Sports Day in KwaZulu Natal

This past weekend, I witnessed one of those unique events that make serving in the Peace Corps such a unique experience.  Essentially, I saw the initial phases of how the department of education plays a role in helping to find talented runners from the rural areas of South Africa.

At the beginning of the week, the teacher that acts as our “sports coordinator” announced that there would be a mandatory sports competition on Saturday, 9 February, for the 27 schools in our area. Turns out that the mandatory meant that every school needed to send at least one learner to compete, and that the competition was really just races of various distances (100m, 200m, 400m, etc) for boys and girls in various age groups. Since the schools were asked to send their best two runners for each group, at the end of each school day, we held races of our own to determine who would go. I wish I could tell you how they measured the distances, but somehow they just roughly estimated each length and then had a few teachers stand at the “starting line” and “finish line”. Then one of the teachers would call out something like “girls, 8 years old” and all the 8-year-old girls would stand in a big line and we would teach them how to “take their marks” and “get set” before someone said go and they started to run. Not one kid ran with shoes on. But all of them were really excited to run – and they all really wanted to win. We did a different distance each day, so by the end of the week, we had our team and we were ready for Saturday.

Everyone was asked to arrive at the local field by 8am and we were told that the races would start at 9am. Our sports coordinator said we would aim to arrive around 8:30am because it was unlikely to start on time. I was quite certain he was right, as absolutely nothing starts on time in this area…or country…or continent, really. But even I was surprised at just how late we started. 11:30am. Perfect timing really; just when it was starting to get really hot!

The runners await instructions.

Once things got going, it wasn’t too bad. In fact, it was somewhat amazing how smoothly things went given the sheer number of kids that were there. Something in the neighborhood of 600 learners were milling around the soccer field turned racetrack for the better part of 6 hours. Add to that the dozens of grannies lined up all around the fences selling blankets full of snacks, sweets, drinks, and even ice cream for the kids (and adults) to buy throughout the day. I think we had to skip more than a few events in the end, but they managed to get in quite a few heats, semifinals, and finals for learners of all ages.

Girls, Age 10, 100m Semi-Finals
The girl in the red is from my school!

A couple of things I observed, as an American. There was no water for the kids. No first aid station anywhere. And the only toilets were the outdoor latrines at the closest school just up the hill. But no one seemed to notice that any of those inconveniences as being a big deal or anything to fret over. So, I really didn’t fret over them either. I think in the end, the kids were having a great time running around and feeling like they were a part of something really important. The winner and runner-up of each final race would be sent to the circuit level competition, and from there they could potentially advance to races at the provincial level. For the 8-year-olds, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but for some of the older learners, it was pretty serious business.

For my part, I took as many pictures as I could and cheered for the kids as they ran past. What at first I considered to be a silly afternoon, I started to rethink as an potentially life-changing event for a learner here or somewhere else in South Africa.