Jodanne & Andrew Talmage

We find ourselves living a life and following a dream that we never expected to have. 

We are a typical Australian couple, high school sweethearts (or we would have been if Jodanne didn't ignore me until after highschool), happy and prosperous.  Life is very easy, there is plenty of work, plenty of food, plenty to be thankful for.  We are not sure how the dream of volunteering in Africa became our dream but we have never regretted the sacrifices or trials of living this dream.  We fund our own travel and expenses for our trips to Africa allowing for any donated funds to go 100% to the children and charities we are working with. 

Why we do this is a question that we occassionally ask but never really manage to answer.  I think that we have many and varied motivations; because we can is one answer that always springs to mind; the love, the hugs and the smiles from the kids don't hurt either.  We love what we do, it feels right to us and we know in our hearts that for whatever reason this is the path we should walk.

A lot of people question how we are building a future for ourselves while spending our savings on these charitable trips.  Well, I have the philosophy that you can always make more money.  Perhaps this is a nieve notion but I fully believe that we will find a way to meet any future challenges that come our way.  I think it is important not to worry about the future, not to dwell on the past but to live in the moment.  This moment is all we ever have, this moment of being.  And right now in this moment we can reach out and help someone in need.  That is all the reasoning we can come up with and all the motivation we need.

We have no religious motivations, we have no destiny to fulfill, we simply have the capacity to help in whatever small way that is open to us and so we go, we help where we can and we hope that the smiles, the hugs and the love continues on long after we have gone.