“Asante”. Swahili for thank you. Perhaps the most useful of all the Swahili words and phrases the 3G KiliClimbers will learn. It’s a little word that makes a huge difference, whatever language it is expressed in.
Ever since Sheila was little she has been saying thank you, and the moment she could write, she was writing thank you letters. Our mother was adamant. She would draw pencil lines with a ruler on a special notelet with “Sheila” printed on the front, and after every birthday, every Christmas, the thank you letter routine would roll into action.
Recently a dear relative, our mother’s cousin Marianne, sent from Norway a bundle of treasured black and white photos and among them were thank you letters from Sheila which Marianne had kept for over 60 years. Spelling and handwriting in pencil are endearingly child-like, but the presents seem odd. A book about galleons (Sheila was seven at the most as her address is Lintalee) and a gummed paper outfit that might help her win a prize. What was that? Maybe Sheila remembers these presents better than I do.
Thank you letters are totally out of fashion. Even a spoken thank you cannot be taken for granted. But I was pleased to see that in emoji, apparently the UK’s fastest growing language, there are many emoticons with which to express thanks. And the iWatch, which has only a preset range of messages as there is no keyboard, can send thanks in four ways, cheers, thx, thanks! And thank you. Which is what I want to say to everyone who is reading this, thank you to everyone who has donated, to all the supporters of the 3G KiliClimbers behind the scenes and front of house. Above all thank you to the 3GKiliClimbers, the three actors on the stage, who by climbing Kilimanjaro in August, are helping three charities, Catching Lives, Friends of Conservation and Baraka, a small charity working with under-privileged schools and communities in Zambia, Morocco, Laos and India. To all, I say ASANTE.