no drawing marijuana

3-3-09
4:06 pm

man, i really need to update more often. i always mean to, but then i get busy and end up with novel-length posts. my apologies.

well, i have now officially been a netball coach for 4 days. our first practice was scheduled for saturday at 1:00 pm. i arrived at the netball court... field... mound of dirt, really, at 1:00 sharp, clearly forgetting i was in africa-show up on time and you can be hours early.

at 1:20 the first players starting showing up. 3/4 arrived in flipflops and most were wearing flannel pj pants. it had to be 90 degrees out that day.

my first job as coach was to make "jerseys." each player is required to have their position written on both the front and back of their shirt. let me point out that there are 34 players on our team and only 7 play at once. of course, as soon as the team saw the 14 jerseys (i made an extra set for scrimmages), chaos broke out. the next 40 minutes were spent arguing in swahili over who got to wear a jersey. i pretty much stood there trying to figure out how i could assign people to positions without actually knowing what any of them were. so i'm yelling in english, the girls are yelling in swahili, and i wouldn't even know how to get a game started if i wanted to.

once the arguing died down, we realized that someone had neglected to get a ball-probably me. the captain ran to get one and returned with a partially deflated soccer ball. we play with what we can get here.

i tried my hardest to coach, but how do you coach a sport you've never seen before? really i just stood there and fried in the sun for 3 hours. i was asked to ref, but politely declined, knowing that i would probably mess up their game. i'm totally rocking the coaching position. the 20 extra girls stood there with me. i was going to do some drills, but then realized we didn't have access to anymore balls. then i thought i'd do conditioning, but didn't think i could make the girls run in flipflops.

the practice ended when a girl in flipflops gashed her toe on a sharp rock. she reached down to smear the blood off and then immediately grabbed onto my hand for support. as we were walking to the nurse's office, it hit me that perhaps i should be wearing gloves or something? i've heard some of the kids here are hiv+ but i don't know which ones. oh well. here's hoping.

i'm only sort of sad to say that i neglected my coaching duties when i slept through the 5 am practice sunday morning (i had told the girls i probably wouldn't make it). instead, i slept, woke up and went to church with janaya. after church, a guy from denver came to tour peace house. he's been in tanzania volunteering and doing neurosurgery for the past month. the crazy part? we discovered he was close friends with my dad in med school.

i got up monday and started wandering down to the office to find janaya. as i was walking through campus, i saw half the netball team jog past me. "sister? are you coming to the tournament with us?" wha? tourney? don't bother telling the coach!

i hustled back up to my room, grabbed some water, a rain jacket and my camera. the team showed up with the van at my doorstep, so i hopped in and wedged myself between one of the teachers and the driver--you really aren't riding tanzania style if you aren't being impaled by the gear shift in your right thigh.

i'm picking up on some kiswahili (thank you, elephant, hakuna matata), but i have yet to learn the phrase, "i really need to sit by an open window or i might puke on your face." for those of you who don't know me well, i get crazy carsick. i can't last 5 minutes in a car without feeling ill. therefore, i've taken dramamine almost everyday since arriving. however, because of all the rushing around, i had neglected to pop a couple before departing.

so we drive off toward the tourney. during the journey, we saw a squished dog. this may sound culturally insensitive, but it really adds to the barf-inducing adventure: apparently tanzanians don't believe in kleenex. you can pick your nose in public and it really is not a big deal. so the teacher i'm smushed next to starts picking about 4 minutes in. a few minutes of digging later, she grabs my hand to tell me how much she enjoys having volunteers come to peace house.

upon arrival at the stadium, i promptly found myself a corner and parted with my breakfast. netball tourney, day 1, off to phenomenal start.

after my little puke party, i looked around and realized 2 things: 1. the court at peace house is maybe a third the size of what it should be and 2. we are the only people there.

turns out somebody translated 3:00 pm in swahili to 9:20 am in english. so, we piled back into the god-forsaken van and headed back to campus.

my next order of business was to relocate the netball court and expand it. it basically meant climbing through knee high weeds, a random cactus, and burr-filled plants, measuring the sides, and then pounding rusty rebar into the ground with the end of a pick ax. since we were measuring the string, janaya and i accidentally made it 30% too small the first time, so then we had to start all over. overall, a fairly frusterating morning.

at 2:00, we got back in the van, passed the squished pile that no longer resembled a dog, and arrived at the tourney--this time there were actually other teams there!

my team changed out of their flip flops (most had borrowed shoes from friends-and most of those borrowed shoes were ballet flats) and began to warm up. apparently in netball, "warm up" doesn't actually mean "practice." have you seen remember the titans? you know the scene where they come out onto the field? same vibe. they line up and then flap, clap, hip thrust and wiggle around the perimeter of the court. a good coach would have stifled her laughter. clearly i've already proven i'm a terrible netball coach.

our team ended up playing a city team, comprised of women who had to be pushing their late 30s. they were terrifying! i would have been afraid to get on court with them, not going to lie. but my wonderful girls only lost by 2! i was very, very proud of them. we've got a few really talented athletes... i think that once they start practicing on a court that's the right size, they'll do a lot better.

we proceeded to stay and watch 3 games. let me say, there IS indeed a limit to how many netball games one can watch in a row before she begins contemplating running away.

last night, i was invited to paul and elizabeth's house for dinner, which was really nice. mainly it was nice to have some company and a home-cooked meal!

also, it was decided last night that i'm going to FIJI!!!!!!!!! i'm SO excited. i got an email from a guy who's there now, and they had just completed a dive with spinner dolphins, turtles, white-tipped sharks, and a couple other reef sharks. i'm definitely disappointed i won't be going to madagascar. it's so random and remote, who knows the next time i'll be in this neck of the woods? but, i also don't want to be shot in the face with tear gas. haha. and cmon... FIJI! WHOO! the cheapest way to fly is actually to go through mpls, so i'm heading home for a couple days. i leave here march 26 and arrive march 27. i haven't figured out yet if that means my birthday will be extra long or extra short :) it will definitely be nice to do laundry and eat a few meals that don't include rice or beans. actually, i'm hoping nwa will be nice and let me change my flight once more-i just found out that the kids are on break starting march 13 and the entire campus will pretty much shut down. plus, it'd be nice to not have to do two 20+ hour flights within one week.

todays was maths all day--and yes, apparently math is plural here. janaya and i taught three classes this morning and then did three tutoring sessions after lunch. the morning was sort of a joke. the maths teacher is on verification this week, so he left us a few problems to go over. unfortunately, neither of us could remember how to do most of them, so we had some of the smart kids do them on the board and prayed they knew what they were doing! tutoring was a whole different story. we are tutoring the kids who scored a 0% or .5% on their last exam. i was with 16 and 17 year olds today who didn't know that zero is less than three, or that 1/2 always equals 50%, or that 6x4 does not equal 64. one girl told me that 1000-25=996. it was really sad, because if these kids don't pass their math exam at the end of the year, they're sent home and most likely will never complete secondary school. as much as i'd like to say my tutoring will help, some of these kids have YEARS of catching up to do. a few of them definitely have learning disabilities, but of course there aren't the resources here to do anything about them. most of these kids probably went to poor primary schools, fell behind, and never caught up. not surprising, seeing as how some schools in tanzania have class sizes of 70-80.

despite a completely sobering afternoon, there were a few funny parts. apparently my wacky handwriting is so distinctly american that the students can't even read it. they thought my "a"s were "2"s, so they kept reading "and" as "2nd." we were both so confused and they couldn't explain in english what was tripping them up. finally a girl pointed at an "a" and said, "what is that?" i explained that in america, some people shaped their "a"s differently. she went on the say, "well, nobody HERE writes like that! also, your 4s look very strange!" haha. so while the students were getting back to the basics of how to count, i was going back to the basics of how to write the alphabet.

immediately after tutoring i went to art club, where we attempted to make greeting cards we could sell for peace house. during art club last week, i walked over to a boy's drawings and noticed that they were covered in pictures of marijuana. so, despite feeling a tad ridiculous i had to clarify: you are not allowed to draw drugs. we listened to some jonas brothers, rihanna and disney. the highlight was when a 15 year old boy started belting along with "one step at a time" by jordin sparks.

overall, things continue to go well. yesterday was long, hot, emotionally exhausting and left me pining for a country with ample supply of kleenex. however, despite being filled with maths, today made me glad i hadn't opted to just run home last night. one day at a time.



now you're feeling more and more frustrated. and you're gettin' all kind of impatient, waiting. we live and we learn to take one step at a time. there's no need to rush. it's like learning to fly or falling in love. it's gonna happen when it's supposed to happen and we find the reason why, one step at a time. --jordin sparks