Sammye Walton and Chris Gates

[00:02] CHRIS GATES: Hi, my name is Chris Gates, and I'm 35 years old. And today is Saturday, March 19, 2022. And I'm here at the Greenwood Cultural center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with my friend Sammye Walton.

[00:11] SAMMYE WALTON: Hi, my name is Sammye Walton. I'm 45 years old. Today's date is Saturday, March 19, 2022. I'm at the Greenwood Cultural center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with my friend Chris Gates. Chris, you were born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, educated at NYU, and during that time, you started over 16 years of work in Tanzania, East Africa, working to alleviate extreme poverty. Thank you for being with us today.

[00:37] CHRIS GATES: And thank you for being here with me.

[00:39] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah. So, Chris, do you remember how we met?

[00:42] CHRIS GATES: I do. I think I was already working in Tanzania, and I was featured in a local newspaper here in Tulsa. And you'd read the article, and you yourself had a long history in Tanzania, had an adopted child, and I just reached out and we met at the brook, a local restaurant here, and had lunch, and the rest is history. We became good friends after that.

[01:02] SAMMYE WALTON: I have to correct you. Oh, you weren't at that meeting.

[01:06] CHRIS GATES: Oh, I wasn't.

[01:06] SAMMYE WALTON: I met.

[01:07] CHRIS GATES: Oh, you met my mom.

[01:08] SAMMYE WALTON: I met your mom and one of your coworkers, and you and I actually met in Tanzania.

[01:14] CHRIS GATES: Oh, my goodness.

[01:15] SAMMYE WALTON: Do you remember that?

[01:15] CHRIS GATES: I do remember meeting you in Tanzania, but for some reason I thought, yes.

[01:20] SAMMYE WALTON: So I met your family.

[01:20] CHRIS GATES: Maybe I've heard so many stories.

[01:22] SAMMYE WALTON: So I met your family before I met you. But the second I met you in Tanzania, it was just love at first sight, and the rest is history. So glad that we are friends. So tell me, what is it that you're doing in Tanzania?

[01:36] CHRIS GATES: So now we're working to alleviate extreme rural poverty through a holistic approach. We have two different campuses. We work in female empowerment, education, economic stability through agriculture and healthcare. We help several thousand people per year through our various programs. We have two different homes for orphan and vulnerable girls where we serve as their family. We have a school, well, two schools now pre k all the way through high school for over 500 students. We provide medical care to several thousand people per year. And we work with smallhold farmers who normally cannot provide for their own families based on their land. And we help them to better utilize their land through an agricultural methodology called permaculture and help them to increase their yield and better provide for themselves.

[02:25] SAMMYE WALTON: So it's both education but also sustainability.

[02:27] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely.

[02:28] SAMMYE WALTON: And did you tell us the name of that organization?

[02:30] CHRIS GATES: And our organization is called mainsprings.

[02:32] SAMMYE WALTON: Okay. So what I love about mainsprings and something that really hit me the first time you told me about it and I visited was that you really do work to make sure that the people that you are servicing are the. Are able to sustain themselves after the fact. And so that's really different from a lot of the NGO's that I saw in Tanzania, which is what made me fall in love with mainsprings and your mission. So can you kind of talk about some of the differences between your approach to the services that you provide, maybe to some of the more traditional?

[03:08] CHRIS GATES: Yeah, I think a lot of the international organizations working in East Africa that I've seen are very much based around one person. And from the beginning, I went to school at NYU and went to their school of social work. And I remember on the very first day, one of our professors said, this is the weirdest job you're ever going to have, because your job is literally to work yourself out of a job, and that's when you know you've done a good job. And I took that philosophy into the organization because I wanted to be an organization run by Tanzanians for Tanzanians, and always believed in local leadership, always believed in having all of our teachers, our staff, as much as possible be from that country. And I felt it was both the right thing to do and more sustainable, and that's where we are today. You know, I lived for a little over ten years in Tanzania, working to train our staff, working to get everything set up. But now we are 100% run by East Africans in Tanzania.

[04:03] SAMMYE WALTON: That's amazing. And they're doing an incredible job.

[04:05] CHRIS GATES: Oh, they're doing a fantastic job. Far better than I ever did when I was on the ground.

[04:09] SAMMYE WALTON: Well, that's what you wanted, right?

[04:10] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely.

[04:10] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah. So let's go back a little bit. Before the work in Tanzania started. What was your childhood like? Who were you closest to growing up? What was your life like? Cause it's dramatically different than what you have now.

[04:23] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely. I had a very privileged upbringing. We had a large family. I had lots of wonderful parents, wonderful grandparents on both sides, aunts, uncles, cousins. One set of grandparents had a lake house that we'd all gather at throughout the summer. And just, we were very, very close. But I went to private school, and I was extremely privileged with everything that we had. And truly growing up, just thought that was normal. And as far as who I was closest with, I would say it was my grandmother. I called her Mimi, but her name is Janet. A bachelor. She unfortunately passed away in 2012, but she was definitely my best friend growing up. She was my Conrad, my mom loves to share the story of the time she broke me out of prison, as we call it, which is actually middle school. And I would just randomly call her at lunch sometimes and be like, mimi, I'm bored, can you come get me? And can we do something? And she'd make up an excuse for a doctor's appointment or a dentist appointment. I'm sure the school thought something was very wrong with me, but two, three times a week, literally, we would, for over a year, just have these afternoon adventures before we had to go back and pick up my brother. And we were just, yeah, comrades and extremely close.

[05:40] SAMMYE WALTON: And she was really instrumental in getting you to Tanzania, right?

[05:44] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely. She was the one who brought me to Tanzania. She'd been there the year before we actually went. And it all started because I stood up in my kindergarten career day. My parents were working, so she was there, and I stood up and said, I want to be an exotic animal veterinarian in the Serengeti National Wildlife park of Tanzania, East Africa. Very specific, very specific. And I was an animal nerd growing up, and absolutely loved working with animals. Even at the age of twelve. I worked at a pet shop before it was legal for me to work, but I could bike there and work for store credit because the guy could just see that I loved just working and being around animals. And so that was my dream growing up. I never wanted to be anything else other than an exotic vet in the Serengeti. And she promised that when I got older, she'd take me on safari. And as we were planning for that trip, she went to Tanzania herself and visited some different missions through her church, and also went on safari and said when she got back, you know, in order for you to get this two week safari that we've talked about, I really want you to volunteer at the center for street boys with me for two weeks. And I looked at her and said, absolutely not. No way. I don't like people. Let's just stick to the animals. And she said, tough cookies. You get both or none. And so I dragged my feet on that first volunteer experience at the center for street boys in Waze in northern Tanzania. And it literally was a trip that changed my life. I fell in love with Tanzania. I fell in love with the culture and everything about the country.

[07:11] SAMMYE WALTON: Well, what stuck out to you the most?

[07:14] CHRIS GATES: I think it was my first full day there. So kind of our second day, I was meeting with, we just played soccer with a bunch of the boys, and I was starting to have a good time. I was like, oh, this isn't going to be so bad, even though the living conditions were not up to my standards and all that fun stuff. But I sat down after soccer with this one boy, we'll call him Moses, and he was only about a year younger than me. And he asked, can I share my life story with you? And I said, sure, knowing what to expect. And he said, when I was six years old, my mom was a prostitute, and still is to this day. But I was responsible for my two younger siblings. We lived in a very, very simple grass hut, and she would frequently bring her clients home in the middle of the night and wake us up. And it was just a horrific living condition. And I thought that sounded bad. But he said, then one night, he accidentally spilled their one kerosene lamp over and caught their hut on fire. And her mom had brought home two clients, or his mom had brought home two clients at night, and she was so irate that he had burned down their hut, even though at six years old, he had the wherewithal to get his two siblings out and several things to safety that he was actually held down by her clients. She wrapped kerosene, dipped straw under his arms, behind his knees, and his crotch, and literally lit her own sun on fire. And there I was, you know, just not wanting to be on this trip, not wanting to work with people, not wanting to recognize my privilege. And it just hit me in the face that I have so much to be grateful for. And I have this grandmother, this family that loves me, and that means I have a responsibility to do more. And it was the single moment that changed my perspective of this world.

[09:07] SAMMYE WALTON: I can tell just after all these years, it still hits you?

[09:10] CHRIS GATES: Oh, every time.

[09:11] SAMMYE WALTON: It's making me think about my first experience there, too. And it will always, always stick with you. So after that first trip, how did you stay involved? How did that kind of propel you into where you are today?

[09:27] CHRIS GATES: So I had, even on that first trip, gained what I felt was close relationships with several of the boys at that center. Some of the staff started learning Swahili, the national language of Tanzania, but recognized this was a locally led organization that really didn't have much. They had about 90 boys in their home, but they only were able to afford very, very simple meals and only two meals a day. And so I wanted to go back and fundraise so they could have a little bit more sustenance in their diet. And that's where I really focused at first. And started with fundraising for a chicken project so that they could raise their own chickens. They could have their own eggs, they could have their own meat and maybe a source of profit. And so that's really where I started. Throughout my high school summers, just each summer did a different livestock project for that organization to help them be more sustainable.

[10:15] SAMMYE WALTON: And then at what point did you realize that you wanted to start your own organization? And what inspired you? And how did you even get started?

[10:23] CHRIS GATES: Yeah, so it was the summer after my senior year of high school, and I was spending the whole summer in Tanzania, and spent most summers in Tanzania anyways, at that point. But I had learned the language. I had gone out on the streets with several of the boys, seen where they come from, seen the issues, seen how drastic the situation was. But one thing kept popping up in my head, and that's, where are the girls? And when I started asking that question, several of these boys say, we have sisters. Some of them have been sold into brothels. Some of them are in domestic servitude situations, but there are a literally no homes around to put them into. So they have to, you know, survive however they can.

[11:03] SAMMYE WALTON: Wow. So you were in high school and you already started an organization. You went into college. I think what amazed me when I met you was just how young you were and how much you have accomplished in your life. I mean, by the time I met you, I don't know that you were even 30 yet, and you were already, you know, you had this school you were running, all this impact that you were making for families had built a farm. And by the way, we're raising four boys.

[11:40] CHRIS GATES: Yes, I did adopt four boys in Tanzania.

[11:44] SAMMYE WALTON: Yep. And we can. We're proud to say they're all in college right now.

[11:48] CHRIS GATES: They are. And this is my first year as an empty nester, which is weird at the age of 35. But there are. They're thriving and doing well in college, and I couldn't be happier.

[11:56] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah, that's a lot to be proud of. We're really proud of them. So what were some of the biggest challenges in the very beginning when you were getting started? I mean, that's a lot to put on someone at your age.

[12:06] CHRIS GATES: I would honestly say the biggest challenge was just convincing people that a 19 year old was serious, that this is the direction I want to go with my life, and that, yes, you can fund me. It's not going to be a one or two year thing or just my college passion. This is what I want to do with my life. And even that summer, after I decided to start this organization, before starting NYU, I told all of my different family members and pretty much all of them thought I was crazy. They said, don't do it. Finish college, you're going to learn a lot about yourself. All advice that I honestly would give my kids these days, sound advice. And I finally went to my grandfather, who I was most nervous about telling, and he handed me a check and he said, don't ever tell your grandmother you got this from me.

[12:56] SAMMYE WALTON: And what did she give that she didn't tell him about?

[13:00] CHRIS GATES: So many things. She liked her Social Security, money for purses. Buying purses.

[13:04] SAMMYE WALTON: Yes. Yes, for sure. And that grandfather got a restaurant named after him. Right. Property.

[13:10] CHRIS GATES: We do have an on campus restaurant and lodge now to help support visitors and volunteers to the organization. And we named it after him because the organization originally was named after my grandmother because she was the one I was closest with and brought me to Tanzania. But he was joking at a Thanksgiving several years later of, okay, now that it's out, why was the organization named after her when she told you not to do it? And I was the one who gave you a check. And so I said, the very next thing we do, we'll name after you. And that happened to be our restaurant lodge. So it's now called Papa's because. Because that's what we called them.

[13:40] SAMMYE WALTON: And I love that lodge. I still think that that's someplace. I'm going to retire. I build my own little bungalow out there.

[13:46] CHRIS GATES: I could live there forever.

[13:48] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah, it's beautiful.

[13:49] CHRIS GATES: Right on the shores of Lake Victoria.

[13:51] SAMMYE WALTON: So you started as a home for girls, but what else are you doing now? You mentioned some of the permaculture and that sort of thing. Can you just talk about the impact that that has on the community because it's wider than just the school.

[14:01] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely. And everything that we have now came to be out of the need from the community that we were serving. I knew from just living in the area that I didn't want to have a home directly in the city. I wanted to be more rural so that we could have a true refuge and a safe place for these girls who'd come from horrific backgrounds. And so that's where we started. So we landed on this village called Kitongo, got just four acres in the very beginning and started with just seven girls in our home. We were able to build our first house that first year and get seven girls. But as we'd lived in that village, we realized there were a lot more needs. The school in the area at the time had 900 students and only three teachers. So a 300 to one teacher student ratio is not great. And obviously, you can tell a lot of learning doesn't happen. So we wanted to start our own school. Similarly, there's about 30,000 patients for every doctor in Tanzania. And so we wanted to be able to provide people who were literally dying from preventable diseases like malaria to have access to quality healthcare. And we realized also at the same time, or in congruence, that farmers in our area have a lot of land. They're just not utilizing it properly, and they're not able to feed their families. Sometimes farmers can have 20 acres, which is more than enough to sustain a family, but they're still only able to provide one, maybe two meals a day for their kids. And so that's really how our holistic mission came to be, and that's why we've changed our mission since, to be alleviated extreme rural poverty in Tanzania.

[15:39] SAMMYE WALTON: So that sounds like a lot. Why did you decide to take on so much at the same time, and how did that growth happen? I mean, I watch it, and it just still amazes me everything that you're able to accomplish.

[15:50] CHRIS GATES: Yeah. So it was about four years in that we opened our school. That was really the second biggest thing after the girls home that we did. That was the biggest jump we had as an organization because we went from having about 26 girls and a handful of staff to over 200 students and 40 staff, literally in a week. And so that was a shock to the system. And it took us a while to recover. But we opened our primary school, and once those students graduated, we opened our secondary school. And it was then the permaculture part that came next. And we originally started with permaculture just because we wanted to be more sustainable ourselves. That's something that we've always believed in. And after we started seeing the fruits of our farm, because permaculture weaves in all sorts of fruit trees, nut trees, vines, along with your typical garden crops, we started feeling, once again, a responsibility to spread what we're doing to the larger network. And now we're working with over 11,000 people all across East Africa with our permaculture projects.

[16:51] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah, I wanted to mention that because it's not that you've just done these things for the school and for the immediate community around you, but now it's really getting recognition from some of the national organizations over there for permaculture and even for, like, hospitality training and development. So your students come out of the program and their families as well, not just having a book education, but also knowing how to really be a whole person. Right. And prepare themselves for the next stage of their lives.

[17:24] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely. And no matter what, always be able to provide for yourself and your family because there's a huge employment shortage in Tanzania and we do have graduates that are set up for fantastic employment opportunities and we're seeing that now that they're graduating from our programs, going on to college and getting fantastic jobs, but there's still a shortage. So being able to have all of these other life skills at the same time is incredibly valuable.

[17:48] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah, it's really. I think that's my favorite thing is to see the updates on the girls that have graduated and gone on to their, their new roles. But also it's fun when you see them come back. I want to give back to the organization. Do you have any examples of that that you'd want to share? Just some of the kind of full circle of some of the girls that have gone on to success.

[18:10] CHRIS GATES: So the first one that jumps out at me is one of our initial seven girls. And she was one of our initial graduates from our secondary or high school. And we'll call her Aliza. Her name is actually Aliza. She's given me permission to use her story because she's an adult now. But Elisa came to us and she was around twelve years old. She had been adopted by this couple and they had adopted seven kids on top of their four or five biological kids. Fantastic people. But the husband tragically got cancer and passed away and the widow was unable to care for them and only able to care for the biological kids. So they had to play place this girl, and she never knew she was adopted till that point in a residential program. And so we took her in and she's always been kind of the oldest big sister. So she's been fantastic despite her background and despite that loss, but was always academically focused, always wanted to be a teacher and says because of our program, she will continually want to give back to the next generation of young women. And actually just in January, just a couple months ago, we officially hired her as one of our teachers at our school, at our second campus. So she's an incredible example of somebody who goes away, graduates from our program, gets continued education, went to various programs, then went on to get her bachelor's in education, working remotely for her master's now. So that's exciting as well, but really wanted to come back and provide for the next generation of young women.

[19:41] SAMMYE WALTON: I think that really speaks to mainsprings and what you do for someone to want to come back.

[19:47] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely. The second example I can think of is a little girl. We'll call her Grace. She was brought to us probably about eight, maybe nine years ago at the time. All of the girls in our girls home are placed with us by social welfare. And we have a policy with them that, you know, we only have so much capacity, so many beds. And at the time, we were completely full. And even though there was a waiting list, we said, sorry, we. We are full. We can only commit to these 48 girls and social welfare. Late one evening, I was living in Tanzania, came and literally knocked on my door, and I was like, what's. What's up? And they said, we have an emergency case for you. And I said, you all know we don't have any space. They said, please come down to the car. Please come see this. We have an emergency case. You have to take her. And I said, no, we are absolutely not taking her. And I started following this social welfare officer to the car, and he's bickering back and forth with him. And when I opened the back door of his car, I literally had the biggest rush of fear I've ever had in my life come over me. This was supposedly a four year old girl, and she only weighed 14 pounds. She was literally a pile of skin and bones she could not track her eyes, did not have any hair on her body. And I literally thought this little girl had been. Had come to us to die so that it wasn't on social welfare's hands. And obviously, we took her because you can't leave any child in that situation. But we slowly nursed her back to health. We had our nurse constantly monitoring her health and giving her peanut paste and all sorts of nutritional supplements. Slowly, she began to be able to walk. But she was so malnourished throughout her childhood that even one time after she'd learned to walk, she just fell on the floor and broke her femur. That's how weak she was. But it's amazing today. She's now just entered high school in January. She knows English and Swahili fluently. She's an incredible student. She's about as bossy as they come. But we'd love to see it because she is her own person and she's creative and thoughtful and just an incredible young woman. And we can't wait to see where she goes.

[21:53] SAMMYE WALTON: I love it. So what do you think has been the biggest turning point for mainsprings?

[22:01] CHRIS GATES: Hmm.

[22:01] SAMMYE WALTON: You've had some recent expansion, which is pretty cool.

[22:04] CHRIS GATES: Yeah. I think the two biggest points, one was the primary school and we opened that going from just a girls home to both a home and school for day students as well. Went from 20 something kids to 200 something kids. But more recently, I would say the opening of our second campus, we really felt that we had a track record of over ten years working in, in this one community, but we wanted to be able to replicate it and do it all over again. And so we're in the process of. We've opened our school, our girls home there. We're going to be opening our clinic there next year and also have been doing a lot of permaculture programs already. So it's really exciting to see that growth and that expansion that we are replicating. And with both of our campuses now, we're in a new strategic phase as an organization where we're not only going to be serving our direct communities, but we're also going to be able to provide educational training and permaculture training for other organizations and government entities moving forward so that everything that we're doing well can be replicated on a much larger scale across the country and even all of East Africa.

[23:10] SAMMYE WALTON: That's amazing. So that's. I mean, there's a lot to be proud of there. What makes you the most proud about your work?

[23:19] CHRIS GATES: I would say it's a mix for me of both the individual transformative stories, both within our staff and our girls, because we've had some staff that come to us literally not knowing anything. Our manager of our restaurant and lodge, Papas, did not know English when he first came to us. He was just a guard and got really interested in it. And because of our different professional development programs, he's fluent in English now. He has certificates in hospitality and hotel management. And so those types of transformations are incredibly impactful to see, not just with the kids, but also seeing kids like grace come from four years old and 14 pounds to this thriving teenager. And seeing one of our initial girls come back to us in full circle, become a teacher, is ultimately the most inspiring because that's really what we're going for.

[24:10] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah. Yeah. I love to watch the pride and excitement and joy just in the faces of the people that are working for the organization. So all of that doesn't come easily. So what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced in moving to a new country? One where, yes, you knew the language, but you were just getting started. So what were some of the big major roadblocks?

[24:35] CHRIS GATES: I would say first and foremost on the local level, it was getting community buy in and that really took time. It took an understanding of their language, but also they've had so many expats, westerners, come in and out of their lives and start organizations that last for a few years, but then ultimately leave the community in worse shape because they have created dependence and then they have to pull out. And so we had to prove that we were different. And that definitely took probably the most time out of anything beyond convincing the government what we want to do, beyond convincing supporters that a 19 year old can take this on and be serious about it. It was really working with community and establishing trust.

[25:20] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah. And I think that is what stuck out most to me was that I trusted you all and the work that you were doing, because like you, I'd seen so many organizations come into Tanzania and do more harm than good. So I'm very, very picky about the organizations that I support, and there are some great ones, and you're up there at the top of my list. So thank you for the good work. Yeah. So that was a challenge then. So what keeps you up at night now?

[25:45] CHRIS GATES: I would say, I mean, our ever changing world and how we're going to adapt to it. Fundraising these past couple years has been tricky with the Covid-19 pandemic. But I would say what keeps me up the most at night now, in an exciting way, is our growth and how we are going to use everything that we've done for the past 16 years to impact other organizations and government schools and government entities and even local farmers, so that we're not just affecting thousands of people per year, we're affecting tens and eventually hundreds of thousands, because that's truly what needs to happen if we're going to live our mission of alleviating poverty.

[26:23] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah, well, you mentioned Covid-19 so I know that, yes, it impacted fundraising, but Tanzania handled it a little. Interestingly, that pandemic, there was a while where it was not really acknowledged.

[26:37] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely.

[26:38] SAMMYE WALTON: There wasn't the ability to get vaccines. And then that's changed. So besides the fundraising aspect of it, how did it impact your school and your ability to deliver the services?

[26:49] CHRIS GATES: Yeah. So when Covid first hit in March of 2020, there was a government shutdown of all schools across Tanzania for a little over three months. The president at the time was still a Covid denier. He refused to allow any form of testing, any social mandates around social distancing, masking, things like that. He just said, you know, testing is invalid and Covid is Covid, and we can pray it away. And that did not work. The tanzanian government at the same time was doing night burials of people just to hide the numbers that were actually dying in the country. So there was a horrific time, and we were terrified because there were only a handful of working ventilators in our entire region, our state. So we knew that if somebody on our campuses got Covid, it could be very, very life threatening. And so we were very, very insular. We followed the mandate, shut down our campus for our residential girls, and we had some staff stay on there, too, almost for the entire three months. We had one switch out, but managed that, and we're able to keep all of our residential girls, staff and everybody safe, kept our day students at home. And as far as distance learning in Tanzania, they don't have iPads, they don't have computers, they don't have the phones. So what we had to do is once a week, just have different stations where we had paper packets out and students would take a new paper packet developed by our teachers and submit their homework and assignments from the week before. And then they had all of their teachers cell phone numbers if there were ever questions. And that's what the teachers spent time doing during the day. So it worked fairly well, I think, better than a lot of other schools because we kept some learning going, but we were excited to get back in person, continued to mask. And while you never wish anyone's demise, there is a new president of Tanzania because the former one actually passed away from COVID presumably, and that was in March of last year, so almost a year ago. And his vice president, who's the first female president in all of Tanzania and East Africa, has taken over and reversed a lot of his policies and is doing a fantastic job so far.

[28:58] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah, she is. She's been great to watch. So are you back to everything back to normal, or has life kind of been a new normal? What's it like there now?

[29:07] CHRIS GATES: Right now, we are much more back to a normal state than before. So we've started opening up the past couple years. We haven't done a lot of our community wide seminars, things like that, but we've started opening those back up slowly. We've let go of our mask mandate in the school and on campus unless people feel that they want to. So there are a lot of studies that are actually showing there's a huge amount of immunity across East Africa because partially, people just got Covid because there was no distancing.

[29:41] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah. I've never met you or never been with you during a time where you haven't been completely passionate and bought into what you're doing and going for it. So what keeps you going? How do you keep your energy level and your passion? I think I can guess.

[30:01] CHRIS GATES: But what would you guess?

[30:03] SAMMYE WALTON: It's an amazing cause. I mean, it's hard to look out at all the work that you're doing and not just be completely inspired and motivated to keep going.

[30:12] CHRIS GATES: No, and that's absolutely a major part of it. There's also a belief that I have that I think we all have a place in this world and something we should be doing. And I think our world is falling apart in many ways because human beings don't want to listen to what that is. Whether you call it your place in the world, your calling, whatever it is, I think we all have it. And I was fortunate to find mine at such a young age and always remember that that is what I'm supposed to be doing to be a part of this world, be a productive part of this world.

[30:45] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah. And so much of today is about us and them. And, you know, I've never seen you take that approach and just really recognizing that we're all really one.

[30:57] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely.

[30:58] SAMMYE WALTON: One nation. I mean, one nation under God, not. That's the us slogan, but it really applies to the entire world. Right. That's how we should be looking at it, so.

[31:05] CHRIS GATES: Absolutely. And I think back to all the people I've met in Tanzania, and there is a big, especially in international development, a big mentality of that giver, givee of, you know, if you're in the west, you're kind of a little bit better than.

[31:21] SAMMYE WALTON: Right.

[31:22] CHRIS GATES: And I've truly never had that because I feel that I just won the uterine lottery.

[31:27] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah.

[31:28] CHRIS GATES: The only reason I am in the place and have the privilege that I've had in my life is because I was born into the right family. But that doesn't make me any different than all the kids we're working with in Tanzania. And I could have easily just been in their boat. And so we as a society, need to recognize that and help to mitigate and fix it.

[31:47] SAMMYE WALTON: And I think there's this assumption that there's more knowledge and understanding and skill set, but when you go, and I mean, with somebody from the west. But I can't tell you how much more I've learned from people who are in Tanzania than probably have learned here. Right. Like, I mean, so many lessons that we wouldn't even think of. So what's something that you learned that maybe would be surprising?

[32:13] CHRIS GATES: You know, it's funny because I moved back with my four adopted boys about six years ago to really focus on development and fundraising for our expansion, but also to really turn over operations to our tanzanian leadership. And so they came here. They went to the same school that I did, and I'm slowly working on a book, and one of the chapters is called how America ruined my kids. Yep. And it's very true because the tanzanian culture is just so familial, so communal, so welcoming and hospitable and just friendly. There's so many volunteers that I talked to before they've ever stepped foot anywhere in Africa. And they're like, we're just afraid it's going to be this depressing, desolate place. And I'm like, it's the tropics, and it's beautiful, and you will never meet a more beautiful, happy group of people.

[33:01] SAMMYE WALTON: In your life, 100%.

[33:03] CHRIS GATES: And, you know, we need to learn that in our society that we don't have it. All right? And there's so many. So many things that I do miss about the tanzanian culture. And having raised my kids in America now for six years, I can clearly see that we are so much more selfish. We are not focused on the greater good, and, you know, we're not as communal as human beings are meant to.

[33:26] SAMMYE WALTON: Be, and we are just churning out our work and our life. Right? Like, I think that I was thinking about this the other day. The second that I land at the airport in Arusha, my shoulders drop and I just relax because I know that I'm going to be in a completely different pace and environment, and it's just truly a beautiful place to be.

[33:46] CHRIS GATES: Oh, it truly is. And we have so much to learn from it.

[33:50] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah. So what advice would you give others who want to make a change in the world?

[33:55] CHRIS GATES: I would say don't let society hold you back from where you're supposed to be and what you're meant to be doing. You know, I think we've come to this place, especially here in America, where, you know, there's what looks like a successful path and then what society thinks isn't. And I've definitely taken a different path. And now people are like, oh, you're successful. But in the beginning, that wasn't the case. But I knew where I needed to be. I knew what I needed to be doing, and I stuck with it. And, you know, you don't have to be working for big businesses. Not knocking that down, but you don't have to be doing everything that society tells you you have to do. You don't have to go to the right, the right schools, you know, you can just. Just follow your heart, and you can make a living doing whatever.

[34:45] SAMMYE WALTON: Well, let's flip this back on the 19 year old boy that started all of this. So what if you, in hindsight, what advice would you have given yourself, knowing what you know now.

[34:56] CHRIS GATES: Honestly? Well, two things which are kind of contradicting. First is, I would say, keep your head down and just keep going, which is what I did. And so I would definitely tell myself that, that doors will open where you don't think they're going to open, and some opportunities are going to seem like a great deal, and they're not. And that's okay. Just roll with the punches and just keep going. And that's really how we've built up. The other bit of advice is, because I was such a heads down, stubborn person that just kept forging, is I would also advise myself to listen to experts a little bit better. Not the naysayers, but experts in the field and listened to them earlier, because now we're at a place where we do work with a lot of different experts and different things, and we do so much. I'm not a doctor. I am a farmer now, but I happened into that. But, you know, how we've developed is by getting experts who really know these different departments in these different arenas to really help us out.

[36:00] SAMMYE WALTON: Yeah. Yeah. All that is important. But there's also, like, something to be said about blind passion and just drive and some level of ignorance. Right. If I look back on some of the things I did younger and accomplished, it's. I wouldn't have done it with the wisdom that I have.

[36:14] CHRIS GATES: Oh. And I thought. And I thought we were just gonna start a girls home. Like, I had no idea it was gonna grow into what it has, but it's also an awesome thing.

[36:23] SAMMYE WALTON: Yes, it is. So, beyond your work at mainsprings, what else would you like to do and what do you have going on now?

[36:29] CHRIS GATES: So, during the pandemic, my best friend and I bought a farm right outside of Tulsa. So we moved from our house in Tulsa. The boys, the two younger boys, were seniors in high school, so they were not excited about moving outside of the city and moving back to a rural environment. But they're in college now, and they can get over it. And so we've started practicing permaculture, just like we do in Tanzania. It's a different environment, but we still have lots of animals, over 200 animals, 200 fruit and nut trees, and are just practicing this regenerative agriculture that we hope can like it's doing in Tanzania also take off here in northeast Oklahoma. So we're working with a few different people and farmers to really try to create a movement to help with climate.

[37:10] SAMMYE WALTON: Change ultimately, yeah, I have a yard you can practice on if you'd like. Okay. So is there anything else that you want people listening to know about you?

[37:22] CHRIS GATES: I would say I'm not unique. There's so many people that go and do this type of work that think they're extremely special. But I truly feel that I am just fortunate to have found my life's passion at such a young age. And any single person can do it if you just put your head down, if you put your mind to it and just keep going, and there's going to be countless roadblocks, many that you can't expect. And the things that you do expect typically aren't as difficult as you think they will be. And so my biggest piece of advice is find out what you're passionate about. Don't let society dictate what you should and shouldn't do, and just keep going. And always try to make this world a little bit better than we found it.

[38:12] SAMMYE WALTON: That's what we're all here for. Okay. Thank you, Chris.

[38:16] CHRIS GATES: Thank you.