Ah the sound of hard rain on sky-lights.  There’s really nothing like it.

If I can reasonably expect the coming year to be anything like my first week with Grassroot Soccer, I can reasonably expect a business (BUSY-NESS) most commonly associated with bees.  Or mayBEES whose nest is on fire (heh).  At any rate, since I left the oh-so-nostalgic heat of my DC home one week ago, there has been so much…. so much…. stuff to tell about. So, so much stuff… just about every dang thing you can think of, actually.  Thus, in recounting my story, I have resolved to start with the last first, lest I never make it to the end.  After all, the end is as good of a beginning as any.

My first week of “work”

The good news, in case anyone was concerned, is that Grassroot Soccer most definitely is a not-for-profit organization.  The office buzzes constantly.  One can positively feel the anxious energy which is almost always channeled towards “making a plan” for some thing or another that (inevitably) was supposed to happen last week.  In accordance, just to keep things interesting (i.e. more frantic than they already would have been) plans absolutely never proceed according to plan.

The other good news is that despite the mania of the endeavor, I actually have a real role to play in it.  To quote one of the directors of the organization (who, incidentally, is quite easily the most beloved single figure in the Cape Town office) “there’s no ways GRS could run without the interns… no ways!”  Indeed, this sentiment has been repeated candidly and frequently since my arrival.  The people whom I would consider the heart and soul of the organization, all seem to think that the interns are the heart and soul of the organization.  That, and, apparently the workhorses of the organization (not to devalue the time spent by real [paid] staff); in a meeting on our first day in the office, our former intern/current trainee introduced us to the all-favored acronym: GTI…. Give It to an Intern.  “It” according to Andrew’s explanation, always seems to be the most time-consuming projects with the smallest budgets.  I think Andrew experienced a slightly troublesome delight at declaring that GTI no longer applied to him but that, rather, he was now free to use it as he would.  But… that’s a story for another day.

Of course, GTI (and every other responsibility) depends upon the fact that interns actually know what’s going on… which is a process that does require some time… which means that despite everyone’s (including mine’s) confidence in the substantive impact I will be able to make with GRS, my role these first few weeks inevitably will be limited. During this first week, for instance, approximately 1/3 of all of my “work” hours translated practically into driving.  Although, upon arrival, I had never logged the practice necessary to render myself a proficient stick-shift-driver, in the last week, I have driven approximately 1000 km.  On the wrong side of the road.  With a standard transmission.  Explanation?  As a “programmes” intern, my job revolves around ensuring that all of the GRS implementation operations that run out of Khayelitsha happen – that they happen properly and roughly according to some (often elusive) plan.  As I just got to site only on Monday, I obviously couldn’t have had anything to do with planning the programs that were actually running that week. Thus, my capacity to facilitate smooth operations was limited to driving coaches around so that they could implement their curricula.

Brief Blurb on Khayelitsha’s Programs:

In total, there are five or six programs that run out of Khayelitsha, each with a different focus.  One program works with pre-school children, one exclusively with high school girls, one program with men between the ages of 19 and 25.  Nonetheless, across the board, locally trained leaders implement all of the curriculi (read: no white people/outsiders of any sort directly implement GRS’ educational programs to the kids). For me (and many others, not just at GRS) this proves crucially legitimating detail… sending a foreigner, especially a white person, into an area that has been systematically denigrated, deprived, and otherwise oppressed explicitly on the basis of race need not be the default model for education. In fact, I think it’s wildly complex to render such a model effective.  I mean… what local Xhosa child is going to pay any attention to my American-English lesson plan??? AS IF.  Just ask any American kid what it was like to sit through sex ed program after sex ed program run by some (always) old married white lady. 

Instead, in GRS educational programs, teachers (whom we call coaches) come from the local community.  Also, they’re pretty young and hip, as some might say… very few coaches over the age of 30.  Moreover, all lessons (which we call practices) are implemented in the local language -- which, by the way, is not English.  In Khayelitsha, it’s Xhosa. 

In sum, I’m not allowed to implement the lessons (le sigh).  But! to keep us sharp, they do let us white girls tag along to practices.  We stick out like a sore thumb, we attract a lot of attention, and for now we just sit in the back of the classroom trying to absorb the lesson via osmosis.  ** disclaimer: eventually (actually, pretty soon) we will be following monitoring and evaluation protocol for these lessons – checking in with the coaches and students on what works, what doesn’t, and what we can do to make GRS programs better; revising the curriculum; providing logistical support, etc…

My first Skillz Street practices (Monday, 20^th of August à Friday, 24^th of August):

Brief SKILLZ Street Blurb: Skillz Street is a gender specific, girls-only program designed to address the specific challenges met by females in the communities where GRS operates.  Gendered power-dynamics, socio-economic inequality, and cultural traditions consistently (and pretty dramatically) disempower women in these communities.  Among other things, the assumed self-evidence of women’s inferior status renders women up to three times as likely to contract HIV.  SKILLZ Street (in addition to providing GRS’ token health information) aims to use soccer to empower women more generally.  First, GRS shows girls that they can play (South African females are not generally offered the opportunity to play soccer).  Then, SKILLZ Street encourages women to recognize their own capacity to self-actualize even within their limited social context.

I returned to Cape Town, in this internship position, particularly invested in the opportunity to work with this program – obviously, both men and women need and deserve access to adequate health information.  But women are at greater risk, by far, and in many contexts have minimal to non-existent tools to protect themselves against HIV.  Needless to say, I was pretty psyched to get to go witness my first SKILLZ Street practices this week.

From my conservative side it’s a cliché, from my Wesleyan(leftist) side it’s subscribing to exoticism and social othering, but from my practical side, it’s a straight up observation: these girls love, LOVE, love to sing, they love to dance, and they would do it all day if anybody would just let them.

Every SKILLZ Street lesson starts with an “energizer” – an activity (a game, a song, a warm-up, call and response, some combination of the aforementioned and the not-mentioned).  In fact, every GRS program starts with a “gizer” of some sort.  During our orientation (which was four days) we probably learned about 25 of them.  But of all three SKILLZ Street lessons I went to in the last week, every single one of them started with a song.  And, by the way, the coach was not the person who chose the song.  Rather, the girls would run out of class at the end of the school day, gather in a clump, and start singing – (clearly, there’s a large collection of songs that every school-child knows, kind of like every American child learns “Mary Had a Little Lamb” except the songs that these girls learn actually have a beat that is a crucial part of the song… all I’m saying is that no song I ever learned as a child had a beat.  Except the ones in Hebrew.  Hooray for Anglo-America’s non-existent musical tradition… NOT).

Anyway, these girls’ enthusiasm for the songs they sing (even though they sang the exact same variety at three different occasions throughout the week) is totally contagious.  They get so into it that they start song-battling each other… no, I’m not joking.  My favorite moment of the last week happened this past Thursday.  I was at a school in Langa, a different township outside of Cape Town, when (as I just described) a group of about 35 SKILLZ Street Girls ran out of class and began (at no prompting by our coaches) their song and dance routine.  The coaches were sitting this part out, because they were waiting for a group of girls from a neighboring school to arrive (read: they were sitting around laughing at how the girls were gizer-ing themselves without any help, without the program at all).  So, this group of 35 girls were all singing (extremely loudly) in the school parking lot when another group of 35 girls came around the corner, lead by 2 SKILLZ Street coaches, singing a different song...

For my (limited) “Western” frame of reference, it was like something out of West Side Story.  One group was in maroon uniforms, the other in navy.  One group was standing and waiting, the other group was (effectively) marching towards the waiters.  As soon as the two caught sight of each other, the maroon’s (who had been waiting in the parking lot screamed, while still singing their song) and started to run towards the navy’s.  The navy group simply proceeded on their march.  Then, when the gap narrowed to approximately half a meter, they faced off.  The competition was obvious and pretty inclusive – they battled for volume, they battled for energy, they battled for coolness.  And they were so, so, so excited about it.  It was undeniable.  It was contagious.  It was awesome.

Simply the fact that this display was (albeit loosely) associated with these girls’ engagement in SKILLZ Street was pretty inspiring and comforting, all at the same time. From my own personal experience, it’s pretty difficult to imagine an after-school educational program that anyone would give a rat’s poop about.  Especially if it’s some sort of health education.  That stuff was a boring drag that everyone that I ever knew or heard of ignored without exception.  You had to be part of it, but you weren’t about to like it.  In fact, if you didn’t demonstrably exhibit your boredom, you were socially ostracized.  No one did health education willingly.  Even raising your hand to answer a question in health ed was a sure plummet to the pit that lies below the bottom rung of the social ladder.  That was my experience.  The difference with these girls was that they had chosen to be a part of SKILLZ Street. Even more astoundingly, the vast majority of them were very, very present.  They actually engaged.  In SKILLZ Street, the unenthusiastic girls were the obvious minority.

True, once the gizers ended and the substantive part of the practices began, general energy level deflated some. Even then, however, general levels of attention and engagement remained alarmingly high.  Coaches’ questions met many answers from across the room at once. Small group discussions actually followed the prompts.  Girls debated vociferously.  It was remarkable, and, (yes) also awesome.

Disclaimer: I don’t know the lessons or the programs or even the organization well enough to say why this model works in a way that none of my own health-ed programs did.  My understanding is also (severely) limited by the odd English word interspersed in practices implemented in Xhosa… hopefully I will have more productive insights into this in the future.

My first trip to site: Football for Hope Center, Khayelitsha, Cape Town

On Friday, the 18^th of August, I first visited my office – the home-base I will operate out of for the coming year.  A legacy of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the Football for Hope Center in Khayelitsha was funded by FIFA as part of an initiative to link kids to health through soccer.  (see pic below, in all of it's glory)



below: Football for Hope Center's very own soccer pitch (Khayelitsha semi-represented in the background)



below: same soccer pitch, slightly different angle




On my first day, I can’t say that I actually did any “work” in Khayelitsha.  Rather, I busied myself with something akin to “orientation” but far from sterile, or standard, or “professional.” Of course, standard orientations are generally miserable, so this deviation was more than fine with me.  Self-consciousness (one of the many million things that tends to make team-building and ice-breakers so horrid) was totally lacking from my first day at Khayelitsha. (I generalize, of course).  At Khayelitsha, self-conscious awkwardness was minimal, largely due to the fact that everyone embraced their own personal and collective awkwardness.  Most everybody was recklessly unabashed. 

Even though only two GRS interns (myself and my co-intern/partner in crime Jessi) will be working out of Khayelitsha, all ten Cape Town interns visited the Football for Hope Center that day.  Our first introductions to the team there offer a very representative glimpse of the social atmosphere I am trying to relate: as part of our initial introductions, each of us (interns) sat in a circle, interspersed amongst the local staff (normal, thus far).  Then we went around saying names (shocking!) where we were from (DC represent!) and then… yes… the favored aspect of the introduction (in fact, the only reason the local staff sees to do it) – the demonstration of a favorite dance move.

Thus, I learned my first of many crucial social lessons – a lesson that was to be reiterated over and over again over the course of the week: black Africans, every bit as much as (and maybe more than) black Americans, think white people dancing is the most reliably, timelessly, hilarious source of entertainment. In the first place, because they expect that you can’t.  Of course, in a turn of events that delights me, both Jessi and I complicate this standard; Jessi is a dancer, and I myself got (some) rhythm.  At our first SKIILZ Street practice, our coordinator Mphaki literally couldn’t believe that we could actually participate in the gizer (which involved… imagine… A BEAT!!!)  Indeed, she started sputtering when Jessi and I not only carried the beat but moved with it!!! A similarly revealing side note: I was dancing at a bar last night with my sister, and a black African came up to her and said: “is that your sister?” and she said “yes.” And he said: “I love it when I see white people who can dance because it happens so so rarely!”

Yes, if you were to lean overly towards the politically correct side of things (and some of you do) you might find this assumption (that white people can’t dance) offensive.  But political correctedness does not exist in South Africa any more than Kraft macaroni and cheese.  But shamelessness?  We’ve got it in spades. If not in Khayelitsha, then in Grassroot Soccer. If you didn’t have it when you came in, you developed it within a week…  Sink or swim.  Laugh or die.

Wrap-Up

GRS is special.  Yes there are some classic failures in communication and almost everyone that works there is over-stretched.  But everyone who works there also wants to be there, works overtime not to get paid (which they don’t) but because they believe in the GRS model – and it works (**more on how we know this later**)...  The kids GRS works with want to be there. Somehow, finally, someone has thought of a way to use the incredible power of soccer in southern Africa to improve quality of life. Sport for development…. Such a simple idea….. Whodathunkit.

***

I think that’s all for now.  I can’t imagine spending the time to read someone else’s four page blog post so I don’t really expect many of you to make it to here.  If you have… GOOD for you!  Your attention span is better than mine.  And apparently you have time on your hands! Thus, if you have nothing better to do send me an e-mail (relevant or otherwise) at lybrown@wesleyan.edu!  I don’t have internet in my house and was always notoriously bad at communication, but that don’t mean I don’t get your e-mails and delight in them!  It simply means I will struggle to respond within a year [partial joke].

Also, you few with time on your hands, I beseech you: use your time to blab about my project to ANYBODY who might have the slightest interest in sponsoring my internship (which is unpaid, by the way).  Please give them the link to this blog, and my e-mail, and my fundraising materials (which I will attach) and absolutely anything else that you think might be useful.  Parenthetically:

***Tax deductible donations! can be mailed to:

Grassroot Soccer, PO BOX 712, Norwhich, VT 05055

*Please include a memo on the check that the donation is on behalf of “Leah’s Internship”

Or, for online donations, visit: http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/what-you-can-do/donate/donate-to-an-intern/***

Be a go-between, put me in contact with them directly, do absolutely anything you would to facilitate their support! I appreciate all of the help I can get.  I am not, how you say, a complete success with ze advertising/fundraising aspect of zis piece, even zough I depend on donations for food...  And I like food…  and I vould like to continue to eat it…  Tell your friends.

THANK YOU!

For reading.  I hope you found this mildly entertaining.  If you didn’t, do something else with your time!; do you, dude… do you.

Peace and cheese muffins,

Leah

p.s. whatever your reason, check out this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyplef2Hi6Y&noredirect=1
"When Silas Haggerty went to Zambia in 2006 to see how soccer could change lives, here is what he saw..."

p.p.s. in case you didn't know, this is the kind of view one gets in Cape Town... even from a humble abode.... make a visit!!!