Friday, March 23, 2012

ISC basketball court inauguration


Today Promo Jeune Basketball inaugurated it’s second new basketball court (le Terrain Zinga Teta) in the month of March. I an write with the utmost pride today, and all the members of PJB can stand tall as we have surpassed the greatest of expectations that anybody (including ourselves) could have imagined. Even speaking with our Director, Dario Merlo, he said that he always dreamed that he would be able to provide a great basketball court for the players of Goma, but never did he imagine two great basketball courts.

In the same way, as I mentioned in my other inauguration blog, it has been a dream of mine to one day build a basketball court in Africa. Well today my dream has come to fruition two times over. Even though I am not personally responsible for the funding or construction of the courts, I like to think that my presence here in Goma and my blood and sweat (and yes even tears) put into the construction of the court has made this day possible.

Our new court is different from the other court we built. We decided to design the two courts differently. Le Terrain Valerie, which was inaugurated the other week, was your common six hoop (one center court with two side courts) basketball court. This new court though only features four hoops. There is one main court and two half courts on the new court. This court is also located in a much more public place than our other court. Le Terrain Zinga Teta is located on the main road passing through the middle of downtown Goma and is built in front of the Institute of Commerce in Goma (or better know to people of Goma as ISC). It is a great location as it again is it the middle of two of the largest secondary schools in Goma, ISC and Instagoma.

The only problem with the location is that it is too open to the everyday traffic of cars, people walking, chookadoos, bicycles, and whatever mode of transportation they can think of here in DRC. It is located about 20 meters off of the road and is open to everyone walking by. Even during it’s construction a lot of the day was spent telling people to walk around the court, not right through the middle of it. Of course we want everyone to come and enjoy our new court, but some people don’t have the common knowledge no to walk across a basketball court that people are playing on.

The traffic of the location also causes another problem, which is dust. I swear I have lost a couple years of life living in Goma because of all the dust, smog, and smoke I have inhaled. On the dirt roads of Goma it is not uncommon to not be able to see 50 meters in front of you due to the diesel engines releasing all the crap from its exhaust, the trucks and cars kicking up large amounts of dust from the dirt, and the smoke, which is billowing from multiple piles of burning garbage. It sounds disgusting and it really is. Anyway, our new court is located right on the busiest and dirtiest roads of Goma, which is not ideal.

Even though there are these problems with the basketball court, it does not take away from the fact that it is beautifully contracted, well designed, and now ready to be broken in. Today was like pulling a new pair of shoes out of its box and putting them on. You feel great and know that you look good (just as the court did for PJB) but there are always some troubles breaking those shoes in. The court was beautifully set up with a DJ table, and a tent covered sitting area. The sun was shining and the people began to arrive to watch as we opened up that new pair of shoes for the first time.

The ceremony began at a Congolese 3:00PM again with the broken record sounding national anthem. This time speeches from PJB director Dario, and the Provincial Minister of Sport in North Kivu, as well as the president of the regional basketball league headlined our ceremony. After the speeches was the ribbon cutting ceremony, which was just your average ribbon cutting ceremony. Then we had a special surprise for the children of PJB.

Along with being able to open our new basketball court we took the opportunity to present 30 players with scholarships. In Goma even the public schools require fees to attend and many of our players are kicked out of school because they cannot pay. It is a terrible problem in Goma that education is not available for everybody because of the fees[1].  Today PJB was able to support 30 players with a year of education. At the end of the ceremony, and before the games began we took a short time in honoring the effort and focus of these 30 kids receiving scholarships.

After the presentation of the scholarships, we began the girl’s game. The PJB Girls Elite team was matched up against DC Tropicana for the first time this year. Just as the game began some large clouds appeared out of nowhere and decided to dump on us for about five minutes, so the game was paused for a couple minutes. After the clouds cleared everything continued as planned, like the rains never came. The sun greeted the inbounds whistle to re-commence the game. The match was a 30 minute abbreviated match, which saw Tropicana beating us (PJB) by 3 points in a very scrappy and disorganized game.

The second game, which was scheduled for the inauguration, didn’t involve a PJB team. Instead we decided to invite two other teams from the town to join in our celebration and play a match to break in our new court. These two teams were Goma Bulls and Mt. Carmel. These two men’s teams actually star some of the better youth players of Goma playing alongside grown men. The match was very up-tempo and very entertaining, and ended in a Mt. Carmel victory

Overall the inauguration was very successful and beautiful. We had probably close to 1000 people out to the new court to celebrate our accomplishment with us. It is great to share PJB’s hope and excitement for the future of Goma with the people of Goma


[1] Each school year requires three payments of anywhere from 80$-$200 depending on the school. Though this only amounts to anywhere from 240$-600$ per year, which sounds like nothing to those of us paying back university loans, for a person who only makes 30$ a month, it is difficult to use 80$ every three months on school.

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