Sports Carnival

The much awaited sports carnival finally arrived!
The week prior was a hectic rush of organising the teams as I was required to make student IDs for every student, these had to be stamped and signed by the principal then laminated. Another copy of their IDs with all the players shown on one page also had to be made and stamped. Each player had to have their birth certificate (matching the date on their ID) and primary school results certificate stamped, signed and attached.
Sounds simple enough but in reality it was a nightmare.
Many students don't know their birthdates, have multiple names they use interchangeably and couldn't produce a birth certificate.
Combine this with frequent power blackouts and ink shortages and the result was a couple of 12 & 13 hour days at school getting it done. The whittling down of the team to the required number was more determined by who had the necessary paperwork rather than skill. A shame from a coaches perspective, but the principal informed me that if we don't obey the rules we are likely to get kicked out as they are stricter on private schools.

Our transport lorry.

The actual morning was a flurry of organising shoes and uniforms, strapping ankles and checking names and then our transport arrived and the energy and excitement levels increased astronomically! 
Over 50 girls in the back of a lorry all super excited about sports, clapping and stamping and singing at the top of their voices-no wonder we attracted attention as we drove to the venue!

The sports competition was pretty interesting to be part of. There were over 2000 people there from various schools in the region, the street lined with stalls selling bananas and snacks, music pumping from large speaker setup, games being played left right and center with everyone seeming to know where they had to be despite no schedules, scoreboards or timepieces anywhere. 

Rough fields resulted in many injuries.

My duties were to be coach of girls football and also first aider to all our school teams- although it didn't appear that any other schools had first aiders so I ended up assisting quite a few other students as well.

Being the only white person caused a stir again, as I walked past the row of spectators watching a football match they all stopped, turned and stared, laughing and waving.  I am fairly used to this under normal circumstances but found it unusual that they were turning from their beloved football to look at me, until I realised there amongst the  noise of music and cheering there were two guys just behind me yelling out in Swahili 'have u seen the muzungu!? Look look!!'
Once again I was given preferential treatment, people kept giving me chairs to sit on which was a bit of a problem as I preferred to stand and cheer, but it was rude to refuse so I would sit for a bit and then thank the person and come up with some excuse as to why I had to suddenly leave.

Crowds watching the football.

I discovered that it is very difficult to coach a team when the officials, spectators and other players are all speaking another language. My girls were fantastic, sticking by me and translating when they realised I had no idea what is happening, but even so I found that in our first game some Kenyan men were cheering super loudly for my team and then made a couple of substitutes on my behalf- I assumed they must have been associated with our school somehow but afterwards I found out they were just over enthusiastic spectators that has convinced the officials they were part of staff- something that had slipped past me amongst the language confusion- often they speak Swahili and also a local dialect, sometimes even both together-makes it very difficult to know what's happening.

After the first game I was a little more savvy and didn't allow randoms to take over anymore. I continued to cause a stir, being a white, female coach, and running around with a backpack bandaging, massaging and strapping my players. Especially in the first game when one of my players realised she didn't have sports shoes, and so I pulled mine off and gave them to her to wear for the game, a barefoot muzungu is a very rare occurance!
Often people asked me for money or if they could work for my school or come and be my student, or get contact details. I would mostly answer 'hapana pole' (no sorry), pretend I didn't understand or leave it to one of my students to answer them in Swahili.

On the second day the school hosting the games ran out of water and I had students asking me for drinks all day. I ended up purchasing 28 bottles of water throughout the day- until there were none left even for sale around the grounds!! The games went late into the day, not finishing until almost 7 pm, but it was worth all the efforts, our school came off with a few wins and we qualifies for regionals in girls volleyball, netball annnnnnnd yep... My girls football team :) :)

Kids climbing the trees in order to see properly.

Lunchtime for football girls.

  

Our boys volleyball