Vacation Part II

• Zimbabwe police whether corrupt or actually interested in searching for weapons, stopped our car at least 7 times en route to Mlibizi.
• Our campsite in Mlibizi, perched on the Zambezi River, had a massive “Beware of Crocodiles” sign hanging on a nearby tree. A Dalmatian had been eaten by a 4m long croc the week before.
• The 24 hour long Lake Kariba ferry that we took was to run for the first time in 7 years. Talk about good luck!
• Our sole pot pulled a “reverse Michael Jackson.” Once bright and shiny, the thing now looks like a witch’s cauldron that has been subjected to a10 year inferno.

Part II: All you need in life is a pot, a little fork, and a massive tent

It’s true. Well, kind of. Like I said before, we really didn’t do the whole “prepare” thing. I insisted on bringing a pot more out of novelty than anything else. And the tent, the massive tent, was a money saver and a bicep exercise. We found the plastic fork at some fast food store – it lives today, but in a more deformed state. It became apparent soon after we left Victoria Falls that our pot and our tent would become our 5^th and 6^th companions on our trip.

We hitched a ride across the border into Botswana, and were immediately greeted by wilderness. No fences, very few people, and lots and lots of animals. We flagged down the first mini-taxi we saw, and courtesy of a little Hooter linguistical magic, arrived at our next home 20 minutes and $4 later. We set up our tent for the first time – a 6 person behemoth, and got to work making our very first one-pot meal (little did we know that 20 days later we would be reminiscing about the multitude of one-pot meals a family of four could cook). After a game of “Most likely to…” the four of us fell asleep under the Setswana stars- our first safari was kicking off at 5am.

Through a Jurassic Park style entrance (yes, this is how my brain works), our elevated four-wheel drive vehicle entered the world famous Chobe National Park, home to over 60,000 elephants, and some other crazy statistics of African wildlife that I can’t remember for the life of me. On the edge of my seat, camera in hand, and my mouth ready to make my now infamous “ooooooohhhhhhhh ______! (fill in the blank with an equally as girly animal)” squeal? I was ready.

The next three hours were impressive to say the least. We saw numerous antelope, many species of birds, cape buffalo, jackals, mongoose, monkeys, baboons, deer, hippos, crocodiles, elephants, and LIONS. All at extremely close range as well. The three lions we were lucky enough to see (apparently they are rarely spotted at Chobe) were hidden beneath a tree – our driver drove off the road around the tree, and we got a great glimpse at the two juveniles with their mother.

We headed back to our site, took a little dip at the nearby pool, and then jumped into a cruise boat for a sunset tour of the same park. Cocktails in hand the four of us basked in the sun on the Chobe River, with Botswana on our left and Namibia on our right. It was one of those “I bet you didn’t think you would be doing this a year ago” moments followed by a “please don’t let the boat break like it did on the Zambezi- there are hundreds of crocodiles and hippos in every direction.” Anyway, the memory ingrained in my brain from the cruise was dozens of elephants playing in the water with the sunset setting in the background. Incredible.

We came home that night and hit the sack after resorting to a lodge-cooked meal – the one-pot meal could wait until the next day, and the next, and the next. In the morning we hitched back to the border, and were retrieved by the same gentleman who drove us to Bots two days early. After stopping back in Victoria Falls briefly for supplies, he took us the 5 hours to Mlibizsi, Zimbabwe, where we were catching a 24 hour ferry the next morning that would take us up Lake Kariba to the town of Kariba in northern Zimbabwe.

Until next time!

Sunrise on the boat.

Baby lion!

Elephants

Crocodile

Quick Work Update and Vacation Part I

Since returning from holiday on January 6th, life has been hectic. Vacation was amazing, pictures and details are included at the end of this post.

Over the past month, I've been splitting my time between researching for the Research & Development team, reformatting the Skillz 1.0 curriculum for the Curriculum & Development team, completing my daily Operations tasks, and transitioning into a new role as a Programs Intern. As of Thursday, February 4, I am no longer the Ops Intern. My new position involves more hands-on responsibilities and requires that I spend less time in the office. Currently I am working with several other Interns and employees to create a schedule of activities for the Football For Hope Centre. Further updates to come soon.

Phil Johnson (in South Africa, he is known as Phul), one of my roommates that I traveled with, recently blogged about our adventures so I'm borrowing these summaries from him. I'll continue to post as I receive the updates from Phul. Enjoy!!

• Managers of our hostel quickly told us to be very careful at night, due to wandering elephants, warthogs, and buffalo
• The big thing to do in Vic Falls is to sell their hyperinflated currency (100 trillion zim dollar notes are common)
• Zimbabwe uses SA Rand and US dollars, except they value the rand to dollar at 10:1. It is about 7.5:1. Also, they do not use American cents, instead they give you change in lollipops and sucker candy.

Part I: Bungi Jumping, Colgate, and Hippos

December denoted the “halfway” mark in my time volunteering here at Grassroot Soccer. As I have mentioned before, it has been a truly remarkable time so far, and the knowledge, new skills, and new perspectives that I have gained are immeasurable. As such, and due to the immense workload that surrounded the World Cup draw and the FFHC kick-off event, we interns decided it was time to for a nice, relaxing “holiday.” What better way to accomplish this than a 23 day backpacking adventure through Southern Africa?

On Wednesday, December 16^th, fellow Cape Town interns, Sarah Bell and Amy Cawley, and I left our house at some godforsaken hour of the morning on route to Victoria Falls via Johannesburg (by plane, thank God). Our quick layover in the metropolis of “Jburg” allowed us to rendezvous with our fourth partner in crime, Peter “Hooter” Glidden, an intern in Kimberley, South Africa. The team was assembled. And as GRS says, it was now time to make our move.

Let me stop here by saying that this trip was not well planned, at all. Perhaps this was in fact due to laziness on our part, but I can honestly say that most of it was due to the excitement that question marks add to the life of a young adult, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (note parents cringing). Most of these revolved around the political instability in Zimbabwe- actually probably all of them. When researching Zim, I realized quickly that ATMs were rare, gas prices and thus car rental prices were astronomical, and hippos and crocodiles were out to get you at every turn.

Anyway, I digress. We arrived at Victoria Falls Backpackers on a beautiful afternoon to a friendly reception by the couple who managed the place. They are in fact lovely, and I would recommend the hostel to anyone. We spent the first afternoon at the world famous Victoria Falls themselves. It truly is as incredible as you have heard. Stretching for kilometers, the falls present numerous views at various angles, each more impressive than the prior.

The following days we booked an “adrenaline package” and a full day of white water rafting on the great Zambezi River that separates Zimbabwe from its northern neighbor, Zambia. Not for the feint of heart, we took part in a bungi jump, zip line, and other crazy circus acts, each taking you at increasing speeds over the cliffs just along side the falls. It was terrifying, and spectacular.

The next day was the white water rafting, and it was probably the craziest thing I have ever done. Our insane guide, Colgate, between telling Sarah to shut up and the 82 year old in our boat to keep paddling (both hysterical) “guided” us down class 4 and 5 rapids clearly with no concern for our lives. Joking a little, but it was literally insane. Wave after WALL of wave would crash on the boat. We only capsized twice…

We decided to take the night easy, and go on a tame cruise on the Zambezi. That turned into the boat breaking down and us slowly being dragged towards the falls. Our plan to jump out of the boat and swim to a nearby island was shot down by a hippo taking up residence directly in between us and the island. But hey, we survived. Surely these first few days were not a sign of things to come..

Off to Botswana!

Victoria Falls

Before gorge jumping. Hooter, Amy, Phul, Me.

Jumping!

FFH Centre is Open!!

Football For Hope Centre

After a crazy, but awesome weekend, the Football For Hope Centre finally opened!! Overall, the weekend went smoothly and was a great success. On Friday, we spent the day watching several GRS activities in action. The FFH Centre Opening took place on Saturday morning and went fabulously. Sepp Blatter, the President of FIFA, spoke at the opening and participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Sepp Blatter

After the opening, two GRS coaches demonstrated Skillz activities for the crowd. I hung around for a couple more hours to watch Delegation Teams from Khayelitsha, Lesotho, Namibia, Brazil, and Zambia.

Khayelitsha Delegation Team

Aside from working, I've continued to spend a lot of time outdoors, especially as the weather warms up. We spent this past weekend relaxing with the interns from Malawi and Lesotho and I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go to Zimbabwe with three other interns on holiday break. Our tentative plans include flying into Victoria Falls, going on safari in Botswana, rafting on the Zambezi River, spending Christmas in Harare, and spending New Years on the beaches of Mozambique.

Happy Holidays!!

Football For Hope Centre

Quick weekend update. I spent Saturday and Sunday in Harare, Khayelitsha at the Football For Hope Centre. Annie and I held a community meeting on Saturday morning to discuss the upcoming community opening and we spent the afternoon attempting to build tree cages (we gave up after realizing it would be virtually impossible to build the cages without a professional) and painting fences. We worked alongside many local workers and attempted to communicate via hand gestures and broken English. After a long day of manual labor, Annie and I had only managed to apply the first coat to one of many fences, so we returned on Sunday with the rest of my housemates to finish painting the fences. As the November 28th community opening and December 5th official centre opening approach, we will be spending the next couple of weekends in Khayelitsha.

After returning from Khayelitsha, we hosted a welcome braai at our new house. Lots of GRS coworkers attended with their families and we had loads of delicious food. The braai went so well that we are already planning to host a big Thanksgiving dinner.

The past two weeks have flown by! Everyone is swamped at work as the December 4-6 weekend approaches. The December weekend is a huge event for FIFA because the World Cup Draw takes place on December 4 in Cape Town. It is also a huge weekend for Grassroot Soccer since we were selected as the Football For Hope (FFH) Centre Host in Khayelitsha. FFH is the main element of a strategic alliance between FIFA and streetfootballworld and it is a movement that uses the power of the game for positive social change. The FFH Movement is a part of FIFA's "20 Centres for 2010" official World Cup campaign.

Most of my time over the next three weeks will be dedicated to preparing for the big weekend. As the final touches come together for the Centre, GRS has started to focus on the logistics for the weekend. I'm spending a lot of time putting together an agenda for several visitors that are coming for the weekend. I've learned that planning events in Cape Town is much more difficult than planning an event in the States!!

Table Mountain

We started our hike in Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

We hiked up Skeleton's Gorge, a route that has lots of ladders, big rocks, shady trees, and waterfalls.

At the top of Skeleton's Gorge, we reached a sandy reservoir where we set the 10 second timer on the camera and jumped up and down trying to capture a picture of all five of us jumping.
From left to right: Me, Corey, Amy, Phil, and Allen.

View from the top of Table Mountain.

View of Cape Town.

Resting on the top of Table Mountain before hiking down. We originally planned on taking the cable car down the mountain, but it was closed because of the wind.

Hiking down Platteklip, the face of Table Mountain. Although it was tough on everyone's knees, the hike down the mountain was beautiful because we were surrounded by clouds.

I'm going to backtrack a bit and write about a couple events that I have not yet touched upon.

October 9: Heritage Day at GRS Cape Town! South Africans celebrate Heritage Day on September 24 by celebrating the many cultures that are present throughout the country. GRS decided to host its own Heritage Day lunch to share our own traditions and cultural dishes. I decided to be adventurous at lunch and have a taste of everything. This included sheep eyeball, smiley (known as the "tastiest" part of a sheep, smiley is the cheek), tongue (I could feel the tastebuds), intestines (so salty), and hoofs (really chewy). I also ate lots of chocolate buckeyes (made by Elise, a fellow Ohioan), German cake, and Greek goodies (my contribution).





October 10-12: Rocking the Daisies Music Festival with the interns located in Kimberley, Richmond, and Lesotho! We spent the weekend camping and watching amazing music on a wine estate in Darling, about 75 kilometers outside Cape Town. My favorite bands were Freshly Ground, Gang of Instrumentals, Lonesome Dave Ferguson, and Goldfish.

October 13: Finally visited my host family in Grassy Park! I had dinner with Nazeema, Soraya, Juleigha, Tasneem, and Mischka and caught up on everything that happened since I left in April 2008. It was great to see the Valleys and I'm going to do my best to stop by more often.

October 18: I spent seven hours hiking up, around, and down Table Mountain with Allen, Corey, Phil, and Amy. It was my first time hiking the mountain and it was absolutely beautiful. I'll write another post with pictures and more details just now.

This past weekend was much more relaxed. I spent Saturday morning at the Old Biscuit Mill Market catching up with Alyssa, my program director from Projects Abroad and I spent the afternoon surfing with Corey, Amy, and Allen. We got a full night of sleep in preparation for a soccer tournament that we played in on Sunday.

Aside from music festivals, hiking, surfing, and eating, I've been spending lots of time in the office. My workload is picking up and I'm getting involved in several long-term projects, mostly involving the weekend of December 4-6. The World Cup draw takes place on December 4th and the Football For Hope Centre in Khayelitsha is opening on December 5th. Both of these events will have huge media coverage and Grassroot Soccer will have the spotlight for a small part of the weekend. Several GRS Board Members and important GRS friends will be in town for the events and I am helping to prepare for the big weekend.

Table Mountain pictures to come...