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