The Most Significant Story

Working for a non-profit organization has been an interesting experience. I have been able to learn a lot about where the organization gets funding from and what avenues there are for fundraising. The basic way GRS gets money is by proving its idea works. We have to have someway to prove the curriculum and program we are using is making a difference in South Africa. Otherwise, no one will support us. The way we prove our methods work is through data collection. We report on how many kids are going through the curriculum in a given time period and we test the participants on the knowledge they have gained by taking part in our program. There is a quiz which the GRS coaches give to participants before and after we run our entire curriculum. The quiz is the same at the beginning and end so that we can see how scores have improved. This data is then collected and organized by our Monitoring & Evaluation team. After they input all the data and put it into a presentable format, GRS can show it to potential donors and funders. Currently our support comes mostly from the United States Government through USAID and PEPFAR (The Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). We also get money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other smaller foundations like that. Another way to gain money, which many of you have helped with, is through generous donations from individuals. While data is useful for the US Government to use there has to be another way to prove to the average person that we are doing something here. This is why GRS came up with the Most Significant Story (MSS) campaign. Once a month GRS coaches get together at their sites and talk about a certain topic (how they have seen GRS change a child, how they have changed since working for GRS, etc.). The coaches share their experiences with each other and then vote on the best story. The following is a story that came from one of our male coaches in Port Elizabeth about how Grassroot Soccer and its coaches helped one girl overcome an extremely difficult situation. The story was voted last month’s MSS for all of GRS South Africa:

I’ll never forget our first intervention at W.B. Tshume Primary School in Zwide, Port Elizabeth in August 2009. Coaches Mendisto, Amy, Nkadi and I were working with sixth grade boys and girls. When we began, it was clear that some students did not want to participate. The down-turned faces, the curious glances and the hushed whispers all said the same thing: the kids were uncomfortable. We learned later that they thought Grassroot Soccer was for little kids because they saw students just running around, and others did not want to participate because they knew we talk about HIV and AIDS and they feared being stigmatized.

The teacher at W.B. Tshume told us not to pressure those that did not want to participate and mentioned that several kids had personal/behavior problems. We felt like outsiders as we began to run Skillz practices with shy, reluctant kids. It was a monumental challenge. Some kids were absent for days at a time. It was difficult to tell if we were reaching anyone with our messages. One 17 year-old girl named Ntombi always caught my eye. She would just sit in the back, never speaking or participating in games. She was often absent too. When we did Team Talk she did not even look or listen to the other kids in her group. I feared that we were not reaching her and that we were letting her down.

The turning point of the intervention came during Practice 8, the final Skillz practice, which features an activity called “My Coach’s Story.” During the activity, we asked volunteers to come to the front of the class and share an experience that challenged them and explain how they triumphed in the face of adversity. “Volunteers only,” we repeated. There would be no pressure to perform. A young boy, one of our most enthusiastic participants, was the first to step forward. When his story concluded, he sat down, leaving the stage for a new presenter. As silence descended upon the room, I scanned the classroom for signs of life. No one could have predicated what happened next.

In the back corner of the room sat Ntombi, who had not spoken all week. Without lifting her gaze, she quietly got up from her chair and walked slowly down the aisle toward the front of the class. Her quiet confidence mirrored the class’s stunned silence.

In a soft but steady voice, she told the group that her mother was HIV positive and had been bedridden at Dora Nginza Hospital for the past six months. Because her mother had fallen ill, she had moved in with her aunt. But rather than love and support, Ntombi was met with scorn and disapproval. Ashamed of her sister’s “condition,” her aunt was determined to take it out on her young niece. She gained confidence with every word and slowly gained the courage to confess something she had never shared with anyone before.

In May 2009, one day after school, Ntombi went to Greenacres Mall with her brother’s friend. On the way back, he raped her. Despite the fear and pain that consumed her, Ntombi knew what she had to do. Ntombi went to the Dora Nginza Rape Crisis Centre, where one of the diagnostics is an HIV test. There she learned that she had, indeed, been infected with HIV. Shocked and confused, she didn’t know how to handle the situation. Without a strong support base at home, she chose to run away to live with a friend in Motherwell. This was why she had missed so many school days.

She didn’t have anyone. There was no one to protect her and no one to turn to. Although weakened by the experience, she was not broken. She still had the courage to confide in us, her Grassroot Soccer Coaches and fellow participants, to seek help from those who cared for her. She told us her story, and we connected her with the Ubuntu Education Fund, a long-standing partner of GRS that provides long-term counseling and support for youth in Port Elizabeth.


It has been four months since we completed our first intervention at W.B. Tshume Primary School. Ntombi is now attending counseling and is ready to disclose her status to her mother and her aunt. She said that things are much better in her life after sharing and telling other people about her story.

This year, when we went to her school, she was friendly and open and shared with us that she really liked the My Coach’s Story activity because she got to share what she was feeling inside. Now she is working toward the completion of grade seven. This time, when we were doing Team Talk, Ntombi told her friends the story of being raped by her brother’s friend. “Be careful,” she warned, “because even if people know you and offer you things you should not completely trust them.” She also participated in Risk Field and talked to the class about the danger of sugar daddies. Ntombi’s transformation from shy and reclusive to a classroom leader demonstrates the impact our program can have.

Now when we head to W.B. Tshume, students ask us to come early so they can tell us about their friends who also need help accessing counseling services, HIV testing, and rape victim support. These were the same students who wouldn’t even talk to us before, and now they are open to share and even help recruit kids for Grassroot Soccer programs. I am proud that, since 2006, our team in Port Elizabeth has touched the lives of more than 7000 youth like Ntombi.

Our January

On the night of December 17th we suffered our third break-in so far in South Africa. Our upstairs window was left open (not that unusual because most of the houses in our complex do the same). The robbers wedged a 16ft makeshift wooden ladder in between the front of our car and the garage and climbed up. The top of the ladder was about 4 feet to the right of the window so they must have scaled across the wall in order to get in. They came in at about 3am and Mike saw them through the window. Luckily he closed his door and waited in case they tried to come in. One of them went downstairs and one milled around upstairs. Sarah woke up to a noise and saw one of them standing in her room. When the guy saw her he darted out of her room and downstairs. The two intruders slipped out the back door and ran away. Thank the heavens no one was hurt.

It was difficult to deal with this considering we were all leaving on vacation that evening. Grassroot Soccer headquarters in Cape Town was notified, but other than that everything went on as normal. When I got back to Port Elizabeth after our holiday trip was a little scared to sleep in our house but I didn’t have that many options and getting robbed is a preventable event. The next night my family arrived and I was able to stay with them for the next ten days. The girls arrived home from Tanzania two nights later, and Mike got back from Mozambique on the 4th of January. Living and sleeping in the house seemed a little unsettling to them. The last straw was one night when our neighbor’s car window was smashed in and his stereo was stolen. Mike also heard people tapping on our windows. The next day none of us wanted to stay in the house and we called the Grassroot Soccer COO, Bill Miles. He immediately told us to get out.

So we were on the run!

Well it wasn’t quite that dramatic because GRS was willing to pay for alternate accommodation. The first night we all crashed at my family’s hotel which was okay but they would be leaving the next day. We moved to the Formula 1 motel (no racecar beds) down the road which offered cheap, basic rooms. We stayed there for four nights before we had to find a cheaper place. We found temporary housing in a holiday flat where students wouldn’t be arriving until January 23rd. This was nice, but GRS HQ was a little frustrated at the amount we were spending on the place. It was R500 per night (equivalent of $66) for the four of us and we would stay there for 12 nights.

Finally, Cape Town gave us orders to find a new place to live that would be furnished and safer. We searched and searched for places all over Port Elizabeth in the areas we had heard were the safest. This was tough considering none of us had done anything like this before after coming out of college. We were also competing with thousands of students who were looking for places before the school year started in February. All the while we were working trying to jump start Grassroot Soccer 2010 in Port Elizabeth. We were out all day searching for new schools to work with and speaking with principals about implementing our curriculum in their schools.

We found a place that was furnished, secure, and within our budget. Nice!

One twist: turns out our original place in Bluewater Bay from which we were moving came unfurnished according to the team in Cape Town. So now we had to find a different place that was unfurnished. Luckily, we had seen a nice unfurnished place by accident earlier in the week that was just outside our budget. We told Cape Town about it; they took two days to approve the new price. At this point we are living upstairs in our boss’s house as our time at the holiday flat (as well as our funding from Cape Town) ran out. Now the budget was approved and all that had to happen was the settling of a lease agreement between the townhouse owner and GRS Cape Town. This took over a week to get done (typical South Africa). We were getting nervous the owner would drop us; the owner was getting nervous we were not going to accept the lease; and Mpumi, our site coordinator, was getting nervous we were gong to tell everyone about his personal life now that we lived at his house. To be fair, Mpumi was actually incredibly nice to offer his place to us and it really goes to show how much he cares about us and the organization. Without him we all would have been in a tight spot.

Finally, the new lease agreement got signed by both sides and we had a new home. The new place is great and after a struggle in January, we moved in on February 1.

Dealing with issues like this is tough when you work for such a young organization. Grassroot Soccer has had interns since 2006 but maybe nothing like this has ever happened. This year is such a big year for GRS with such huge expansions around South Africa and the world. The World Cup and business development are important for this organization this year. Dealing with our situation was serious for us but it was tough for them to find time and people to help us out. I think it is apparent now that they have to come up with plans for such emergency situations. Initially we were being pointed in all different directions by different people working in the same office in Cape Town. It was a bit unsettling, not to mention the actual scare we were facing. We did not really know who to turn to and who we were supposed to consult in any of the circumstances we had dealt with. Reaching out to our COO when we were scared probably wasn’t the best option and it angered some people, but we actually did not know who to contact in order to get something done. We had had three break-ins and nothing was done about it so we had to make it a bigger deal somehow.

Currently we are working with Cape Town employees to develop a better policy in case something like this happens again. The time was made easier because of my housemates. We all got down at one point or another during the process, but we were all there for each other. It may sound corny, but this shared experience has definitely brought us all closer together.

Now we have our new place and we have so much to look forward to for the new year. Our Skillz Core is underway in almost 20 schools around Port Elizabeth. We are trying to reach 3000 kids in PE alone before the end of March. This is unheard of in terms of interventions for Grassroot Soccer. We are excited to be part of something so big. We also have another Voluntary Counseling and Testing Tournament coming up in April which will take a lot of hard work. My main project is getting the Skillz Street League going in our three sites. I am really trying to focus on getting young girls out to play after school. Empowering young girls and showing them how important they are is a big deal in fighting the things that cause HIV to spread so fast. So my main focus is getting this going. It will not be easy and it really has not been done before in Port Elizabeth.

The World Cup is also a huge deal for us. Port Elizabeth has one of the 10 World Cup Stadiums. Our site has been given almost 2000 tickets for 8 different games in Port Elizabeth which we are supposed to give out to kids. We have to have one chaperone for eight kids. Yeah, this means I will be attending a couple of games here for free, but I will also be taking care of eight kids who do not speak the same language I do. Should be an experience. We also have to run eight holiday programs over the four weeks of the World Cup. The programs will be sponsored by Castrol and it is going to be quite a project. Running one holiday camp and recruiting kids is a project in itself. Running eight over four weeks will take a lot of work to say the least. So despite a rough start to 2010, we do have a lot to look forward to!

The Transkei

On December 18th we finished our Holiday program and we were officially on vacation for the holidays. Mike, my housemate, and I planned a surf expedition up the east coast of South Africa from Port Elizabeth to Durban. The region is known by a couple of names: “The Wild Coast” is the term most tourists use and “The Transkei,” is how locals refer to it. This stretch of coast from East London to Port St. John is the most popular tourist destination in the Eastern Cape. Some go there to relax, some go for the waves, and some just go to get lost (for a long time). The region is quite rural compared to what we had seen travelling between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth; so what you see besides the hippies, hikers and hills, are the thatched roof mud-huts that house the native Xhosa people. The trip was designed around surfing and relaxing and it would soon become an unforgettable adventure. Neddie along with Chris, another GRS intern, joined us for the trip.

We started out on Friday evening after packing our rental car to the brim. We had four backpacks, four surf boards, and four dudes packed into a minivan for a 3 hour trip up to East London where we would stay for two nights. East London is an industrial city that is a little bit larger by population than Port Elizabeth. It is not the most exciting city in South Africa, but it is renowned for good surf and nice beaches. Nahoon Beach and Gonubie point were the spots where we surfed and they were beautiful beaches. Otherwise, we did a nice pub crawl on Saturday night to really get to know the city and meet some locals.


Our next destination was Coffee Bay. The town is very small and consists of two hostels, a hotel, and couple of restaurants. The scenery there is amazing with a beautiful beach and amazing cliffs dropping straight into the Ocean. Apart from the native locals there are a good number of hippies that have lived there for what seems like too long. The people were extremely friendly and we surfed all three days we spent there. We got in a beautiful hike to “Hole-in-the-Wall.” On another hike we were guided by a nice local named Eric who showed us the perfect place for cliff jumping into the ocean. He also gave us a tour of some of the caves where Nelson Mandela and his crew hid from the apartheid government in order to not get arrested during the 1950s and ‘60s. This gave us a little taste of the incredible history attached to this region. After all of that and four crazy nights in Coffee Bay we departed on a four-hour drive to Durban.



We drove into Durban on a rainy Christmas Eve to a hostel called “Surf ’n’ Dreams. The hostel was nothing short of its name and it was a great place to spend Christmas and Boxing Day. Christmas wasn’t exactly the same with out my family and the cold weather in New England. We woke up early on Christmas and drove to the beach for a surf session. We also enjoyed a true South African Braai (a barbeque), which Nick, the hostel owner, put on for some of the guests. We swam, drank, and ate. Mike even surfed in a Santa Claus costume. On the next day we had to get one last surf session in just south of Durban before Neddie left on his return trip to America. Chris, Mike, and I enjoyed a relaxing Boxing Day afternoon. Durban is a really nice city with a heavy influence of Indian South Africans. The city is suffering, just like many South African cities right now, due to endless construction in efforts to get ready for the World Cup. The new World Cup stadium is really interesting and it is worth checking out pictures of it online.



On the 27th I left Durban to drive south toward Port St. John. I was going back to the Transkei. I left Mike and Chris in Durban as they would be getting on a bus that evening to travel up to Mozambique for New Years. PSJ, as many refer to it, was a lot like Coffee Bay with the rolling hills, immaculate beaches, and cliffs over ocean. The road leading up to PSJ runs a long a jungle river that used to be the home to hippos. The river leads straight into the ocean and it’s quite an amazing site. The hostel was full of hippies, surfers, and hikers. I did not get any surfing in here due to the three shark attacks that had happened over the last six months. There had been three deaths due to sharks at the same beach and I wasn’t about to take any chances surfing alone. I did a short hike and relaxed at the bar listening to bongo drums and watching some hippies throw flames. The next morning I woke up early and started my seven-hour drive back to Port Elizabeth. I stopped in Cintsa which is located just north of East London. I was supposed to spend the night in this quiet beach town but I decided to save a little money and get home to my own bed after 10 days on the road. It was, however, early enough to stop for one last surf session at Yellowsands, a popular vacation destination just south of Cintsa. The waves were awesome and it was a good way to cap off an amazing surf trip.

Cruising into Port Elizabeth just as the last of the sun was setting, I quickly thought about all the things we had seen and done over the last 10 days. It was an unforgettable trip and I even improved my surfing a little bit. It was great to have an opportunity to travel this beautiful country. South Africa is full of so many different types of people and the trip definitely reminded us of this. The surf was great, but the scenery and the people are what I will remember the most. I think we got a lot more out of this trip than we had originally bargained for.


Travelling always gives you a better picture of what is going on outside your everyday bubble. The Eastern Cape is home to some of the poorest people in the entire country. These rural towns along the Wild Coast are a reminder that issues like poverty and HIV are so widespread. Grassroot Soccer is doing great work with kids all over South Africa, but it’s hard to imagine reaching all the people in the country and defeating this epidemic when there are so many small communities in different towns, speaking different languages, and living different lifestyles. One of the biggest parts of GRS’s curriculum is getting kids to act as a “coach.” They need to take the information they learn and share it with others. The data nerds in GRS call it “diffusion” and are working on studies about its influence. It really makes you realize that the only way HIV can be defeated is if the information we are sharing becomes an epidemic in itself.

Familiar Faces

Its 2pm on Thursday and I’m sitting in the office getting ready for our Skillz Holiday Program for next week and my cell phone rings with a mysterious number. I answered, “Hello” and the other end replied, “Dominic Fitzpatrick…” The voice was unmistakable and one I recognized right away. “Neddie!” “Dom, I’m landing in Port Elizabeth at 5:05, can you pick me up?”

I had known Neddie was coming but he had planned to take a 22 hour bus ride from Johannesburg to PE and he wouldn’t be arriving until Friday afternoon. I was excited and now only had to wait a couple of hours before I could finally see a familiar face.

Having such a good friend here meant a lot to me and it was great to be able to share my work with him. Neddie helped out the next week with our Holiday Program and got to see what it is we are actually doing here. I think it was a great experience for him and eye-opening at the same time. We also got in a fair bit of surfing, a bungy jump, and some good old R&R. Neddie had been travelling around the world with our other friend Mike. The two of them had backpacked all around Southeast Asia. Since Neddie split up with Mike, he had been to Thailand and India before flying down to South Africa. Needless to say it was comforting for him to be able to sleep in a bed and relax in one location for an extended amount of time. This being said, Neddie only had a week before he would be off on the road once again. (For more information on their adventures through Asia visit Mike’s blog at earthfromallangles.blogspot.com)


The Fitzpatrick family also made it down to South Africa for the New Year. After an adventurous couple of days in Cape Town, they drove to Port Elizabeth along the Garden Route. It was truly amazing to have them here and I hope they enjoyed the time as much as I did. I know they got some good pictures and saw some great scenes. We went to Jeffery’s Bay, went on a safari at Addo, played with baby tigers, and even got in a bungy jump among other things (Mom and Dad opted out of the bungy). One of our South African friends also invited the whole family over for a true South African braai. The best day for me was taking the family into the township and showing them around. They were able to meet some of the people I work with and they really got a better idea of what we do. Just like helping out worked for Neddie, the tour gave them a better picture of issues facing South Africa and how the majority of black people live in Port Elizabeth. They left for Cape Town on the 8th of January and I was sad to see them go. They definitely made the most of their time in Cape Town seeing Table Mountain, Camps Bay, Muizenberg, Cape Point, and more. They capped off their trip in true Fitzpatrick style with a tour of the vineyards outside Cape Town just before going to the airport to fly home.



Seeing a familiar face is always nice wherever you are especially when you haven’t seen one for a long time. It was cool to be able to share our work with friends and family and give them insight into what our lives are like down here working for Grassroot Soccer and living in South Africa.

Bafana Bafana!!!

This past Saturday we were able to go see the South African National Team play at the new World Cup stadium in Port Elizabeth. South Africa was playing against Japan and we got tickets for R30. That’s equivalent to a whopping $4. It was great to be part of the crowd. Everyone was going wild with their vuvuzelas and other types of noisemakers. We thought we would be early showing up 90 minutes before kick-off only to find a third of the stadium was already full. All tickets were general admission, which meant first come, first serve for seats. Don’t worry, this is not how it will be for the World Cup. We had a great time and met up with some of our coaches from GRS. You can see us with them in the pictures. The stadium is beautiful and holds about 48,000 spectators at capacity. There were 44,000 at the Japan game on Saturday.

Sadly, South Africa is not the strongest they have ever been. They are winless since their campaign at the Confederations Cup last June and haven’t been scoring many goals. They held a good Japan side to a scoreless draw. This is okay, but they need to improve a lot before next year. Enjoy the pictures! (you can click on them to make htem larger)

Not all Braais, Beaches, and Bar Ones

So, after living in Port Elizabeth for three months, we have started to learn a little bit more about our surroundings.

For starters, we have learned a little bit about how inefficient SAPS is. The South African Police Service is a pretty big joke. I have always resented cops a little bit back home for cutting in on some of our fun, but at least those cops are productive and do their work. We always spot cops around here giving random pedestrians rides, chatting and laughing on the side of crime scenes, or driving with no regard for any traffic laws.

I’ll start off with some depressing stuff and finish with a funny story we heard.
First off, there has been a lot of debate about what Jacob Zuma (the SA President) has been saying in the media about cops. One cop was cop was caught in a tight situation and decided to shoot his way out of his surroundings, injuring a couple of people and killing one. Jacob Zuma was quoted – or misquoted – saying, “sometimes cops need to shoot to kill” in order to do their job. This has been a hotly debated subject with leads me into the most depressing story I have heard. A three year old, I repeat three years of age, was shot dead by a police officer in Soweto last week. He was seen playing with a small pipe, which a police officer mistook for a handgun. The officer shot the little boy point blank for what he thought was good reason. No comment necessary…

Our closest encounter with the cops has been quite frustrating. We got broken into one night while we were all sleeping. We live in a gated complex of condominiums with electric wire lining the entire complex around its tall brick walls. One night, a burglar came in our back door while we were sleeping and stole a bunch of stuff from our first floor. I woke up the next morning to find my computer, my camera, my iphone, my backpack, and my new shoes all gone. Rosie also lost her computer and Ipod. We called the cops at about 8:30am. They showed up at 2:30pm to our place. We all missed an entire day of work waiting around for them when they said they would come “just now.” They took a report and said the fingerprinting guy would call and set up an appointment. No fingerprinting guy ever came by to help.

One week later… The four of us are eating dinner and listening to music as we always do. We hung out after dinner reading on our first floor. At around 11pm Mike decided to go upstairs and get ready for bed. He was casually looking around for his wallet when he noticed his Barcelona jerseys were no longer hanging on his wall. He thought that it couldn’t be possible. We had been robbed again. We had been robbed while eating dinner downstairs. Mike had had his window open slightly that leads to the back porch, which is on the second level. While we were eating dinner, the perpetrator climbed up onto the back porch, came in the back window, and nicked his wallet, his camera, and his favorite soccer jerseys. We waited up all night together until about 5am when we finally decided the cops were not going to show. We had called them each hour since 12 midnight. Mike went to the cops the next morning and had to make quite a scene before the cops took him seriously at all. He missed all of work on Friday waiting for the cops to come by the house and take another report. The cops never came. He went by the station again on Monday and the police sergeant said the fingerprinting guy would come around on Tuesday. Mike missed work all Tuesday waiting for the detective. We left around 6pm to go out for a drink and the detective called saying he was outside our gate. We told him we would be back in ten minutes and to wait for us. We got home ten minutes later and he was nowhere to be found. Mike tried all week to get more attention but not much was done. We took matters into our own hands by bolting up the back windows, getting a lock for our back gate, and buying a motion detector. I guess that’s what people have to do in this country. I met a girl just last week and discussed this with her. She assured me that no one here is looking out for the people on the ground. Her friend was raped and the police just sat around laughing while the girls waited for attention at the station. “The only way to be safe is to protect yourself,” she said. We now know that every night we have to go through a checklist of things before we can sleep comfortably. This is just the way it is here. A little different from Bowdoin or Carter Dr.

And now, for a little fun. Motherwell is one of the townships where we work in Port Elizabeth. Parts of Motherwell are considered some of the most dangerous in Port Elizabeth. They government decided to build a police station in the depths of Motherwell, just on the fringe of the dodgiest neighborhoods. One night a group of 20 or so hoodlums, armed with guns bombarded the police station and robbed it blind. AK-47s, Assault Rifles, and more were all jacked straight from the few helpless officers on duty. I couldn’t believe it when I heard this. The story got better when we heard that the police station is now lined with signs saying, “ADT security services protects this property.” Who is really watching out for whom here?

As much as South Africa tries to be a first-world nation, there are a lot of things that it lacks. The President is always criticized in the paper for giving out bogus pardons to friends for tax evasions and things like that. The Department of Education has had numerous money scandals which is depressing when I see the poor state of the schools we visit everyday. Higher-ups are seen driving around $100,000 sports cars, which they use as “business cars.” Cops drive around in Saabs and BMWs. I have been planning a soccer tournament where children have the opportunity to get tested for HIV. We are trying to use the Department of Health to help us test kids and community members. I’ll go into more detail about this in a later blog, but dealing with these women and trying to get them to help you out is like dealing with the mafia. We have to do them favors in order to get them to do their jobs. It has been really frustrating.

South Africa is a beautiful, wonderful country, but it is warped by poverty and a great divide between social classes. There have even been instances where our own coaches have been caught lying in order to make an extra dollar or two. Our coaches can also be extremely lazy at times and you wonder what they are actually involved in GRS for. Most of them do great work, but others have different motives in mind, which is another frustrating element of working here. Then again, they do deal with hardships everyday that I could never imagine. A lot of them are supporting five or six people on this part time job.

South Africa is also a nation still coming out of an era of racism and inequality. There are white neighborhoods, black townships, and colored townships. It is uncommon to find a lot of mixture in any part of the city here. Some may say they see things like this in America, but here it is a divide like you have never seen before. It is visibly still segregated in many elements of life whether there are still signs that make sure of it or not. Going to bars and restaurants in different parts of the city is the best way to see it all. Lucky for us, we get to experience the different sides on a daily basis. In Port Elizabeth it is not nearly as bad as stories we have heard from the more rural parts of the country. Some of our friends are working in Kimberley and Richmond, South Africa where people are very outwardly racist.

South Africa is a tough place to get used to and this is what we are starting to realize as reality sets in and the honeymoon period of living here starts to wear off.

Pictures!

This is the group of interns that have come together from all over the United States to help Grassroot Soccer. A Couple of the guys are missing from the photo. There are 26 of us altogether and we are now spread across five different countries in Southern Africa: South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia, and Malawi. For more info on all the interns and other staff you can go to grassrootsoccer.org and click on the "Who We Are" link. There is a profile for each of us.

This is the hotel where we stayed in Cape Town for the first 10 days in South Africa. The hotel was located right in the shadow of Table Mountain.

This is a photo I took from the top of Table mountain after a three hour hike. It was a beautiful day. Cape Town lies in between Table Mountain and the Ocean which makes for the most incredible setting for such an interesting city.

This is a photo I took in Khayelitsha which I find to be pretty sad but very interesting. No adults were in sight where these kids were digging through the trash looking for snacks.

Khayelitsha is one of the largest townships in South Africa. You can notice the shacks upon shacks. This goes on for miles. This being said, the townships are full of energy and pride. Many of the shack owners have great pride in their homes. Most of these homes hold between five and ten people each. Note: You can click on the photo to enlarge it.

The day we spent in Khayelitsha during the first week was incredibly enlightening. It concluded with a Grassroot Soccer employee tournament held at the CTC '10 field in Khayelitsha. The field is a 3/4-size field-turf field, built in memory of a player from Franklin & Marshall University who passed away. The field is located right behind one of the town's primary schools and is lined by a chain-link fence with shacks on the other side. You can see the houses in the backdrop of the photo.

These two pictures below are from the Skillz Street League tournament we held at Sithembile Primary School in Zwide. We had 8 teams from Zwide competing for prizes. I was able to organize this with Siya which was great! Bringing all these kids together after school and teaching them about fair play and responsibility really keeps them out of trouble. This is the basis behind the Skillz Street League which is going on in Zwide and New Brighton; soon to start up in Motherwell.

This is a team picture of Nkuthalo. They are a great groups of kids and their school is very involved with Grassroot Soccer events. The kids are very passionate and play their hearts out in each game which is awesome to see considering they come straight from school with nothing to eat and no water to drink.

This is a picture of a South African sunset taken from our back porch in Port Elizabeth. The sky looks so big here and we often find ourselves talking about how different it is from where we come from in The States. (Click on the picture to make it bigger)

Here is a picture of the Bungee that we did in Tsitsikama. It was on the underside of the N2, a major highway that traverses the southern coast of South Africa. Its kind of like jumping off the underside of the Mass Pike if the Mass Pike crossed over any valleys that dropped down over 700ft. Needless to say, the jump was quite a rush.

Here is a picture of Rosie playing with some of the school children right outside our office. Having the office at a primary school in the township is one of the coolest parts about the job. There are always kids around and its hard to complete tasks in the office when they are always calling our names and wanting to hang out. I think Rosie is learning a few dance moves here from a group of first graders. Its hard to tell who is enjoying it the most.

This is one of our coaches leading "Fact Fitness" during the Holiday camp. All the schools had spring break last week so we ran holiday camps in three different sites during the week. This gives kids an opportunity to stay out of trouble while they are not going to school for the week. In New Brighton we had over 200 kids each day playing soccer, cricket, netball, and rugby. They also spent half the time learning about HIV and life skills from our coaches through the Grassroot Soccer Skillz activities. For me the camp was a great opportunity to see all of our coaches in action. I feel as though I know them all a lot better after spending a week with them out in the field. The week was not all fun & games though as three of us has to collect data from the camps and take pictures for the main sponsor, Castrol. Castrol funded all of the camps across the country. We had three camps in Port Elizabeth, two in Kimberley, one in Soweto (Jo'burg), and one in Khayelitsha. These next two weeks will be pretty busy inputting all the data from the camps and reporting to Cape Town. Castrol also requested that we find out the story for one kid at each camp and report about how this camp has "changed their lives" and "improved the community as a whole." I'm not sure they really understand what is going on, but whatever they think will work for their PR is cool with us as long as they keep providing support. I actually did meet a nice sixteen year-old boy from New Brighton who loved to play rugby. In New Brighton we worked with a partner organization called Umzingisi who promote the influence of sports on a positive lifestyle. Their campaign is similar to Grassroot Soccer but more focused on sports. Lifa, the boy I interviewed, played for the Umzingisi Dragons rugby team. The holiday program is just another avenue Grassroot Soccer uses to spread awareness for HIV and reach all the kids in the township. In one week Port Elizabeth reached almost 400 kids. This is a good start in our goal to reach over 16,000 for this next fiscal year.

This is a Photo of a girl signing the "Skillz Trial Contract": Play, Respect, Coach. All the kids do this during the first session of Skillz Core. It is referred to throughout the eight sessions and then at the end the Kids all sign the "Skillz National Team Contract," which means they will go out and share all the information they learned during their time with Grassroot Soccer with others in their community.

Here is a cool little photo I took in the bathroom at the Addo Elephant Park near PE. Its easy to see that South Africa understands how big this problem of HIV is. Its also interesting to see the different campaigns that offer solutions to the problem. The elephant park was cool, but we only saw two elephants, a few jackals, about 20 Kudu, and some warthogs. In our disappointment of not seeing any lions we went to a croc & lion park down the street where we got to play with baby lions.

I have a had a few comments about the blog and appreciate the support. A couple of people have told me that they weren't able to leave comments. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to e-mail me at dfitzpat22@gmail.com. Thanks!