I wake up at 5 am by one of the singing roosters in the neighbourhood and my host family getting ready to start yet another day. It’s still dark outside and my alarm clock will go off in about 5 minutes and i will (together with Simon) go out for a jogging round on Brazzaville’s streets. That is how it works here, if you want to exercise, you have to do it before 05.30 am. I am back 40 minutes later, i get some water from the well, take a shower, eat some breakfast and i am off to the office. At noon is time for lunch, between 3 and 4 pm the training starts, at 6 pm i go home again, i eat dinner and go to sleep . And i begin to see how my daily rutine gets shaped, if you could say that life in Congo has a daily rutine.. when no day is like the other.

All players outside the club house

It is the small things that make one day different than the other. It can be planting trees after a day’s training or being forced to almost put your life on the line to get a place on the bus to Mflilou. It can be sitting in a taxi when the driver suddently realizes that the car needs gasoline and the nearest gas station has only one pump that works… as well as ten queuing cars in front of us, all in a well organised chaos difficult to understand; and you have to wait twenty minutes before you can continue your journey. It can be your congolian host family bringing you breaksfast to your bed on your birthday and singing happy birthday in both swedish and french.

Things like coming to the training to coach and realising that you should always have a plan B…. or even a plan C. For me, a swedish girl with a ”touch” of control necessity and a bit stressed to perform, this felt at a start like an impossible task. How are you supposed to coach a group that starts with seven kids and at the end you have twenty two? But that’s how it is for a while, you find your own tricks to make the trainings work and you get some good advise from the other coaches. My french is getting better and i come to realize that the huge mountain i had in front of me at the beginning is now only a small hill i have to climb. I know i will get through this day and this is what it’s all about, the challenges i am forced to face everyday, cultural chocks that get easier by the day and all the meetings with other people will become etched into my memory forever. At dusk, after a day’s coaching in Mfilou i hopp on a bus and i think to myself that right now i wouldn’t change places with anybody in the entire world.

Volunteer as referee

In the past two weeks, we have started working at our assigned facilities. Simon spends most of his time at Tomas Sankara, Louise coaches the kids at Mansimou and i spend four days a week at Mfilou. The trainings are almost over for this year and the past weeks have also been for new registrations of kids to the three facilities. On Saturday (28/11) all the 14 year old kids will participate in a test game and starting next week all kids go on holidays and come back in january. During holidays, we volunteers are planning a trip to the north to enjoy some of the rainforest and the jungle life. Even though it’s going to be exciting to get out of Brazzaville for a while, we are already looking forward to the new year. Because it is the football the reason we are here for, and it is when we meet all this children we understand why we want to spend seven months of our lives in Congo, away from family and friends.

//Football volunteers in Brazzaville – by Elin