{ If you were wondering, the title of the last post is Acholi for “Good afternoon” and is pronounced something like “eeree (flipped r) mahbeh” }
So yesterday was super fun! The athletic competition (basically a track meet) was held in Kiryandongo, about an hour’s drive away. Last week’s competition was just within VOH secondary school to choose which students would compete in certain competitions. At the meet, I honestly have no idea how many schools were there. There were hundreds of people, both athletes and spectators, all on the field at the same time, so it was pretty exciting. I’m pretty sure all of those people took their turn looking at me like I had two heads, though. I was one of three mzungu’s there, so I can understand. I had some nice conversations with strangers that approached me and talked to me like we were old friends! One girl did ask me if I knew Nicki Minaj. Sadly, I do not.
Anyway, our athletes did pretty well, and we had a few kids place! I think today is the final rounds of competition, or something like that, and I think a couple kids moved onto that. I didn’t get to stay the whole time yesterday however, since we needed to start taking vans back in separate trips. I was on the first van, but we still didn’t even get back to VOH until after dark. I haven’t been able to ask how the rest of the competitions went, but I did hear the screams and yells of the other vans full of kids pull into the compound late into the night. What I love so much about these kids is that they’ll yell and yell after their competitions no matter how well they did, they all just have a great spirit of victory when they return. And they should! The day was long and hot and very tiring. But fun, also.
Let’s see how much media my internet connection will let me get in here~
Athletes in some track competition, not sure which
Flavia taking selfies, me photobombing 🙂
Me, Diana, and Flavia (Diana figuring out how the camera works)
Taken out of the van window on the way back
Dangit, wordpress won’t let me imbed the video of Gloria’s discus throw. 🙁 Sorry about that.
{Haley}