Day 17 - Teaching & Community Centre (7/11/11)

Today we begin our 3 days of teaching and playing with the children at the community centre. I am relatively excited because both of these places are a host for children who are mainly orphans. Some orphans to parents who have died of aids, some whose parents have died of drug related causes, and some of which whose parents abandoned them because they were not wanted.

Teaching this morning has been good, but slightly difficult. The language barrier is tough, but we manage to get most of the point across enough that we can get through a lesson well enough. In the evening we went to the community center which was called Bona Pele which we were supposed to run from 1:30-4:00 with roughly 100 kids. There were three total groups ran by 6 of us (since the other half of our Fulbright group went to another center) all who ran different "classes" for the kids to participate in. My partner Noah and decided months ago to run a track meet to keep the kids actively moving which we thought sounded like fun. The whole goal of the community center event was just to have fun and we did just that.

In preparation for Bona Pele, Noah went over to the center to set up the track so when the children arrived at 1:30 we would be ready to go. So as far as I was concerned we were going to see our 30 or so kids and have a track meet. The rest of our small group left around 1:15 ready to meet the needs of these kiddos.

We pulled around the corner only to be greeted by masses of children somewhere in the hundreds and the woman who ran the program who I might add is a rather prestigious and well known in the country. It was so packed that we couldn't even pull the van up until they all moved. Let me tell you that my jaw has pretty much dropped to the floor at this point. We found out later in the evening that there were over four hundred children who showed up to attend the classes that the six of us put together.

Omg.

Long ... and I mean long ... story short, this woman called the Minister of Sports and arranged to have a huge event which allowed children to have almost something like a glorified field day chalk full of equipment and hurdles for the kids to play with. It was incredible. There were so many things to do that they filled an entire soccer field and hosted somewhere around 150 kids. Every station had a volunteer and Noah and I stood back in awe at what had become of the event.

Later that evening, we realized that the woman who ran the event had invited the number 16 Gold Medalist runner in the WORLD to attend OUR little event and help kids participate in the activities. Holy sh*t!!! This is now getting bigger than we planned and I am sooo excited :)

I was walking around with a few kids preparing them for an event and the Minister himself came over to me and asked to take a picture with me ... WITH ME?!! Who am I? Nobody if he actually realized it, but you wouldn't think so by the way this guy was shaking my hand and smiling at me.

Ok, so I can say that I am feeling rather pleased at our decision and cannot even begin to understand how it got so grand. I'm not complaining one ounce, but man this is so cool !! This makes me so excited about tomorrow and the fun stuff we are going to do again, I will keep you posted about what happens because I am sure I haven't seen the end of this great event!

Lineo35lero@yahoo.com. - this is Dineo's email




- With all my thanks :)

Location:Roma & Bona Pele