Thursday, July 16, 2015

The Barefoot Olympics

Tonight was Trivia Night at the Sol Cafe, so it's a late evening for us.  More on Trivia Night later.  

The morning had us working in the library a bit more, (It's beginning to sound like it's a major job, which it is, but we only have an hour or two at a time to work on it at a time,  so it seems like we're always "working on the library").  I personally am excited about how it looks after pulling off shelf after shelf of books that are either pieces and parts of books, or in the completely wrong section (adult fiction books in the math section, easy to read books in the science section, etc,).  We even had to sweep tiny shards of glass off the floor from a window that had broken last week.  We've marked the books by reading level and sorted the textbooks that are stored in the library.  We all realize, however, that the first time the kids use the books, it will all be chaos again.  

The Musana kids were competing in a soccer and netball tournament today, which we were fortunate to be able to attend and lend a cheering hand.  Netball is similar to basketball, except that the players do not dribble, they pass the ball around a smaller court, and they score by getting the ball into a circle around the "net" and with one hand, try to get the ball up into the "net" (there is no net, just a circle of metal on top of a pole).  There are rules about shifting their stance as they shoot, and the other team cannot block the ball from the goal as they shoot.  The blocking is done as the ball is moved down the court.  Think ultimate frisbee meets basketball.  It's played mainly by the girls and the Musana girls won both of their games.    

The boys soccer (football here) team dominated in the first game and won 2-0.  They had a little more competition from their next opponent, but still won 1-0.  The field was enormous, sloped down on one side, had holes to avoid, and they played in their bare feet.  There were no parents yelling that the ref was an idiot, or bringing little orange slices for the boys.  

It was a lot of fun watching them play and watching the other students were were there from other schools.  The host school had a number of younger kids watching the games, but they were more interested in watching us Mzungus (white people).  The school had a number of deaf students, two of which made friends with our driver, Kyemba.  He showed his sign language skills again with the five-year-olds and made their day. 

Thursday is always Trivia Night at the Sol, so off we went to dinner in downtown Iganga.  Hannah and Sam were the question writers.  Our group divided up into two teams, and with the other people who played in the restaurant, my team came in third.  Who knew that India was the largest producer of bananas in the world, or that a cockroach farted every 15 minutes???

We're pretty wiped out from our day in the sun at the games and are not going to take long trying to fall asleep. We continued to see the fruit of Musana's labors today in the coaching, kids' behavior and sportsmanship.  

Blessings, 
Judy



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