Sports

Last month included sports day for the students at God Cares Nursery and Primary School. What did that mean for this term: track & field. Well, at least they had track. The students trained for about 2 weeks in events such as 100 m, 200 m, long jump, discus, and many more. Finally, the day came...it was Friday the 13th. Unfortunately the host school was not well prepared for the event. They did not have any of the things needed for the field events. We were really disappointed as the studnets trained very hard for those events. Not all have the ability to run. As we competed in the track events, I found some shining starts in our school. We placed in many of the events, but the most exciting for me was to watch the 100 m and 200 m. Two of our boys shined in those events. Shafiq was amazing in the prelims for the 100m. He was so far ahead of the rest of the pack in his heat that they called a rerace maybe there was a false start or something, but as he ran again, he smoked the pack again this time coming from maybe two meters behind to pass everyone. Both him and Kalega shined as well in the 200 m both coming from behind in the stretch run to pass other competitors. Word has it that the host school had secondary members competing against our primary memebers. But could that stop us...no way. Our school finished on top of all the other schools in our region. A few of our students went on to the next few levels of competition, but none to the national level. Either way, it was fun to watch and root for our kids.

On another shining note if you hadn't already heard: the University of North Carolina Tar Heels are the mens National Champions for basketball. I think they just wanted to drive me crazy this year becuase I couldn't be there to watch all those games. However, I did get to watch a few via Skype through friends (thanks Trenton and the Kirchners) and listen to games through March Madness on demand. Only later to find out that all the games were broadcast on ESPN here in Uganda. So next year I have to get satellite TV so I can watch march madness!!!

Finally, I have also had the opportunity to play basketball over the last few months as well. It's not the competition that was present in the US, but it's still playing. Hopefully I'll get to the university soon to play against some other people.