finally figured out how to upload pictures easier...

here are some of my favorite pictures...

two kids watching soccer at our vct tournament

african sunset from our driveway

our puppy, kamba, in our backyard. though she's no longer a puppy.

me being forced to dance in front of the crowd at our vct tournament. embarrassing.

picture of some of the kids at one of our events

me on a lion walk in livingstone

peter tosh memorial concert

picture at the refugee camp. pretty awesome.

sitting on the edge of victoria falls. where the water is falling behind us, we jumped into a pool from a few meters up -- it's called devil's pool.

funny sign considering the whole field is filled with garbage. there is trash everywhere here.

give me

the amount of things i get asked for on a daily basis by zambians is pretty absurd.

at the events we host, we all wear our grassroot soccer tshirts, and i get asked for one of them (or even mine off my back) no less than 10 times each event. and it isn't a nice, "oh, do you have any extra tshirts i could have?" instead, it is, "give me a tshirt," or "give me your tshirt." it is almost as if there is a sense of entitlement where they think they deserve my tshirt.

the same goes with food and drinks. we provide food and drinks for our staff and testing partners at our events. but, the kids can see it being stored in the classroom and constantly coming up asking for food and drinks. they will come up and say, "give me water," or motion to their mouth and rub their bellies to indicate they're hungry. the worst is when you get people come up and say they are hiv positive and they deserve food, and if you don't give it to them you are going to be the cause of them getting sicker. it is a tough thing to tell someone no when they say that to you.

but, there is no way to pick and choose who to give things to. it is dangerous. if you give a drink to one kid, and others see, it will cause a mass chaos chain effect and everyone will want one.

i remember our very first event we hosted. after it was all over, we had boxes of extra meat pies, like 200 extra meat pies, and we weren't sure what to do with them. as we were leaving the venue, there was a group of 10 girls, probably around 15 or 16 years old, standing with a couple of our coaches. we offered them meat pies and they came running in a stampede to the car. i unfortunately was the one with the box of pies in my lap. they all slammed up against my door and about 15 hands flew through the window grabbing at the meat pies. keep in mind there were more than enough meat pies to go around, but the idea of free food put them in a frenzy. i initially was trying to hand each of them one, but when i lifted a meat pie up, about 5 hands would go for it and would end up squishing the meat pies (squished meat pies are not a great thing to have all over you, your hands, and the car haha). i gave up on trying to hand them out and just let them grab at them in the box through the window. the aftermath was meat pies all over the place. and the ones that were left in the box were all crumbled up and destroyed. it was one of the craziest things i've ever seen - that free meat pies sent these girls into such a mad rush.

when i was in the refugee camp i got asked for things a lot as well since resources are scarce. little kids who barely spoke any english would come up and say, "give me money." i think that may have been the only english they knew because when i would try to talk to them and explain i didn't have any money on me, they just gave me a blank stare in return.

we had an electrician come a few weeks ago to fix our hot water switch and he asked me about getting a grassroot soccer tshirt. i said i would work on it (though i reality i was never going to get him a grassroot soccer tshirt...the tshirts are mostly kept for staff and coaches because when wearing it around town, people recognize grassroot soccer, so the people who wear them need to uphold our organization's reputation. if that makes sense. and not in a snobby way at all). anyways, he came back the other day to fix something else in our house and he asked me again about the tshirt. it is so weird to me that he wants a tshirt because i guarantee he has no idea what grassroot soccer even does; he just saw all of us wearing them so he wanted one for himself.

even our coaches, who are well brought up and well educated ask me for things. more tshirts. my jewelry. my water bottle. it gets tiring at times having to constantly say "no." especially when many time you could afford to give a little kid 2,000 zmk, which is like 50 cents, and that would make a difference to that kid. but when you're asked 10 times a day, you get a bit jaded and it is instinct to just say no. a little disheartening.

another reason i get frustrated is because i know they are only asking me because i am white. on the way up to the refugee camp it was me, alice, mike, and then 4 zambians. we stopped in a town on the way to grab some food. alice, mike, and i (the mzungus, white people), didn't get any food, but all the zambians had big take away trays of fried chicken and chips. as we were sitting in the parking lot waiting for the bus driver, people kept coming up to the window asking alice, mike, and i for food. we were obviously not eating and had no food on us. on the other hand, all the zambians were sitting right next to us chowing down on their chicken, but were never asked for food. it's so bizarre, but i've gotten used to it.

it is something i was warned about before coming, buy dealing with it everyday is another story.

hand holding

hand holding is a part of everyday life in zambia -- male, female, young, old, it doesn't matter. you'll be driving around town or in the grocery store and see two grown men in suits walking holding hands or with their arms around each other, and it is totally normal.

this was one aspect of zambian culture i was not ready for when first arriving. i remember my first couple weeks here we had dc's (development courses) which are 3 day refresher courses for our coaches. throughout the dc's the coaches constantly came up and would hold my hand as we walked or talked, come up behind me and put their arms on my shoulders so we were cheek to cheek, have me sit between their legs as we listened to lectures. whole trains would get going of everyone sitting on the ground between each others' legs and it was no big deal.

also, you get males and females, males and males, and females and females dancing all up on each other. shake shake shaking it. but they don't view it in a sexual way, it is just them dancing and having fun. a lot of times, when girls dance, they pull their shirts up so you can see the movement of their bodies better, and guys do the same with their pants/shorts. it seems a bit unnatural to me because when i'm dancing the last thing i want to do is lift my shirt up for all to see haha, but it's how things are done here.

males and females alike also tie chitenges (colorful patterned african fabrics) around their waists when dancing. i believe it is to draw attention to their hips when they dance, but i'm not 100% positive on that, i need to ask.

it is amazing to me that people of the same sex are so comfortable being affectionate towards each other and dancing with each other in zambia because it is illegal to be gay/lesbian in the country. there is a private scene for the gays/lesbians here, but it is very underground and never talked about. in malawi, one of the countries that border zambia, 2 men were put in jail just 6 months ago for being gay. they were initially sentenced to 14 years in prison until the president himself eventually pardoned them.

i wonder if that is a reason why same sex are affectionate towards each other....because no one assumes they are gay if they act that way. where as in america, if you showed that much affection to someone of the same gender, people may assume you were gay. who knows?!

refugee camp

for the past year, grassroot soccer has been funded by unhcr (united nations high commissioner for refugees), and we have set up our grs skillz programs in both mayukwayukwa and meheba refugee settlements in northern zambia. these camps have been around since the 1960's, so they are well established with houses and small markets. not what i expected for refugee camps. however, they do live very simplistic lives: electricity only from generators, for the most part only unhcr owns cars in the settlements (and that's only about 5 for each camp), small huts made from mud, trees, and straw for living, etc. also, since they have been established for a while and are the homes for thousands of refugees, they are much larger than i expected. meheba is the larger of the two and it takes close to an hour and a half to drive from one end of the camp to the other (on bumpy dirt roads though). but it was crazy because the different areas within the camp are like little communities amongst themselves; not everyone in the camp knows each other. not even close. also, there are refugees from many countries, such as the congo, angola, and solamlia, so many times the refugees gravitate to areas where lots of people from their home countries are located.

the other week i was lucky enough to make it up to meheba for a 5 day trip. it was about a 12 hour bus ride to the camp. sadly, it was the last trip grassroot soccer will be making to the refugee camps for a while. we lost our funding from unhcr because the zambian government is trying to get rid of the refugees and shut down the camps. as of now, all the refugees (for the most part) are registered and given permission to live in zambia. but, that is changing and the government is working to send everyone back to their countries, which is really sad. especially since many of the kids living in the camps were actually born there, and it is their home. it will be a slow process though; i'm not totally sure how it is all being played out, so we shall see.

it was very cool to get to see the camps. the first couple days were pretty chill because the schedule for our events got switched around. but it was nice to get to walk around and explore the camp. we got a lot of attention walking around the camps (mike, alice, and i all went), because white people are not common within the camp at all. people would come out of their houses to see us as we were on our walks, everyone said hello to us as we passed by, alice and i went for a run and had a group of kids running behind us, and so on. i thought it was bad in lusaka, but this was a new level. it probably didn't help that it was 3 of us together as well haha.

we had a lovely, old lady named clementine who helped get us get settled in and help cook meals with us. she was from the congo and a jehovah's witness, so her helping us was her work as the good samaritan as she liked to say. alice and i got called into the kitchen for each meal to help cook (as the boys watched tv and hung out. yes, we had tv. crazy. we don't even have tv in lusaka ha). but clementine said it was the woman's duty to be strong and cook to support the families. so we cooked. we cooked over a little coal fire outside using our headlamps as our source of light.

this is clementine cooking nshima on the porch

we also had to bathe, not shower, while we were in the camps. this involved boiling a big pot of water on the charcoal stove and taking a few buckets of the hot water into the washroom and bathe yourself from the buckets. no wasting water there.

we had a crazy thunderstorm one of the afternoons. downpour like i've never seen. things were flooded in about 5 minutes. then lightning struck a tree about 10 meters from the house we were staying in. it made the loudest noise ever and lit up the whole house. a few of the people were standing on the porch outside when it happened and all came sprinting back in haha.

the event we were hosting in meheba was a graduation for the kids who had graduated from our skillz program and an awards ceremony for the sports teams. we partner with another organization called breakthrough sports academy in the camps where we sponsor soccer and netball leagues for the youth. all in all it was a pretty easy event because there were no testing or tournaments involved. the kids got so excited for their certificates and awards, which is always fun to watch.

then shit got crazy. after the event, it was planned to feed at the participants from grs skillz program, the soccer and netball leagues, coaches, and special guests. all together this totaled somewhere around 1000 people. ridiculous to attempt to feed that many people if you ask me. and no, it wasn't just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches they wanted to serve, it was a hot cooked meal of nshima, fried chicken, and cabbage. granted events like this happen all the time in the us. buuut, we don't have the resources to do something like that here in zambia. let alone in the camps. so the system that was devised was to have about 7 women cook all the food in a classroom. yes a classroom. to do so, they had: 6 bags of coal the size of me, 6 bags of meali meal (the cornmeal to cook nshima) which each weight 50 lbs, 90 chickens (no joke), tubs full of heads of cabbage, and 10 pots big enough that i could fit in them. they started by building 5 coal fires directly on the classroom floor. obviously, being in a classroom with only a few windows, the room immediately heat up to a sauna. ridiculous. so these women started the cooking around 9 when the kids started to arrive. however, it obviously takes a long time to cook for 1000 people, so by the time the program was over around 12:30, they were no where close to being finished cooking. i got recruited to help cook while the others were doing all the closing stuff. luckily the kids were fine waiting knowing there was free food on the other end. i dont think the food actually started getting served until around 3:30. that's a long time to wait for food. then when we did finally start serving food, mass chaos broke out. there had been no system put in place about how the food was being distributed and no good way to make sure each person only got one serving. pure madness. we were serving from inside the classrooms through the windows while the coaches tried to organize the kids. buuut, it failed. after almost an hour of serving people non stop, finally some order was reached, and the kids were put into lines. then we continued with another hour of serving. this entire time i was in a squat position moving the plates from the cabbage station to the nshima station. then from the nshima station to the serving station. needless to say, by the end of it, my legs left like they were about to die, i was covered in sweat, and my shirt and hands were covered in dried, crusted nshima. but thankfully it was over.

it didn't slow down though. as soon as the feeding was finished, we quickly packed up and went back to our house for just enough time to grab our bags and sleeping bags. we had to catch our ride to the next town where we were getting the bus from the next morning. no shower. no time to change clothes. so all 8 of us crammed into the car for the 1.5 hr bus ride to the next time. when we finally arrived to the hotel i was so tired i just passed out on the bed in my full clothes and shoes. still no shower hah. got up at 5:30am the next morning to get on the 9 hour bus ride back to lusaka.

i'm really glad i was able to make it up to the camp before our funding ended. it was neat because it was nothing like i expected a refugee camp to be like. very naively, i expected it to be small, inside a closed area, where everyone lived in tents. but that wasn't the case at all. it was a whole mini village with lots of communities within it, and it was home for many of the people living there. not to say their lives weren't difficult there since many resources were scarce, and they had been forced to leave their homes in the native countries. but at least they had a place where they could start a new life.

frustration

it's been a while since my last post because we didn't have internet for the past 2 weeks. being operations intern, i had the privilege of dealing with the internet company multiple multiple times. so frustrating! nothing, absolutely nothing, is done efficiently here. and everything is made 100 times more difficult than necessary. many phone calls and trips to the office of iconnect, and nothing got fixed. it's a little tough to work and run an organization without internet ha. thankfully, 2 weeks later, we now have internet.

to add to that, we ran out of energy for our office on monday (energy is prepaid). usually this isn't a big deal because there is a zesco (energy) story just down the road. so i hopped in the car and went to buy some more zesco. of course, though, their system was down. for the entire day. so no power for the day. the next day i went to buy it and it's still down. of course. so we have to drive to 1 of 2 locations in lusaka that has zesco we can buy.

also, we have a gas account i set up a few weeks ago with one of the bp stations close to us for filling up our cars. but of course, the bp all of a sudden is going under/being bought up, so they have no petrol. we would hear one day here and there that they had petrol, so we would quickly try to go fill up. but of course, by the time we got there they were usually out. awesome. so we had to set up a new account.

oh the joys of living in africa. haha