Why I'm here!

Yesterday made me remember what I'm doing here, why I can't leave and what I wanna do with my life. I went with 3 of the new volunteers to one of their projects. It's a project called StreetWise Sports and it's 2 friends of mine that are running it. Adam and Barney. I've known them since 2009/2010 when I was here and worked for MyLife. They are both coming from the streets and drug problems. But since 2010 they are running this amazing program. It's with kids in town. Street kids, poor kids, troubled kids. We went to the, probably, poorest area in town. A small, small township area in Bo Kaap. I live in Bo Kaap. I've heard about this place before but never knew it was so close to me. 500 meters and I'm there. It's crazy. Just around the corner from 18 million Rand houses..  This country... It's so weird. I can't really get used to it and I hope I never do. There are way too many people in this country just living in luxury and don't give a shit about that most of the people are living in poverty..

Anyway. So we took about 40 kids to a soccer field in the neighbourhood and they played like a tournament. I played one game and the kids were good! You could tell that the guys have been teaching them well. They played like a team and there was no fighting and I've never seen kids behaving so good for so long. Imagine 40 kids between 3-13 years old, hanging at the same place for 2 hours and there was no fighting or misbehaving at all. I'm gonna join every tuesday and we are gonna have practical sessions with them. Me and Sofia (the swedish volunteer) will take the girls and try to motivate them to play more. They want too but they are a little scared to play with the guys because the guys don't want them to play (same all over the world more or less I guess).

I will do this every week until I leave and I will keep up when I'm back , for sure! This is great!

These kids are living in the middle of drugs, violence and other crime every day. It's a part of their life. It's important to show them that there is a world outside that. Some of them won't be helped, but some of them will. And that's what counts.