A Weekend to Remember

Blog Post 10/25/11

So it has been a minute since I have left a post. As I move along here in Goma and I become more and more busy I have less time to try and go get the Internet because I am less motivated to try and find it. I feel like I have become less dependent on the internet. It is a good feeling because I think in America we are to dependent on it, and its not really until you go without it that you realize how much you used to depend on it.

            Anyways, a lot has been going on. We just began construction on a new basketball court in town on Sunday. Much of what has been done so far is just clearing the area that the court will be built on. The land used to have trees, a mini garden, a little parking lot, and some useless big Hyundai freight containers. We spent Sunday chopping down trees, which was really fun. We also didn’t have a chainsaw, so there was about 6 of us taking turns hacking at trees with small axes until they came down. It was a great workout! It was interesting though because my main job is to just oversee that the work is effective and actually being done, so when I asked to help cut the trees down the workers thought that it was hilarious. I guess they don’t get a lot of muzungus offering to help do the hard manual labor. I just love interacting with the locals here. They really are great people.

            The day before we started construction, Saturday, was an amazing day. Hopefully I can add some pictures below, but I spent the whole day watching the High School Basketball Championships for Goma. It was an awesome atmosphere. It kind of felt like an AND1 game or a game at the Rucker because it was outside and the court was filled to the brim with people. People standing, people sitting, people up on the roofs of their homes with plastic chairs looking down onto the court, it was a great basketball atmosphere.

The games were really fun too. First was the 3^rd/4^th place game, which had a handful of PJB players on both teams, so it was good to see how the training we have been doing, paid off. The game was pretty lopsided as the team that won should have been in the championship. The team that won was also on of the coaches that I am teaching and working with at PJB so it was cool. What was awesome about the game was that the people treated me like a VIP guest. They took me to this area where the president of the tournament and the North Kivu Basketball Association was and other older basketball heads were sitting and gave me a seat right at center court. Then some of the announcers and random people would come up to me and say “hi coach” with a really big smile. They welcomed me really well. It was great! I felt like Spike Lee at a Knicks game.

After the consolation game was the Championship. It was fun to see again some of my PJB players, but also almost the whole Goma Bulls team was playing in the final. It was a very competitive game, and the Eminem that the DJ was blasting the whole game made it that much more intense. The players really played hard, and it was a very physical game. Very exciting to watch! Half time was the highlight of my weekend though. A street kid came out and began to break dance. The kid was incredible. He looked like he was about 5 but he could have been like 10. He was bending, flipping, and dancing all over the place. Many people in the crowd were impressed and would run out whenever they saw something they liked and threw some money at the kid. By the end of halftime the kids probably made 20$ worth of tips, which was great!

The weekend was really exciting. The tournament really made it great. I am really excited now because we will hold a PJB tournament in November which I hope is similar n entertainment, and can get out as good a crowd because it made for an exciting environment. Basketball really is the perfect weekend getaway. It is a safe and exciting environment for people of all ages and it allows for great camaraderie. That is all sports really though. That is why I love them so much. You can learn so much from sports, yet they are still the most exciting and fun things that you can do.