Well, balls. The kids here are very much drawn to any ball. They love anything ball related, like football or basketball. But they can be quite excessive if it comes to balls.
They, the balls, just don’t have a long lifespan.
I brought a football with me from Germany and gave it to the children in the first week. This ball well kept being a ball for about one and a half weeks. Then it was destroyed.
Another football, which we are using now from time to time now, at least keeps the air for one or maybe two hours. Enough for one game, which is great. Apropos football game. To play football at my work, one has basically two options, either you play on the stone field at the center and use the basketball basket rods, which make up two small goals. The other option is to go ten minutes from the center to a big football field with two normal-sized goals.
However, the beauty of this field is that it is an earthy dirt field, which becomes a huge mud party with the slightest bit of rain.
Moreover, I’m also quite worried about breaking my ankle playing on this field, because I’ve never seen a football field with this many bump holes. It is still a great deal of fun playing there with the kids and it is also honestly one of the best views of Kigali.
But back to the Ball problem apart from football, the kids love basketball, perhaps even more than football. When I got here they were playing quite often with one basketball, which to my surprise almost hold on for one month. However then also it’s life ended painfully.
Then last week I bought one basketball, bearing in mind how much the kids loved to play with the other basketball.
Sadly this ball didn’t even last three days. Apparently, it hit a sharp stone and now it has a whole.
So, in conclusion, four balls didn’t even last over 2 months. I would call these kids definitely professional ball killers.
But perhaps that’s also a good sign because the materialistic value of these balls doesn’t mean anything to the children. The balls are there to be used and to play with them. If they are more careful perhaps they wouldn’t have that much fun.
So we will keep on getting new balls for them.
Stay tuned
Janek
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