I apologize for the lack of postings lately! I have been all over the place and away from my computer. Also, I have been feeling quite apathetic lately about most things. I will snap out of it soon I hope.

Over the past month I was in Pretoria watching the Confederations Cup and then a training for my coworkers about using soccer to teach HIV/AIDS to kids.

For people who don’t know, the Confederations Cup is like a trial for the World Cup. Things went really well. The earlier games were a little empty, but they sold out at the end. A difference between soccer in SA and everywhere else apparently is the use of the vuvuzela by fans. The vuvuzela is a long plastic horn that people blow in the stands. It makes a loud noise and it seems like 25% of people in the stadium have them. They are loud. European players really hate them and want them banned from the World Cup because they say they are distracting. However, they make for an amazing atmosphere at the stadium and they are really South African, so I say they should stay. However, some of the people I went to the games with definitely don’t agree with me on that one.

I went to the US-Brazil game and the Brazil-Italy game. The US was embarrassed in their game against Brazil. It looked almost like they forgot why they were at the game or that they were soccer players. It was awful. But they improved later in the group stage and went on to come in 2nd place in the entire tournament. The Brazil-Italy game was a little more heated but Brazil still won 3-0. It was great to see such good players so close up against each other. It made me regret my decision to miss out on the World Cup next year (I will be traveling during it) because the games were so amazing, however, I think it will be really fun to watch it from home or wherever I am at that point.

It seems like SA is almost ready for the World Cup. However, when I was in Pretoria about 5 people that I knew at my hostel were robbed while walking on the street, some even early in the day. I wasn’t robbed, thank goodness, however it was awful to worry about all week. I think that SA just needs to step up police presence away from the stadiums. At the US-Brazil game on the way out there was a line of 300 police officers mingling with seemingly no purpose.

As for the past week, I attended a training for 10 of my coworkers about communicating HIV/AIDS information through soccer-related activities. The training doesn’t involve kids actually playing soccer, but instead doing soccer and netball related games and drills while learning about HIV. I think the training went well. However, it really underlined some problems I have with international development. Again. For one, it is really difficult to train Zulu speakers in English. You would think this would be obvious, but apparently it isn’t. Even with the best intentions and trying to translate back and forth, when you are talking about personal experiences and learning really serious information it really just doesn’t work. ARGH!!! So annoying. My point is that 21% of South Africa speak Zulu (the most of any language in the country) so it seems like it might be smart to have someone on staff who speaks it (South Africans who live in Gauteng Province or Urban areas are generally multi-lingual, so it isn’t hard to find), instead of an American who speaks quickly, whose accent makes it that much more difficult to understand what is being spoken, and who speaks no South African language at all. It seemed like our group picked up most of the information, but, like I said, it was hard to understand in depth because of the translation issues. Like my friend says “I speak German and if I went to a lecture in German I would get the jist of it, but if it was in English I would be able to understand it completely and find the deeper meaning”. This does not seem like a hard concept for anyone to understand.

Another hilarious part to this week was telling the American trainer how much we (everyone at the training) hate these specific cartoon commercials about HIV prevention that run on the air. Click on this link for one of them. The trainer guy, of course, absolutely adores them. They are funded by USAID, PEPFAR and Johns Hopkins. However, they are entirely in English in an accent that no one can understand, even South Africans who speak perfect English or whose first language is English. This is because the characters in the commercials speak very very very fast and in this South African accent that to me is one of the hardest to understand (I think the accent is supposed to be that of a colored South African, (which is a politically correct term for a race here—people of Malaysian, mixed race, sometimes Indian racial mixes, or descendants of the Koi San people). Anyways, this apparently never occurred to him. What I want to know what research went into creating these advertisements. I mean they basically produced an ad that no one understands and then spent probably over millions of Rands on airtime. Also, even if it was in understandable English it would not be targeting the population that most needs this kind of information—non-English speaking South Africans who live in rural or township areas. Argh! Really, they could have just hired 1 South African and this problem would have been spelled out to them quite quickly. It is just surprising to me because Johns Hopkins was involved, and they are world-renowned for their Public Health/Development Masters and PHD programs. I think I should find out who is responsible for these commercials and write them a letter. I think I will. I will keep you updated with any response I receive. Haha.

So just in case you are one of the few people on the planet I haven’t discussed with yet---I will be in American for 3 weeks in August to attend the Claxton-Lane wedding celebration, a.k.a Nate’s wedding and I couldn’t be more excited! I am just trying to get everything together work-wise before I depart for almost all of the month of August. Currently I am straightening out final playground prep (building looks like it will happen right when I get back in September, as long as funds work out, the company comes through, and the land is ready, so basically the perfect storm. I also am doing a fundraising push that will hopefully fund our Orphans and Vulnerable Children Program for years to come, as our current funding ends January 2010. Eek! So if anyone has $100,000 they just want to throw at me, I would be forever in your debt ☺.

Also, yesterday I celebrated my first 4th of July in which not one person knew it was a holiday or that the 4th of July is anything special. It was pretty weird. It turns out I actually love the 4th of July, who knew? I think its the street fireworks that I miss the most. ☺

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