Day 7

Day 7.

Wow! What an awesome day today was. I hope you enjoyed my photos yesterday after finally finding out how to upload them!

Today was focused on getting a feel for the surroundings of townships and to visit a company called Grassroots Soccer.

We started the day by waking up at 6:45 to leave the apartment at about 7:20 to get the 103 bus down to the civic centre and then the train from Cape Town to Vasco. Overall the train journey takes an hour and a half, give or take a few minutes! Of course this all depends on bus arrivals and train times etc. We arrived at Vasco and took a short 10 minute walk into Ruyterwacht to meet Lourens and Joe at the learning centre. We arrived at the agreed time of 9, although we were leaving the learning centre at 11, these couple of hours gave us plenty of time to catch up with some workers, do some research on the computers and just chill for a bit before setting sail!

11 soon came and before we knew it we were on our way to Mvalis, a lovely township tavern which is a neighbourhood butchers but is also a restaurant. The meat was delicious and really filled us up for the day ahead, I was stuffed! The meal was the best that we've had so far, closely followed by the stew we had the day before! It was b-e-a-uuutiful! We stayed at Mvalis for just under a couple of hours before heading to grass roots soccer.

It was a half an hour drive to the grass roots soccer centre but i enjoyed it! Since there's no air con in the car, we get to open our window and feel the African breeze and get a close look at the scenery. It seems common that at each set of traffic lights someone will be selling something!! You see an assortment of all kinds of things from watermelons to big issues, sunglasses, drinks and sweets.. All sorts!

We arrived at the grass roots soccer centre and straight away were greeted by a small bunch of children so happy to see us! The kids are really playful and smiley out here which is great. As soon as I got out of the car, a girl took my bottle of water and wanted me to play with her to try and get it back! Despite having the pace of Usain Bolt I have the reflexes of an old man and therefore she soon ran away with it! Oh well! Let her enjoy it I thought to myself. I'll upload a photo later where it shows me playing with her trying to get my water bottle back!

We spoke to some employees of the grass roots soccer centre, soon a circle formed and gradually one by one we all introduced ourselves and everyone said a little something about themselves. We met two American interns who are spending 12 months out in South Africa working for grassroots soccer. Lucky sods! Their names were Anna and Eric and at the end we got their numbers as they only live 5/10 minutes away. Afterwards, we took a tour of the centre before moving onto a football related exercise to explain the risks of HIV,Aids and Sexual Partners. This gave us an insight into what message grassroots are trying to project and how they relate it to football. For example, we did an exercise where we had half the group as strikers and the others as 'HIV'. The strikers would have two footballs representing two sexual partners and HIV would have to try and catch the strikers, whilst they were dribbling two balls. Emphasising how tricky it is to control HIV when you have more than one sexual partner. Weirdly, I managed to dribble the two balls to the other side without getting caught! To be honest it was my shins which handed me luck rather than my footballing ability being high. Oh and don't forget my Usain Bolt pace! The staff clicked their fingers instead of clapping and did a little clapping whooping chant instead of saying well done, which was hilarious!

Shortly after these exercises we played a 15 minute match, which believe me was enough! The guys we were up against were a really good set of guys and were so quick and strong! We won on sudden death penalties after drawing 2-2 in normal time. Jeff managed to get on the scoresheet with a flukey goalkeeping blunder from the opposite team! A little crowd formed round the side of the pitch and I'm sure you can guess that the little kids were as vocal as ever! We were drenched with sweat (sorry to be that blunt) but the African sun is powerful! Not to mention we ran our hearts out for the grass roots soccer team!

It was time to go home, a few children followed us out and waved us goodbye and were high 5'ing us out of the car window! Shouting "Issa!" (Not sure of spelling).

Thankfully Lourens dropped us to the station. Jeff and I took the usual Vasco>Cape Town train journey then 103 bus from civic centre>rayden!

We were home and desperate to get in the shower and have some dinner! Jeff and I came home to our laundry done which was a nice surprise!! Time for a chilled night, going to Skype some family and get an early night before heading to Robben Island tomorrow!! CAN'T WAIT!! Jeff is flat on his bed, face down conked out snoring whilst I'm typing this so he should be bright eyed and bushy tailed tomorrow!

All the best

Luke