Dean McRae (left) with a group of volunteers from all over the world about to distribute masks to the residents of Arambol in India.
Dean McRae, who owns and is renovating the historic Dudley Arms at Mangatainoka, has just returned from Goa, India, after being trapped when our respective countries closed their borders during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.
He has been through some very interesting times, some very stressful times, some personal emotional upheavals and some incredibly inventive, newsworthy times.
Napier-born Dean is a semi-retired builder, having made his money renovating homes in Australia and building three of his own in Queensland's Gold Coast , Bulgaria and Goa.
Until he bought the Dudley Arms he spent half his year in Bulgaria and the other half in Arambol, a village outside Goa on India's west coast.
He was there when the coronavirus struck, having left Dudley Arms to tenants, and he decided to return home. Air India was laying on repatriation flights to New Zealand from New Delhi to help Indians return and was booking New Zealanders in India wanting to get home.
Unable to book because he did not have an Indian credit card Dean scrolled the internet and discovered one seat on the only plane flying out of Mumbai 500km away.
Using his BNZ card he miraculously secured it. A taxi ride costing $900 through tight internal border checks saw him on the plane and safely in quarantine in Auckland just a month ago.
He said that while staying at the Rydges Hotel he was very well treated by staff and health officials, but he was pleased to return safely to the Dudley Arms.
While trapped in Arambol he spent his time helping the locals fight Covid.
In Dean's words:
"Basically, I'd like to say a huge thank you to all out there who were so generous to help and back me with this wee Covid project ... to get the locals in this village protected through the provision of good quality, 100 per cent cotton, reusable masks. The project has been an outstanding success, and we managed to get over 7000 masks manufactured and distributed to the entire community. No mean feat in a lockdown India.
■ There were several tangible benefits:
Firstly of course that there were masks distributed through all stratas of this village. The breadmen, taxi drivers, garbage collectors, labourers, bus drivers, fishermen, shop keepers, policemen, locals, tourists, migrant workers, are all sporting these masks still to this day. Given they were being distributed just as they became compulsory made the project extremely timely.
■ This timing meshed in well with the ability to encourage better relationships between the local police and the population that they were under orders to control. Many people would have seen the videos of the police enforcing the pandemic lockdown rules around India. Not a pretty sight. Here in Arambol that was tempered by the police at the major checkpoint in town at the bus stand distributing over 1000 of the masks. A very nice opportunity to humanise these guys was generated. They appreciated that very much.
■ Another positive offshoot is the lack of used disposable masks littering the place, which apparently has occurred in many places, India and abroad.
■ We were also able to provide a few weeks' work for some trapped migrant tailors, mostly from Nepal, who otherwise would have been haemorrhaging money in this time.
"Of course, the fact that we were able to distribute these masks free of charge (thanks to all your lovely donations) meant that the take up for these masks has also been very successful.
"All in all I think I can say it was a very successful, extremely timely, well accepted, well taken up community project. I am personally very humbled by the support of my dear relatives and friends, out there in FB world, who supported me and sent donations from near and far, to enable me to pull this off.
"Too many to number here, I can at least say I got donations from all around the world: New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Cyprus, America Bulgaria, Italy, to name a few, making this a truly global effort ... thank you all again for this wonderful support," says Dean.
Councillor Alison Franklin says: "One of our own has made such a difference to the village/community that he was living in over there that it deserves recognition.
"I've been in regular contact with Dean since lockdown and have tried my best (at arm's length) to help him where I can. I've been keeping him up to date with repatriation flights, government announcements about Kiwi trapped overseas, the whole gambit."
Dean is a remarkable man - a "survivor entrepreneur" has to be the best way to describe what he has done for the people of "his village" - the good old #8 wire Kiwi ingenuity at its best.