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!