Soccer Day

Today was the day we launched the Soccer Program here in Sena. Just to give you some background on what we actually did - we capped it at 4 teams total (red, white, yellow, blue) with 11 players and a coach on each team. We split the pitch 1/4 - 3/4 and had two teams engaged in a match on the quarter side, and 4 stations going simultaneously on the 3 quarters side. All the activities were fun and engaging, but at the same time had a takeaway learning lesson about HIV/AIDS. (About 1 in 4 people here are HIV positive, and that really hit home today when we figured that roughly every single player/spectator out there today (approx. 100+ people) had either lost a mother or a father to AIDS). One activity was Tennis Ball. We had two teams line up shoulder to shoulder facing each other and pass a tennis ball (representing HIV) behind their backs until the facilitator said stop. Then the opposite team that didn't have a ball had to guess which player on the other team had the ball. One point was awarded for guessing correctly, but most teams were frequently wrong... and the message was that you can't tell if a person has HIV (the tennis ball) just by looking at them. Then the group discussed the takeaway point and such...

The next station was called Fact/Nonsense... and each team was given a statement about HIV/AIDS and had to identify if the statement was "Fact" or "Nonsense".

Another was Team Handball. This is similar to what a lot of us have carried out in soccer practice - the game is played only with your hands and you have to pass the ball from teammate to teammate 5 times co

nsecutively, and the last pass must be a header. This taught kids teamwork, and that you have to work together and support each other in life...

The last station we had was Limbo/Dribble through the Cones... kids had to pass underneath the limbo stick (representing different pressures in life - pressure to drink/smoke, have sex, etc...) and then dribble through cones that represented obstacles in life.

The photos you see we

re taken today... spectators finding shade in and underneath a tree, Senore Maringue - and Activist at Kuwangisana and a coach for today, one of the players taking his penalty kick (the first match was decided by PK's), and a village kid holding his rendition of a soccer ball