For the past month and a half, I have helped organize and run a youth soccer league here in Lusaka. If you click on this article taken from The Post, Zambia's leading newspaper, you'll find a pretty good description of what the league is all about. And if you look closely you might even find a picture of me in the photo collage. But I'll summarize briefly what the league is all about. Fifteen teems from around Lusaka, most of whom are affliated with orphanages and drop-in centers for street children, compete in the league. Every Saturday morning, the competition begins at 9:00 at the Italian Club, a soccer facility boasting a state-of-the-art 5v5 turf field. Teams have the opportunity to play the game they love on a really nice pitch and then take part in the Grassroot Soccer program. Essentially each child gets to have fun on the pitch and off the pitch as they learn about HIV/AIDS prevention.

The Kidsafe League is the brainchild of Luka Moens, an incredible organizer and a good friend. Luka had the idea to get the private sector involved in creating this opportunity for children that they never would have had otherwise. It has worked marvelously. The league has garnered a lot of media attention from newspapers and television and rightfully so. I am so proud to be a part of it!

This past Saturday we were able to hold a Christmas party after league play. With the help of sponsors we were able to feed 200 kids, entertain them with a local theater group and give everyone a gift. We secured a large amount of Nike gear from the organization RAPIDS which means that every player in the league will now have their own brand new uniform. That's not a bad Christmas present.

No one has ever tasted gum this good. In fact, no one has ever actually tasted this gum. But still everyone believes that it's chewable Any time because the fun-loving cowboy says so.

Monday I took the 7:30 bus to Livingston, Zambia's tourist capital. I organized a joint business/pleasure trip for myself with marvelous results. This past week there was six day long national soccer tournament held in Livingston at the Dambwa Basic School. 24 teams from all over the country came to play and it was a huge success. This was like no other tournament I'd ever been to because all of the teams slept on the floor of the classrooms at Dambwa. The cooked in the courtyards and come to think of it, I have no idea where they bathed. But apart from playing soccer, I had set up a GRS program with one of my trainers, Ebby. We took the captains from each of the teams and trained them and it turned out great. GRS doesn't usually do tournaments, but because this one lasted for a week, there was enough time to run through the whole curriculum with the kids. I was impressed by how well organized things were run, even though, to the untrained eye the whole tourney might have appeared overly hectic.



All the kids and coaches from Lusaka, had gone down to Livingston on the train, which somehow takes 48 hours. It sounded hellish. I took the bus down and we made it in under six hours, albeit it's a more expensive mode of transport. I went down with my friend Marc who I'd met at the refugee camp. He's from Barcelona and moved down here because his wife is stationed here with Medicines Sin Fronteres. Marc's about to start a job as a government consultant but until New Year's he's just chilling. So we got it and booked a room at the backpacker's lodge, Faulty Towers. It was nice enough even though we soon found out there was an American all-girls teen tour also staying there. While Monday and Tuesday morning I had work to do, in the afternoon, we went to Victoria Falls. I also took Ebby.



The falls are truly awesome. They aren't even at full capacity and I was amazed. On the trip down I realized I have never been to Niagara Falls, so I have little to compare it to, but it didn't matter. It's one of the seven natural wonders of the world and we saw it from all sides except the part of the falls that lies in Zimbabwe. We hiked down to the where the water ends up after it drops. We did everything but take the helicopter ride. Actually, the area is a hot bed for extreme sports. There's bungee jumping, gorge swings, hang gliding, whitewater rafting.

Now's the best time of year to whitewater raft and Marc and I woke up early Wednesday morning for a full day of rapids. I've never really rafting before so 23 rapids with half of them being level 4 or 5 was no picnic. We flipped three times over the course of the day and each time I went overboard I thought I was going to die. The worst was getting thrown under the raft and scrambling to get out from underneath the boat while swallowing water. It instills a sense of panic that for me is not worth the adreneline rush. I survived though, exhausted and slightly disgruntled at the end of the day. Our guide Choongo just didn't do it for me. But after they fed us dinner back at camp, we saw a video of the trip and I was able to laugh at us flipping over and make light of what I thought only a few hours ago was near death.

While on the raft I got a little introspective when I saw that the company that made it was named ark. I was in the front of the boat and somehow was deemed the leader, so everyone was following my stroke; there was no time for slacking. The kid next to me was like, "Oh shit, this is Noah's Ark." I realized that perhaps my dislike for water has something to do with my namesake. I am not a great swimmer and I've never enjoyed being in the water that much, tumbling solo down rapids was no exception. But I love boats, and it all makes sense. I'm Noah; I'm supposed to be on water but not in the water. If I find myself in water that means symbolically somehow I've failed to save the world from the Great Flood. Or maybe that's reading too much into it. Regardless, Livingston was awesome.

I have been out of Lusaka for a week. Last Friday, I took a weekend trip up to Kasanka National Park with a bunch of friends/people I'd never met before. During November and December each year five million straw-coloured fruit bats take up residence in one hectare of Kasanka National Park's mushitu swamp forest. Saturday night, we left our campsite and headed for the swamp. We set up shop in the middle of the marsh and waited. We asked one of the guides when the bats would start flying. He looked at his watch and said, "two minutes". Two minutes later, at 6:15, like clockwork, the dusk sky was flooded with silent wings. It sounded like an ocean breeze as the entire colony streamed out from their roost in search of food. For about 25 minutes I was mesmerized by the erratic flight of the largest congregation of mammals in the world. I felt like I was watching a dragon army going off to war or something.



In the morning we hiked to where the bats' roost. We had to go through some heavy brush and I almost fell in a stream crossing it via a rotten log. The whole weekend was amazing. It's so crazy that I can get out of the city for a few days and find myself in a national park, breathing fresh air and witnessing nature in a way I never have before.

On a side note: Do you know what the ABC's of HIV prevention are. Abstinence, Be faithful, use a Condom. Did you know that George W. Bush only supports the first two and is ignorant enough to believe that promoting condom use means promoting sex before marriage ergo we mustn't do that because then kids might do something unchristian and actually have sex prior to the wedding night. Come on! A bigger problem here is that all the money the U.S. government earmarks for HIV/AIDS comes with the caveat that the promotion of condom use is essentially prohibited. Therefore the biggest prevention technique for not spreading AIDS is not condoned by our government under Herr Nitwit W. What really infuriates me is that people can be ignorant enough to believe that kids will abstain until marriage. So what if the bible says so, we are living in the real world! And in the real world people have sex. This is why religion can not dictate public policy and world health issues. We have to be realistic. And we are just not doing a good enough job.

Zambia's own version of the New York City bodega:

I've been meaning to take a picture of this banner that hangs right across the street from Millenium Bus Station in the center of Lusaka. You pass by it every time you transfer at Millenium and it always disturbs me. Today, I took advantage of the fact I had brought my camera and crossed the street for a good shot. To my dismay however, the banner had changed. Before it had said something to the effect that HIV was a virus created and manufactured in New York City for the sole purpose of re-enslaving the populations of Africa and killing them off. Conspiracy theory? I later found out that this belief is held by many Zambians. This has now been replaced by an even more nonsensical sign:

Who said detachable hoodies went out of style?