Bafana Bafana!

Well, last week was a bit of a nightmare, but overall pretty cool. We had compliance training Monday and Tuesday, meaning we sat through two 8-9 hour days learning about how to properly use our USAID grant. Important in the grand scheme, but I mostly tried not to let my eyes close for over 5 seconds (otherwise I would have been gone). Our days were long, but Tuesday night was our last hip hop class, during which we video-taped our final routine. I will alert the press when the video is available – you’ll be able to find it on youtube and facebook, so don’t worry. You won’t miss it. I tried to dress as hip hop as I could: mid-length spandex with a longer tank under a somewhat shorter shirt. I dunno.

Wednesday was an interesting day. A Malaysian documentary crew came to film our office for a series on South Africa they are putting together. When I say documentary, I mean more of a staged, somewhat true representation of what is actually happening – we did multiple takes of each scene. They had two of their crew, decked out in soccer jerseys, carrying duffel bags and soccer balls, walk around the office and ask us at each of our seats questions about GRS, what we were working on, etc. When the camera came to Sarah and me, we conveniently had the GRS webpage open and were able to drop some names. I’m excited to see the final result: Rosie dubbed over with Malaysian subtitles. I’m finally living my fifteen minutes of fame.

After the filming wrapped for the day, we headed over to UPE, the local university, where Bafana was training before their match on Saturday against Japan. It was really cool to see them so closely…there wasn’t much in the way of security or barriers, so we hung out in the stands at the stadium for awhile, watching them run counter-attacking drills, and then free kicks. This was the first game back for Perreira, their former Brazilian coach who left the team last year when his wife got sick in Brazil. Their coach from that point last year up until about a month ago was another Brazilian, Santana, who was sacked after they lost nine international matches since the Confederations Cup in the summer. Friday was pretty uneventful…I paid my first speeding ticket – R80 (about $11). If only they were that cheap in the States.

Saturday was great. We took a cab downtown to the stadium, which we had yet to see. I was excited that our first experience inside would be at a Bafana game, and there had been a lot of build-up to the game, so we were ready for a huge crowd and loads of vuvuzelas (those horns people were blowing throughout the duration of the Confederations Cup). We walked in to pumping house music and painted-up fans waving South African flags, dancing and singing. It was insane. The stadium is beautiful, with a roof that people here describe as looking like a pumpkin. It seats 46,000 and 44,000 were in attendance for the match, so it was almost a full house. We wandered around for a bit, trying to find some of the coaches who said they’d meet us there. We found them 5 rows up from midfield – pretty good for R30 tickets.

We watched as the teams entered the field to a thunderous crowd cheering for Bafana as they enetered to the beat of the music. They ran what we called at Colby a Swedish warm up: 4 even lines going back and forth across the field doing dynamic stretches, clapping, twisting etc. It’s a good way to warm up, but more importantly, when done right, looks badass. Everyone in the lines was in sync and moving to the beat of the music. Had they played the way they warmed up, they would have crushed Japan.

Following the warm up, the teams changed in the locker rooms and came back out for the national anthems. I think this was my favorite part of the day. The lyrics of SA’s national anthem are a combination of Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans, and English, drawing from the hymn “Nkosi Skilelel’ iAfrika” and the previous national anthem “Die Stern van Suid-Afrika.” The history of the anthem is really interesting, as the hymn was originally sung in church, but was later used to defy the apartheid government. The Afrikaans anthem was sung with “God Save the Queen” until 1957, and then alone until 1995 when Nelson Mandela adopted both anthems. The songs were merged in 1997, forming the current national anthem:

(Xhosa) Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika
Maluphakanyisw' uphondo lwayo,
(Zulu) Yizwa imithandazo yethu,
Nkosi sikelela, thina lusapho lwayo
(Sesotho) Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso,
O fedise dintwa le matshwenyeho,
O se boloke, O se boloke setjhaba sa heso,
Setjhaba sa.
(English) South Africa, South Africa!
(Afrikaans) Uit die blou van onse hemel,
Uit die diepte van ons see,
Oor ons ewige gebergtes,
Waar die kranse antwoord gee,
(English) Sounds the call to come together,
And united we shall stand,
Let us live and strive for freedom,
In South Africa our land.

Translation:
God bless Africa
May her glory be lifted high
Hear our petitions
God bless us, Your children
God we ask You to protect our nation
Intervene and end all conflicts
Protect us, protect our nation, our nation

From the blue of our heaven,
From the depths of our sea,
Over our eternal mountain ranges,
Where the cliffs give answer,
And united we shall stand,
Let us live and strive for freedom,
In South Africa our land.


National anthems usually make me tear up a bit, but this one was particularly special. It was amazing listening to 44,000 people singing together. One of the coaches grabbed out hands and slapped them over our hearts while we listened. It was a pretty emotional couple of minutes, and I was really happy in that moment to be where I am.


The game was a little disappointing, South Africa playing pretty flat and not having much spark in their play. We expected with their newly returned coach and this being the second to last international friendly before the Africa Nations Cup that they’d be fired up to play, but that wasn’t the case. They managed to keep it scoreless, though – better than losing. We’re all hoping they pull themselves together and are ready when the World Cup rolls around, but we’ll have to wait and see for that one.

All in all, pretty great weekend. We had a lazy day on Sunday and went out to the Maitlands, a nature reserve about 30 minutes from where we life. It’s a beautiful stretch of rocky coastline and sand dunes, and we had a great afternoon jumping off the dunes and gearing up for this week.




Love to everyone,
Rosie

Round 2

Hey all,

Officially three months in, and it’s been jam-packed. We had a pretty quiet week after the break-in, laying pretty low and getting our heads wrapped around what had happened. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a one-time deal, and we were broken into exactly one week later last Thursday night. We didn’t realize it until we all went to bed, but someone had climbed up onto the balcony that overlooks our walled-in yard and used a cracked window to get into my roommate’s bedroom. They took his wallet, including credit cards and cash, his watch and two soccer jerseys, and then opened the sliding door and jumped back down into the yard. This all took place between 8 and 10ish while we were eating dinner downstairs. After the initial disbelief faded, we were all pretty shaken and angry. We called the cops around 2 am, again at 3, while we sat in the living room jumping at every noise we heard. At 4 we decided to get some sleep, and all brought our sleeping bags into one room upstairs. While we were moving our stuff around, I thought for a minute that the robber had been in my room and stolen a wad of cash I had in my backpack, transport money for our coaches that I was in charge of – total around $450. I flipped out before realizing I had moved it to a different hiding place in the bag. Aside from being scared that I’d lost the money, I was angry that this person has gotten so deep into my mind that I can’t think straight before jumping to some conclusions. It was a long night; one I spent lying awake listening for someone to try to break in again.

The next morning was mostly routine: we got ready for work, made some calls to our supervisors, and went to the office. Our wonderful maintenance man, Sheppard, came to the house and bolted the windows shut where the robber had climbed in. He was shocked, asking the same questions as we were: who the hell are these people? The total weirdness of what happened was accentuated by the fact that Sheppard had waved us down on Thursday morning as we were leaving for work to show us that someone had tried to get into one of the empty, furnished condos closer to the gate. The would-be robber tried to pry the window open next to the sliding door leading out to the yard, but the door was secured shut with a lock that had been installed at the top of the door. I’m sure he meant well, to give us an idea of how these guys think, but it was pretty eerie to actually see a failed attempt. We got robbed 12 hours later.

To top off all the drama, we were expecting 11 of the other interns from around South Africa to come on Friday for the weekend. We debated whether we should cancel or not, but everyone was still on for a weekend away, and we decided it would probably be a good thing for us to be with a group of people who understand where we’re at mentally, adjusting to life here and dealing with a bad situation. We ended up having a great weekend – chill, great weather for the beach, and some Halloween celebrations. It was a relief, at least for me, to have a bunch of people all looking out for each other so that I didn’t have to constantly think about the robbery.

Talking with Sheppard, he told us that people living in another complex down the road from us actually saw the robbers throw a blanket over their electric fence, and jump it with things they had stolen. These people chased the robbers into the bush behind our neighborhood, and found themselves in front of two plastic shacks where they uncovered a bunch of stolen goods. They informed the police, who refused to go check the shacks out. The people who found these shacks also told the police they could identify the robbers among the men who wait around down at our gas station, looking for work, but the police again were not interested.

Did they sit back and wait to get robbed again? Nope. They formed a group and went back to the shacks, recovered their stolen possessions, and then torched the shacks. A big f-you to whoever has been creeping around. I also sent my regards vicariously through that bonfire.

At this point, we’ve made some security updates and are working on getting some sort of legit security system…German Sheppard? We all agree that if we do get a dog, we’ll fight for who gets to keep it, smuggle it out when we leave, as South African German Sheppard puppies are much better than the American version (at least in our opinion). It was tough week mentally, jumping at any and all random noises, imagining noises when they’re not there, and generally not sleeping well. I was pretty nervous about being home last Thursday night, as this creep seems to enjoy prowling through the neighborhood and our belongings on Thursdays, but we had a beautiful day – sunny and warm – went surfing, grabbed dinner, and then went home to find it securely locked and untouched.

Away from the negatives, we’re organizing one of our VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) tournaments for 28th November, and it’s non-stop at the office every day. These tournaments involve teams competing from schools is the communities where we run our curriculum, and participating in Skillz activities between games. They are able to test for HIV for free, and counseling is available for those who test positive. We have been trying to nail down a venue, prizes, security, the list goes on and on. One huge aspect of a VCT is getting a celebrity or two to make an appearance to draw in people who otherwise wouldn’t be interested. We’re probably going to get a widely popular DJ from the area to emcee, and we may get one or two Bafana players (SA men’s national team) to show up. Bafana is playing Japan at our stadium on 14 November, and we managed to get them to agree to sign a t-shirt that we can give away as a raffle prize. One of Bafana’s players, Khanyeza, is featured in our Skillz dvd that we use in trainings, and he may make an appearance and talk about our VCT on the radio when he’s in town. It’s stressful, but really exciting. We’re trying to make this our largest VCT ever in GRS, with the buildup to World AIDS Day on 1st December and the World Cup on 4th December.

Congrats if you made it all the way through this blog. I’ll try to write more often so you’re not reading a dissertation on my life each time.

Stay warm,
Rosie