On Sunday, we had an afternoon session with some kids in a slum somewhere in Eastlands – can’t remember the name – and we headed over with Oti like we normally do. We walked forever back into the slum and said hello to numerous kids who came running out of their places to see the mzungus. The general trend is that in more residential areas of the slums, the kids get way more excited to see us, because they aren’t as used to seeing white people. It can also be a bit annoying though, when you are just trying to mind your own business and every kid and adult you pass says something to you. It’s also really creepy a lot of times when you walk by groups of men because they are clearly hitting on you. Ewww.
Anyways, as we were getting ready to start the session and waiting for kids/balls/cones to arrive, some visitors arrived!!!!! It was the Kickabout team, a group of people traveling overland from England to South Africa in an effort to raise awareness for local football-for-development organizations in Africa. For more on the Kickabout trip, please click
here for the main blog, and
here for more pictures and videos! The Kickabout team includes Lorrie Fair, a good friend and former UNC and USWNT player and Eli Sinkus, one of my best friends who practiced with our UNC team and went to school with me. The other two members of their team are Brian and Ashley, who are awesome! When the posse rolled up to the session, I was soooooooooo excited to see friends from home in a faraway place!!!! I almost started crying because I was so happy to see them! It’s really hard to explain what it means to share this experience with people who I have known for years and have similar backgrounds to me. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to go back to the US and make people “get” what this is really all about unless they come here…so everybody
buy a plane ticket and get over here now! Just kidding – but if you want to, I will definitely support your decision.
We had a good session on Sunday with some kids and were ready to go back and get some dinner…until more kids showed up and we had to do another session. So that was a lot of fun. No matter how tired we are though, we have to
bring our A game all the time because this may be the one shot we have to get the message across to each kid or coach that we work with. Andy and Nick have this thing where they talk about “Camp Nick” and “Camp Andy,” which basically means they muster up some strength from within, put on a happy face, and share their football knowledge no matter what the circumstances are. It’s really good for me to see that example and learn that I must always bring enthusiasm to practice so that the kids follow that example.
After the double session, we washed up, had dinner at the hostel, and headed to a place called Tamasha to watch some soccer and have a couple
drinks with the whole big group. It was a lot of fun to blow off some steam and get caught up with everyone. There were even some bets made on people dancing in front of the the whole place – although I just
danced without anyone putting anything on the line (duh) so I didn’t make any money. Bummer. It was quite a sight to see though, a bunch of
wazungu making fools of themselves.
We had the day off on Monday for the first time since I’ve starting working with CAC, which was definitely nice. I headed to Dormans, a coffee shop/restaurant/free wi-fi place, to meet up with Eli, take care of emails, and grab some lunch. Afterwards, we went on a wild goose chase to get him a new American Express card after his was stolen. [Quick story: his wallet fell out of his pocket in the cab or fell on the ground outside the cab, he lost everything, he called the cab driver who said he hadn't seen it, he later texted the cab driver to ask if he found if he could at least return the ID cards and such even without the money, and then Lorrie and Brian found a bunch of his stuff on the ground a hundred yards from the hostel the next morning. So basically the cab driver took his money and cards. What can he do about that? Nothing - we are in Kenya.] We took a matatu up to the Hilton, where the AMEX representative had told Eli he could get the card at 4pm. We got there around 4:15 and the lady at the desk said the office had moved to a building near the Integrity Centre. The Integrity Centre is the home of the Kenya Anti-
Corruption Commission…as Eli said, they must basically
fail at their job every day. So we took a matatu there, asked the guards if they knew where the office was, then finally found it a few hundred yards up the road inside the Middle East Bank Building, where, funnily enough, there was no indication of the AMEX office on the building. By that time it was probably 4:30 or 4:45. Well it turns out that the office was an AMEX partner office who hadn’t received any info on Eli’s card. After 30 minutes of confusion, the AMEX rep and the guy we were talking to finally got on the same page and the guy printed Eli and emergency card. Turns out it’s good for only a month, he can swipe it, he can’t withdraw cash with it, and he can’t use it at a bank to get money. So basically it’s worthless. SWEET.
Tuesday was a fun day, because we were able to visit a community center in Eastleigh and do a soccer clinic! The community center works to do HIV/AIDS prevention and has a Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) center, dressmaking, hairdressing, and computer classes to empower the youth, and has singing/drama groups, among other things. Here are a couple pictures from the center:
Lorrie and Nick straight chillin at the community center, in front of a cool painting that advertises the female empowerment program Binti Africa (Daughters of Africa).
An amazing singing group who were practicing (or maybe singing for us?) at the community center. Let me repeat: AMAZING.
The soccer clinic was at Oti’s old school and we had a fairly large group of kids, which was good. We did our goalkeeping session WOOT WOOT, which means I lead more of the drills and got to really share my incredible expertise about the best position in soccer. Here are a couple pictures from the soccer clinic:
Halima, one of the cutest kids ever. She never stopped smiling and kicked ass at all the drills despite being half the size of most of the kids in her group. I made her promise that she will be the next Marta and she agreed…LOOK OUT WORLD.
Me molding the minds of the next generation. How did they get so lucky?
P.S. If I can get the internet to work long enough tomorrow, I’m going to try to upload some picture albums so I can post the links and everyone can see ALL the pictures I’ve taken so far!!!!!
If you would like to make a tax-deductable donation to the work of CAC in Kenya and Uganda, please click here. Thank you for all donations – past, present, and future!
May 8th, 2010
For the first time we have seen girls coaching sessions. Having girls in the program was a necessity for working with Coaches across Continents and I am so grateful to see these quiet girls coaching at the top of their voices and running sessions that they have learned from Coaches across Continents. This is the first time that we have female coaches who can teach about female empowerment and HIV.
integrate them into our program. We will use the Coaches across Continents games and curriculum to improve our Football for Social Development. Before we simply played football and separately taught life skills. Now we can do them all by using the Coaches across Continents program. We now have the capacity to develop our community through our coaches.
Members of our Business and Coach Advisory Boards head to Philadelphia today for the National Soccer Coaches Association of America Convention. The NSCAA is the largest coaching organization in America with more than 30,000 members.
