Alliance HS Events and Netball Coach (July 11th?)

Hope Academy had visitors from a neighboring Alliance High School in Kyazanga, which is about 20km West from Kyetume, a few weeks back. The visitation, as the locals call it, included an afternoon of extra-curricular activities such as debate, netball, and futball. This was quite a serious event, so the kids ended up spending the morning preparing (setting up a tent, moving desks and benches, clearing and weeding the grounds, setting up flag poles, etc.).

We first started off with the debate and the motion was "The Coming of Europeans to Africa did More Harm than Good." We were given the option of choosing which side of the motion we were to support and thus we opposed the motion. Now just as a side note, we have debate every Thursday after school and the kids (no matter the topic) always seem to work the issues of abortion, prostitution, and homosexuality into their supporting evidence….always fabulously entertaining for us volunteers, or muzungus as we’re so often referred to. So, thinking that it was just our students that managed to bring up these important issues, we were all quite surprised to hear a few of the Alliance HS kids join in on the fun. Apparently the Europeans brought the idea of prostitution, whereas women sell their bodies like vegetables! Ha. Anyway the debate went swimmingly and it was on to netball.

Apparently it had been deemed that I was qualified to coach our netball team, perhaps because I was playing with them every Saturday, or maybe it was because I have a background in basketball….not sure, but nevertheless, I needed to learn the rules and fast! Since our internet has been completely unreliable I ruled that out as a reference and just began playing with the girls every afternoon and forcing them to speak English, not their native tongue of Luganda and any infractions resulted in the loss of ball. After a few days of this I was familiar with the rules, but still didn’t have any idea of how to "coach" these girls, so we just scrimmaged everyday….fabulous strategy, I know! A side note, netball is similar to basketball as you shoot a ball into a circular hoop, but the similarities end there. The court is divided into 3 sections and there are 7 people on the court for each team at one time. You essentially have 2 people who can shoot, 1 helper to those shooters, 1 center, and 3 defenders. There is no dribbling and in fact you can’t move after you’ve received a pass, except for a pivot foot. There is also no contact….there goes my advantage! Anyway, it’s a good time and we ended up playing quite well despite the fact that they were extremely tall, and the festivities ended in a 4 – 4 draw.

Finally, was the futball match. Hope prevailed and beat the other team 2 - 1 in an exhillerating match! I know next to nothing about soccer, so we'll just assume it was exhillerating....