Maddy enjoyed spending time with kids playing and watching soccer

Since getting back from Joburg, I’ve had an additional week off from my internship because of term break at the school. Though being busy with some stuff that I had to do such as catching up on homework and getting shirts for the Fire Fighters tournament for the weekend, I had a lot of free time on my hands to reflect. First off, I realized that during the week when everyone is in their routine of internships, I want to be at mine too. It was nice having the week off in Joburg, yet when we came back to Cape Town, I was ready to get back to my own internship.

During class this week we had a conversation about our transition back to the U.S. and what and how we are going to tell people about our experiences here. I realized that I have SO much to say and could go days talking about everything about Cape Town. However, Marita pointed out a good point that people may ask, but not everyone is looking for a detailed response or necessarily care about everything we have to say, and that’s okay, but it’s a good thing to acknowledge. I liked how Marita recommended that when people ask us how it is we say, “It was great, I saw and did so much, what would you like to know about?” I also realized that two of the hardest transitions I will have back to life in the U.S. are not wanting to hear people complain. Some of the stuff people complain about, including myself, are so not worth a complaint and I often find myself catching my complaints. However, listening to others who complain about things that really don’t matter is going to be different for me because here people are so happy with what they have when at home people complain about what they don’t have and I feel like I just see it in a bigger picture now. The other thing that will be hard to adjust to is people always being on their phones. I’ve always been a “no phones at the dinner table” type of person and always try to not be on my phone and enjoy the company around me. Being here and not even being able to use a phone unless I have Wi-Fi has really made me adjust to only using my phone before bed and in the morning. I know I will go back to using it all the time when I’m home but enjoying the things around me without distractions is so nice and I want to continue this.

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After a week of not much going on, I had a very busy weekend with helping the Khayelitsha Fire Fighters host their first annual tournament. In typical African fashion, we showed up early Friday morning to start setting up for the tournament and they still have many things that we would have thought would have done days in advance to do before the games started. Oscar, they guy who was basically running the show was so awesome and had everything very organized, he just didn’t have any help. He was so thankful that we were there and we did a lot that first day helping him out whether it was registration of the teams, managing the entrance fees, doing the schedules of the games, and logging the scores of the completed games. The next two days were more relaxed because registration was over so we could watch some of the Fire fighter’s games as well as make almost 100 sandwiches for the senior and junior teams as well as the other volunteers. It was a senior tournament but many of the little juniors were there each day to watch. That gave us more time to sit and play with them because we usually only see them at practice. It was awesome to see them become comfortable around us and Sunday when we were leaving they thought it was our last time before going back to the U.S. so you could see how sad they were and wanted to make sure they were able to say goodbye. When we told them we would still be at practice at least one more time they lightened up and went back to playing knowing they would see us again.

Sara, Ethan, Maddy, Kaitlyn, Bongi, Claire, Power

Spending time with the kids was definitely the best part. The rest of the tournament was a little physically and emotionally draining. The coaches depend on us to do a lot for the team that we realistically can’t always do, so we had to learn to start saying no. Additionally, though we were there all weekend, people didn’t seem to get used to a group of white girls walking around and constantly just wanted to take pictures with us and then just walk away. It got exhausting walking by people everywhere we went and have people start talking in Xhosa to each other and laughing, clearly talking about us but we had no idea what they were saying. This has happened countless times to us before in many situations but having it occur constantly for 3 days straight was a lot. This was another reason why I wanted to hang around the kids, they don’t care what you look like, if you are willing to play with them and give them your attention, they will love having you there. Overall I think the tournament went great for it being their first one and it definitely brought me closer to the Fire Fighters.