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Seth Taylor's blog on his trip to Rwanda. 
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There is a strange deflation happening inside me as I prepare to come home. Africa is so familiar to me now that the adrenaline no longer rushes and the feeling in the air does not have the romance it used to have. It’s like any relationship, the passionate fervor of the young and in love is replaced with a deep knowing that sustains the heart. Today I was able to spend some time alone, walking the streets running a few errands for friends. I popped in my headphones and fired up some old school mellow stuff - David Gray, White Ladder - and took the back roads so that I would have some quiet. One thing I LOVE about “the land of a thousand hills” is that there is always an amazing view.
I am satisfied as I walk; content that I have done good, not damage.....and I have joy, not regret. You might wonder how one can come do work in Africa and have regret. The answer is only known to those that have known Africa below the surface. We know that there are no answers to Africa, only more questions...so we do the work of God and we ask Him to bless it. And that is what I feel I have done here: God’s work. I trained some coaches who are working with over 200 homeless, addicted, and abused children. That is a beautiful thing in my heart...no matter what country I am in. So, as Sting said, I put the message in the bottle, and send it out. Where it lands has more to do with the ocean than it does with me. (-: Thank you to everyone who helped me do this. I am coming again to continue the training in December, so if there is anyone out there that wants to support me, hit me up with an email here or check me on Facebook and be a part of this amazing thing. God Bless you guys. Seth ps...we’re also looking for coaches that are interested in coming in December, but commitments are needed soon, so if you are interested, shoot me an email soon. (-: |
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So, I am not going to summarize here, but I will cover this day. Next post, I’ll get my thoughts together regarding the whole experience.
Today was the once a month government required event called “Umuganda”. During this event, the entire country divides all the way down to neighborhood cells, each cell is called an Mdugudu. Each family must send one member to be a part of this each month. In short, they clean. They clean streets and work on neighborhood cleanup projects. It’s really quite fascinating. Young kids are excluded and many people try to find ways to duck out, but what results is a very clean country. It is strange though: in the market around 7am, anyone wandering around is in danger of being whacked by a cop with a little thin stick. The shops are all closed and the roads are empty. In all my trips to Rwanda, I have never been here for it until today. It was so quiet....I felt like I was in the bush. We finished up with formation theory today and tried to dispel more “myths of the magic pill”. I have been teaching this “there is no magic pill” concept all week because the Rwandans have been hoping I could give them some thing that will make all their soccer problems go away. They especially think this regarding formations and tactics. They think a formation is the magic pill that makes a coach good or not good. So, I taught about formations and showed them a good way....I think. (-: Then, we went to a match between with the U17 national team of Rwanda. I enjoyed it a ton and so did the other coaches, even though no goals were scored. There are major offensive issues here. All in all...it has been a very good training and there are going to be some kids lives changed massively. These guys are ready to grow as coaches and mentors for these street kids. As a side note, I went to a match this morning to watch some of the street boys I trained a few years ago. I ran into them on the streets and he invited me. I went and gave him my soccer boots and some new socks and shin guards. He ran out onto the field like he was playing in the pros..... |
So, I have been training coaches for one week now and I can truly say I have experienced some new things. Every time I come to Africa now, I desire to experience a “first”. I want to do, see, touch something I have never done in Africa. Something small will do: like driving, which I just did the other day. I had never driven a car in Africa......always had a little fear of it I suppose. On a cultural level, I feel like sometimes I have gone as deep as my life will allow. Unless I live here and learn the language, I seemed to have hit a wall...until this experience. I have trained teams here before and it is always a fascinating cultural experience. But, training coaches has taken that to a much deeper level. There are so many cultural trip wires when dealing with these men, I am amazed....partly because I am ready for many of them, partly because so many of them are new to me. For instance, I didn’t know that coaches are looked down on often because it is seen by many religious people here that they have given their lives to sport, and not God. They see it as a sin to dedicate your time to sports. I am also fascinated by how much “the magic pill” has played a part here. What I mean by that is this: many people in Africa are oppressed by an idea that there is a magic pill for all their problems. They believe that white people possess that magic pill. I have encountered it mostly when doing medical aid work. I have given an aspirin to someone with Malaria and Neosporin to someone with skin fungus and watch them walk away thinking that their problems were over. The white man had given them the magic pill. It was all I had and they couldn’t understand.
My focus has been to teach them how to structure a training session. What I am doing is modeled after the American licensing process, except for that it is effective. But, even while I show them the structures, using different skills as a focus of each session, I’ll talk for 30 mins about training structures and then they will erupt with questions regarding that skill. “Give us a drill so that my team will be able to do this or this.....” Fascinating. At one point, I had to snap at them. “Focus!” I said. “I am not teaching you how to finish right now! I am teaching you how to plan a practice! You must be able to crawl before you can walk!” I am saturated with a fascination for cross-cultural communication. I am also proud of what I am doing here. I feel like I am really truly doing something powerful. Thanks again to all those that made this possible..... |
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So, I was able to sit with the leaders of Play for Hope and teach them about child development yesterday. Mind you, these are guys that have worked successfully with street kids for a long time. I think they enjoyed seeing things defined a bit and they had a lot of questions regarding what to do in certain situations and if that was the thing I was talking about. Turns out, kids here react to coaches the same way they do back in America. Go figure. Now I will say that I have always tried to stay mindful that statistically, half the kids I coach are likely from divorced families. That, among many other factors, has always played a part in the way I coach. Also, having premier players comes along with a certain expectation of parental mis-steps, but these coaches are dealing with issues like: abandonment, AIDS, genocide, infidelity from parents, starvation, abuse - and that is the majority of the kids. What does that do to the soul of a kid and how does one coach that soul? Now, it helps that the kids here see playing on a soccer team as a major privilege. In the USA, it can seem like a burden to so many kids once the joy is snatched from them. This really confirms in my heart the things I have been learning about every childs need to answer these three questions before they can be successful in sports: 1) What makes me safe? 2) What makes me valuable? And therefore, 3) Who am I?
We are going to teach these coaches to make their teams sanctuaries for the wounded soul. |
Well, I am sitting for some time in Chicago and thinking about that part in the wonderful creation poem of Genesis when it talks about “the spirit of God hovered over the deep”. The reason I was thinking about it is because I was watching the “seas” of people bustling through the airport and thought that God was probably hovering over us. A sea of people, created in God’s image, with His fingerprint on our hearts. I imagine that the world is a bit more noisy than it was then. I wonder what would happen if this whole airport just stopped and became silent at the same time. I wonder if we would feel God hovering over us? I wonder if we’d hear Him? Some people might think this some new-age blah, but I am struck so hard by the words of God - “Be still and know that I am God.”
That’s one of the beautiful things about traveling alone. I feel very still...like I am walking to a different rhythm than everyone else. Nothing but the silence inside me.....if I allow it to stay. Africa is like that. The silence can often contend with the noise, whereas in the States, I often feel like the silence has no chance. We have to be intentional about allowing it a place. And then, because He was always there, we can hear the whisper of God to our hearts. |
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