I haven't been all that busy this week because of the strikes which have been going on now for two weeks. Nurses, teachers and other public service workers have demanded a 12% increase in pay and the government has been stubborn. The strike has made everything go haywire; hospitals are staffed by the military and children wander the streets all day. Schools normally would be in session here because it wintertime. I suppose the summer break comes in january and february. Most of the work Grassroot Soccer does at the moment is through the schools in the townships so the strike has thrown off our schedule significantly. Were under pressure to hold graduations before the end of the second quarter on June 30th but Im not sure we'll be able to do it. We gather data at graduations including post-quiz data and number of graduates and attendees which we include in quarterly reports. These document and monitor the effectiveness of the programs and are important for getting donations. My boss and one of the founders of GRS, Kirk Friedrich, is on a plane back from Germany at this moment after meeting with FIFA and streetfootballworld, an umbrella organization that brings together organizations from around the world that use soccer as a social development tool. FIFA and streetfootballworld put on a tournament every four years in conjunction with the world cup for teams that represent different organisations from different areas and GRS, as one of the key members of the streetfootballworld network in Africa, is hoping to host this tournament in 2010. Im not sure I I already mentioned it but we are planning on building a compound in one of the townships, across the street from the Ubuntu Education Fund Headquarters, that will include a turf soccer pitch and a clubhouse. Once I get the green light, hopefully tomorrow morning at my meeting with Kirk, one of my jobs is to set this plan in motion. I would look for architects to make sketches and draw up a proposal to the municipality asking that the land, currently a dirt lot where kids play and people dump their garbage, be donated.
Its all very exciting.
Besides work, Ive been listening to a lot of Oliver Mtukudzi and Tupac (only god can judge me now) and reading the Brothers K. Im just at the beginnning now but so far it has made me laugh out loud more than any book I can remember.
I went out last night with Kourt to the waterfront, an area of PE with restaurants and dance bars, kind of near Barney's. One place, Tapas al Sol, had a good crowd and groovy music, at least for a while. At 1 am it changed from house remixed hip hop and 90s pop to american 70s classic rock, the kind of stuff you only want to hear when you are wasted. I wasn't so after making pretty valiant effort I was driven from the dancefloor by the lack of thumping base. THe place was pretty good. It had a truly mixed, though not at all representative, crowd, a rare thing in this very segregated town. Indians, who make up about 1% of the city's population probably made up a quarter of the crowd and their were very few black africans, mostly colored. Colored is the word for black/white mixed here and it took a while to get used to.
Took a nice run today in the park adjacent to the neighborhood where I stay. My neighborhood, in which every house has a 2 meter wall with spikes or electric fence on top and attack dogs behind the gate, sits on the edge of a significant cliff which constitutes one side of a beautiful canyon. The little river at the bottom cuts through the hilly landscape from a lake 40 K away right through downtown PE. It is flanked on either side and buffered from the city by dense lush park. There are beautiful flowers and groundhogs that live there and it is great for long runs. PEs got tons of park and is a great city to run in, before dark at least. I plan on taking quite a few so long as my feet cooperate.
SO long. Im gonna go call my father and wish him a happy father's day.