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!

Graduation Kilo!

Things over the last couple of weeks have been pretty busy. We have had a lot of graduations all over Motherwell, New Brighton, and Zwide. It seems as though the way the coaches work in PE is by starting all the new programs during one week. This way they will all finish within a couple of weeks of each other. This is why graduation time can become busy for us as interns.

The graduation from the Skillz curriculum is a big deal for these kids. The way Grassroot Soccer has organized it makes the kids feel as though this is a big moment in their life; as though this is a great accomplishment they should be proud to have been involved in. It really does work out this way. The Skillz coaches work with the school to organize the graduation. They bring all the kids together in the courtyard of the school and run a graduation just like any other graduation would work. Parents and family members are all invited, and most of the staff as well as other students will come out and watch. The beginning of the celebration is used to let the parents know about the program. The coaches like to play “Find the Ball” with the parents. They line up about 6 or 7 kids in front of the parents, shoulder to shoulder with their hands behind their backs. As the kids sing a song, a ball is placed in one of their hands. The kids then pass the ball behind their backs between one another. At the end of the song the kids must stop passing the ball. The parents then try to guess who is holding the ball. The ball is supposed to represent HIV and the lesson of the game is that you cannot tell who has HIV just by looking at their face. The kids are really good at the game and the parents are stumped most of the time. This is one game the coaches use to give the parents an idea of what their children have been participating in over the last month.

The next part of the celebration is left to the kids. Many of them will perform songs, poems, jokes, and other things relating to the topics they have covered in their sessions with GRS. Most of the demos have to do with self confidence and awareness. One girl stood up and presented a poem about her face and the confidence behind it. Another girl sang a beautiful song about her life. A group of boys got up and sang a famous rap song about HIV and AIDS. Things like these really make you realize how much the kids appreciate GRS. It shows how much they have learned. This part of the graduation is my favorite.

The next part is really moving. The Skillz coaches ask one of the parents to stand up and say a few words. It means a lot to hear words from parents about Grassroot Soccer because the topics covered in the curriculum are not discussed everyday. One woman stood up and spoke about how her daughter was coming home each day and teaching the whole family about the things she had heard that day from her peer mentors. At another graduation a father stood up and explained how these sorts of things were not around when he was a child. It made him extremely proud to see how his community was beginning to understand how much of a problem HIV and AIDS are in their country. Most of the speeches are in Xhosa, but with the help of coaches translating it, we can get a good idea of what is going on.

After the parents have spoken and the Principal has said a few words in appreciation, the graduation ceremony is completed with each student coming up to the front to receive their certificate of Skillz completion. This three Skillz to win in the curriculum are: 1.) Know the game 2.) Build your team and 3.) Make your move. The certificates read, “On completion of the Skillz curriculum, [student’s name] is now certified to Make Their Move.” Through many Cheers, Kilos, smiles, and a few tears, the celebration is always a huge success. The principals are usually a bit hesitant to allow a two-hour period for the graduations in the middle of the day, but once it is over they appreciate the happiness surrounding the event.

After the graduation parents and children are free to eat snacks and juice that we bring for them. This is where our job comes in. Each time there is a graduation Sarah and I go with a coach to “The Sweet Connection” to pick up snacks. This place is unbelievable! It is a warehouse for just junk food. They have bags the size of a body pillow just filled with cheese puffs. They have racks upon racks of cookies and chips. I thought it was really cool at first but now I am getting a little sick of it. Anyways, we fill our carts with bags of chips, biscuits, and juice for the graduation and get on our way. We then have to drive the snacks all around the townships for the graduations. The perk of the job is definitely getting to see the celebrations for the kids.

This week has been quite slow. We are getting ready to host our holiday camps for children. This is where we invite groups of children to participate in our Skillz curriculum during their vacation week. The coaches run the sessions during the day. Our job as interns is to take care of the monitoring and evaluation for each camp. We will run focus groups with children and coaches to see how well the camps are working and what we need to change. This should be good fun but it will take some work to prepare. My responsibility will be the camp in New Brighton. The camps are held during the last week in September. Another job I have taken on is to run the organization of the next Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) Tournament which will be held at the end of November. They have done a couple of these already in Zwide. This time will be a little bit different because we will be running qualifiers in each town: Motherwell, New Brighton, and Zwide. Through these qualifiers we can get even more kids tested then before. The main VCT tournament will be held in New Brighton with 8 boys teams and 4 girls teams. At this tournament we will be more interested in testing members of the community because the children will have already been tested during the qualifiers. The whole thing is a little bit of a mystery right now, but soon enough I will be incredibly busy getting everything together.

This past weekend My housemates and I took a weekend away from PE. We stayed in a cool hostel in Tsitsikama called the Tube’n’Axe. Tsitsikama is a beautiful town between mountains and the ocean. We went bungee jumping at the world’s highest bungee site (216meters = 708ft = height of the Met Life building in New York) off a massive bridge. We then hiked along the ocean in Tsitsikama national park where we saw tons of dolphins and whales. We also went swimming under a waterfall. After a good night on Saturday we woke up and took a zip-line tour across Tsitsikama Waterfalls. It was an incredible weekend to say the least.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that has been reading the blog and keeping up to date with my work. I really appreciate it hope you are enjoying it. Please ask any questions you have about anything because I am glad to give further information. You can e-mail me at dfitzpat22@gmail.com or just post a comment below. I have been checking for comments so if you have anything to say just let me know.

The townships are where GRS does work

The office we work at in Port Elizabeth is at the Sithembile Primary School located in Zwide. Zwide is one of the many townships around Port Elizabeth. The townships are the place where black, coloured, and Asian people were forced to live during the apartheid era. They are located outside all of the major cities in South Africa. This is where we would be doing all of our work and I could not be more excited.

The first drive from the airport to our Cape Town hotel was our first exposure to the townships. Along the highway you can see tin shacks crammed together for miles in each direction. This was Khayelitsha. The Monday and Tuesday before we left for PE we were able to spend some time here doing work. As part of our training we were taken out to a Skillz tournament that was going on at one sight in Khayelitsha. The focus of the tournament was the girls because it was National Women’s Day in South Africa so we helped run a few games and explain rules to the participants (with a little bit of translation help from the coaches there). The tournament was a success from what we could see with small-sided matches going on in one area and Skillz curriculum games being enjoyed in another. The children are so happy to hang out with us even though I did get mauled by about 20 of them on our way out (I think the video is on YouTube). The field was a large, mostly dirt complex in the middle of one part of the township.

On Tuesday we were able to take a tour of another part of the township. This may sound a bit voyeuristic, but it was actually very cool and good for the community. We were led by a group called Ambitious Youth. They are a group of young men from Khayelitsha who offered us a free tour in order to give us a better understanding of what was goes on everyday in these towns. It was amazing to see how developed the business and lifestyle actually was. From the outside looking in, it just appears as though they are quiet miserable places where people only live and eat. In actuality, there is a lot going on. We first visited a fishery which is where people can get fast-food type stuff. It also had an arcade inside. Next we walked past a bar with pool tables inside and TVs. There are markets all over the place where people can get groceries. All of these are contained within these tin shacks. It is weird for locals seeing a large group of white people walking around, but they know about the tours and seemed to welcome our presence with smiles and greetings. One of the places we visited was a shebeen where some of the elders gather to drink homemade beer and gossip. The whole tour was really amazing and changed my entire perspective on what the townships had to offer. The tour guides from Ambitious Youth were awesome and I would definitely recommend getting in contact with them if anytime is spent in or around Cape Town.

After the tour we went to the main event for the day: a GRS soccer tournament and braai (South African term for barbeque). We met at the CTC ’10 field which was built in honor of a student from Franklin & Marshall University who passed away just before is senior soccer season. Amy Cawley, one of the GRS interns who graduated from F&M, will be spending a lot of time working at that field with orphans and some GRS groups. The field is a beautiful ¾-size field-turf field located at one of the primary schools in Khayelitsha. All the staff and friends were divided up into teams and a fun time was had by all. Kids from the township who caught wind of the soccer events lined the field and cheered us on. We all showed our appreciation by giving away our jerseys. A few local women cooked up some great braai and we concluded with a feast.

Port Elizabeth is actually known to have some of the poorest townships in the country. This is interesting considering the industrial state of the city. GM South Africa, Volkswagen, Continental Tires, Goodyear, Cadbury, Ford (just to name a few) are all located in PE. It is hard to fathom the fact that the unemployment rate is up to 80% in the townships around PE. Nevertheless, the township is always buzzing whenever we are at work.

I have been spending a lot of time driving around so far. I was the only one of the four of us here able to drive a standard, so I have been able to go out anytime someone needs a ride. There are three areas where the Port Elizabeth office runs programs: Zwide, Motherwell, and New Brighton. One of my supervisors, Siya, has been taking Sarah and me to Motherwell each day to ask schools to accept us into their curriculum. Sometimes it is a challenge to convey our ideas and our purpose to the principals of the schools, but with time and patience we usually get our point across. Initially Siya did most of the talking, but after a few schools Srah and I both had our chance to introduce GRS. We usually speak with the Life-Orientation teachers for 12-18 year-olds, and set up times when our coaches can come in and run Skillz interventions with the kids. The schools are very receptive to our proposals and for the most part have accepted us. We visited eight new schools and we will start running programs at seven of these schools this coming week. It seems as though the schools are used to NGOs coming in and making proposals. With a lot of teacher shortages schools are eager to get help from outside sources which we like to capitalize on. I think the teachers and principals recognize that it is important for children to learn about HIV/AIDS and the stigma surrounding it; however, it is a difficult topic to bring up in a school setting. This is why GRS and the Skillz curriculum are so important.

Other than driving around I have been helping out around the office with whatever needs to be done. Sarah and I have been helping keep track of attendance for coaches. They sign an attendance sheet every time they run an intervention and this is how we keep track of how much each coach will get paid. Rosie and Mike stay busy with their jobs and we help them out whenever we can. The coaches are all from the township so they are in the office most days hanging out and waiting for assignments. Every Friday there is a coach development session held where all 41 coaches in the area get together at the office to go over developments in the program and anything else that needs to be covered. The first week we went over a contract for a coach’s code of conduct which they got to design for themselves. Last week we celebrated Women’s month by playing netball and soccer together. Having the coaches around all the time is great because they are all so nice. They teach us random things about the town and recommend cool places to hang out. They have also been teaching us Xhosa (pronounced “click-osa). This is the main language spoke amongst black people in the townships. It is one of the nine national languages in South Africa. So far we have got “molo” which means “hello” and “unjani” which means “how are you”. It is tough to get the clicks down because it’s not very natural, and Bere, one of the coaches, told us there are about 85 different click sounds. We will work at it though.

Working in the township is awesome and is really what I was hoping to do when this whole thing started. It is just great to work right where all the kids spend their day. Anytime I want I can usually go outside into the courtyard with a soccer ball and kick it around with little kids. They run a Skillz Street League at Sithembile too so I’ve been able to take part in running that. There is one really cool spot in Zwide where we like to catch lunch. It’s a butchery where you go inside and get a certain type and amount of meat, possibly a loaf of bread, and drinks; then you go around back where there are guys with a braai set up that will cook the meat up for you. It’s greasy and delicious! The township is full of energy with so many schools. There are also mini-bus taxis flying all over the place that definitely don’t follow traffic laws, making driving an adventure. The townships are extremely poor, but it makes you wonder what people need to get by and keep a good mindset. Though there is good reason to be negative in such surroundings, the vibe I get whenever we are at work is a positive one. Through the energy of the kids and the enthusiasm of the coaches it seems like we will be surrounded by a lot of optimism this year. The townships definitely have downfalls too as we have read in the paper and heard at work: a corrupt cop got shot and a fight that ended in a stabbing. There are also huge problems with drugs and crime which make for sketchy surroundings at night. All this being said, I feel lucky to be able to work in Zwide every morning. I will never forget the drive from the airport to the hotel that first morning as we passed by Khayelitsha. By the time I leave South Africa next year, it will be hard to imagine the initial impression I had of what the townships would be like.

And you will be spending the next year of your life in...

The whole first week built up to where each of us would be assigned and what jobs we would be doing. It is important for the South African staff to get to know us before they assign us to a place where we will be working for the entire year. This is why they keep us in the dark for so long. It was something hanging over our heads since we accepted the job and we would finally find out Friday night. We went to Bill’s house and played a huge game of soccer before the assignments were revealed. Originally we were told there would be three people in Kimberley, eleven in Cape Town, five in Port Elizabeth, three in Zambia, two in Malawi, and two in Namibia. The day of the unveiling we found out there would also be one traveling to a refugee camp near the border of Zimbabwe and two people traveling to Lesotho, a completely land locked kingdom within the borders of South Africa.

Tannis, one of the interns who had been working for GRS in Cape Town for the summer, was the one to reveal the assignments. Finally the information was released and I was assigned to work in the programs department in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Port Elizabeth (PE) is located about 800km east of Cape Town along the southern coast of South Africa. There would be one other girl, Sarah, working with me in programs. Rosie was assigned to operations in the PE office, and Mike was assigned the task of Monitoring & Evaluation in PE. The four of us will be living together for the next year in PE.

It was a great relief for everyone to find out their positions and placements whether they had expected them or not. There were a few surprises, but regardless, it seemed as though each of us was excited to embark on our year long adventure. The relief made for a good night out in Cape Town on Friday. We also had a relaxed weekend with the freedom to explore the city and no GRS commitments. Saturday we watched the big Rugby match between the Springboks and Australia. The Springboks are the South African national Rugby team. Sunday a group of us hiked Table Mountain. We scaled up the backside where Skeleton Gorge emerges out of the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens. Once we reached the top and had enjoyed our well deserved view, we descended down toward the city through Platteklip Gorge. The weekend was full of great weather and fun! Within three days we would be leaving for PE with a lot of work ahead of us.

Cape Town Training and Orientation

Training in Cape Town started off with a “Resiliency Race” bright and early Monday morning. The race was a scavenger hunt organized so that we could orient ourselves with the different areas of Cape Town as well as learn a little bit about the local culture. We had to take pictures, complete tasks, and finish our adventure with a presentation in front of the other interns and a panel of judges from the office. Even though our team did not win we had a great time!

Tuesday morning marked the beginning of formal training sessions. The sessions were set-up like class in a conference room in the hotel where we were staying. The first day was all about GRS’s curriculum which has been branded SKILLZ. The curriculum is full of tools including games and information which coaches use during interventions with children. There are four components to Skillz: Skillz core, Skillz tournaments, Skillz Street, and Skillz holiday camps.
The Skillz core is a seven week program that kids go through composed of eight 45-minute sessions. This is where coaches pass-on knowledge and confidence to kids through games.
Skillz tournaments, or voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) tournaments, are one day tournaments held to promote GRS and its curriculum. Teams get points depending on their results, but they also get points for good sportsmanship and getting tested. In between games teams do activities from the Skillz core.
Skillz Street is another tool used by GRS to promote good sportsmanship and HIV/AIDS education. It is a street soccer league where kids referee themselves and learn to make fair decisions. Education is also involved before and after the matches.
Skillz holiday camps are similar to the Skillz core but presented over a week during school holidays.
Skillz is also the name of the magazine that GRS uses to reach the masses. The magazines are placed in local newspapers quarterly. They include games, information, articles about famous soccer players, and more. They are useful for helping kids communicate with their families which is important considering the topic is quite taboo in the communities. SKILLZ is a brand name that Nike has helped GRS come up with so that GRS is easily recognized in the communities. All the coaches wear bright yellow or blue shirts with Skillz written across the front when they are coaching.
Tuesday was the best day in my opinion because we learned the core of what GRS is all about. We got to see footage of interventions and meet the actual coaches doing work on the ground. We got to see GRS from the perspective of an outsider, a 14 yr-old participant, and a 24 yr-old Skillz coach. Xolani, Avuyo, Tami and Gcina, some of the coaches around Cape Town, ran most of the day as well as Taylor Ahlgren, the head of curriculum and curriculum development.

On Wednesday we got to meet Bill Miles, the COO of Grassrooot Soccer. This day was all about Business Development, Marketing, and Communications. F4 (standing for “Football for an HIV Free Generation) is a huge business initiative from GRS and partners to make a difference. Some of the partners include Lovelife, the Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation, USAID, Nike, PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), and a few others. It was very interesting to learn about where GRS gets all of the money to run the Skillz curriculum. Over the last year GRS has doubled in size within these branches of Business and the development of the organization. Through a “strategic alliance” (as they worded it) with FIFA, GRS has been able to take a huge part in the 20 centers for 2010. One of the Football for Hope centers will be located in Khayelitsha which is the township outside of Cape Town. GRS will run/host this center for FIFA. Nineteen other centers will be erected all over Africa in time for the World Cup next year. The purpose of the centers is to create a community center for kids with counseling and testing centers, a field, and resources for children to do schoolwork. The opening of the Khayelitsha center will be on December 5th, the day after the world cup draw.
There were two more programs GRS works on for marketing including the ambassador program and the Sony Ticket Fund. GRS Ambassadors are individuals of celebrity status that work for GRS at an intervention or a training of coaches and help to promote the organization. The Sony Ticket Fund is the coolest thing. Sony has donated 15,000 World Cup tickets to GRS in order to bring local kids from the townships to the games next year. This is extremely exciting and will make many kids very happy.

Wednesday and Thursday we also learned a lot about the Monitoring and Evaluation side of GRS. This is the group that takes down all of the data for GRS from interventions. It is important for NGOs to prove their ideas are working in order to get more grants and data is the best way to do this. Zak Kauffman is the head of M&E. Him and his team, including a few of the interns, are doing a great job getting information from interventions and coming up with new ideas on how to organize all of the data. This is an important wing of GRS as the organization grows and progresses into the future.

Thursday and Friday we learned a lot about general operations and policy of GRS. As a group from the office deliberated over our placements we had a few miscellaneous presentations relating to the topics of South Africa and HIV. One was from a public affairs representative from the US Embassy who spoke about safety in the country and how the consulates can help if we get into trouble. We had a presentation about Gender and HIV from a professor of Gender Studies. The last presentation was about the biology of HIV and AIDS from Dr. Kevin Rebe.

All in all training was very tiring, but incredibly informative. I have to thanks Ryan Janks, the head of interns, for putting this all together in such a smooth fashion. Also was to thank Tannis who was a great help to Ryan. Thank you to all those who gave presentations and helped us all week!

Skillz Kilo!!!

Arrival in Cape Town

The trip started off with a bang when my initial flight out of Boston to JFK got delayed three hours. This meant I would definitely miss my connector to London-Heathrow. Fortunately, there was a scheduled twelve-hour lay-over in London and our nice travel agents at Raptim Travel were able to get me on a later flight out of New York without having to reschedule my flight from London to South Africa. I happened to run into another group of the interns at Terminal 5 in Heathrow and we played games and shared stories until our departure.

After twelve hours I was ready to get off the plane when we landed in Cape Town. A representative from the Best Western picked us up in a shuttle from the airport and brought us to our hotel in the city. Our thirty-minute drive along the highway took us past the townships and suburbs of Cape Town. The townships are where a lot of black South Africans live and work. These are very poor areas with an extremely dense arrangement of houses made from paper and sheet metal. The townships go on for miles and this is where we do a lot of our work (more info on this to come).

We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of our hotel with its spacious rooms, a pool, a restaurant, and a pub. This is where we would spend the next ten days living out of our bags and learning all that GRS has to offer.

I'm Off...

Thanks to all my friends who showed up to John Harvard's last night. It was a great send off and I will miss you all so much. Thank you for all the calls and good wishes from everyone else!

So I have my visa and I'm ready to go. I have to fly down to JFK in New York first. I then fly out Friday night to London on a 7 hour ride. After a twelve hour layover in London a group of us will board a plane for a 10 hour journey down to Cape Town. All in all the trip will take about 40 hours. Can't wait!

I will see you all soon enough and I'll keep you updated as much as I can. I'm not sure about the internet access for the first two weeks so hold tight for updates. I will put up a post as soon as I can.

US Training

This past weekend was spent up at Dartmouth College at an orientation session for GRS. I was able to meet all of the other interns that will be doing the same thing. Everyone was super cool and it made the weekend extremely fun. We shared all sorts of stories, played some soccer, and really got to know each other.

A few former interns ran the training which was filled with everything from awkward ice breakers and dancing to accounting and HIV/AIDS education. I wanted to say thank you to Anndrea, John, Carolyn, and Kim for setting this all up and making it so enjoyable. They each gave presentations about the different sites where we could possibly be posted including our GRS involvement as well as activities we might get involved in outside of work. There are five possible sites now: Kimberly, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town (all South Africa); Lusaka, Zambia; and one location in Malawi. Each one seems to offer a unique situation both in and out of work. We are not sure of our assigned locations yet. We will find out about a week after we get down to Cape Town for more training.

Kilo!

Video and More Information

We were showing a video at the party the other night and a lot of people did not get to watch it or could not hear it that well so here is the link. The video will give you a good idea of how important soccer is to the people in Africa, and an idea of why they have chosen to use soccer as their avenue toward AIDS prevention. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyplef2Hi6Y

Here is the link for more videos about Grassroot Soccer:

http://www.youtube.com/grassrootsoccer

For more information about Grassroot Soccer and HIV/AIDS visit the website at www.grassrootsoccer.org

If there are any problems with these just let me know and I'll try to help you out

Thanks!

After Party

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for joining us at the party. It was a huge success. Also, thanks to all others who could not make it but sent donations and nice notes in the mail.

It is great to see all the support from family and friends and it really means a lot to both Eren and myself as well as Grassroot Soccer.

I just set up this blog so if you have any questions about it let me know...

Thanks again!