We took the opportunity to rally our students, and talked up the tournament for a full week and a half. Our gym teacher Morad knew a volleyball player who came to train the students every day after school. We had official try-outs - although, with about 6 students per grade, everybody who wanted to be on the team made it. We even had the gravel shoveled to the side of a 10x20m rectangle in the gravel lot so we had an official court!
The tournament buses (actually two vans, filled with players, chaparones like me, and fans) left Saturday morning to make the 5 hour drive to the coast. It apparently was supposed to be a 4 hour drive, except that the local in the front seat didn't believe that any white people knew their way around. Abdul and Katie, two teachers at my school who used to teach at the capital school, tried to give directions - and were not heeded. We got there. Shwia b'shwia.
The school was amazing. My spirits were sinking as we walked in to the indoor gym area at the other school. They had a wood floor, a net, a SCOREBOARD. Their team had matching uniforms and kneepads, and they were practicing passing drills with their two coaches. Country mouse, city mouse?
After yelling with the students a bit and taking over most of the bleachers, Abdul and I left to find lunch for the students. We walked off the campus, immediately swallowed by the wonderful close atmosphere of the country, which had been walled out from the capital school. We walked to the local market, and bought ten kilos of meat while standing delicately in between the skinned bodies of our choices that were dripping blood from the ceiling. We took the meat next door to the griller to have him make it into 43 grilled sandwiches, and then needed to collect 30 dh exact change from each student. Oh, headache.
Abdul and I arrived back at the tournament to victorious yelling; the girls team had won their first game! I sat with some of my seventh grade students, and they led me through one drum-session on the bleachers of our school's funky-remix-type song. The girls played so well together; I was so proud of the teamwork they developed and the grace they showed one another and the other team! They won their second game, too, by quite a good margin, thus winning the tournament for the girls!
The boys, too, played well, although a select few of them had not mastered the teamwork that the ladies exhibited, and so not all the plays made were strategic. I had to leave to pick up the lunch, and thus did not witness the full tournament by the boys.
The day was concluded by pick-up games of soccer, basketball, volleyball, sprinting, and American football. Basically, we just wanted to play on the grass that the capital school has. I had a great time with my students in a less structured environment than the classroom, and I got to interact more with the older high school students that I don't teach. The shineyness of the capital school made me appreciate many of the rusty aspects of my school. It may not be as ritzy, but it has personality and charm.
The day was an excercise for me in narrowing the power gap between student and teacher. I sat with several different students on the bus, in closer physical proximity than I would dream of in America, discussing all sorts of issues and concerns of theirs, on a very non-authoritative level. I sang kareoke on the bus. The students came up with a game of impersonating teachers and guessing who was whom. Mostly, everybody behaved maturely and repectfully of everyone else the whole day; they all made me very proud.
Yeah for the underdog team for doing well! A great experience for the kids and the chaperones as well. I loved the description of buying meat for lunch and then having to take it someplace else to be cooked. Not fast food but I bet it was tasty! Love you! Patti
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