THE PREPARATION:
One of my big projects in the past couple months has been forming a volleyball team and preparing to take them on a trip to visit another volunteer who also has a volleyball team. The twelve girls on my team are between ten and fourteen years, and one of the main reasons I have been able to convince them to practice twice a week and be good sports is that I told them that we would go on a trip. In the month before the tournament the girls came to practice religiously twice a week, and wanted to practice more but I put a limit on the amount of times a week we could practice. They also arranged to have a raffle to raise money for the trip. While they were busy selling raffle tickets I took no more than five trips to the capital city of our province (about an hour away) to beg the politicians for money to pay for the costs of our transportation to the camp/tournament (which was what we were calling it). Here in the DR if you want something done in your town (such as a road paved, building built, etc) or you just want something (like a job, or money to pay for a car rental to take 12 girls on a trip) the standard procedure is to go ask one of the many “local” politicians to give you whatever you want. So I began by taking an hour long motorcycle ride to our “mayor”’s office in the capital city. By the time I arrived there were twenty people waiting to talk to him, and I didn’t have time to sit and wait as well. So I left him a letter with his secretary who told me to call back every couple of days to see if he had received it. I did just that, but in the end she basically told me that he wouldn’t grant any request unless you talked to him in person.
After several more unfruitful trips to his office and the Senator’s office (they both were never in their offices) to ask the same thing, I finally got lucky and called one day when I was in the city, talked to the secretary and was told to hurry in, because the mayor was finally in the office taking requests. I went to the town hall and waited outside his office with about fifteen others. People were being called in one by one to talk to him, and then suddenly the secretary came and told everyone to go into his office. Now there were about fifteen of us all in his office, all vying to get his attention. I decided to go shake his hand, to let him know that I was there (I had met him several other times at various events, so I was pretty sure he recognized me) and then sit back and let some other people fight over his for attention. After three groups talked to him, I got closer and sat down in a chair next to his desk. The girl in front of him was asking him for a job, he told her to come back on Thursday and talk to his secretary. Then he turned to me. I explained to him that we were going on a trip to participate in a volleyball tournament/camp and that we were asking him to donate some money to help us pay the car rental. He said, "Oh no, I can just send one of our buses to take you". And that was that, after a month of trying to contact him, and contact the car rental company and find a driver from our town, he had solved all my problems. I tried to get him to give me a phone number that I could call to confirm the day before to make sure the bus would come, and he gave me his personal cell phone number and then sent me on my way.
During the week I tried calling that number several times, but of course he never picked up, so the day before I made several calls to make sure that the bus was coming, and finally talked to the right people, who told me that they would arrive at 8am (a little later than I had hoped). Meanwhile, my team had raised 500 pesos (fifteen dollars) which was enough to buy everybody ham and bread to eat for breakfast in the morning and bake three cakes to share with the other team. The girls were all super excited, borrowing clothes from different sisters and friends to make sure they all had the same uniform, and claiming that they were going to wake up at 5 am to do their chores and get ready. I told them they could not arrive at my house until 730.
THE CAMP
Almost all of the girls arrived at my house at 7am, the same time that the bus arrived. The girls were pleased to point out that I had told them to come at 730 because I thought that the bus wouldn’t come until eight, but I was wrong and they actually came at the right time. There was a flurry of bread and ham cutting and serving and then we all piled in the bus. Before we even left town the girls wanted to stop at a small store to buy candy and soda with the money that their parents had given them. We arrived pretty quickly to where we had to go, and were greeted there by the other team.
We had the camp in the elementary school, using their outdoor concrete court and the facilities the school had. We began by introducing ourselves to the other team, then we did some relay races and warm up drills. After that we practiced passing, setting, hitting and serving. We forced the girls to make groups so that there were half girls from my team and half girls from the other team. When we finished with the drills the girls were absolutely exhausted, so we took a break, ate some cake and then just rested and hung out. The girls from the other team went home for lunch while my team stayed and ate food which some of the mothers of the other team had prepared for us.
When everybody returned after lunch we talked about good sportsmanship and then did a team building activity where we blindfolded each team member and put out object on the court. The teammates had to guide their blinded teammate from the sidelines through the court without her stepping on any of the objects set out. The girls loved the activity and were disappointed that we didn’t have time for every single girl to try being blindfolded.
Then we began the tournament. My team had twelve girls and the other team had eleven. Since we wanted everybody to get a chance to play, and everybody was already exhausted, we played four games to just eleven points. My team won every single games, and boy were they excited!!!! Throughout all four games they were chanting and cheering (we had to stop several of the cheers because they did not quite show “good sportsmanship”) and celebrated every win as if it were the national championships. After that we mixed the teams and had them play several more games, and then of course the coaches had to play! Let me just say, the Las Pajas team won that game as well…
We finished the day off with some song and dance and then started packing up to go home. My girls were very tired, but insisted on passing by a local store on the way home to by more candy and small gifts for their families. We drove home in the pouring rain (it has rained almost every day this month). When we arrived on the dirt road that leads to our town all the girls started pretending they were crying, wailing that they wanted to go back to the camp. When we arrived in town they started singing and chanting to make sure that the entire town knew that they won. I was exhausted by the time we got back, but it had been a successful day and my girls were proud to say that they had won!
No comments:
Post a Comment