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.