7/18/09 from Heather

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to have 100 Zambian children running at you with all the speed and fury of a Cheetah? Well, the three newbies (Carrie, William, and me, Heather) found out just how that feels, but we'll get to that in a minute.

The day started fairly early with Dr. T's cheerful morning wakeup call followed by a quick breakfast. We piled a bunch of soccer balls, basketballs, and volleyballs into the back of the van for the sports clinic we would be running later in the day. Everyone piled into the van and off we went to Luansobe for a day of sports and fun (and a little work of course).

The plan for the day was to clean up the sports fields and basketball court then have a little fun teaching the students a little more about the sports they loved to play. The clean up turned out to work fairly well because the older male students were put to work with shovels scraping the grass that had grown up over the edges of the basketball court. The next age bracket of boys picked up rocks from around the fields and courts. The young children were tasked with picking up the trash and the billions of little husks and scraps from sugar cane from around the same area. I got the bright idea to have a contest between my team of about 10 boys and Tannen's team of the same. I lost the attention of these young boys fairly quickly, though I kept the contest going by myself with only the help of a 2 year old who could not understand a word I said. He would collect a piece of trash, show it to me, then take the single item (wrapper, stick, bag, etc.) to the heap. Tannen of course took home the gold on the most trash collected, but this is mainly because, like the lovely Maria from the sound of music, she began singing at the top of her lungs a Zambian song she had learned -- which of course sent the kids running. Kids, I may mention, including my 10 little hooligans who began piling trash in the competition's pile instead of ours. The favorite song of the day was one involving the phrase "everything is double double, everything is triple triple" which I'm sure you could have heard from space as there were at least 40 kids following her around by this point.

After cleanup the students were allowed to play the different sports with little STS team member involvement then the real fun of the Sports Clinic began. Dan and William (my husband) were in charge of basketball. If you asked either one of them when the last time they picked up a basketball it was before the word "teen" was in their age. Nevertheless, the kids seemed to have a wonderful time and even learned something. Megan led a group in soccer (football) drills to the boys who were not too busy playing a very rough game of football on their own. I have never seen such young children have such incredible football skills!! Watch out David Beckham (or whoever is impressive in the world of football today -- obviously I am not a follower of the sport myself).

Now the sport few kids really knew much about was volleyball, but boy did we have a large group of people to teach the eager students! Thanks to Gino from the Florida Beach Volleyball Tour, we were able to supply the school with a volleyball net installed by many members of the VanZwieten family, Joel Wolf, and a few others. The net looked great and the kids seemed to have a wonderful time, including watching a few "pro" exhibition matches and even participating in a few of their own.

After the sports came the "short" STS presentation. Because we were told it wouldn't last more than a little bit, the three newbies (remember them? The ones attacked by the so-called Cheetahs?) agreed to watch the kids who were too young or too hyper to sit through the talk. Let me say, bad idea to anyone thinking about such a task. By the time the search and rescue team came for the naive newcomers, the total kid count was well over 100 and the total body count could have been 3 had Drew VZ not delivered a secret message that stated simply, "We can't hold them back much longer! Send HELP!"

All in all, the day was so much fun and very productive. The students got to help clean up their community, play some fun games, and learn about HIV/AIDS, all good goals for a Saturday afternoon.

I pray that everyone reading this is doing well and is continuing to keep this trip and its members in their prayers.

Have a great night,

Heather