Saturday and Sunday

Ok, I've already gotten beef from three people (BECKY,DAD,GEN) about being behind on my blog. Guys- I'm in Africa making the lives of vulnerable AIDS orphans better. I can't possibly post every single day.

So Saturday I got up at 9 and got ready for the soccer program. We left the house and got a taxi around 9:30, and rode into Katutura. MB gets to the center at 8:45 to hand out shoes that she holds for the kids (whose uncles steal them at home and trade them for booze) and then is at the field by 9am starting games and giving out jerseys.

The taxi dropped us off at the center, and the field is about a block down the road. There is a gaping hole in this big cement wall that you have to walk through (that just happened to appear after the kids started using the soccer fields on the other side). The kids play on gravel fields. Many of the children don't have tocks (cleats) and play barefoot. The skin on their feet is literally inches thick, but I still cringe when I see them run for the ball over all the gravel and broken glass. The worst part is, they have to walk past a really nice grass field to get to their fields. MB has tried to convince the owners of the field to let her teams use it, even just for games, and they refuse. she has offered them ridiculous amounts of money for it, and they just respond by telling her that the grass needs to "rest".

Saturday soccer is so crazy. MB literally has to organize a zillion games for a zillion kids. When it was time for her girls Little Pumpkins team to get ready to play, total mayhem broke out. Unlike the rest of the teams of the world where the coaches chose the spots for the players, and the players agree, MB lets the girls shout out what position they want and whether they want to play half a game or the full game. It's crazy! There is so much screaming and pushing, and the girls are all shouting at each other in their language and screaming at MB in English...Anyway, that was the last Saturday MB is going to let them do that. From now on, she will decide their positions and who will play when. She told them they can say "yes Mary," or "No Mary, I don't want to play that spot. I will leave the Pumpkins team". The girls actually agreed to this (they really have no choice, I suppose).

I sat an watched some of the teams play, until around 12:30 when we went back to the center for the Saturday reading program. It's run by an American man named Brian. He writes stories using their names and animals as characters, and at the end there are a series of reading comprehension questions. They hand the papers in and he grades them, and they can fix the ones they got wrong. He also has math sheets for them with addition and subtraction. There are books for them to read, and after reading a book, he often asks them what it was about. All of these things can earn them "points" and after a certain number of points they get a sticker book or something. I was so impressed with the kids at the program. It's really totally voluntary, but there were 10 or 15 kids there. Since it directly follows soccer, many of the kids are from the girls soccer team. This Saturday, he also talked to the kids about conflict resolution, and they had to preform skits about situations where normally there would be violence, but had to use their words instead. They worked on "I" statements like "I feel sad when you do this because..." or "I would like if you ask me before you take my pencil". Some of them are pretty good at it, and like to act in front of everyone, and others really just hate it. Anyway, I had a really great time working one-on-one with a girl named Sanet, a twelve year old girl, who could barely read through a children's book. She was alright at subtraction, but it was sad to see how much she was struggling with really just third grade work. Things were a bit better when I was working with Meroldi. She is eleven years old but is a fairly good reader and is very good at answering the comprehension questions. Then I worked with Macreney, a fourteen year old boy, on his math. He was ok with that. It's really terrible because you would have no idea he is fourteen by his size. He is literally as small as an average American seven or eight year old child. He and his seven year old brother RuRu (who looks like he is four) and their sister Edelsien, are all sexually abused at home. My first day at the center, Macreney was asleep under a table in the Library room when Ilga came over to talk to him. He told her he hadn't slept all night or all week, which can infer means that he was raped every night. Rick, the CEO of Catholic AIDS Action, recently told MB that he thinks that every single child at the center is being sexually abused. That is probably the source of their anger and rudeness towards the volunteers, because after being so violated themselves, they have become good at pushing other people's boundaries. They don't know how to treat someone with respect, and they have never gotten respect from anyone in their whole life.

After the center we came back home and all showered. Saturday is basically shower day, because the soccer fields are so dusty and it's incredibly hot (there is practically no shade) so everyone is just one big muddy sweat ball. After showering we started getting ready for the braai (pronounced bry), or barbecue. A bunch of other volunteers were invited, as well as some of Mark's (a house mate of ours) friends. Around 5pm I laid down to read, and ended up falling asleep. I woke up around 8pm, and everyone was outside eating and talking. I couldn't even hold a conversation! I was exhausted! So I went back into my bedroom (which I share with MB and Suzanne) and MB had also just woken up. We started talking about the kids and some other things, and I basically had a mental breakdown. It was crazy. But things are fine, and I have this huge epiphany that has totally changed a lot for me. I'm not going to go into details, but it was pretty amazing.

This morning I woke up around 11am and had jam and crackers for breakfast. MB had run out earlier to visit the UNAM soccer team and ask them if they wanted to buy some of the really large shoes I brought with me. She ended up playing with them for a while as well. When she got home, the two of us left to visit her friends Ger and Jose Kegge, the people who I met on the plane from JoBurg. They invited us to lunch on Saturday. We arrived, and there was actually another couple and woman there. Jose and Ger are the loveliest people I have ever met. They live in the richer part of Namibia, on top of a mountain overlooking "suburban" Windhoek, and more mountains. They have a fabulous garden and two very hyper but very loving dogs. There is a pool in the back and the inside of their house is beautiful. It was really kind of them to invite MB and I. Jose served chicken soup for the appetizer (yeah, it was a really fancy lunch, actually!), and then Indian food for the main course. We had those crispy pancake things with rice, meatballs, and all these things to put on top. It was really tasty. Then we each had 1/4 of a pineapple with cream for dessert, and lots of little chocolates. I was going to go for a swim, but it began to rain, and there was quite a bit of thunder and lightning. It is really strange, there are these things called micro-climates. It's especially cool from their property because we are so high up- basically what happens is that you have one area of perfectly blue sky, and then on your other side you see these dark clouds approaching, and you can literally see the rain coming down! It's awesome. I've never seen anything like it.

We ended up staying at their house until 7pm! MB drove me back to our house, and then left to pick up our new volunteer, Kirsten. She is also from Germany, like Ilga, and will be sharing a room with her. I have to say, it feels good not to be the newest person here.

I am almost done with my book, What is the What by David Eggers. Tomorrow I am going to go to the pick-and-pay again to get some more peanut butter (I've just been eating spoonfuls through the days!) and some other snacks. Then at 1 we will go to the center. I guess that's all that's going on...

xoxo