By Mitch McSweeney:
Hi Everyone!
It’s now been one month and a bit since Jenna and I have been in Swaziland, and it has really picked up at the SOCGA offices and the Olympafrica Centre. I’ve been going back and forth between the SOCGA and OAC offices, and last weekend I was a part of my first Sport Values 4 Life/Leaders in Training session, which involved teaching 16 volunteers about sport values, coaching philosophy, and how to use sport for everyday issues in Swazi’s lives. It was fantastic and I had a lot of fun meeting and learning from the volunteers. This training session was held so that OAC volunteers, starting next Wednesday, can travel to different schools to teach youth about sport and sport values. This programme is in partnership with the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families, and will continue until September 30th when there is a competition between the 8 different schools that volunteers will visit. I’m looking forward to the start of it!
In non-work related news, we have a done a ton of stuff since my last post. Like Jenna said, we went to a Swaziland music festival, “Bushfire”, and saw great performances by different African artists. There was over 20,000 people at the three day event, although we were only there on the Saturday. We’ve also booked a 5 day safari in July, as well as visited a cultural village this past weekend, where we learned about traditional Swazi culture and saw a Swazi cultural dance, which was amazing. We also saw about 20 monkeys and a “Beware of Crocodile” sign on our way to the village, as well as other animals. Time has really flown by here and I can’t believe it’s almost half way through June.
My time here in Swaziland has been fantastic and I can’t wait to see what more is to come as time goes on. I will post again soon! Goodbye for now!
Beware of Crocodile! Luckily we didn’t see one