Holiday VCT Tournaments

GRS Coach Linda Mvula (in yellow shirt) with her winning team

Our interventions for the first term of the school year ended in the first week of December and schools let out for holiday break on December 9^th so it was time for Grassroot Soccer Malawi to hold our school’s out celebratory Voluntary Counseling and Testing soccer tournaments.  We held two, a day apart in different areas of Lilongwe.  The first, in Area 25 in northern Lilongwe, was a great example of issues faced every day here, but how our team just moves past obstacles to get the job done.

Action rages on at the Area 25 Tournament

Poster with Coach's Responsibilities for the day

The first obstacle was simple – all of the printers at the clinic were down and we couldn’t print the roster of roles for coaches at the tournament or the schedule for the day’s events.  We just old-school pen and papered it and decided to write the roles on large posters at the event which ended up working better anyway and is now something we’ll do every tournament.  Then, on the way to the event a giant rainstorm came out of nowhere.  Godfrey was on his motorbike followed by Cossam and myself in the car and we had to pull over because it was raining too hard to see anything.  We got to the venue 20 minutes late, but the grounds were too wet to start setting up and the DJ hadn’t shown up because they needed special transport because of the rain.  The clouds dissipated though and we were left with sunshine and our coaches worked on overdrive to get the tournament ready by the start time of noon.  Then a local chief came up to me and told me there had been miscommunication as they all thought the event started at 8am and had shown up here with many people from the area only to find no one there.  I apologized for whatever caused the mixup but assured him there’d be an event with games and music beginning at 1pm.  As things tend to do, thanks to the great work of the GRS team, everything sort of fell into place.  The quality of soccer was fantastic, the coaches were energetic, and the two site coordinators for the area, Mary and Gloria, were awesome in running the tournament.  After a slow start 4 local village chiefs showed up to give their support, we tested over 100 community members, The winning team from Dzenza school played liked a barefooted Barcelona on the dirt pitch.  It was a fantastic tournament.

Everyone gathered around to watch the award ceremony 

Kawale Test 4 ur team banner

Two days later we were at it again, this time in Kawale, a heavily populated area just south of our office at the Baylor clinic.  This time the DJ was already there when we arrived playing music, and the fields were quickly set up and the testing and counseling rooms all made available.  Unfortunately, less than an hour in the DJ lost power and they had forgotten their generator.  Having loud/live music is essential at these tournaments to get people from in the community to come and enjoy the atmosphere.  Without the music and sound system we can’t announce to the community the testing services available and the key HIV/AIDS sensitization messages that are so important.  Our own MC used our megaphones to try and make up for it and they were passionate in their announcing, adding to the atmosphere.  Luckily the DJ had gotten their generator in time for the final and we managed to get many community members to come watch, get counseled, and test in the last half hour as we tested over 70 community members.  It was an exhausting but rewarding last couple of days, The next day I’d be leaving by bus for my holiday trip to Tanzania.