Holiday adventures

It has been far too long since I last updated this blog! Since my last post, life has been a whirlwind. December was a crazy month filled with many successful GRS events. From coordinating another SKILLZ Street holiday program, which was a great success, to hosting (and playing in) an HIV Counseling and Testing tournament at which we tested over 200 participants, to successfully recruiting and transporting nearly 100 youth from Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Nyanga, and Langa (all townships outside of Cape Town) to the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA), which was hosted here in Cape Town and attracted the best and brightest figures in the field from all over the world, it has been pretty hectic and really fun.

The successful ICASA conference wrapped up the 2013 working year for me, and at 4am the next morning, I headed off on the adventure of a lifetime. I began my trip traveling on my own, which was my first solo travel experience. I was very excited to have the opportunity to push myself to meet new people and be completley self-reliant in getting myself around Southern Africa. My adventures took me from Cape Town to the Okavango Delta in Botswana, to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and then on a 10-hour bus ride across the beautiful Tanzanian countryside to Moshi, Tanzania, where I met up with a group of friends to climb Kilimanjaro. After a Christmas morning summit of the highest peak in Africa and an epic two-day safari to the Ngorongoro Crater with Matt, I returned to Cape Town just in time to meet my mom, my dad, and my sister who came to visit for two weeks. We had an amazing time exploring Cape Town and the Garden Route, followed by an unforgettable safari in Kruger. After my family departed warm sunny South Africa for the polar vortex (despite my best attempts to get them to stay), I dove right back into work in Khayelitsha.

Things at work have been busy as ever in 2014. Since coming back to work after the long holiday, we have recruited, interviewed, and hired a new class of GRS "coaches," who are the young community leaders/role models that implement GRS curricula and we are currently in the process of training these new facilitators. Welcoming these new faces into the GRS family has been an absolute blast, and a good reminder of what GRS is all about. The preparation and effort that goes into these trainings (which last for 3 weeks!) is immense, but the payoff is huge as we have the chance to watch our new recruits transform into talented facilitators.

Anyway, since it would take forever for me to write about all the things that have happened since my last post, I figured it would be better for both myself and the handful of people that actually read this thing (i.e. my family) to relay my latest adventures through pictures, so here goes!

SKILLZ Street participants celebrate after scoring a goal during our December holiday program. In South Africa, soccer is a male-dominated sport with limited opportunities for girls to play soccer. SKILLZ Street is a program that seeks to educate young girls about HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence, and sexual health. It also incorporates free-play soccer into each session, giving girls a way to break gender norms by playing soccer.

SKILLZ Street participants in Site B, Khayelitsha

In December, the world lost one of it most influential and inspiring leaders, South Africa's own Nelson Mandela. His life was a powerful example of the human spirit's ability to persevere, overcome adversity, and perhaps most remarkably, choose reconciliation over retribution. I felt extremely fortunate to be in South Africa and to experience the way that the nation reacted to its beloved leader's passing and participate in the celebrations of his life (the above photo is from a Nelson Mandela memorial in the Cape Town World Cup stadium that I attended with fellow GRS interns). Mandela's passing serves as a reminder for us to uphold and build upon his legacy, so let us remember his words: "For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." Rest in peace, Tata Madiba, and thank you for all that you did for South Africa!

On vacation: my first sunset in the Okavango Delta, taken from outside my tent!

Solo travel adventures: I was certainly not expecting to be the only guest on my camping safari in the Delta, but it was pretty cool that I got to have a private safari and that everything I got to do was on my own terms! The 3 nights I spent in the bush with my 6 guides (pictured above), was a blast. From hearing roaring lions and laughing hyenas from inside my tent at night, to learning how to navigate a mokoro (wooden canoe that you steer using a pole), and having the opportunity to ask the guides all the questions I could think of, it was certainly an unforgettable experience. To top it off, on one of my sunset mokoro cruises, as we were passing under a fish eagle (the national bird of Botswana) that was perched on a branch hanging over the water, the eagle let loose a very large and very warm poop right onto my leg. I can now say that I have been pooped on by an eagle--an accomplishment I don't think many others can boast!

Next stop: Dar Es Salaam! To escape the heat of this crowded and swelteringly hot city, I took a 30 minute ferry to Bongoyo Island (pictured above). I spent the day snorkeling and enjoying the warm Indian Ocean waters from this island paradise, but the real highlight occurred while I was snorkeling and was joined by a pod of dolphins. It was incredible!!

The lowlight: I left Dar Es Salaam on a bus bound for Moshi, Tanzania (a 10 hour trip). Despite considering myself a seasoned bus traveler after the many trips I made between Philly and NYC for my work last year, nothing could have prepared me for this ride. The bus started playing Christmas music as soon as we left the terminal, but to my dismay I realized only two songs were playing on repeat. Those two songs were Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Oh Come All Ye Faithful. Somehow, no one else on the bus seemed to notice the music, and if they did, they were completely unfazed, whereas after about 30 minutes I was ready to pull out my hair... With the sunrise and onset of the staggering Tanzanian heat, in combination with the music selection, the bus became almost unbearable. However, to my great excitement, I spotted an AC vent above my head, but when I opened the vent, instead of cold air, about 100 dead bugs fell out onto my lap.  I managed to make due by opening the window as wide as I could and trying to lean my head out as much as possible. The countryside was beautiful and I was able to forget about the ever repeating verses of Rudolph and enjoy the beautiful countryside pictured above. All was well for about 5 hours, when I realized there was another more serious downfall of the bus: no bathroom. At this point I had to pee really badly and was starting to panic about what to do. As the only mzungu (Swahili for white person) on the bus, and unable to speak any Swahili except for the couple phrases I picked up from the Lion King, I was at a loss for what to do. Just as started to consider the option of wetting my pants, we swerved off the road and into a rest stop. I was the first person off the bus, which was especially amazing considering my seat was way in the back and I there were about 10 people sitting in the aisle.  Thankfully, I made it to the bathroom (which was a room with about 10 holes in the ground - no toilets, let alone privacy...), and the rest of the ride was uneventful and that afternoon I joined the rest of my friends (GRS interns + Matt) in Moshi and prepared for our trek up Kilimanjaro!

Sunset from the Barranco Camp at approximately 13,000 feet.

Group shot! From left to right: Matt, myself, Eric, Sandy, Caspar (head guide), SJ, Betsy, Claire, and Sarah

After four full days of hiking (15-25 km/day), we arrived at the Barafu Camp (15,000 ft), the final camp before the summit. After a quick dinner, that few of us were able to stomach due to a combination altitude and nerves, we caught a precious few hours of sleep. We woke up at 11:00pm to begin our midnight ascent up the final 5,000 feet to the summit. Despite our incredibly slow pace, after about 30 minutes of hiking, any talking ceased because all our energy had to be focused on just putting one foot after the other. After nearly 6 hours of hiking in the pitch dark and bitter cold (see picture above), the first rays of sunlight peaked over the horizon bringing hope and a new burst of energy to our whole group.

Sunrise tea on Christmas morning!

Spectacular Christmas Day sunrise from 19,000 feet

All smiles at the summit--about the only place in Africa where you can get a white Christmas :)

Never once thought about having to go back down the mountain. After about 10 minutes at the summit, our guides urged us to start hiking back down. After a grueling 3-4 hours back down to the Barafu Camp, we got to rest for one hour before continuing down to the next camp, which was 23 km away. It was a long and tiring descent and when we finally saw the campsite at around 6pm (nearly 18 hours since we began the midnight summit), we were relieved to finally get to rest (and experience more normal oxygen levels!!).  After one of the best sleeps of my life, we set off on our final descent, which was only a 3 hour hike to the gate where we piled back into the van and returned to civilization.

Tanzania safari: Herd of 100+ elephants cross the road in Tarangire National Park

Masaai tribesman and cattle on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater

Cerval cat on the hunt - a rare and lucky sight!

Lions napping in the shade of our vehicle!!

Lionesses on the move in the Ngorongoro Crater

In the words of Toto: God bless the Raynes down in Africa!

Fam comes to work, Khayelitsha Football for Hope Centre

GRS family meets Rayne family :)

On the Garden Route: Parents getting up close and personal with some elies!

Safari time! Family dinner in the Kruger.

King of the Timbavati

Showing some teeth!

Finally found a leopard!

Unplanned excitement: This is the luxurious chalet that Jenny and I had the privilege of staying in. However, in the middle of the second night, Jenny and I woke up to a flash and a bang. I was in a deep sleep and was not about to be bothered by anything, but luckily Jenny's sense of danger is far superior to mine and she woke me up because she started smelling smoke. We got up to investigate and when we opened the door to the bathroom, smoke billowed out into our room. There was no obvious fire that we could see, but soon the smoke was overwhelming, so despite orders not to go outside at night with out a ranger (due to dangerous animals that come through the unfenced camp!), we opened our front door and hovered on the stoop - half exposed to the poisonous smoke, half exposed to the lions, elephants, buffalo, hyenas, hippos, etc. etc. and began blowing on our emergency horn (luckily each chalet was supplied with a horn!). After about half an hour of what started as tentative blowing, but became more urgent after we heard some loud shuffling and chomping noises only 25 feet away, our two rangers came to our rescue. We moved to the empty chalet next door and found out that a huge male hippo had been grazing right on the path outside our chalet (the source of the chomping noises, ahhh!) and that a massive centipede had chewed through some wires and caused a small electrical fire. In the safety of our new room, we chalked up the experience as an integral part of our time in the Kruger and even managed to get a few more hours of sleep before our sunrise game drive!

Needless to say, it has been an action packed couple of months and as usual, there are lots of exciting things on the horizon, including adopting a revised GRS global strategy for 2014 focused on improving the quality and impact of our programs, as well as incorporating more soccer into our activities (can't complain about that!).

Thanks for reading and hlala kakuhle until next time!

Anna

SKILLZ Street Holiday

Molweni!

My apologies for the lack of blog updates, it has been a busy month in Cape Town, and as I approach my two-month mark here I am amazed at how quickly time has been passing.  Between work and weekend adventures, I have certainly kept myself busy. Now that the weather is finally starting to get nicer (hooray for spring!) I'm looking forward to more excitement to come!

Here at Grassroot Soccer we just wrapped up a grueling week of holiday camps. Last week was spring break for Cape Town schools, and while most of the country enjoys holidays, here at the Football for Hope Center in Khayelitsha, spring break means Holiday Camps! In normal GRS weeks, our coaches go into local schools and implement GRS curriculum during school periods (one class of 20-30 kids will have one class period of GRS curriculum 2-3 times per week, thus the entire process lasts about 5 weeks). During a holiday camp, however, coaches implement all the curriculum (10-11 "practices") in a week long camp that runs from 8am-4pm and incorporates HIV education, life skills, and of course, plenty of time for playing soccer.

I was helping to coordinate a SKILLZ Street Holiday program at a primary school in Khayelitsha. SKILLZ Street is our all-girls curriculum, which addresses gender specific issues in South Africa that make women nearly 3 times more likely to contract HIV than males. The curriculum allows participants to learn important health information and develop the skills necessary to help counter some of the realities that are present in these communities that severely disempower women.  The curriculum also incorporates a soccer league, giving the girls a chance to play soccer, a truly rare opportunity in Khayelitsha (and really the whole of South Africa), where it is generally considered that girls can't play soccer (GRRR!).

I have been assisting our SKILLZ Street coordinator, Mphaki, a fantastic, hilarious, and passionate young woman, in several SKILLZ Street interventions that are currently in progress at various schools in the area, so I am now familiar with the energy, enthusiasm, and excitement associated with SKILLZ Street. However, SKILLZ Street Holiday is like SKILLZ Street on steroids. The camp-like set up allows for coaches and participants to bond quickly and it was really cool to see how much the participants loved the coaches (and how much the coaches loved the participants!). From the opening circle, during which the whole camp gathered to partake in songs, dances, and cheers (or in GRS lingo: energizers and kilos), the excitement was palpable. Girls were screaming, laughing, running around, and just having a ball; it was a truly beautiful thing to see so many people so happy!

SKILLZ Street joy

Amazingly, between moments of insane energy, singing, dancing, playing soccer and just plain FUN, the girls and the coaches had intense discussions about really serious issues. From HIV/AIDS, to gender based violence, to sexual health, to personal issues that participants face in their day to day lives, it was really incredible to see the participants open up to each other and the coaches as the week progressed.

The week culminated in a heritage themed graduation ceremony (in celebration of the South African public holiday, Heritage Day, which was last Tuesday). There was time built into the program during the week for each team to prepare a song, dance, or skit to perform during the graduation ceremony about what they learned during the week.  The graduation was a really powerful day for everyone involved. All the coaches and many of the participants dressed in traditional Xhosa garb and the performances were really spectacular. Several of the skits moved both participants and coaches to tears as they addressed some of the different issues facing young girls and women in South Africa. One girl stood up in front of the entire camp (100+ participants, and nearly 20 coaches, and several other GRS visitors) and confessed how the SKILLZ Street camp was one of the first times that she had ever felt happy and proud to be a girl. When it was finally time for people to leave, as we hugged all the participants goodbye, I noticed several people crying. When I asked one of the coaches what was going on, she told me that the girls were crying because they didn't want the camp to be over.

Graduation song and dance: Women with Power

As great as it was to see how much fun the participants had over the course of the week, the moments in which the girls really opened up to the coaches and to each other affected me the most. These moments served as a window into which I could actually see the impact that Grassroot Soccer has on participants and its potential to impart positive change within the communities that we work in. It is the moments like these that make the less glorified aspects of NGO work really worth it (figuring out budgets, printing and binding materials on weekends, acting as the GRS taxi service, etc.).

Soccer time!

GOOOALLLL

SKILLZ Street team

Outside of work, life has been great and full of adventures! From exploring new places and revisiting some other spots, I have been having a lot of fun! Some highlights include:

• Road-tripping out to Hermanus for the annual whale festival. Hermanus is a beach town about an hour and a half east of Cape Town, which is known for having the best land-based whale watching in the world, especially during the winter and spring months during which nearly 100 Southern Right whales come to breed in the warm(er) waters of the Hermanus bay. Despite getting off to a somewhat rocky start with getting a flat tire on the side of the highway immediately followed by a dead battery (all in the pouring rain), we persevered and ended up seeing TONS of whales! So cool!
• Exploring the West Coast National Park with the other Cape Town intern ladies. The park is known for having spectacular wildflowers in August and September and it certainly lived up to its reputation.  We also had some more animal encounters, including a bay filled with hundreds of flamingos!!
• Running the Cape Town Marathon 10K road-race with some fellow GRS-ers
• Watching the South African Springboks take on the Australian rugby team. I still don't really understand the sport, but the Springboks won and it was a happy day in ZA!

That's a whale!

Flamingos taking flight

Wildebeests enjoying the wildflowers 

GRS race crew post 10K

Thanks for reading and cheers until next time!

Anna

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!! 

My workplace :)

Cape Point ostriches!

Cape Town interns at the Cape of Good Hope

Showing some teeth on the beach

African penguin takes a tumble!

That's all for now! Thanks for reading!!

Anna

P.S. Wishing my mom a very happy birthday today! Sending you lots of love and a huge thank you for all that you do!