Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Contact Info
If you would like to email me, my address is joshua.feenstra@cornerstone.edu or if you're on facebook look me up, i have a lot more pictures posted on there
Back in Soroti
So its been awhile since my last post and a lot has happened. I was gone all last week on a retreat and before that we didn't have internet for about 5 days but im back now and have internet so thats a blessing. So the Freedom Boys Football Club i help run ended up winning the finals 1-0. The boys were super excited and so were all of the people who were supporting the team. We were presented with a trophy later that night as well as a goat. The goats were about a 15 minute drive away so people from all four winning teams piled into Tim's van and we went to go pick them up. The whole experience was just one of those things thats so hard to explain becuase its nothing that would happen back home. It was hilarious trying to get the goats into the back of the van because they definately didn't want to come back with us but we did finally end up shoving them all into the back. About a week after our huge win, we ended up roasting our prized goat at our victory party. It tasted pretty good but it was very tough and hard to chew, but the kids loved it.
The boys celebrating with the trophy
Stuffing the goats in the van
Our 1st place trophy with our 1st place goat
What was left of our 1st place goat after our victory party/goat roast
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Some Pictures From This Week
The soccer field. A lot of dirt and some grass.
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Busy Week
This last week has been very busy for me and a lot of it has been dealing with soccer so i guess thats not really a bad thing. Right now there are two different tournaments going on. One is for 18 and up and the other is for younger kids with different divisions for 11 and under, 12-14 and 15-17. Two of the guys who i have gotten to know quite well named Jr and Erasmus are my age and play for a team called Ajax. A couple days before their first game they were joking around with me about having me join their team for the tournament. I didn't really think much of it but the next day they told me they were serious and really wanted me to play so i told them i would. Every day their are usually two or three games played with the first starting around 4. Soccer is by far the most popular sport here so their are usually around 200+ people that come and watch the games. However, when a white person is playing in the tournament, attendance goes way up. White people here are called Mazoongoos, so when i walked out onto the field, everyone gathered around to see if the mazoongoo could play. I had a blast playing, anytime i did anything on the field, whether good or bad, it always raised noise from the crowd. We ended up tying the game 1-1 with our goal coming off of a penalty kick that i earned for our team by being fouled in the box. We have another game tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.
I am also involved in the other tournament helping coach an under 14 team of boys. The team is made up of some street kids as well as some kids from the neighborhood. A man named Bobby who is part of our mission team here in Soroti and myself have been working with these kids almost every evening by meeting them at the fields and just getting to know them and then going through training sessions and practices with them. The team is called Freedom Boys Football Club and we have had three games so far. We won the first and tied the other two and have qualified for the semi-finals tomorrow. Getting prepared to start the first game of the tournament was one of the craziest experiences i've seen. Both teams starting line-ups were brought to the center of the field where the screening happened. They needed to screen the players because many kids over 14 try to play with the lower kids so that they will look good. The screening process consisted of finding two people in the crowd who were parents. From there, those two people went through and picked kids that they thought were to old to play. No one has I.D. or anything to prove how old they are, so it is all based on looks and height and size. After the screening process, we lost two players and the other team lost all but 3 players. The other team was disqualified and a new team was brought in for us to play and we ended up winning 2-0. Everything here is just really unorganized and chaotic, but Bobby and i have come to realize that its just expected and accepted by everyone, so we just have to role with it.
On Sunday we drove about 2 hours away to visit a church in Karamoja. The drive their is so hard to explain. For the most part roads arent paved here. If i could define most "roads" that we drive i would say that they are paths without trees in them. In many cases, water has carved trenches right through the middle of the roads and those trenches as well as potholes can be a over a foot deep. There were more than a couple instances when i was pretty sure the vehicle was off the ground and unfortnately for some off the people in the back, they were in constant threat of drilling their heads on the roof. It had nothing to do with the driver (i had to say that in case he reads this) but many times he was given the choice of hitting a hole or a bigger hole so pick your poison. Once we got to our destination we had a church service and then were given a tour through the village. I will put up some pictures of the village and explain them in another post. On the way back we stopped at a mass grave cite that was constructed for victims of the Lord's Resistance Army in one of the towns. The mass grave contained around 350-400 bodies, some of which were identified but most were unidentified. I have pictures of this as well that i will put up. It was an eye opening experience for me. This specific raid only happened a few years ago and its just something that is unimaginable to me but many of the people that i have met here have stories of thier parents being killed or they themselves being shot at and running for their lives. The LRA has now been pushed out of Uganda and are now located somewhere in the Central Republic of Africa, so they are still a problem that needs to be dealt with and needs everyone's prayers.
Another problem that i have been dealing with is mice. We have a family of mice in our house and have been dealing with them for about a week now. As of now we have killed two of them thanks to teamwork and a pair of shoes i brought that have been used as hammers. These mice are smart and very quick. We set up a trap right outside thier hole but the continually push it away and walk around it. Their quickness was surprising to me, they don't really run, they jump around with crazy speed so it takes multiple downward swings to try to hit them. It reminds me of that game a chuckie cheese' where the little mole heads pop up and you have to smash them back down, but this is a little harder and we dont get any prizes for hitting them.
Please continue to pray for the street kids as well as the Freedom Boys Football Club that they are apart of. Also for the families of victims and survivors of the LRA attacks because it is still happening all over Africa and is a tragic situation for many people.
Josh
I am also involved in the other tournament helping coach an under 14 team of boys. The team is made up of some street kids as well as some kids from the neighborhood. A man named Bobby who is part of our mission team here in Soroti and myself have been working with these kids almost every evening by meeting them at the fields and just getting to know them and then going through training sessions and practices with them. The team is called Freedom Boys Football Club and we have had three games so far. We won the first and tied the other two and have qualified for the semi-finals tomorrow. Getting prepared to start the first game of the tournament was one of the craziest experiences i've seen. Both teams starting line-ups were brought to the center of the field where the screening happened. They needed to screen the players because many kids over 14 try to play with the lower kids so that they will look good. The screening process consisted of finding two people in the crowd who were parents. From there, those two people went through and picked kids that they thought were to old to play. No one has I.D. or anything to prove how old they are, so it is all based on looks and height and size. After the screening process, we lost two players and the other team lost all but 3 players. The other team was disqualified and a new team was brought in for us to play and we ended up winning 2-0. Everything here is just really unorganized and chaotic, but Bobby and i have come to realize that its just expected and accepted by everyone, so we just have to role with it.
On Sunday we drove about 2 hours away to visit a church in Karamoja. The drive their is so hard to explain. For the most part roads arent paved here. If i could define most "roads" that we drive i would say that they are paths without trees in them. In many cases, water has carved trenches right through the middle of the roads and those trenches as well as potholes can be a over a foot deep. There were more than a couple instances when i was pretty sure the vehicle was off the ground and unfortnately for some off the people in the back, they were in constant threat of drilling their heads on the roof. It had nothing to do with the driver (i had to say that in case he reads this) but many times he was given the choice of hitting a hole or a bigger hole so pick your poison. Once we got to our destination we had a church service and then were given a tour through the village. I will put up some pictures of the village and explain them in another post. On the way back we stopped at a mass grave cite that was constructed for victims of the Lord's Resistance Army in one of the towns. The mass grave contained around 350-400 bodies, some of which were identified but most were unidentified. I have pictures of this as well that i will put up. It was an eye opening experience for me. This specific raid only happened a few years ago and its just something that is unimaginable to me but many of the people that i have met here have stories of thier parents being killed or they themselves being shot at and running for their lives. The LRA has now been pushed out of Uganda and are now located somewhere in the Central Republic of Africa, so they are still a problem that needs to be dealt with and needs everyone's prayers.
Another problem that i have been dealing with is mice. We have a family of mice in our house and have been dealing with them for about a week now. As of now we have killed two of them thanks to teamwork and a pair of shoes i brought that have been used as hammers. These mice are smart and very quick. We set up a trap right outside thier hole but the continually push it away and walk around it. Their quickness was surprising to me, they don't really run, they jump around with crazy speed so it takes multiple downward swings to try to hit them. It reminds me of that game a chuckie cheese' where the little mole heads pop up and you have to smash them back down, but this is a little harder and we dont get any prizes for hitting them.
Please continue to pray for the street kids as well as the Freedom Boys Football Club that they are apart of. Also for the families of victims and survivors of the LRA attacks because it is still happening all over Africa and is a tragic situation for many people.
Josh
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