yeah, they sponsored two children, had no idea how well see they were at all. They were just really supportive. And then one day I needed a tractor for the other organization. They took me out for dinner and gave me 60 grand. He’s the tractor darling. And then it was time. So we needed to we needed a house for our bigger girls that were facing women. So we were looking did a fundraiser.

Condo [00:51:06]

So hang on at this stage. Now, how many kids do you think?

Sarah [00:51:10]

Oh, we had I think about 32. Right. And they were a mix of small and big girls. Now, big girls, as in from over 13 up to 17, very different to toddlers up to 12. And we had to separate them because they were at really different stages. So we did a fundraiser and raised like 26,000 over the weekend. It was bright and we were thrilled, of course, because that money was going towards a rental house, another rental house for the big girls and grandma, I call her grandma now. She had me over for lunch and said, Why are you renting another house? I said, All because we need to split them up. And we’ve got a lot of because well, why don’t you buy one? I said, Well, why don’t I? Because I don’t have any money like we have no option. Of course we want to buy. Oh, just you just go and look for one and let me know and I’ll speak to Grandpa about on the college ship. And they were talking $200,000, which I was thrilled with. Fast forward, the my friends in Kenya had found a farm and it was bigger than we’d ever imagined. I probably wouldn’t have gone that big back then.

Woody [00:52:15]

Ike is now.

Sarah [00:52:15]

14. Ike is.

Woody [00:52:16]

Yep.

Sarah [00:52:17]

And I found this farm and it was in a really safe location. It had an existing house on. It had so much land that we could farm and build more houses on. And I had to ask Grandma. I said, Grandma, we found some land. It’s a little bit bigger and a little bit more expensive. But I was thinking if I could do a fundraiser, for one part, I can borrow money from this other supporter and we could get money from you. What would do it? What do you think she said? How much is all I said? $830,000. She said, Ah, I’ll come back to you. And then I remember I was a.

Condo [00:52:50]

Bit over budget, little.

Sarah [00:52:51]

Bit, and then, but I had given a proposal. I’ve got this much I can borrow and this much. I’m going to fundraise it, I’m going to do this. So I think if we could still get your 250, we can do it these other ways as well. If we all chuckling, what do you think? And then I was in Bali and she rang and I said, Grandpa has just come home from the RSL and he’s decided you can have the 830,000 like the well again, always having a margarita in Bali. When she said that with my husband I went, Yeah, 830. I’ve got photos of me and her with the checks, like I take selfies with her and money all the time and wait.

Barnesy [00:53:28]

Who is this? This is your grandma.

Sarah [00:53:30]

Your grandma? This is Noel and Kate Doyle. They live in grandma lives in Bel and a grandpa passed away.

Woody [00:53:36]

They’re both they this one Order of Australia medals, she and I.

Barnesy [00:53:41]

And they’ve been your biggest supporters for the biggest.

Sarah [00:53:44]

Supporter after.

Woody [00:53:44]

The article. How did that come about. How did they come across? Obviously they well they worked really hard for years running business really hard.

Sarah [00:53:50]

So petrol stations, petrol stations, they started farmer Charlie’s in detox. Yes. So just really good business. Grandpa was really smart and just they worked really hard. They only came into money when they were 60, 70 years old. And since then they just like. Giving it away. Taking friends to Hawaii. First class like a legend. Amazing. And she said, Yep, you can have 830,000. Grandpa said, Yes. I’m like, What the hell? So we we bought this farm and it was just mind blowing to think that we had.

Condo [00:54:25]

Did you actually visit to see the farm before you purchased it?

Sarah [00:54:27]

No, they they they had because they were going on a safari with friends and they were there. But I have.

Condo [00:54:32]

Also the Doyles had seen it.

Sarah [00:54:34]

The Doyles had seen it and many other people in Kenya. We have we have lots of stuff there and lots of other people that I trusted were there to look at it. So we did the sale and it was amazing to think we had this permanent house. There was one house that was on there and that’s where the small girls were going to move. So we moved the small girls there, and then we’re back to needing a house to the big girls, because that’s where it all started. Like how do we we had money to rent because house and now we’ve got this farm. Now we need to build a big girls house. So we got some great ambassadors on board. Celeste Barber’s one of our ambassadors. And then when Constance came on board, that’s when eight times before overnight, like she came on board.

Woody [00:55:19]

Just to reach and everything is just.

Sarah [00:55:21]

Yeah. Her reach. So she came on board when she said, How can I help you? And I said, Well, we’ve got this farm, we’re really lucky, but we need to now build a house for the big girls. Now, Constance is all about queens and she has, you know, she’s a queen, Queens. Follow her. And I said, And these are our queens. So let’s call it the Queens Castle. How about we do a fundraiser online? Like a go fund me where people can, you know, pitch in by brick? I don’t know. We were just brainstorming, and let’s just do a fundraiser. I think about $75,000 will do it. We can build a house on the farm for our big girls. It’s called the Queens Castle. Let’s go. And then all of a sudden, she gave me no warning. She’s like, Right, I’ve done it. I’ve done it. We’ve done the GoFundMe. It’s launched, but it’s crashed. I’m like, What? You didn’t give me any any warning at all. But so much traffic had gone to the Go Fund Me page that it crashed the Internet. And then we had to we spoke to them. They put it on another server or something, and then within 6 hours is 100,000. And then within I think within the 24 hours is about 180,000. And then, of course, I’ve got I say I cut it off at 200,000. Exactly. That was about two weeks later. But yeah. We’ve got $200,000 which built. A huge house, so a Queens Castle, but it’s cut in half. So there’s one side. It was initially for volunteers, which we now use for training and for kids to do other training in there. And the other side is for the Queen’s Castle, because we had so much money. We also built another little two bedroom hut. It’s around here. You can picture African Hot, which we call Mikaere Mtoto, which is like small angel. And that’s for when young girls who come to us first, if they come straight from the police station, you can imagine how traumatized they are. And you go straight into a house if, you know, throw psycho a little loud. Girls, psycho is my favorite. And that’s endearing. I love I’m you know, my daughter’s a psycho so, you know, it’s very little loud psychos and it’s really overwhelming. So we put them in mock mtoto. It’s kind of like a stepping stone house. So they go in with an aunty and just come and eat with all the small girls and go back and just they stay there for two weeks as they.

Condo [00:57:36]

Sort of transition.

Sarah [00:57:37]

Yeah.

Barnesy [00:57:38]

Can I, can I ask just a. Whole structure of it, like is there. Ten staff to the each house is a security lock. How does it work for the girls? Like is there, you know, a volunteer for every couple of girls? How does it work? Like in that whole set up in the structures? Is security at yes.

Condo [00:57:59]

24/7?

Sarah [00:58:00]

Yeah, we do. The girls are in a lot of danger. So in Kenya, if you are prosecuted for rape, you’ll go to prison for life. But if you murder someone, you go to prison for life. So there’s a lot of risk to their lives because the the male whoever has done this is often the breadwinner. So if that person goes to jail, they won’t be able to feed their family. So a lot of the family members are often after the little girl because they’re either going to go to prison for life if they get busted or try and kill because same thing. So they’re at huge risk, which is why we wanted to move to a safer location. So we have electric fence right around the farm. We’ve got three Maasai guards that have bow and arrow that have snake poison on it. And I said, I can get you some guns. And they’re like, What’s that going to do? A bullet can go right through there. Like, if the tip of this touches an elephant, it will be dead in like 20 minutes.

Woody [00:58:54]

Just quickly, the Maasai war, so we’re talking the real the toll like those guys are just hunters. Yeah, unreal.

Sarah [00:59:00]

So we have three men, Goodfellas. Amazing. So nice. Do not fuck with them. Do not leave the house at night because they will shoot before they ask questions like that. That’s why you hire messiahs. Because they don’t muck about at.

Barnesy [00:59:12]

All and they just live. They just live and cruise around the. Yeah.

Sarah [00:59:15]

So one of them lives there on the property and two of them live in town. So the mine they had Messi leaves there and the 24 seven and we have someone on shift walking around 24 seven. We also have I think eight German shepherds added that have been with us forever and they’re trying to attack. Yeah. Anyone but the kids and me. I don’t think they’re convinced of me. It’s really scary.

Barnesy [00:59:40]

But is this is taking a wall to work out that structure like did that have did you have that at those rented house?

Sarah [00:59:46]

At the rented houses, we had German shepherds and we had a god. We didn’t have a messiah. Just because the compound was a lot smaller. The German shepherds would do the trick, you know, not mean didn’t.

Barnesy [00:59:57]

Have to cover as much ground sort of thing.

Sarah [00:59:59]

Exactly. And we didn’t have as many kids. We had 25 kids there now. Now the farm.

Condo [01:00:04]

So what’s the makeup of the farm now.

Sarah [01:00:06]

So we, we built McMURTRIE to that stepping stone house the transition has and with the money we also built an office. So there’s an office on the, we have one compound at the end that has the big girls house and the training house or the volunteers house on the side. We also did a trek in New Zealand where we raised money for one of our girls who’s been with us since she was 12. A stories horrific that you don’t need to know the stories, but she’s very, very handicapped now from her abuse that happened from when she was a baby, what her mother did to her. So she is a danger to herself. She can never leave us. So and she’s also very manic, very huge mental issues that she was struggling when she was in the house with the girls. She believes that she has to have sex with everyone. That is what she’s ever known. So she will run around. She would do many inappropriate things. She can’t leave the farm. So we wanted to build her a house. So that is on where the big girls house is. We also have a Hulu movie which is translated to a safe haven, which is where she will live, but it’s now a special needs house. We have two other girls, so three girls in total that will probably live there forever with an auntie. So we have two houses there. We have the small girls house and we have Mukaila, Omotosho and the office. And then we have the King’s Castle, which is up the other end. So we yeah, this is fascinating.

Woody [01:01:37]

So on this, what I found really interesting, like most charities will focus obviously on the girls perspective, but I think what makes you different is the actual bring the boys in to try and teach them the alternatives to how they’ve been going about. Yes, what they’ve been doing.

Sarah [01:01:49]

Exactly. So the boys come to us from the streets. So they have run to the streets because, you know, their homes were probably more violent then more scary than the streets of Ngukurr, which is pretty scary. The streets at night are awful or they came from huge poverty where they literally weren’t eating, so they were just going to find food. Some of them we’ve we have a six year old who came to us. He caught he ran away from an orphanage in Nairobi and he jumped on the back of a semi trailer from Nairobi, which is 3 hours on, you know, on a good road, and caught it all the way to Nakuru. And he’s come to us like the stories of these kids are little kids. I look at my 11 year old daughter and thank goodness she can’t I have to walk her across the road to school. I don’t know how they just live these lives, but these kids come to us. From the streets. And we have about 35 boys. We have a small kings house and a big kings. The big kings kind of look after themselves there over 16 and they have to cook for themselves. We’re trying to teach them how to look after themselves. And then the smaller ones who kind of need aunties and and guidance and, you know, we teach them another alternative, you know, that they don’t have to live like that, that they’re worth more, and that they do hold a lot of value and you know that their lives can be good. We also do home visits where we take them back to their community to visit their homes and where they’re from if it’s safe.

Barnesy [01:03:20]

He said. Not only did it look, can it be pretty?

Sarah [01:03:23]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I would never go on a home visit. I’ve been on home visits to kids and families that I know and love, but it’s it’s risky for me. It’s risky for them. If they if a white person would go.

Barnesy [01:03:35]

On and try and tell you.

Sarah [01:03:37]

It could. It could. It puts the charity at danger and it puts the child danger because if the child ever goes home, they associate that child with a white person, which would often make them think there’s a lot of money involved in that. And it’s just we have. So you asked if there was any volunteers. We have 46 staff members. Yeah. So we’ve got a manager for each house and then assistant manager and then carers. Everyone is trained therapeutically to look after a parent therapeutically.

Woody [01:04:06]

So what does that differ from normal? Say Hey, caring for kids in Kenya, that abuse and that sort of stuff. Yeah.

Sarah [01:04:13]

So I mean, discipline in Kenya is just belting the shit out of them like you don’t you don’t talk about feelings, you don’t talk like there’s no if you are naughty, you are belted like really terribly. So our role and we’ve had to teach our staff because they they find it really fascinating that you wouldn’t hit a kid if they did something naughty. And where there is no heating at all, you’re not allowed. You can’t treat the children with disrespect, but they also can’t treat you with disrespect. And it’s very different to Kenyan culture. But the staff are learning. They’re taking what they’ve learned home to their own families and they’re saying it helps them as well. But a lot of the things that they deal with in their work day trigger a lot of things in them because they’ve suffered as well. They have a lot you know, a lot of them have gone through what these kids have gone through. So it’s a tough working environment. But we. Now our staff are very happy with their work environment. I went over in April and they’re really enjoying everything. We’re doing a lot more to help our staff. We’re giving them therapy to deal with what they’re dealing with. We give them staff appreciation days, which they’ve never experienced, and they really they’re really loving working there. And that shines down to the kids as well. The children often come in being very disrespectful. I’ve been called every name under the sun, which I think is so funny and it doesn’t insult me at all because I know that means that they love me and they just trying to say, if I’ll walk away from them, look, I’ve had the worst thing said to me and I just, you know, you still stick around. And then it turns out that kid who wanted you to cut your throat and throw you to the cows, they’re your favorite, you know, because they’re just pushing you away. But they we are now teaching the kids. You can’t speak to us respectfully. There will be consequences. The consequence will not be hitting you or taking your food or treating you disrespectfully. But you can’t go on a bike ride if you do that or you can’t go swimming this weekend if you you know, there will be consequences. And they’re learning to the the amazing their behaviors have changed and the the routines that we fit that we put in place for them. And the staff are finding it much easier to manage the children.

Woody [01:06:32]

Are you saying now that the older kids that you’ve had under your care for a oh, not a long period, but are reasonably long, they are now modeling the behavior that you need from the younger ones or you’re growing a bit of leadership within it.

Sarah [01:06:43]

Yes, I’ve had some tough experiences because I guess you learn as you go and not in the past. Not a lot of. Good decisions have been made by other people that I worked with. So you learn as you go. And we’ve had boys that couldn’t deal with the rules that were in place and the leadership that was in place at that time and they ran away. So a lot of these boys are back on the streets and I keep in touch with them. When they still a fine, they’ll call me. And that’s how I stay in touch with them.

Barnesy [01:07:17]

I’ll just toss out how you get random numbers.

Sarah [01:07:20]

Hi, Mom. Oh. What have you done now? So I keep in touch with them separately. Terrific women, because they are not under our umbrella. But they. I love you still. But I don’t. I have people that will take them food. I will never send the money. But they. Yeah. We’ve, we’ve had some tough experiences with the kids leaving, but we’ve got some great older boys now, one who’s left and he’s going to university and he lives on his own. So while he’s out of a house, we pay his rent and we pay for him to go to university while he follows the rules like he has to go to university. He can’t go back on drugs. We have uncles that go and check on him and check how he’s going, just like a father and uncle would. And we pay his bills while he’s doing that. When he finishes university after six months after he finishes university, he has six months to get on his own feet. So he needs to get a job and then he’s on his own, just like a child, you know? Yeah, we’ve got a boy at the moment who’s just he’s finished school. He wasn’t thrilled with his results, but he did better than I did at school. And but they give themselves a real hard time. Like they don’t just want to be a bus driver. He wants to be an architect and the best of the best. So he wanted an I. And it’s like, you don’t need to be the best of the best. You can just, you know, be just as long as you have a job and you can support yourself. Don’t give yourself such a hard time. So he took a while to tell him that, you know, say were okay and you know you can do a plumbing apprenticeship which so took him a while to convince but he did a computer course he got credits and distinctions and now he’s going to do the plumbing course and he’s thrilled. So he’s moving out in a few months. We’ve had girls that are moving out and they do a hairdresser’s course or something. So with the well, we’ve learned things along the way and there have been kids that have left and, you know, are back on the street. But. You’re not always going to win them all. That sounds awful. But, you know, it always does. Not everything is going to be success, but you learn from your mistakes. And yeah, I think we’re going to have a lot of success stories with the kids that are with us now. We do have role models in the House. They have we do voice of the child meetings, which is some way for the children to make sure that they’re heard and believed. So we have an older person in the house that just calls the kids up for a meeting and they write down all their questions. And then I get on zoom with them and they go through their questions. Some of them are hilarious, like the little girls going, I like the food, but I don’t like to work for it. And we’re like, I’m sorry, but we all have to sweep up and stuff. So some of the things are really funny. We don’t get.

Barnesy [01:10:00]

To go to bed at 9:00. I want to go to bed at midnight.

Sarah [01:10:03]

Since you left, we haven’t got any chocolate that’s going to happen. Yeah, sorry. But some of them are serious. Like why? Why was soccer canceled last weekend? The staff didn’t give us a real reason. You know, some other questions that are really important questions for them to be asked. And, you know, if they feel like a staff member isn’t supporting them or speaks badly to them, I’ll said it’ll be investigated. So they always heard. But you know, kids with trauma also do make up a lot of stories. So it’s really hard to figure out what’s a lie, what’s what’s anger, because they’re being disciplined, you know, by not being allowed to go swimming or bike riding. It’s hard to figure out what the truth is, but we’re all we always have a way around it. I love speaking with them on Zoom and I love going over there with them. And we’ve got some really trusted aunties and uncles in place that can work out everything that’s going on.

Barnesy [01:10:59]

What about just to paint a picture of like if you’re a teenager, early twenties in Kenya? I do. Most people I know it’s quite a poor country, but people I find it is it a pretty is an easy spot to get work is it just you just on the street everywhere trying to join a gang to get any money like.

Sarah [01:11:19]

It’s all different? Yeah, it depends on how the.

Barnesy [01:11:22]

Social structure sort of stuff is it.

Sarah [01:11:25]

It’s, it’s hard. A lot of people like even in the last three years, our staff have been complaining that prices have gone right up like their wages are not covering things. And we’re working really hard at the moment to do a restructure and try and work out and do a salary review to see if we can increase their wages. But we need more donations to do that. Yeah, because their wages aren’t covering things. But what.

Barnesy [01:11:47]

Is that? Food and petrol, electricity.

Sarah [01:11:49]

Everything like cooking oil, taxis, everything like that has like doubled since COVID. I think so expensive. It’s really common to not have a job and there’s no Social Security like, yeah, you got grandmas looking after families of 12 people and these 60, 70 year old grandmas are going to look for work on farms and they’re getting a dollar a day. Yeah. To feed these and kids. You know, a lot of our kids leave and go to the streets because it’s easier for them like they can get their drugs, which.

Barnesy [01:12:20]

Stop with.

Sarah [01:12:21]

Hunger.

Barnesy [01:12:21]

What are the drugs? What are they? What are they on all us and stuff? A lot of glue, mostly.

Sarah [01:12:25]

So you’ll see.

Woody [01:12:26]

Sniffing. Sniffing glue.

Sarah [01:12:28]

That’s the cheapest. So another project that we have is called the Feeding Program, and that happened with when our small boys came with us. They were worried about their brothers in town. So because we can’t we could only take how many fill our houses. And they were always worried about their brothers being hungry in town. So all of our kids wanted to cook and feed and go into town and feed them. So on every Sunday before COVID, our kids would cook up big batches of food, like in literally big buckets of rice and chapatis and things. And then we’d all go in the vans into town and meet a bunch of street kids and then they’d feed them. But then and we did that every Sunday and but then COVID hit and all the restaurants were closed and the kids eat out of the bins. So that’s how they get food or they beg. But because town was shut down and the restaurants were closed, these kids were starving because there was nowhere to eat at the bins. There was no one on town they could beg for, so they were literally starving. So we had to jump in and feed them every day. But then that costs us a lot more money. So we put a call out there for sponsors. So that’s another sponsorship you can do where you sponsor the feeding program, and it can be any amount. We just ask for a monthly sum. Five bucks, ten bucks, $10,000 is fine. Anything. And then we have five, five full time staff that turn up every single day. We now have an office in town and we feed nine or nearly 100 kids now every single day. And we’ve done that since COVID. They we employed to we would like a café, we’d call them to feed them, and now we’re starting to do education. So on Friday we pull out the whiteboard that we have and we teach them reading and writing.

Condo [01:14:17]

So this is in town?

Sarah [01:14:18]

Yes. So with the 90 kids, they all have their own book. We put out the cardboard box of books, they pull it out and these kids are off their faces. They have their little a bottle of glue. They just hold it under their mouth. And they just if you go back on our Instagram and stuff, you’ll see them with a bottle under their mouth. And that’s just them sniffing glue. And a lot of people say superglue.

Woody [01:14:39]

Now, what is it? You never seen this before?

Sarah [01:14:41]

I mean, it’s like the triangle strong. Yeah. Like petrol.

Barnesy [01:14:45]

Glue. Yeah.

Sarah [01:14:46]

Really, really strong resin.

Barnesy [01:14:48]

Any sort of petrol?

Sarah [01:14:48]

Exactly.

Woody [01:14:49]

What you breathing every day.

Barnesy [01:14:51]

Is going to be my.

Sarah [01:14:52]

Eyes. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people say, how can you let them have glue around you? It’s like, well, I’m not going to take that from them. This glue can cost them ten shillings, you know, and that will comfort them and help them sleep at night for two days, whereas ten shillings would never buy them a meal. So I can’t. I can’t tell them. You can’t come in here without you. That’s the only thing that’s comforting them. If I can’t take them home and look after them. You know, let them have the glue.

Barnesy [01:15:20]

So what what would be, like, equivalent to a meal at a restaurant there? Like a bit of a chicken and rice or something? So what would that be? And Ozzy, is that like a five boxer box.

Sarah [01:15:31]

All about $2 a meal.

Barnesy [01:15:34]

For the.

Sarah [01:15:34]

Restaurants? Yes. So it’s and it’s always like rice. We have one day a week where they have meat, but it’s really common. Like they’ll just have like a avocado, some fried rice. Yeah, some chipotle spinach, cooked carrot and things when you.

Barnesy [01:15:50]

Go out on the farm.

Sarah [01:15:51]

So and there it will be big bowls because this is their only meal. So they so we’re employing a local café to do that and we split them up. So half the bigger kids go to one and the smaller kids go to the other. And one day we do reading and writing, one day we do soccer, one day we do painting, one day we do beading. And in that time where they’re doing soccer, they do put down their glue. And then it’s only even if it’s just an hour without their glue, like just they just put it by their side, it’s that’s going to be better for them. But we’ve taken recently taken five of the smallest kids into the King’s Castle.

Barnesy [01:16:27]

So how small are those kids that are in on the streets to figure out they love six or seven?

Sarah [01:16:31]

Yeah, these ones were they look little love, but they tell you they think they’re 12. But I think they’re about. Yes. Seven. And you don’t know their age because they don’t know where they’re from. They don’t have a birth certificate. You can get their teeth checked and that’s how you can get their eyes, get their accurate age. But what we then do and this is what we do at home as well at King’s Castle, is we if they don’t know where they’re from, we do family tracing. So we have an outreach team that. They all every child has a key worker, which is like the guardian, their auntie or uncle. And will we when we’re doing therapy with the children, we’ll be talking to them and learning about where they’re from. And that’s kind of how they find out if we don’t know who their families, where they’re from. We still have one little boy who we still don’t know where he’s from. We only know that he came from this orphanage in Nairobi. So his home visit is we take him to Nairobi to visit the children at the orphanage, his brothers, and that were there because that’s all he has. And you have to have a connection to something to grow up and get into something. So he goes to the orphanage. There’s some other girls who we she doesn’t have anyone. We don’t know anyone. So her home visit is to go with her aunty or key worker into town and she has chicken and chips and a soda and that’s her home visit because she doesn’t have anyone to go with and she’ll stay with us forever. But we’re starting to do family tracing with the kids in town. If they reach out and say, you know, they just starting to tell their story and they say, oh, I ran away when two years ago because I was hungry. My mum’s good or whatever. I don’t know how I don’t know where I came from. I don’t know how to get home. So we’ll start looking for them.

Barnesy [01:18:08]

So little young girls, so just runaway boys.

Sarah [01:18:10]

Maybe we only see the boys. There are girls, but they hide, you know, they don’t come out often.

Barnesy [01:18:15]

Why is that? Because they get raped, although.

Sarah [01:18:17]

Yeah, well, they’re probably scared. Or they’re being held by someone, you know, and like they’re not allowed to come out that you don’t often see girls in this group, it’s mostly boys. And yeah, it’s really tough because there are girls and you know that people are using them, but you can’t go and take them. You just can’t. You’ll be in trouble. But in the place in the children’s department won’t do anything unless you pay them to do it. So we’re starting to we’ve got one boy reunited back at home. We’re slowly starting to do it, but we’ve got 100 kids and yeah, we just do what we can. But there’s thousands of children in town.

Barnesy [01:18:53]

Yeah, it must.

Woody [01:18:54]

Be just one town in Kenya. How big is this town?

Sarah [01:18:57]

Nakuru is quite big. It’s I think don’t quote me. Second largest in Kenya goes Nairobi and then Ngukurr.

Woody [01:19:03]

Okay. So it’s a quantity course.

Sarah [01:19:05]

It’s a big city and.

Barnesy [01:19:06]

Like is it equivalent to Gold Coast, Brisbane, that sort of size or.

Sarah [01:19:11]

I would say bigger. Well but can we look it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m not definite, but it is big and it’s busy and you know, Kenya’s huge these.

Barnesy [01:19:21]

So is there a wealthy population inside Kenya?

Sarah [01:19:24]

Yeah, really wealthy.

Barnesy [01:19:25]

And what do they get their wealth from? Is it from like mining minerals and.

Sarah [01:19:30]

Yeah, a lot of times, yeah. Yeah, the government. Government. So it’s a lot of government. Where do.

Condo [01:19:36]

You want to stop.

Sarah [01:19:36]

That? Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. I don’t know exactly, but mostly government are corrupt. I’ve dealt with it develop all the time. And there in Nairobi, majority of them there are some into Kuru. But the only people I know that are rich have been government working from the government.

Woody [01:19:56]

The crazy thing is Kenya is what you’d call a relatively successful African nation. So that’s what’s worrying. It’s like, look around them Botswana guys pretty good, but there’s not much South Africa. Where else do you go? Like because there’s not a hell of a lot positivity around there.

Sarah [01:20:11]

No, and it’s getting better. They’ve just had elected a new president and that was scary because the elections can be really, really violent. But we’ll see how that goes. But, you know, there’s a lot of great people as well who try and fight the corruption.

Barnesy [01:20:27]

And be like clever, articulate people that know how far and bad it is.

Sarah [01:20:31]

Hmm. Oh, yeah. Everyone knows how bad it is.

Barnesy [01:20:34]

How do they. I guess it’s just what it is. It’s always been like.

Sarah [01:20:38]

You drive down the street, the place a pull you over. You know, it’s time is, you know, you pay your fee and on you go like, oh, I’ve had to pay my way out of so many situations, so many situations.

Barnesy [01:20:48]

And you’re just in there helping kids.

Sarah [01:20:49]

And they’re like, Oh, I don’t care, they don’t care. And but I also now I’ve been there since 2005, so I know a lot of people now. So if I was to get in trouble, I would know who to call. Yeah, but there’s some great people as well that are fighting corruption. We’ve got so we take our little girls through the court systems as well. If we know who raped them, we will. The caseworker will work with the little girl and get her ready. We have court trials every two.

Woody [01:21:18]

Or three cameras. I don’t you on your way.

Sarah [01:21:20]

No, we we got the first camera installed in Kenya. So this happened when a little three year old girl. Well, we have two. The first one was a boy, a straight boy that had been raped and held kidnaped for years and years. And he was he had to testify against this filthy old man. And in Kenya, you can testify. You’re allowed like the rapist will sit beside you and they’re allowed to question the child and say, that’s wrong. We went, that’s not true. And, you know, intimidate them and these kids. How scary is that? You couldn’t even do that.

Barnesy [01:21:55]

As an adult if I saw someone like.

Sarah [01:21:57]

That. Three years old or this boy. So he was a teenager then and he had to testify against this man who raped him for six years and he was pissing his pants in the court. This guy was yelling at him and I didn’t care. He still testified and this guy went to jail. But watching him do that, this poor kid. So that’s where the idea came for the first video link. So we and we had a lot of girls go to this local court where they had to testify. And one of our little girls, she couldn’t do it because the rapist was screaming at her and they don’t do anything. So she gets let out and she’s in danger. So we did a fundraiser for a video link and we got that through. And that means that they can go in. Seek a safe room out the back where they just talk into a camera and have a video as I have a television screen so they can see that the kid can see the court, but the rapist is in court and he can’t see the kid. So they can’t questions, they can’t intimidate and they can’t come near. So we sneak them in the back and sneak them out the back then. But then that’s that’s you only go to that court if your rape happened around that area. So then we’ve got five other courts in the area, so.

Barnesy [01:23:10]

Don’t have a.

Sarah [01:23:10]

Camera yet. That’s right. So we had a little she was just three years old and she was she had to go to another court. She’d gone to try to testify two times against her father, who was this big, revolting man. And he would intimidator. And she’s three and she would just cry and no one would. And the judge would know and did anything. So I said to, I can’t remember who it was, but I said, Right, she has to go to court next week. I’m going to get this note next month I’m going to get this video link. So over the weekend I’m like, I’m not sleeping until I get to bed. And everyone’s like, Oh, here we go again. There we go. It. So I was awake and I said, This little three year old has to go to court and I’m not going to let her speak to have her father speak to her again. So we got it was about $18,000 we had to get and we got that video link put in that court and we got her ready and said, you’re going to speak into a microphone.

Condo [01:24:04]

So you paid for the video.

Sarah [01:24:05]

Link for the video, installed the room in the court and spoke with the judges and that and got that installed. And we trained her. We told her, you’re going to speak into a camera and a microphone. She was thrilled. She’s like, I’m like a pastor, this is great. And she did it and she testified against him and got him. And she she was thrilled. She’s like all this. I was talking on a microphone and yeah, she was she was excited and she did it. So then he’s he’s gone to jail.

Barnesy [01:24:31]

So so when what is life? Is it life like? He’s not coming out every day.

Sarah [01:24:35]

Yeah, but so that is what it’s meant to be. If you are prosecuted for rape, you go to prison for life. But unless you pay, unless you’re wealthy and you can pay a fee. But not many of the people who we’ve put in jail are wealthy. Yeah, yeah. But there’s a lot like there’s a lot that.

Barnesy [01:24:53]

If you had any really heavy situations, have you had people come on to the farm or anything like that?

Sarah [01:24:57]

We had Oh, I haven’t been there, but we’ve had people come on to the farm.

Barnesy [01:25:00]

But then trying to get to a kid, well, we.

Sarah [01:25:02]

Don’t know. They’ve come on to the farm and tried to break in, but then the Messiah. Yeah, yeah. But they, we don’t know what they were there for.

Barnesy [01:25:10]

So six foot six guy with it with a spear stand and Nancy Ronstadt. So I was dropping off the python.

Sarah [01:25:19]

I mean, go. And the German ship. Yeah.

Barnesy [01:25:21]

How come there’s a German shepherd on my leg pizza delivery.

Sarah [01:25:25]

But we’ve, I’ve not had situations or we’ve not known of that at all, so. Yeah. And we keep it very secret where the girls are and they, we built a school so we have a school called Jazeera Rafiki on. So that’s now we’re going out to find the small girls houses. There we have Jaziri, Rafiki School, which is for the small girls to go to school because they can’t go out of the farm to go out to community school. So we like to keep it as routine as possible. So they go into our little school, well, they with us and then if they’re court cases over and over at night, then they go out to a community school until they go home. But always our main mission is to send the children home if their home is safe. So if they if the abuse happened at home with mom or whatever, we will look for another family member, grandma, aunty, cousin.

Barnesy [01:26:16]

Family. Pretty good. Will they take him back?

Sarah [01:26:18]

Yeah, they very Kenyans, really. They will. You know, like the village will look after the family, but we have to make sure it’s safe. So that’s a lot of work for our outreach team, sourcing the family member, and then we have to investigate who’s around the area, then take the child out and witness how they interact and check who’s that dodgy man? Who’s that? Does he sleep? You know, because often they’re sleeping in a small room. Seven people like make sure there’s no men sleeping around.

Woody [01:26:47]

It’s an entire social welfare system based out of a small.

Sarah [01:26:51]

Yeah, so we do home, we do outreach visits where we take the child home in the lead up to going home after everything’s sorted. And then once they return home, we then continue to check on them and do spot checks to make sure that they are remaining safe. And, you know, a lot of times we’ve gone back and it’s not been good and we’ve written the child straight back out and brought them home.

Barnesy [01:27:12]

And you have the right to do that. They can’t stop, you.

Sarah [01:27:14]

Know, if if they. Yeah, absolutely. If they if there’s proven, you know.

Barnesy [01:27:20]

What what’s the life like the three year old that got his her dad put away or what’s a mom like? The moms do they’ve come to you guys and just broken into.

Sarah [01:27:29]

Yeah so we’re so sorry.

Barnesy [01:27:31]

You know, is it like do you get a lot of that with.

Sarah [01:27:33]

All different that mum. Yeah. She was a gorgeous mom who, who ran and took that when she found out she took it straight to it. Went to. Like a domestic violence shelter and called the police are there is some mums we’ve just had a little 11 year old girl who she told a teacher that something had happened and her mum and dad took her to the hospital and said She’s lying, it’s not true. We didn’t immunizations and she’d been raped. But they were saying, she’s lying. She’s lying because they didn’t want because it was it was the father and they didn’t want him to get in trouble. So there’s a lot of talk and that could be because he’s the breadwinner. It could be because they literally don’t believe it could be for so many reasons.

Barnesy [01:28:13]

If I’m scared of the dad. Exactly.

Sarah [01:28:16]

Sometimes the mums have been the ones that have sold the girl. Sometimes it can be a complete stranger and the parents and mortified. And they just want our help because they don’t know what to do with these children who have been raped because it’s like they are used goods. Some parents bring them in thinking that oh now my six year old she no one wants her now.

Woody [01:28:36]

Religion’s so big two is not.

Sarah [01:28:38]

Really big.

Barnesy [01:28:39]

They just hide behind that shit. Mhm.

Sarah [01:28:40]

Yeah. Yeah. So we, all of our staff are religious. I know our organization is not religious at all, but I, the staff that they have worship, the children are religious as well, but they’re all different. You can be Christian, Muslim, all different, but they’re allowed to worship how they want. But it will never rule our organization at all because I’m just not interested.

Condo [01:29:03]

So where to from from now for the charity.

Sarah [01:29:07]

We’re to definitely no bigger way of keeping it on. The farm is called Doyle Farm after grandma and grandpa we definitely want to. Look after the kids that we have and the staff that we have. And as our bigger kids transition out, more costs come with that because we going to have university hopefully or, you know, any courses and things where you want to just look after who we have really. Well, there’s a lot of things we want to do, but it comes down to funds and it costs 45,000 AUD a month to run all of our projects and we raised that from Lennox Head. So it’s not easy. Some some months in the past literally been screaming out for help over the weekend. I have to pay wages next week and now I’ve got $600 in the bank, but we got a great board and getting some more volunteers who are helping me. I’m the only employed person full time. Nikki does all of our books and she’s done that from the very beginning. Yeah, so we just want to.

Barnesy [01:30:13]

Jeff Bezos.

Sarah [01:30:14]

Oh, yes, I’ve tried to.

Barnesy [01:30:17]

Lay low, guy. Let’s get some fucking here in the mix.

Sarah [01:30:20]

We just need a really large cash infusion. So I’m just not busting my guts, just trying to get ten, 15, 20 bucks here, there and everywhere to pay these huge bills. No interest in growing bigger because we don’t have the manpower. We just want to I want it to be community led and I want this staff to learn how to do their job really well and just watch them thrive because they do such a great job. I want to visit them but not have to control what they do because they teach me as well as, you know, I’m teaching them things, but I just want to do what we do on our farm really well, but not grow too big. So we can’t handle it because that’s been a real problem over the years is it’s gone really big, really fast and it’s just killed us, you know, just working seven days a week. 16 hours a day and you just you never on top of it. And then you realize, oh, shit, my daughter’s ten and I haven’t seen it for.

Barnesy [01:31:15]

It must be that like this, just this stress. Because you got so many people, you want to hell the fucking stress of just getting it.

Woody [01:31:22]

How do you take it.

Barnesy [01:31:23]

You the mental side of that.

Sarah [01:31:25]

Yeah. And I think what.

Barnesy [01:31:27]

Must be normal.

Sarah [01:31:28]

Is the stress is the responsibility on my shoulders I think. Yeah I do try and ignore that with red wine each afternoon. Yeah. When people bring it up then I’m like, oh yeah, that’s right. But it’s a huge responsibility. But it’s I just feel I feel safe with the people I have helping us. And the people know that I’m dedicated and passionate and I will never, ever, ever walk away from these children. So I just have to hope that people will continue to help me do this, because if I run out of funds, I’ll have to sell my house and keep going, because the alternative is these staff will have to lose their job and they won’t be able to feed their family and these kids will go back into abuse. I mean, would you let that happen? I would fight to the death for my daughter and I would do that for these children as well. It’s just you think what would you do for your own family? You would. It’s a responsibility, but what are you going to do? You just have no no option. There’s no choice. So it is a responsibility. But it’s it’s it’s my life and it’s my family. What can you do.

Barnesy [01:32:34]

Listening to what you’ve been saying? I can’t. You can’t help but think of your own kids when you’re saying they’re giving you those examples. It’s it’s it doesn’t even seem real. It’s so fucking sad and crazy.

Sarah [01:32:45]

And when I when a child because the voice of my daughter, we start reflecting where my home started when she was a newborn. I remember I was building the website for her when for this organization, when she was still in a little pouch. And I just thought and I couldn’t read the words of what the abuse happened to these kids because Luisa was the age of some of these kids. I’m like, I’m not reading the copy because I cannot read about these babies being abused. And I always look at the the ten the 11 year old is like my daughter’s 11. I look at kids that are her age going, no way. Yeah, well, 43. Yeah. And they’re beautiful children and they’re so grateful and it makes you feel really ashamed that they’re grateful for food. When my daughter’s like, I’m not eating that. Yeah, get that sauce away from me, you know? And but these kids are like source that.

Barnesy [01:33:35]

These organic blueberries. That’s right. Yeah. They storm the fucking farmer’s market.

Sarah [01:33:40]

Exactly. And it’s a real contrast and it’s it’s a very weird feeling to have people so grateful just for basic human needs and rights that they everyone deserves. Yeah.

Condo [01:33:53]

So before we get to our bouncy ball, that question, um, what are your ideas around sort of trying to have an annualized sort of income stream? How can people support now going forward? Like what’s the, what do you think of the the touch points on to offer those sorts of ideas so you’re not sort of scratching for 25 bucks a year and a half from Jeff.

Sarah [01:34:17]

Jeff to go away and.

Barnesy [01:34:19]

We keep going. I just I’m going to die. I mean, tonight.

Sarah [01:34:22]

Please do not give a.

Barnesy [01:34:23]

Shit about Jeff.

Sarah [01:34:24]

Straight to the inbox.

Barnesy [01:34:25]

For that many fucking books off. Yeah.

Sarah [01:34:29]

You can do. Yeah. Well I have to say the, the, the 25 and the $50 a month is really what has saved us over Cove that I know a lot of people that have run charities who are really and I’ve been jealous when they’ve had these really large sums of money and that’s how they they have survived all these years. But then they’ve shut down over COVID because those huge lump sums of money stopped coming in over COVID, whereas at 10.20 550 mostly have still continued coming in from the everyday people over COVID. So that really helped us survive and a lot of people weren’t surviving.

Condo [01:35:04]

So that’s why people can help.

Sarah [01:35:05]

Yeah, 50, $50 a month. Any monthly sponsorships? So we know it’s coming in. We know what’s coming in the next month.

Condo [01:35:12]

And I just jump on your website.

Sarah [01:35:14]

Exactly. And there’s a button that says, how can you help? And there’s all sorts of ways that you can help. And we’re looking at doing an annual event. Events are really tough, as you guys would know. People buy tickets at the last minute, if at all. And it’s just really hard to rely on people when they say they’ll come. But it’s it’s important to do because it raises awareness. And you can take we’re doing an event.

Woody [01:35:38]

So bingo balls.

Sarah [01:35:39]

Bingo balls for a cause. Yeah. October 14th in Sydney that’s on the website as well. But a corporate sponsorship is what we’re looking for. Elon Musk, you know any. Any kind of ambassadors as well that might align with the work we do that want to spread the word. Awareness is could go anywhere. Like that’s how Constance and Celeste found out about us. And then they found a huge reach. So you never know where it could lead. But yeah, $50 million. It’s all we need.

Barnesy [01:36:15]

That’d help 50 million listeners.

Sarah [01:36:17]

Yeah. Yeah. Celeste. That’s it. Yeah.

Barnesy [01:36:21]

I know. I know. You listen to that. I know you’re in your Tesla. I can get to it. But if.

Condo [01:36:28]

Radovan. Sorry, Woody, your first up, random Question Time.

Barnesy [01:36:32]

Order. I’ve got a few rattling around in my head. If you guys got yours. I’ve got and got a few different ideas. Have you got an idea of what you’re going to ask about?

Woody [01:36:40]

I’ll just. I’ll throw something out, I suppose. What can we in Western society learn from the kids that you surround yourself there with every day in Africa and in particular Kenya, I suppose?

Sarah [01:36:51]

Oh, I am. I mean, I could learn this as well, that we rely so on we rely on all the things we own and everything that we have to make us happy. But you go over there and I’m happiest in Kenya. They’re happy with music and just hanging around each other. There’s such happiness. And you come back here and it feels so busy and everyone is just worried about what they’re wearing, where they’re going, what car they’ve got, their house, everything. It’s so busy and everyone’s consumed with things, you know, they have nothing and they can find so much happiness in that. And I always think about them when I’m stressed about something here that, you know, you shouldn’t be stressed about. Just think about living life simply. And yeah, it can make you very happy.

Woody [01:37:41]

Good point. That’s a brilliant point. I remember when you obviously had that accident. You spoke about billboards, right? You’re looking at billboards. If you could put a quote or sign on a billboard and everyone around the world could see it, what would it say?

Sarah [01:37:57]

Well.

Barnesy [01:38:00]

Die, die, die is not a bait machine in the stroke.

Sarah [01:38:05]

Of oh, it could say so many things, but I think something that I always say and it’s here, you know, and I’ll quote my vote, my brother, I always tell him about Rafiq and he’s like, I can’t listen to you. Just tell me what money you want. I’ll give it to you. And he’s like, Don’t tell me about these little girls or that. And I would say to people, you know, I’m not going to stay silent. So you can remain comfortable because you don’t want to hear about these girls being raped. Children and children are being raped. In Ballina. In Lanarkshire, I guarantee you child abuse is happening everywhere and you have to hear about it. Yeah, you’re not. I’m not going to remain silent. So you can be comfortable in your life because we all should do something about it. And if we’re silent about it, that’s why the kids don’t speak up about it. So you have to speak about it. So I would say all not stay silent, so grow comfortable.

Woody [01:38:55]

And so what are you going to get out of them? You can ask the music question because you should ask and there’s a reason rocker or something in there, I.

Condo [01:39:04]

Can’t wait for this.

Barnesy [01:39:05]

So I want to I want you doing a concert at this at your father at the dole farm. Yes, Guy. You’re allowed to pick that and pick to your favorite acts and then your favorite to or your favorite as well. While on what one can, is there a Kenyan musician or a Kenyan act, you know, all the kids love so they can play there. That can be. Anyone that’s dead or alive that’s going to apply that to the kids who you pick and what the reacts.

Sarah [01:39:31]

To that are like in a Kenyan.

Barnesy [01:39:33]

Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean that that kids. Yes. I mean that we might not have heard.

Sarah [01:39:36]

Kids won’t like it, though. My choice is the kids with all that, it’s like.

Barnesy [01:39:40]

Have you done that? Have you put music on for the kids? Like, listen to this. And they all this guy. Yeah, they are. We don’t like this.

Sarah [01:39:46]

Well, it’s funny, because in Kenya, it’s often if you have tattoos, you’re a prostitute. So when I was in my back, covered in tattoos, so the kids would come up to me and go, Oh, I’m so sorry. Sarah and I, I’d be like, Why never? Because you’re going to hell. And then they would go and pretend they’re cutting off my tattoos and, oh, my God, I like my tattoos. And they’re like, You’re not a prostitute. I’m certainly not. But so they they think they always laugh at my taste in things as well. So I have played them some music and they just look very, very scared because my my choice would be raised fist raised first.

Woody [01:40:25]

Are we are we talking like this? Parkway Draw, Swedish.

Sarah [01:40:28]

Products, Parkway Drive, Swedish.

Woody [01:40:30]

Parkway.

Sarah [01:40:30]

Draw. Well Metallica and Metallica into this house. Yeah. And Canyon. Okay.

Condo [01:40:36]

We have a canyon equivalent of Metallica.

Barnesy [01:40:41]

Is there a canyon equivalent of like a Justin Bieber or like it or is that what.

Sarah [01:40:46]

Yeah, yes, probably. Probably on our farm. I have we have up to Pizarro, so I don’t think you get that out. Is he on Instagram? Oh, yeah. He’s been to our farm, so I met him through Instagram. I said, our kids are obsessed with you. What? He’s like, Yeah, great. Sarah And so I met him in Kenya, took him to the farm. Kids were beside me. So he’s the probably the famous most. There he is. I got him. Yeah, he’s amazing. And he’s really.

Woody [01:41:16]

Put up quite a bit.

Sarah [01:41:16]

He’s really political.

Barnesy [01:41:19]

Like an octopus, a tall little boy.

Sarah [01:41:23]

Racist, political one. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 [01:41:26]

Well, that’s exactly what you see here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, I am here. Will be like.

Woody [01:41:38]

Oh, I did it to talk about it. Yeah.

Condo [01:41:42]

Red bobblehead.

Speaker 7 [01:41:44]

His story, not story. You look forward to him.

Woody [01:41:48]

Lawyer Court So it’s kind of like a wrap on a dance floor. Yeah. Awesome. So, hey, it’s still Pretty Boy playlist. Here we go.

Sarah [01:41:58]

Dylan Wang. She is. She’s an ambassador of Asa. She’s Norwegians, Kenyan. And the kid, the boys love it because she’s hot and they have her music and she came to the farm as well. So I’ve got these people know what? You have to come to the farm. So I’ve got photos of the kids with Doctor and Stella and yeah, I’m still trying to get him to be an ambassador, but he does a lot of charity work himself. He’s from the slums in Nairobi and he’s done amazing things and he’s really a great role model for the kids because he’s into political stuff trying to just do to try to.

Barnesy [01:42:34]

Make change sort of stuff.

Sarah [01:42:35]

Yeah. And he just did a tour around. Can you trying to get the Kenyans to vote like if you don’t complain about your president, if you’re not going to vote and yeah, he’s great. He does a lot for Kenyans. So I’d get stellar and pizzazz like on Rice Fest.

Barnesy [01:42:48]

Is it like over there? Is it like the Today Show where they have that sort of like every morning and watch the news and see what’s happening around? Yeah, Kenya. So there is like a like ten, 20 stations on their TV.

Sarah [01:43:00]

Yes. Yeah, I don’t know about that many, but yeah. Like there is this. Yeah, there’s general television shows, but not everyone has a television. Yeah. Yeah. So, but generally everyone has a phone, whether it’s a smartphone or just some type of phone. And you get you get a message out there, it spreads faster than you’ve ever known. Like really unbelievable how they spread the word in Kenya, mostly via WhatsApp. I think they just have these groups of 700 people in this community. A message goes and.

Barnesy [01:43:29]

Everybody starts rapping on the street corner and.

Sarah [01:43:31]

Oh, yeah.

Barnesy [01:43:32]

They get down there.

Sarah [01:43:33]

Yeah. Yeah.

Barnesy [01:43:35]

All right. Well, James.

Condo [01:43:36]

Any more questions?

Barnesy [01:43:37]

No, that’s it for me. That’s that’s all on that. I’ve actually got to I’m going to listen to that this guy sounds yeah.

Sarah [01:43:42]

He’s really good.

Barnesy [01:43:43]

Sounds good.

Condo [01:43:43]

Octave His sister Sarah you stumbled across the Doyles obviously early on in the piece. What do you reckon were the two, two or three main things that you learned from from the Doyles, apart from their generosity?

Sarah [01:43:58]

Oh. Wow. So much. What didn’t I learn? I just that, you know, I never thought that rich people could be so kind, like they give away more than they spend on themselves. And, you know, that is what and as grandma is now by herself, it’s what makes her happier. It’s like I work with her every Thursday and every Thursday we sit down and go, Who needs money now? And she’ll go, Right, 30,000, 40,000. And because I don’t take any money off her anymore, because she bought a farm and I said, No more money for Rafiki. We need to give it to other people. So she will just. We’ll just. See who needs help. Well, I’ll always ask local people because grandpa died of prostate cancer. Anyone local? Have any issues? What can we do to help? So it is what keeps her alive. She’s 97.

Condo [01:44:49]

So you help every Thursday.

Sarah [01:44:50]

Be with us? Yes. And I’ll do all her bookwork, emails, anything computer read that she needs and make her donations and things and just sit and talk with her. And then I follow up with the charities and just give her because she loves she she’s so involved. She just doesn’t give the money. She then likes to say, you have to this change like she just gave 90,000 to containers for love, like building three container houses for people in Lismore, fully decked out fully with electricity, plumbing and everything. And she’s like, I wonder if those people have moved in. So I follow them up. is a story about the people who have moved in and it keeps her alive. She loves it and good money just doesn’t. Money doesn’t make her happy, but giving it away to people makes a st change.

Barnesy [01:45:36]

Good change.

Sarah [01:45:37]

And I think that is the happiest she can ever be is. I mean, what is life if you just leave it for yourself? Because that is it’s nothing. It’s there’s no meaning to it. If you when you live helping others, it can. It just gives you I don’t know, it’s so worthwhile.

Barnesy [01:45:56]

Because you can’t go that you can’t take it to the grave. Really can’t. You can’t.

Sarah [01:45:59]

That’s right. And you know, you can just have a family and look after your family. But what does that give back to anybody? You know, you can raise good human beings that might give back to the world. But if we all just looked after ourself, there’d be a lot of struggle in the world, which there is. So I think giving back to people, you don’t realize how fulfilling it can be until you you witness it and you can see the real change that you that one person can make. Because I always thought, Oh, I can’t keep doing this. I’m only I can’t make I can’t keep doing what I’m doing. What what am I what change am I making? I’m killing myself, but I’m really not making any change. But then that’s on a bad day. On a good day, you stand back and look at the amount of change and how that’s carried on to whoever, whoever that has gone on to help. Like one person can make huge, huge difference in the world. And I think if everyone knew, you know, realize the changes they would make and might just make a little bit you’ve.

Barnesy [01:46:55]

Made a big difference.

Sarah [01:46:57]

Kids Not all the time. Not all the time. And that’s not to sound like a wanker, but it’s there’s so much need. I get constant text messages all day from people that have left that are asking for things. And I just I don’t have the money to keep giving, but there’s a lot of people I haven’t helped and I can’t help. And there is a lot of people I’ve helped. But there’s so much need, there’s so much need that that feels more overwhelming than what I’ve done.

Condo [01:47:25]

Kondo’s second question comes out of his observation. We’ve had a lot of good people in here that are super passionate about a lot of people passionate about their careers, supporting, you know, what they’ve done. The last couple of people we’ve had, as Barnes, he mentioned Carly and Les Osborne and yourself, that are people that are just so giving. When you say your passion, there’s absolutely no doubt that what you’ve set up was always going to be a success. What’s the long term dream if you dole out like are at 90 of way where you want to have it?

Sarah [01:47:58]

Well, that as it’s a fear. It was always a fear before the car accident and now it’s even a bigger fear. Thinks of PTSD that what will happen when I die. Like I have most of this organization and how it’s run in my head. And just now the board and I are really working on a recession plan to. Because what happens when I die? Like who is going to take over. So my plan and wait we are already working on it is getting systems in place and have it community led and have the funds rolling in to make sure that it’s safe and sustainable until the day I die. Or maybe so I can have a holiday, either one, you know, just to make it okay.

Barnesy [01:48:38]

We don’t need you to die, you know? You just go camping for a week.

Sarah [01:48:42]

Sun They try and make me the missus, but it just to know that they’re safe because the responsibility, not just that I have to pay this month’s bills, but for the future. What is going to happen if I can’t continue doing this or I do anything, you know, so that that is my big mission to just yeah. Just make it.

Woody [01:49:02]

Self-sustainable so you can keep talking about we haven’t even, but we haven’t even touched on the PTSD you suffering and things like that. Like oh how do you go about trying to get on top of that. Is that is this will help you do that.

Sarah [01:49:15]

Yeah, it really does. I’m I, you know, straight after the accident, I had to have therapy to get back in a car. I was really, really scared. And every time I closed my eyes, I just saw the car flipping. It’s a lot better now, but my fear is. Dying brings to six that I can’t look after my child and my children in Kenya because it’s not worried about myself. It’s worried what I’ve created and I’m going to leave behind because the board and my volunteers are trying to get it out of my head like and we’re trying to get it onto paper. But I really have been running it all by myself, you know, all the systems and stuff. So yeah, it’s it does help my PTSD because are too busy to think of anything else but it but it really does because. You know, you. You are focused on something wonderful and. I did have to have serious therapy for that accident and that but moving past that, this is this has been what’s kept me alive and kept me out of.

Barnesy [01:50:14]

Would you call a therapist? Would you call?

Sarah [01:50:16]

Yeah, I definitely would, because it’s what makes me happy. It’s what I always do. Like I can’t do. I can. I seriously can’t do anything else. Poor Nikki. All she ever sees me talk about is we’re faking. But. But I only. I have a select group of friends because I’m quite odd. And they take me as I am. And they know that if they get there, they’re going to hear me asking for money, talking about Rafiki, talking about the dramas. It will never be another subject unless it’s Lavazza. But then I’ll intertwine Faki with that. There’s no other subject and not not everyone can deal with that.

Barnesy [01:50:52]

Maybe. Maybe that’s why only gets a few. Margaret is going, yeah, this is out of control.

Sarah [01:50:57]

My children. Yeah, exactly.

Condo [01:51:02]

Well, it’s been it’s been a pleasure having you in the shed. I hope you enjoyed us on board. Yes, but your story is amazing. And I think if if this podcast can do anything, it’s to. I wasn’t aware of it until a message. Yeah. Oh I grew up here and I was not aware of the good thing. Yeah. Good.

Barnesy [01:51:20]

We’re going to we’re going to get the break. We’ve got a.

Condo [01:51:22]

Ball and all. We’re going to.

Barnesy [01:51:24]

We’ve got 800 people that listen often.

Sarah [01:51:26]

So that’s a local event. Yeah. We’ve had a few. Yeah.

Condo [01:51:31]

Yeah, yeah.

Barnesy [01:51:32]

And I will get something out, we’ll get something going.

Condo [01:51:34]

Our ideas don’t come about from moderator sessions, but we come up. We can, we can, we can sell. But they come. We come up with good ideas occasionally. So I think I think we can move it maybe a small assistance. Yeah I’ve.

Barnesy [01:51:46]

The.

Sarah [01:51:47]

Is one person that sponsors it.

Condo [01:51:48]

So that’s going to reach more than that maybe too.

Sarah [01:51:50]

Yeah.

Condo [01:51:51]

Thanks. I’m Sarah.

Sarah [01:51:53]

Thanks. Thanks very much.