Thanksgiving at the beach

Just a quick update, as November and December have been surprisingly busy, and slow, at the same time. Did a great job keeping the American tradition alive over Thanksgiving; my housemates and I drove down to Port Elizabeth, on the Eastern Cape, to join the GRS interns who live and work there. The drive itself was beautiful, through the mountains from Central South Africa all the way to southeastern coast. There were almost 20 of us – the interns, their Afrikaans friends, and some GRS head-honchos in town for meetings, including Tommy Clark, the founder/CEO of GRS. They prepared a huge feast – two turkeys, a porgasm (ham, wrapped in bacon, stuffed with spiced chili cream cheese), mashed potatoes, veggies, rolls, and 13 desserts – the works. No offense to my mom (or Nancy), but it was up there as one of the best thanksgiving meals I’ve ever had. Over the next few days, we lived at the beach, drove to Jeffrey’s Bay (the surf capital of Africa) and climbed South Africa’s largest sand dunes at Maitland Beach. We also got to know their Afrikaans friends, and they prepared for us a potjie, traditional Afrikaans stew. According to tradition, while the potjie is cooking, everyone must be drinking, and potjie takes at least 3-4 hours to prepare. Needless to say, a great time was had by all in Port Elizabeth.

Back in Bloem, we finished up our school graduations, as the schools closed for the summer on November 30. Since my arrival in Bloem, we have graduated 719 kids from the GRS program, with plans to continue to expand the Bloemfontein site over the next several months. While it makes only a small contribution to GRS’ goal to reach 1,000,000 by 2010, it’s still a fairly impressive number. While I risk sounding cliché, even if we reach one kid, it will be worth it. Next January, we'll be having a Training of Trainers, during which we will be training nearly 40 new “coaches” from throughout Mangaung. This includes a women’s group called the Sisterhood (formerly South African Women in Dialogue), who do various community outreach campaigns to young women and children, and also the Outdoor Sports Center staff of Mangaung. The Center is a large complex with indoor and outdoor sports grounds, and educational and leadership training courses. The individuals who run these organizations are well-known leaders within the community, and once we train them in the GRS curriculum, we will be able to reach a continuously wider base of kids. The Sisterhood women are particularly important, as they are Afrikaans speaking, and will be able to reach the Afrikaans-speaking colored demographic that we have yet to cover.

For World AIDS Day, December 1, we had a huge multi-sport tournament in the township, co-sponsored by MUCPP. Anthony and I were in charge of the 5 vs. 5 soccer tournament, which I would characterize as organized chaos; we had about 12 teams, probably 100 kids. The day was long and exhausting, but I got to watch soccer all day (really, really good soccer), and introduce the concept of an HIV-free, healthy lifestyle into some young minds. After the holidays, Bri and I are going to begin planning for a testing tournament similar to what we saw in Lesotho, and hopefully establish it within GRS Bloem and Mangaung as an annual event.

Last night, I attended the opening ceremony of the Love Life All-Star Games. Love Life is a national organization that uses techniques similar to GRS to promote an HIV-free, healthy lifestyle; their motto is “An HIV-Free Generation.” They have a massive following in every province throughout South Africa, with over 1,000 volunteer peer educators, or Love Life Mpintshis (like GRS trainers). The All-Star Games is a national tournament with teams from all 9 provinces, nearly 3,000 kids, hosted this year in the Free State. During the ceremony, everyone packed into a huge hall at the University for opening speeches, ground rules, and dancing. The entire hall was on their feet...suffice it to say, people can move here. And, needless to say, Bri and I stuck out, as usual. We’ve been working on several collaborations with Love Life, and the tournament is an ideal venue for us to participate, gather ideas, and spread the word within the Love Life community about GRS.