Leaders Keep the Promise and Take Care of Us

My first visit to Katatura, a suburb of Windhoek, it is a township similar to that in Cape Town, but smaller and the spread of wealth in the the township is crazy. A little boy today was wearing the AIDS Day shirt, that stated “leaders keep the promise and take care of us"! It made me realize that it is not just the leaders that are needed to make a difference, but everyone!!

This is a picture of Okahanja, which is the poorest area of the Katatura township. It was so sad to see the same types of "tin" houses that I saw while in Cape Town. There are three main differences:

1. The houses are spread out more
2. There are less people living in the Townships
3. It is the desert so these people literally live in a "tin" house in the desert. I can not even begin to imagine how "HOT" it gets in the summer.

I also got this picture of this boy who was walking down the street through this town ship and I thought.. THIS is AFRICA!! The only real exposure I have had to this is on T.V. or in some cases when I was working with the refugees in Knoxville, but nothing like actually experiencing it. I feel so blessed that I am here and am starting to find a little role for myself here. I still need a place to live and a VISA, but I know this is the place for me!!!!

One of the interns from last year who is now working for GRS is up in Namibia and we have been working like crazy to get the training prepared. It reminds me a lot of the days of graduate school as I spent the majority of the day formatting a paper; but I kinda like doing that stuff. I just wanted to give you a couple of pictures of (okhanja park) where NawaLife is launching some new programs.

NawaLife is one of the other partners that I am working with while in Namibia. They are based in Windhoek but run programs all of over Namibia. They have similar goals as GRS however, there work style is definitely not American, so that is taking a little getting use to. The major difference they have is that NawaLife focuses on working with males 15-35 so it makes the target audience a little different. They are trying to cross over and reach females, but there major practice is males.

The street league is when a group of kids get a team together, play in a couple of games and go through some HIV preventative curriculum. Today was the first day of the league so they just let the kids play, in-order to recruit more for next week. As you can see the field is different that you would ever imagine, DIRT and a lot of ROCKS. It was sad watching the kids play on it, but I don’t think they minded that much. It was also important to recognize the weight and toughness of the ball. I have never played with a ball that heavy but most other balls would get deflated.

These kids are absolutely amazing at soccer skills and many of them play without shoes on. But I had a lot of fun watching. They had the younger boys ages 10 and 11 as ball boys who would chase the balls. It really was cute, and then they let them play! As, you can tell from the picture, they were a lot smaller and ended up loosing 5-0. Everyone, was cheering for them and wanted them to score against the older guys. It was so AWESOME, and they had a lot of good foot skill, they just don’t have enough leg power to shoot the ball. A lot of the kids have a lot of skill so it is very fun to watch.

I was really impressed with this car that a couple of the kids had made; I was so impressed. Apparently, when you do not have a lot of resources you must be creative on how you entertain yourself. It is truly amazing!!!!

I also just took some pictures of the kids, because they love having their picture made. It is really fun; they pose and then want to see the picture, so I have posted some of those as well. It helps to remind me sometimes that these are just kids, who have been dealt a little tougher hand in life, but if there are people who will support them; there opportunity for success becomes greater!! Love ya, Sarah

A Namibian Holiday!!

Hey Everyone,

So I am getting a little more settled in. I am still living in a hotel and I have not yet unpacked all of my suitcases, but I am getting better at living from a suit case. I am going to be heading back to Cape Town on the 9th and I am a little torn about it... I am starting to get settled into the routine and walking everywhere; but Cape Town is so amazing, that it will be fun.

Yesterday, was a Namibian Holiday, Hero's Day. That meant no work. There are some English guys and Australian girl who are working in Namibia for a month staying at the hotel, we had a braai yesterday (bbq or cookout depending upon what part of the US you are in). One of the English guys is an amazing cook and we had sausage, bur gars and chicken, as well as salad and bread. The bread in Namibia is absolutely amazing.... and seeing how I have been eating a lot of corn flakes, peanut butter and eggs.. the meat tasted so good.

Currently, my work is focusing with NAWALife Trust. NAWA is an organization that teaches HIV/AIDS education through soccer to males 18-35.. so it is a little different target audience, but we are running a training next week for them. I was excited today when they said there would be another girl going as well.

I should have some pictures from that next week and I am excited because next week all of my food is paid for by NAWA and it will all be cooked for me, I am WAY excited about that.

I hope all is well..

Sarah

So I am headed back to Capetown on the 9th of September. Apparently, Namibia has tightened the way that they do VISA’s and they will not allow me to apply for a VISA while I am in the country. So I will be going back and applying through the Namibian Office in Cape Town. Other than that things have been going really well.

A couple of facts about my life in Namibia; the housing here is a lot more expensive then the housing in South Africa, the taxi drivers honk at you every time they drive by you - I get honked at about 100 times a day, I am still getting use to people driving on the opposite side of the road – it is tough to have to cross the street and look the opposite way that you have your whole life, the sun comes up at 6:30 am bright and goes down about 6 pm and is dark- I go to bed early and get up even earlier, it is the desert- so I am literally dirty as soon as I leave the hotel- I don’t even like to wear flip-flops because of how dirty my feet are – and I have watched some of the most bizarre movies/tv shows over the last couple of days.

But the work that I am doing here will be amazing. I am going to be pilot testing a curriculum for HIV/AIDS education for individuals with mental/physical disabilities through soccer. For every disabled person “Athlete” we have one youth partner the same age partnered together. This helps to build relationships, teach apathy, and reinforce the messages by one on one discussions.

Here are some of the pictures from the first pilot test that we did. I have done two. The first session we did a game called my supporters. One kid stands in the middle of the center of a circle and leans against the outer people in the circle. Here we teach the kids about what a good supporter is and how good supporters never make a person uncomfortable by the way they are touched. The disabled population is one of the most sexually abused and we are trying to teach them that people who are really your supporters would not harm you in that way. It is a very sad reality.

The next game we played was pressure limbo. In this game the word “SEX” is written on the limbo stick. At the age of 10 the stick is high and it is easy to avoid the pressure in contradiction to when you are 21 and the limbo stick is very low, only 1/3 of the kids could get under. This is a good visual way to show how the pressure of having sex increases as you grow older. Lets just say it sparked some interesting conversation.

The second time I ran the training session by myself, I had so much fun! We played fact/non-sense and risk field. In fact/nonsense I was amazed at how many of the athletes knew the answers to the questions, especially that they all knew a location where one could get tested for HIV. Risk-field is a really neat game. It is where you set up cones and the kids have to dribble a soccer ball through the cones. There are three rounds of a relay game. If you touch a cone, then you have to stop and do a “star jump”. The second round if you touch a cone your whole team has to do “star jumps”, then the third round all teams have to do “jumps”.

This is an amazing way to teach risky behaviors.
In this game the cones represent having unprotected sex and it shows how that action does not just affect the person that participates in the activity, but how it can affect your family (when your whole team does star jumps), or a whole community (when everyone does star jumps). It is the neatest way to teach this lesson; it was awesome to watch the athletes and their youth partners see how participating in risky behaviors does not just affect them, but their supporters and their whole community.

Aside, from this I have been working in the Special Olympics office. I compiled a 3 year budget for the new Football For Hope Centre. It is just a rough draft, but it is a huge excel file. I will be doing a lot of fundraising and getting the programs running. That is just for one of the partners. We are running a Training of Coaches session in two weeks with another partner. So I am really busy and if you know me well I am loving it.

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So I wasn’t the best about updating while in Cape Town, because I was so busy so I am going to back blog this. The training we went to was awesome. It really gave me a lot more information about the programs that GRS participates in and how the organizations work.
In Cape Town, there is a large Township outside of the city that houses anywhere from 400,000- 1 million people. We took a tour of the township and I wanted to share a few photos with you.
This experience literally broke my heart. You hear the term that we are “spoiled Americans” but you really don’t know until you visit a place like this where people live in tin houses lined up, share a bathroom with over 100 people, have to fight for daily survival, and the HIV rates are increasing like crazy. From the training about the culture, there are so many more issues at play here then just unprotected sex, but there are some major stigmas and problems with gender roles that it is hard to just scratch the surface of the problems.

However, there is a sense of community here that people become so accustom to that they are very satisfied. It is very amazing to me how grateful some people are for so little. I felt like a jerk because the day before we went to the township I had paid the hotel to do my laundry and it came back soaked. I had to wear others sweatshirts cause mine were still wet. Then you go to a place like this where people don’t have washing machines and they hang their laundry out everyday, at that point I felt like a “spoiled American” and I deserved the title.
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That same day we had a byre at the turf field that was created in memory of a male soccer player from (a school I can’t remember at this point) who died suddenly one day. It is a turf field that we were able to play a tournament at. It really was a day full of different emotions.

The picture to ther right is where the kids use to play and the picture below is the new field. The new turf field where they have recess, SKILLZ tournaments, VCT- a voluntary HIV testing tournament and many other programs.

As you can tell it is a very good improvement from where they use to play and it creates many opportunities to educate these kids.

Hope all is well, until next time...

Sarah

SWEET!!

So the last few days have been absolutely crazy. I am staying in a bed and breakfast in Namibia and am going to staying here for quite a while. I will be moving to a more apartment style place in a couple of days.

I took a cab today by myself.. it literally scared me to death; but I did it.. I am running my first program by myself tomorrow; we are in the process of developing new curriculum that will work for individuals with mental and physical disabilities. I am partnered with the Special Olympics Namibia and Grassroot Soccer is creating an HIV/AIDS curriculum for these individuals. It truly is an amazing project and I am very blessed to be a part of it.

I am also busy working on networking with other organizations; I have meetings this week and trainings next week. This is all really good learning experiences and I am really excited about the opportunity.

As soon as I find a quick way to upload pictures online. I will get some on here as soon as I find the best method.

With love,

Sarah

Travel Plans

Hey Everyone,

I will try and get pictures uploaded in the next couple of days. I have been really busy and a lot of the interns left today or are planning to leave today. I take off to Namibia tomorrow and we are going to try and find a place for me to live and get set up as well as getting a lot of introductions made so that I know who I will be working with. I am really excited and can't waite to get going.

Will talk with you all later.

Sarah

I'm Lovin IT

Hey everyone,

So the last couple of days have been amazing. I hiked up Lion Head today and it was the most amazing thing!! This place is absolutely amazing. I am really excited about finding out the place where I am going to be placed tomorrow. I am excited and nervous. I hadn't got my hopes up about any one location, until tonight. I hope that it works out but if not any of the others will be fine.

I will talkk to you all later.

I miss everyone greatly;

Love ya

Sarah

Made it to Cape Town!!

I had a really exciting adventure flying to Cape Town. Normally I talk to everyone in the airports but in the Ambsterdam airport, no one really wanted to talk with me. I was okay with it though because I was pretty tired. I also sat next to the two most bizzar people on my 11 hour flight to Cape Town. At one point one of them took the may airplane food away from me and told me that she got hers first!! It really was quite amazing.

Today we did a sort of Amazing Race in Cape Town. It was so fun. I was in a group of three and it was really fun. Our group actually one the little competition so it was really neat. I did see the site of the World Cup 2010 today and it amazing. I also am starting to figure out my way around.

I also met some of the coolest people as we were walking around trying to figure out where the police station was. We finally it and had to go in and speak with the captain. That was a little uncomfortable, but it worked out in the end. Most everyone was really friendly.

Hope all is well

Love ya

Sarah

Sarah

Headed to Africa for REAL this time

So yesterday my flight got delayed and I got to hang out with Whitney and Miah one more night, it was really fun and I am really glad that I got to stay. I am really going to miss all of my friends and family....... but I am so excited for the next year of my life and hope that this helps me figure out what I am going to do with the rest of my life!!

All of my stuff is packed and the checked baggage is under 50 pounds, just barely. I will try and update as soon as I get to Africa.

Love ya,

Sarah