Soccer Mom for a Weekend

Last weekend learners from my school decided to compete in a tournament being held by a nearby school in Tsandi and I decided that I would tag along with the team for support.   My friend’s school was also competing in the same tournament so we met up and were able to chat and hang out as we cheered on our teams over the course of a 2 day tournament.  It was just reminiscent of the old days when I was in middle school and my family would spend the entire weekend at the fields.  A few things were a bit different from my memories for one there were no parents there, only learners, many of whom had to walk 10-15 kilometers just to get to the fields and there were no foldable captain chairs to sit in.  We made the mistake the first day of standing the entire day, and by the end we had decided that tomorrow we could not make the same mistake as we sat in pain trying to stretch out our aching muscles. A few other things that were different were that one of the fields had no nets on the goals, and the line flags were the shirts off the line refs back. 

It was nice though having the opportunity to go into Tsandi because I was able to see more of the town.  When I go I typically stick to the main road where most of the shops are but this time I went off and saw the part where there are many shacks, I saw the high schools, and some of the take away places.  I have finally come to terms with Tsandi, if you remember at first I found myself disgruntled with the lack of produce and general stores to meet my shopping needs.  However I’ve made a few important discoveries: 1. I can buy Chocolate at Pep; 2. I can buy fruit at vendors on the street; 3. All the special things I can buy during holiday on my trips out of the North; 4. The people are so friendly and I don’t find myself being harassed by obnoxious taxi drivers.  I’ve also realized that Tsandi is more or less what I expected of an African town where there are many people selling things alongside the road under tents they’ve constructed with sticks and fabric, no big chain stores and there are not many cars everywhere, like in Oshakati and more and more so Outapi.

It was a really nice weekend though and my team ended up taking 3^rd place out of about 10 teams which is not so shabby considering these games were the first games I’ve ever seen them win, they have a record of losing when they play against other schools.