Ruben bloggar frå turar, innland og utland: A bit of work and a mid-term evaluation

Since my last blog post, a week and a half ago, I finished my exam (which has a deadline for 6^th of December), and I’ve just gone out and worked with other volunteers, so at least I got something to do.

Last week I went to St. Patricks and had two PE sessions with Anja and some other peer-leaders from Sport in Action. The first session I came there on a Tuesday and none of the girls had brought their PE clothes, so we had an indoor session. Since we only had planned a PE session, we asked the girls what they wanted to learn, and they said Norwegian. So we taught them some Norwegian phrases. The following day was a bit more active, and the girls had their PE kit, so we had a session in the school yard. I introduced some kids athletic exercises and it was great to be out on the field again. I love doing it, and seeing how much fun the kids have.

Last week, I also joined a basketball team! I met a guy at Lusaka Backpackers a couple of weeks ago, and he asked if I played basketball, even though it’s been almost 8 years since the last time I played I said “yes, I played basketball”. So on Thursday last week I went to the basketball quart (it turned out I went to the wrong practise, but it was still fun, and the following day I went to the right place). Even though I’m a bit rusty, it was still a lot of fun, and the other took good care of me. Hopefully I will have time to practise with them a bit more before I go for my Christmas holiday.

This week we met the General Secretary of NIF (The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports) at a rather nice hotel breakfast. I was really excited and to loosed up the nerves, I borrowed a wheelchair from the hotel, and pretended like I was disabled. It turned out everyone showed up, except from the General Secretary (Inge Andersen). Mr. Andersen showed up 5 minutes before they had to leave, so we barely had a talk, which was disappointing, but hopefully we will meet him again. At least I had some good talks with the other people who were coming from NIF/Norway.

During this week I went to Kalingalinga where I had a session with some kids, together with my friend and volunteer from Uganda, Ivan. The kids were behaving, even though they weren’t used to seeing white people. “Mozongo mozongo!” they shouted when I walked from the bus stop to the compound.

Later in the week we had a mid-term evaluation. Here all of the sports volunteers in Zambia gathered at Kingfisher Lodge in Lusaka. It was great to meet the other volunteers again and share experiences, it turns out I’m not the only one with long days doing nothing. We also got to present our first few months for our host organization and our coordinator, which will work with us to help us get busier in the future.