A year in South Africa: First week on the job!

Molweni!

I have been slowly settling into work life in Cape Town and although it has been a crazy week, this year is shaping up to be pretty incredible. Starting with an HCT (HIV Counseling and Testing tournament) last Friday, which was Women's Day, a South African public holiday, and leading up to my first week working Khayelitsha's Football For Hope Center (FFHC), a lot has happened since my last post! I have had the opportunity to participate in my first interventions and am now beginning to learn how GRS curriculum is actually implemented on the site level, which is very interesting, especially following nearly two weeks of training in which we learned about the theories behind GRS, its history, goals, and future directions. I also got the chance to participate in a Coach Development session and have started playing with the only women's soccer team in Khayelitsha and have been training with them almost every day after work. Many of the players are GRS coaches and it has been a great way to get to know people better and has helped me feel like less of an outsider in the community (now when I walk around the site I often hear yells of ANNNNAAA or IMVULA (my new Xhosa name, which means rain--apparently Rayne jokes cross cultural borders!).

I have also gotten a much better idea of what projects I will be working on this year, which has gotten me even more excited to get things underway! Because of my interests in medicine and HIV, I will be trained to become the point person in organizing future HCTs (which will mean recruiting participants and working with the partner organizations that actually do the HIV testing and counseling). More immediately, I will be working to start implementing the Skillz Street curriculum (an all girls curriculum that incorporates gender issues as well as soccer and HIV/AIDS information). I will begin working to recruit schools with hopes to reach 200 participants this week! Another project that I will organizing with Eric is the development of a girls soccer league to be run out of the Football for Hope Center, similar to the men's "Community League" that has upwards of 700 participants. In the next couple of months we will start trying to recruit teams, most likely starting with the teams that participated in the Women's Day HCT! It is shaping up to be a busy but incredibly rewarding year!

Mid-HCT tournament dance break!

Some teams taking the field

Getting tested!

South Africans getting a big kick out of watching our attempts at dancing :)

All ages getting involved in soccer: this is from the "Granny League" portion of the tournament!

Probably a reaction to some of my dancing...

Now for some highlights from the week:

Women's Day HIV Counseling and Testing tournament--see photos above!). Nearly 250 people were tested at this all girls tournament (which is impressive considering girls generally don't play soccer in SA)! Without thinking about numbers or stats, the first thing that comes to mind when reflecting on the day was how joyful it was. Everyone there seemed so happy to be there, to play/watch soccer, and to dance and sing along to the music. There was so much energy (seems to be the theme of GRS so far!) and the tournament even incorporated breaks for dancing! It was an amazing day and seeing how powerful soccer is at bringing communities together was really inspiring; the perfect start to this new adventure!
Going to my first GRS interventions. Although I don't understand much of what is happening since the curriculum is primarily delivered in Xhosa, seeing how receptive the kids are to the curriculum and how excited they are to participate is really special. Not to mention, each time I enter a new classroom, I need to introduce myself and show off my favorite dance moves. As I mentioned before, South Africans love watching white people with no rhythm (like me) try to dance, so as you may expect I've been constantly making a fool of myself via my renditions of the macarena and the funky chicken dance.
Driving to an intervention in Nyanga (another township) and having a guy on the road try to sell a puppy through the open car window--it took all my self control not to take it home with me!
Having a meeting with the principal, during which we were asked to defend what GRS is doing in the school and how the school can benefit from GRS curriculum (note: this was our 1st day of work!!). After attempting to summarize all the key points we learned during our orientation while the principal just stared at us and remained completely silent and stone-faced, we were a bit flustered. Apparently we did alright with our GRS summary because at the end of our monologue, he insisted that Eric and I eat his lunch. As a guest in South Africa, it is considered quite rude to refuse hospitality from a host, so Eric and I awkwardly split his baloney sandwich while he continued to stare at us silently. What a first day!
Being convinced to eat a magwenya, a South African specialty that was provided at the coach development session, which in English means "fat cake" and is a circular loaf of fried bread stuffed with meat. After eating almost the entire thing under the watchful eyes of the coaches (a real feat!), they then informed me I had just eaten nearly a pound of chicken livers and got a big kick out of my reaction, ahhh!
Getting some pretty sweet hairdos and Xhosa lessons from little kids who hang out at the center after school.
Playing at least an hour of pickup soccer everyday during and after work :) I now just end up wearing my turf shoes to work in the mornings!
Joining a new soccer team! Let's go RV United!
Heading back to Old Biscuit Mill followed by Cape Point on Saturday with the rest of the intern crew! Ate delicious food, saw penguins, baboons, and ostriches--pretty much the best day ever!!