#also there's a nice cafe next door but they close at 4pm so I dont wanna miss out LOL

[jessiewre]

Day 29

Sun 2nd Feb

Well, I woke up and looked at my phone at 10:15am didn’t I. Mega oops.

I figured I’d missed Jimi if he’d turned up at the agreed time of 9am - but I called Winfred anyway just to check. Didn’t have his number did we.

Turned out he was stood at the restaurant still waiting! Oh frik. Phil got up too (I forced him to) and we got ready (omg we were so slow, it took us nearly an hour...) and the 3 of us got bodas to this local park. I did not feel too peachy but some water was on hand with a pair of sunglasses to hide behind.

We had no idea what to expect, but on arrival to the park there were soooo many young boys from 6-14 years old ready in the kit kicking footballs about. There were maybe 40 kids!

One child ran off then walked back with two chairs on his head especially for us. Cue pure guilt. The coaches all came over to shake our hands and we felt very self conscious of the fact that we’d made Jimi really late and that they were all being so welcoming and nice to us. They asked us to take a seat (we sat down cringing) and they bought all the kids over to sit in front of us, then the coaches all stood to one side while the main coach began to introduce the team and organisation. We were treated like proper VIPSs and they told us about how the coaches were volunteers who started this organisation to nurture the talent of the local children, get them off the street, and to give something to the community. He then asked each coach to introduce themselves and say something. They all awkwardly obliged.

And THEN he turned to us and said

‘Now you would like to say a few words yes’

There was a pause while a huge bit of tumbleweed rolled through the field. 
Thankfully Phil jumped in

‘Hello my name is Philip and this is Jessica, I am from Ireland and she is English and I support Man Utd but she supports Arsenal, thank you for having us here, now lets play football!’

I really have no idea if the children understood what we said, their faces did not give much away, but the kids got up and the coaching began. Phew!

We sat under a tree for a bit while they got started and chatted to Jimi while he ate his rollex breakfast, but then he tossed the plastic wrapper straight onto the grass. I said Mate, dont do that, and picked it up to put in my bag. I tried to say that it was a bad idea to throw rubbish and Jimi said ‘This is Africa. You support gays and I support doing this!’. He laughed as he said it but I think all this gay chat has been new to him so was really on his mind. I laughed along but told him he was doing his country a disservice whenever he threw rubbish as he made it ugly when its a beautiful place. He looked at me and said

‘Yes. You are right. I will not do this anymore’. RESULT - Fingers crossed he sticks to it.

We joined in with the football and did some top class passing (Jimi told me I had talent, just saying) and then they started a game with Under 12s vs Under 14s. We were in the Under 12s and I’ll be honest, I touched the ball maybe once and only gave the ball away. Phil had a mega chance at goal and I was sure this was his moment...and then his shot was more like a pass to the goalie. He was so disappointed!

I was secretly glad that he had also made a mistake so I didn’t look so rubbish. Mwoohaaaahhaaaahaaa.

NOT REALLY PHIL if you’re reading this, obviously I hoped you scored.

We walked off to get a sugary drink (I was fading a little without any food and a slight hangover) and a sprite was a great breakfast I have to say.

We then headed back walking towards the hotel, with the hope of a boda appearing. It did not.

On the way, I spotted a sign for Soft Power Education. I’d read about this charity as it had affliations with our hotel and did One Day Volunteer programmes. Sounded really interesting and so we followed the signs to find it in case we could get some information. Being Sunday, it was closed but you could tell it was worth pursuing as the buildings were really well maintained and everything was clean & nice.

Back at the hotel, the staff promised to investigate whether we could volunteer the next day or the following day, so we had another bean nachos and masala fries lunch before chilling for a bit. Food was getting repetitive but still, masala fries are great.

Jimi had a football game at 5pm which we wanted to watch so at 4:10pm he said we should get going. Turned out he was meant to be there at 4pm and was really late when we arrived at quarter to 5! So they put him on the subs bench and we felt slightly responsible for making him late for the 2nd time that day...though it was not completely our fault...

Two of the coaches from the mornings coaching - one was maybe called Saaid (?) - came over straight away like old friends. They greeted us with big hand shakes and smiles, then we spotted another coach called George on the team and he gave us a mega friendly wave too. SO FRIENDLY. Jimi said its always like this while they all pursue having muzungu friends...some sort of reverse racism going on there.

The pitch condition was crazy. I’d love to see Bujie or Luke having a game on this pitch. Some of it was grass, some was dry mud and one side of it went UP A SLOPING HILL so whenever there was a throw on, the players had to go up this hill to the line to throw it. Sometimes if the ball was going out, it would try and go up the hill but just roll down it and back into play. And it really was anybodies guess where the ball would bounce to whenever it landed on this bumpy pitch.

Jimi came on as Captain for the 2nd half but it was too late and they lost 1-nil. He was disappointed so we took him for a cheeseburger to drown his sorrows at Java cafe (another absolute muzungu-ville). We’d been buying Jimi dinner basically every night and boy does Jimi like burgers and fries.

My vege curry was ok and Phil’s burrito was better. The best bit of our food was finding dairymilk chocolate mint favour in the shell garage next door after dinner.

We headed back to the hotel and our friend there still hadn’t managed to get confirmation from Soft Power about helping the next day. Obviously we were disappointed...but we figured we’d do it the following day and have a pool chill day instead. Then we actually managed to stay awake for once to watch some Netflix woop.