colorful passport

The Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho - one of the prettiest countrysides I
have ever seen.

One of my favorite things about travelling to different countries is getting my passport stamped each and every time I pass through immigration. Trevor makes fun of how enthusiastic I get each time I receive another passport stamp, but I still cannot get over the fact that in less than five months, I have filled several pages in my passport.

The most recent additions to my passport are the stamps I received crossing into and out of the Kingdom of Lesotho. In order to get to and from Lesotho, Trevor and I took taxis. But these taxis are nothing like the taxis that roam the streets of New York City or Washington D.C. For starters they are a lot bigger and can fit anywhere between 14 – 22 people. And they operate more like buses, meaning that you don’t hail your own taxi; instead, you pay for a seat in one of these large taxis and share the journey with strangers. But unlike buses, they leave when they are full and only when they are full (Trevor and I waited anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours for these taxis to fill up). And the last thing that sets them apart from U.S. taxis is that the drivers are even more aggressive, reckless and crazy than taxi drivers found in the States.

But Trevor and I made it safely (even if not too comfortably) to and from Maseru. We travelled to Maseru because we wanted to visit the interns in Maseru, Meghan and Hasmin. Meghan and Hasmin are actually interns for Kick 4 Life, a GRS partner organization, and the first thing we did upon arriving was check out the Kick 4 Life office and FIFA Football For Hope Center (located at the same place). 

A turf 5 vs. 5 soccer pitch at the Football for Hope Center.
This soccer pitch is open all the time and the Lesotho interns told us that
there are always kids playing on the pitch.

Kick 4 Life (K4L) is a very unique organization. Although they are a GRS partner organization, they are independently organized and funded and the only thing they really share with GRS is the Skillz curriculum. K4L only exists in Lesotho (unlike GRS, which has sites in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia and works in about 15 additional countries) and not only works in schools delivering the Skillz HIV-prevention curriculum, but also runs additional programs aimed at helping highly vulnerable and at risk youth.

One program that Hasmin works on is the K4L recycling program. In this program, street kids (kids – most of whom are orphans – that spend their time on the streets because they don’t have homes and have dropped out of school) are provided with a bike and wagon that they can use to collect recyclables around Maseru. K4L actually has clients (there are lots of expats in Maseru) that hire their recycling services. The recycling boys earn points for working and when they have earned a certain amount of points, then K4L will pay for their school fees so they can return to school, receive an education and hopefully find their way off the streets. The coolest thing about this program is that it generates profits and is therefore self-sustaining because it does not need money from funders in order to continue.

Hasmin at the Lesotho Football for Hope Center.

K4L also has programs aimed at reaching vulnerable women and girls. Meghan coordinates/ runs these programs and she told me that a majority of the women that come through the K4L programs tend to be sex workers who are looking to change their way of life. In these programs K4L teaches these women job skills, helps them build their CV/ resume and even works to place them in a temporary volunteer job so that they can get work experience. Meghan explained that K4L is so well known in Maseru that there are several organizations with which K4L has formed partnerships with who are willing to hire these women for a period of time and sometimes even permanently.

Even though I love what GRS does and I believe in the ability of our programs to inspire behavioral change, I really enjoyed learning about the programs K4L runs – these programs not only aim to change behavior, but also to help at-risk individuals in concrete and tangible ways.

After seeing the center and getting the grand tour of Maseru, we returned to the intern house and waited for Ben (Joburg), Katie (Joburg) and Podge (CT) to join us (they were driving in from Johannesburg). When they did arrive we stayed up until four in the morning just laughing, talking and of course, pillow-talking.

Saturday we headed into the mountains of Lesotho (it is after all the Mountain Kingdom). I loved driving through the country. Lesotho is a lot different from the parts of South Africa that I have seen. Instead of having townships, which have a high density of people in a very small (and impoverished) area, small villages dot the countryside.  Most of these villages reminded me of Botswana and Malawi. Houses/ huts were circular and constructed from mud and cement mixtures with thatched roofs. In some of the larger villages we passed there were very plain tin shacks (still smaller than the size of a dorm room) that were the shops and restaurants for the village. And over all the country seemed more rural than part of South Africa that I have thus far frequented. Everywhere we went we could see at least one herd boy (these boys spend all their time watching and feeding their animals and usually only eat once a day themselves) with his flock of either cows or sheep.

The valley we walked into.

Meghan drove us to Malealea Mountain where we booked a group room for on night at Malealea Lodge. After throwing our stuff in the room we set off on a hike – without a guide – hoping to find a waterfall. We never found the waterfall… but we did stumble into an amazing bedrock river channel!

A bedrock river channel!

I had some major geo geek-out moments and couldn't help but think about my senior thesis (which explored how weathering effects the evolution of bedrock river channels). We spent several hours exploring the stream, climbing on rocks and taking in the breathtaking scenery. 

That night we braiied (grilled) dinner, shared stories by candlelight and laid down in the grass to gaze at the stars together. On Sunday we returned to Maseru, played a quick game of 5 vs. 5 soccer at the Football for Hope Center with some of the kids that were hanging about, crossed the border into South Africa and then Trevor and I taxied home to Kimberley exhausted but happy.

life is hard

I was hanging out in the township with my friend Jippli the other day and an interesting/ awkward topic of conversation came up: money. A friend of his had recently asked me if he could borrow R100 and I was explaining to Jippli that it made me feel uncomfortable lending money to people (especially people I don’t really know). Jippli said that he understood, but then he said something that really got me thinking.

“Life is hard,” he said.

He continued to say that sometimes people don’t have a choice – they need money and they ask for it, hoping that one day they will be able to repay it or return the favor.

But those three words – “life is hard” – made me realize something… that for me, life has never actually been hard.

I have never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from. I have never had to worry about helping to support my household. I have never had to worry about not having a job. I have never had to worry that my family and friends wouldn’t be able to support me.

It really puts things into perspective. Up to now, my biggest worries have been about school/ grades, about messing up in a soccer match, about finding a job (which I wasn’t too worried about in all honesty because I knew I wanted to work for GRS for a year), about designing a t-shirt that my sorority wouldn’t deem ugly, or about disappointing someone else or myself. I have never actually had a real/ basic-living worry.

For me life hasn’t been hard. I grew up in a safe home environment. I grew up with both of my parents. I grew up with numerous opportunities. And I grew up surrounded by family and friends who provided me with everything from physical needs to emotional support.

I still believe that a bit of my own blood, sweat and tears have helped me get where I am today, but where would I be if I had not been raised in the safe, opportunistic environment that I was? Where would I be if my back-story were that of any of the coaches that work for Grassroot Soccer in Kimberley? Where would I be if life had been hard for me?

Where people come from – their environmental circumstance (which they have almost no control over) – matters and I hope to be more mindful of that moving forward.

peanut butter jelly time

Before you continue reading, I have a task for you. I want you to write down detailed instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Did you do that? Great! Now you can keep reading.

Tuesday and Wednesday this week, Trevor, Thembi and I ran a Skillz 1.1. (GRS’ curriculum for Grades 6 – 8) Refresher Course for all of the coaches.  The point of this course was to re-familiarize coaches with the curriculum after taking almost a two-month hiatus from running interventions.

I’ll be honest – I was very nervous about holding this Refresher Course. Every Friday last year, we held Development Sessions for all of the coaches. The purpose of these sessions was to have coaches run through practices in front of their peers and receive constructive criticism. These activities were rarely taken seriously and as a result I thought that they were a complete waste of time.

So when Thembi, Trevor and I selected which parts of the Refresher Course we would run, I was determined to make sure that my sessions were fun, interesting, and most of all, worth while.

One of the sessions that I was in charge of was Practice 3 – Find the Ball (link to blog entry), which every coach believes is an easy practice. So in order to make my session grab the attention of the coaches, I decided to take a different spin on it.

And so I asked each coach to write me detailed instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This seemed like an easy enough task and they all finished within a few minutes. Then I had them do two things with their instructions. First, I asked them to compare the instructions they wrote with those of the person sitting next to them in order to see if they were exactly the same. Sure enough, the sets of instructions were not the same.

Next, I asked for volunteers to read their exact instructions, which I followed – word for word – in order to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This was hilarious! One coach told me, “put the bread in front of you and use the knife to spread peanut butter on the bread.” He never told me to take out two slices of bread, so I just smeared peanut butter on the packaged loaf. This led to bursts of raucous laughter from the observing coaches. The other highlight of the day was when another coach instructed me to, “apply jelly to the bread.” Because they didn’t tell me how to “apply” the jelly, I used my hand, which led to even more laughter.

All in all, I wanted the coaches to understand two things; that we all have the same goal, but we may get to our goal differently, and that even the easiest activity can become challenging if it is not explained clearly. I’m pretty sure they all got my point and I think they enjoyed themselves too.

For the most part I was happy with how the two-day Refresher Course went. A couple coaches even admitted that it was much different than they had thought it was going to be and that they were pleased with how Trevor, Thembi and I had orchestrated the event.

At the office we’ve finally tied up all the loose ends regarding “management” and “operations” stuff, which means that next week we will start recruiting schools and planning interventions! 

circle of life

Trevor and I finally “recovered” from our amazing December trip and are ready to get the ball rolling – in both work and play. And this weekend, we played. We drove about 20 kilometers outside of Kimberley to a Safari Lodge (yes, there are safari parks close to Kimberley).

We got to see a lot of animals native to Africa – wildebeest, camels, meercats, wart hogs – but the best part of the day was when we got to play with two baby lion cubs!

They were about five months old and even though they were still cute and cuddly, they liked to play a bit rough. I actually got a few scratches and some teeth marks from our excursion, but it was nothing too serious. 

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Also, I still have two blogs to post about my trip but haven't been able to post them because, as usual, we are having internet problems. Our usage is pretty limited right now. I bugged GRS HQ enough about this that they promised to instal a DSL line at the intern house, but now we have to wait for the phone company to actually do that. Thanks for reading and I hope you keep checking in!

the kimtown low down

In the past two weeks, I have read five books, watched at least ten movies, completed about fifty crossword puzzles, made twenty-ish playlists in iTunes and joined the gym. In other words, I have had a lot of free time on my hands.

But work this past week finally got interesting. In the middle of December GRS closed and all work stopped. And I don’t mean that we just put things on hold; rather, we wrapped up everything that we were working on and didn’t make any future plans. As a result, when GRS Kim “reopened” in January, Mandla, Thuso, Trevor and I had to begin making plans for the entire year to come.

This process has consisted of a lot of talking, a lot of cleaning, and a lot of waiting, but overall I have enjoyed it. During this past two weeks I have gotten to learn a tremendous amount about small business/ NGO management and operations. I am also getting to play a large role in determining what GRS Kimberley will look like this year and what GRS Kimberley will strive to accomplish this year.

There are a few things that will be different in Kim this year and I am excited about these changes. For the first time in almost a year Kimberley is going to have a full staff. When Trevor and I arrived in Kim in August, we arrived at a site that had a Site Coordinator who had to split his time between Kimberley and another site. We arrived at a site that had no Master Coach (the person that is supposed to be in charge of curriculum and coaches development). And we arrived at a site that was supposed to have three interns, but ended up with only two. In short, we arrived at a site where 3.5 people would have to do the same amount of work that other sites do with as many as 10 people.

But in 2012, we will be getting a full-time Site Coordinator, a full-time Assistant Site Coordinator and a full-time Master Coach. Mandla, Kimberley’s current Site Coordinator, is moving to Johannesburg to manage GRS Soweto, but Thuso, the current ASC – the guy at the office who I have very entertaining insulting/ sarcastic/ derogatory/ amusing interactions with – is going to become the Site Coordinator. The new ASC will be Chief. Chief was a head coach who worked at GRS Bloemfontein last year but because Bloemfontein was closed in December (for good) due to lack of funding, GRS asked Chief to come work in Kim. I am excited for Chief's arrival because he is a guy who can get shit done (excuse my language). And last, but not least, Kimberley welcomes the return of Master Coach Thembi who had also been working in Bloemfontein prior to the site's closure. 

Kimberley was also given money in our budget to implement HCT (HIV Counseling and Testing) Tournaments. I have heard a lot about such tournaments from other sites and I think they will provide us with a fantastic forum to not only get people in the community tested, but also to increase awareness about GRS and what we do. 

2012 will also bring a lot of change for me. Skillz Street is going to be completely revamped and I will get to play a large role in designing and implementing the programmatic changes, as well as attempting to monitor the effectiveness of our changes. I think I will also be doing a lot more regarding the monitoring and evaluation of our programs. For example, I want to run a lot more focus groups with coaches and with participants and attempt to measure the effects that our programs are having.

There are also things that I am determined to achieve this year. For one, I want to be much more aware of our budget and do my best to save money and practice effective spending. As I mentioned before, GRS Bloemfontein was closed in December because there was a lack of funding. Even though GRS South Africa started in Kimberley (it began in Daniel Skuil, where Thuso is from), there is a possibility that we could be the site that is next. Why? Because statistically other regions in South Africa are more affected by HIV than the Northern Cape. And also because Kimberley is located in the middle of nowhere, with just one tourist attraction (the Big Hole), it is hard to attract funders. But I’m going to do my best to manage our funding appropriately so we can attract support from GRS HQ as well as external funders. In fact, I spent almost an entire day last week pouring over our budget and making adjustments to it that were then sent to Cape Town.

Another thing I want to do is provide more resources for our coaches. I am going to work very hard to come up with new activities for our coaches to do during Development Sessions so that they can learn about the resources available to them and also so they can grow as coaches and individuals. I have a little over six months to do this and already have several ideas I’m hoping to put into play.

I know that was a bit of a dull blog, but I wanted to let you know what exactly I’ve been doing recently. None of it has been particularly fun or interesting, but it has definitely been important and has helped me figure out what kind of mark I want to leave on GRS Kimberley.