My world was rocked today and I was completely broken down. I came into the office and was writing an email preparing for our upcoming Goals for Grassroots Tournament. Honestly, the tournament had been stressing me out and had affected my temperament in the office. However, the stress I was feeling paled in comparison to the news I was about to receive...
A staff member in the office sat us down and told us that unfortunately he wasn't going to be able to make it to the office in the next two days. Some sad news had reached his family. His niece who is living with him had been raped and stabbed on Sunday night. She was now in the hospital and he needed to take off work to see her and see how she was holding up. On Monday, additional news reached his family that his uncle had passed away which was a huge shock. As if that was not enough, his father has been very ill for a long time and has been in the hospital and there is still uncertainty on whether his condition is getting better or worse. Bam, I was hit instantly with speechlessness. The minuscule tournament that I had been stressing about vanished into thin air.
The rest of my morning was filled with deep feeling of confusion and numbness. I was trying to comprehend the gravity of pain and evil that my friend was experiencing. Why is there such pure evil in the world and why did so much pain hit my friend in such a short amount of time? If you know me well, I always have a happy-go-lucky attitude, my normal way of expressing that is through a myriad of accents or just plain goofiness However today, as hard as I tried, I could not tap into that positive energy. Anyhow, that changed in a matter of moments.
I was at a school in Uitenhage where we were doing Skillz Holiday*. I was watching some kids play soccer during an activity that we call "fair play"**. Only 16 kids were playing while the rest (around 40) were waiting their turn to play. My initial thoughts were the kids were probably upset that they had to sit and wait while others got to play. This conclusion stemmed from my experience in America where kids gripe and complain that it is not fair that others are playing and they are not. However, in this circumstance I was completely wrong. The kids were sitting, watching, laughing, and...singing. They were singing such a wonderful, jubilant, blissful song which included intricate claps and dancing. Immediately I began smiling and trying to learn the words-- a process that i have found leads to many laughs among the children and staff as they find the pronunciations an umlungu*** uses are so gosh darn funny!
Although, the juxtaposition# between the sadness of the news I heard in the morning and the singing and dancing I heard in the afternoon might be an extreme case of my experience in South Africa, it does give some insight to the ups and downs of life experiences on a daily basis in Port Elizabeth.
I cannot begin to tell you how much I've seen, learned, and endured during these past two months. I can only tell you that my perspective on life life changes daily and I am truly understanding myself and others in ways that I never thought possible.
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| Kids waiting their turn to participate in Fair Play |
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| Posted in the classroom, just a way of life. |
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| Closing circle for graduation |
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| Me and VIP donig what we do |
*Skillz Holiday is a curriculum that we implement for kids during their breaks from school. Usually our curriculum takes 8 weeks (where we have two practices per week), whereas Skillz Holiday is done in 5 days, with two practices per day.
**Fair Play is when the kids are able to play a game of soccer, but are taught lessons on teamwork and leadership
***unlungu=white person
# Yes, David I know Juxtaposition might not be used correctly in this context, nonetheless it is an awesome word and one major goal in my life is to find any and every opportunity to use the word juxtaposition.
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