Mbita

Last weekend I traveled to Mbita, which is a town on the southern shore of Lake Victoria in Kenya. To get there, we drove to the northern shore of the lake and took a 40 minute ferry across to Mbita. I went for the weekend to visit an American friend of mine, who works at a school there and has also started a girls soccer team. His team is comprised from girls all around that area and is sort of a "premier club" from that place. Their aim is to get young girls (11-14) and involve them in soccer as much as possible to keep them focused and in school and not pregnant. The district they are coming from has the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in all of Kenya at around 40%. The entire generation from age 30-50 ish has literally been wiped out. The biggest source of income there is fishing, so what happens is traveling fishermen come and stay there for a few weeks at a time. They go out for fish and come back to the shore to "sell" the fish to women. This really means the fish are exchanged for money and sex and there you have the insanely fast spread of HIV and other diseases. Then about 60% of the current population is under the age of 18, or some crazy number like that. Almost all kids are total or partial orphans and most are living with extended family members or grandparents. There are so many issues there that are related to poverty and HIV. The life of a girl there is horrible. They are made to do domestic work all day and they are lucky if they are even able to attend primary school. Many are pregnant by the age of 14 or 15 and are married soon after that. Their future is bleak, to put it nicely.

So anyway, my friend has started this club to promote healthy activities for girls and to empower them to lead them away from this life they are seemingly doomed for. They came to Kisumu to participate in one of our tournaments last year, so that is how I know them. They had asked Ted to coach them for the weekend, since they get together one weekend out of every month for a sort of mini camp to train. So Ted and I went to coach and see the team. We got there Friday afternoon and has a short session in the evening. The girls are all so great. They all are between the ages of 12 and 17 and all except 4 are total or partial orphans. When they come to the camps once a month, they are sort of able to escape their oppressive lives and have fun and play football for the whole weekend. And they all LOVE football!

There is another American woman who helps out with the team, so her and I stayed with the girls at a cabin type place at night. It was so fun to spend time with them and talk to them. They are encouraged to speak English and Swahili when they are at the camp, instead of the preferable mother tongue which is called Dholuo. During the weekend, we did a football session from 8-12 Saturday and Sunday morning. Saturday afternoon they had an academic session for a few hours and we played a little more soccer in the evening. Sunday afternoon they all travelled back home. So basically the whole weekend, besides playing soccer and emphasizing that, there was a lot of emphasis on academics and also religion because my friends there are missionaries. We had 5 pieces of white bread and butter for breakfast and lunch every day (also a hard boiled egg for lunch). Then beans and rice for dinner... pretty typical Kenyan diet, so I was definitely excited to come back home and eat vegetables and meat haha.

I had a great weekend because fist of all, I was able to coach a little bit, which I never am able to do. It really made me want to be a part of an individual team. I mean, I love what I am doing with KYFA and I know that I am able to make a difference, but it is on such a big scale that is hard to see the results. When working with an individual team, you are able to make a real impact on individual lives and build those personal relationships. I really hope to be able to do this at some point. Also, I had not traveled in Nyanza Province, which is basically the area in Kenya surrounding Lake Victoria, so it was cool to experience a more rural setting. Plus the town is RIGHT on the lake which is really cool. I did not swim because it is sort of a swim at your own risk thing. There are a boat load of diseases you can get from the water and I just didn't feel like risking it. The locals swim all the time, but they are also getting the diseases all the time. Also, there are hippos so you can't swim at night, but during the day is not a problem.

This week I am back at work in Kisumu. All is well and we are starting our leagues next weekend. I am excited to finally have everything kicking off and games to watch on the weekend. The weather has been kinds "cold" recently. I have even left the house in the morning wearing long sleeves twice. Crazy!!

Football, friends and food

So I have been back in Kenya for about 3 weeks now. I already miss American food and hot showers, but otherwise it is great to be back. Work is going so well. I have 2 new staff members who are awesome and work along the same lines as I do, namely doing the right thing haha. So basically it is a new year, with new people and we even have a new office. Well two more stories added to the old office, so we have much more space to work in.

I have definitely figured out how to deal with the stress of my job and let things go. By surrounding myself with the right people, it makes me feel much more confident about leaving here in July and things really being able to continue the way they are now. With work being less stressful, it makes it much easier to have more fun in general.

My 3 American friends here just moved into the apartment building next to mine, so it is awesome to have them so close. We can literally stand at our windows and talk to each from 5 yards away... pretty sweet!

This past weekend I played in a local soccer tournament here. There is a girls team here who I practice with once in a while. The tournament was hosted by a local high school, but it was an open tournament. We played 2 games on Saturday and won both pretty easily. Today, we played 3 more games, including semi-finals and finals. We were playing the other good girls team from Kisumu in the semi's and we were winning 1-0 with about 3 minutes left. The officiating was horrible, no one disputed that, and one of our girls had an obvious handball in the box, almost near the 6 yard box and of course, the referee calls a free kick OUTSIDE the box. So the other teams goes crazy and the girls start swearing and screaming at the ref. Their coaches were calling them and telling them to walk off the field, which is what they did. This is the problem with a lot of soccer here. I have seen this scenario happen MULTIPLE times,but this was the first time I was directly involved because I was playing. Teams have no discipline and the coaches are the instigators in almost every situation like this. What kind of role models are they teaching the kids to abandon matches whenever there is a call by the referee that they don't like. Very frustrating to see...

Anyway, we got to the finals and ended up winning in penalty kicks. It was fun and I scored a few goals so people FINALLY realize that I can play soccer, even though I always say I do. The common response is "but Kelsey, they don't play soccer in America." Maybe now they think otherwise haha.

I am currently sitting in my living room at 4:30am watching the Super Bowl by myself. There are no American commercials, which stinks, and I think the broadcast is about 10 seconds behind the US, but it is live nonetheless. This will be my one major late-night sporting event, besides the Duke-UNC games, but it is totally worth losing sleep over.

I am probably one of 15 people in the entire country watching this game right now. Gotta love it...