This week, he’s hosting two visitors from South Africa: Irene Kotze and Gerald Sieberhagen, president and secretary of the Rotary E-Club of South Africa One, based in Durban.

They are in Australia for two months, from December to February, visiting relatives, meeting E-club members in Australia, and playing in the three-yearly International Fellowship of Cricket-loving Rotarians in Melbourne.

“We’re making new friendships, and renewing old ones," Gerald said. “The Fellowship is absolutely amazing; it goes on and on and on.“

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This is Gerald’s first visit to Australia; Irene jokes it’s hers, too – she’s visited her daughter eight times in Perth, which she says is like a second South Africa.

They spent Christmas in the west, before heading to Melbourne for the cricket match. Gerald was the oldest player at the festival – he turns 80 this year – but came away unscathed.

While here, they’re also visiting members of the online Rotary E-Club, living in Rye, Kiami, and Gatton.

Armidale Central Rotary have been involved with the South African club for nearly 15 years.

"It's great to get actual Rotarians we’ve worked with over time,” Alan said.

He first met Gerald in 2005, when he was team leader of a group study exchange to South Africa.

Their friendship has been a boon for the Ekuthuleni Primary School, on the outskirts of Durban.

“They didn’t have a library,” Alan remembered, in 2017; “they didn’t even have one library book. It was the poorest area I saw in South Africa.”

There were only one male and one female toilet for 1600-odd students – and they leaked. There were no ceilings, so teachers and classes could hear each other. The dust from the quadrangle got into the classrooms, so kids could hardly breathe.

Nearly 200 girls failed school each year; they couldn’t afford sanitary towels, so had to stay home.

Literacy levels were low; since all school classes from Grade Four were taught in English, failure to master the language meant students couldn’t master other classes like science or maths.

Over the past 14 years, the Armidale Central Rotary Club has helped the school, through fund-raising activities like the yearly Book Fair.

Some of their money from selling books went towards library books for the school. Today, the school is one of the top 10 primary schools in KwaZulu-Natal province for literacy – an astonishing achievement for a rural, black school in a poor area.

Rotary’s Project Dignity, begun in 2005, provided girls with special panties with washable sanitary towels, lasting three to five years. School attendance shot up from 18 per cent to 85 per cent.

“It’s the project I’m most proud of,” Alan said, “because it made a lot of difference to a lot of girls’ lives.”

Rotary also helped the headmaster to improve the amenities, paying for a sand basin to pave the quadrangle, and building new toilets and ablutions for teachers.

For their work for the school, Armidale Central Rotary received the organization’s Annual Trophy for International Services in 2017.

Armidale Rotary are also helping the town of Velddrif, on the west coast. There’s no employment there, apart from a little tourism – but there will be, soon.

The South African chapter have planted 4100 olive trees – one hundred of them a centennial grove funded by Rotary members, including Alan Francis.

Once the olive trees bear fruit in four years’ time, a factory will be set up to make olive oil; this will create 500 jobs in the town.

The profits will fund an after school care facility, with meals, computers, library books, and activities.

A fruitful friendship indeed!