I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to do daily blogs as our wifi has been awful the last few days. I could deal with no wifi but the fact it's there and all our devices connect to it and it comes up there's a strong connection but it doesn't work is so frustrating. If there's any computer experts out there that can explain this please feel free. We may have to start going to the pub more often just so we can use their wifi and speak to family, any old excuse.
Anyway enough of my moaning for now and on to today. We were up nice and early for our crèche. Again it was over 40 degrees outside and we knew today would be challenging. 1st challenge was to find the crèche, Harry had said that Joe pointed it out to him on Friday and he would easily be able to direct us there. So off I drove with Harry telling me where to go, 'it's definitely it Ruyterwacht he says' after driving around Ruyterwacht for 15 minutes going this way and that Harry gave in and said he didn't know where he was going. We went to the learning centre to find Joe waiting for us, apparently we were supposed to pick him up for the 20ish minute drive, outside of Ruyterwacht to Riverton crèche, well done Harry.
We made our way to Bishops Lavis, we were told this was 1 of the 'not so nice' areas in Cape Town, lots of unemployment and lots of crime. The crèche we visited had been broken into roughly 150 times in the last 14 years. Not the sort of record you want to have. We were given 11 kids and told we had half an hour, which was perfect as any longer in this heat would be very uncomfortable. After a very slow start, the kids seemed half asleep, we managed a few activities and even though we had the shade from a tree we kept the activities short and sweet and with as little running as possible. We found out that 1 of the boys names was Kolo, me and Harry started singing the Kolo Kolo chant for Kolo Toure, the kids over heard and started singing as well. Nice bunch of kids, just looked scared to let go and have fun. After our usual high fives and shouts of Arsenal we were gone. Driving down the road we went past a man that as he spotted us started shouting what sounded like some less than friendly stuff, without sounding horrible as he laid out on the street, did look a victim of drink or drugs but I wonder whether if he was sober and knew that we had come into his community to help the kids of his area whether he would have acted differently? I know the history of the country but it's sad to see that some areas are still showing the effects.
Back to the learning centre we went. After a short cool down from the air con it was back on the road. We considered calling this afternoons session off but knew that we would be disappointing some kids that would have been looking forward to it. Instead we decided on a reduced session and a Q&A. It may have been 40+ degrees but we still had over 30 kids and 2 cows. We were in Wesbank which is a township area about half hour drive from Ruyterwacht I believe, Joe correct me if I'm wrong now that I know you're reading our blogs quite often. 1 ball between 30 kids, no cones, no bibs, 40 degree heat, 2 cows standing on your pitch, cow poo everywhere, pot holes everywhere, cans and other rubbish everywhere, this would be 1 of our biggest challenges yet. To be honest the kids were great, a simple passing activity to start with that gradually got harder, they made it look easy. We have done this with a few groups but these were the 1st to do it correct 1st time. We then decided it's match time, I took the younger kids Harry took the older group, 15 a side on a field with 2 goals. As you can imagine a very scrappy game but there were moments of skill and quality and considering the pitch and equipment etc you wonder what these kids could do if they had been dealt a better hand and been more fortunate. Our keeper had a great game and kept us in the game, which is why I felt bad I let my team down, tripped in a pothole, bottled a 50/50 challenge with a kid that had studied boots and left my keeper 3 v 1, he saved the 1st shot but could do nothing about the 2nd. We battled on but Harry's team were victorious. It leaves it 3-2 to me in games now. I did contest the result as Harry had 2 extra defenders but apparently the cows didn't count. We had a short Q&A with the kids and then the coaches, the coaches told us 1 of his boys had recently been scouted by Ajax of Cape Town the only pro team in Cape Town, which was pleasing but also disappointing the boy has a chance of the big time but the coaches gain nothing from him being scouted, even a football would have been a nice gesture.
That was our day over with, as we drove home we saw the bad side of the heat, 3 fires within a 20 minute drive and also hearing on the radio that the mountain fire that started Sunday was still not out. You can see the smoke in the sky, and there's definitely a hazeyness to the nice blue skyline. I hope it is sorted soon but applaud all the people that have been helping to tackle it. I hope we get the rain that's forecast to help you guys out. Worst fire in nearly 10 years I heard someone say.
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