Thursday was the last day of activities for the Coaching for Conservation camp. The logistics were all flowing smoothing now and everything was going really well. I couldn’t be happier with the way things were going. I was able to spend all of my time at my conservation station, playing different games with the children and teaching them different lessons. This would be the last day that I got to work with them like this and it was a little bit sad.
It was really amazing to witness the change in the students. Originally when I had visited the classrooms the scene was stereotypical. The majority of students seemed turned of and disinterested, mind you they were much more polite than youngsters back home nowadays. However, by the end of this week, all of the students in my groups were participating. They would all raise their hand eagerly to name off limited resources in Botswana, the components of a habitat, the definition of conservation, endangered species in the country, what living healthy means, and the list goes on. Of course, some classes were better than others, but there was a definite shift. These students showed an interest in what they were learning – and that interest was even parallel with football now. I couldn’t have been happier and it was probably the proudest I have been all summer. I felt like I could do this my whole entire life – it felt fulfilling!
People were really good spirits by the end of the day. However, this would be the last night of everyone together and the football coaches would be flying out directly after the program on Friday for their safari adventure! We all headed to Sports Bar – a local dining, drinking and socializing establishment. We had all of the football coaches, all of the conservation coaches, Lesley and her family and the documentarians. We literally were a group of over forty people and we took over the entire restaurant portion of the place except for three little tables.
The food was really good – I actually had green chicken mango curry…that’s right in rural Maun of all place, haha! We had a few rounds of drinks while we waited for our food, playing billiards and watching the big screen sports games. The local Batswana football players from the Shorobe Wild Dogs team that volunteered throughout the week joined us and we played and hung out with them. We got everyone together and a huge round of shooters called “Springboks” – made of Amarula liqueur and peppermint liqueur (a layer of green and brown – just like the rugby team in South Africa). It was definitely the start to an exciting evening!
After the adult scene started nodding off, all of the students and young coaches decided to head to the infamous Trekkers – Maun’s one and only dance club. We spent the rest of the evening at Trekkers dancing late into the evening. The music they play is most commonly house or electronica – with some wicked and some not-so-wicked remixes. One of the guys who DJs back in LA got up on stage with the DJs and started infiltrating their scene. He even got to take over for a little bit – it was awesome. Everyone had a really good time and the locals really enjoyed having us out too – we looked great all still dressed in our camp outfits, haha! We were up well into the early morning hours and everyone decided to call it a night as we had a REALLY long day ahead of us tomorrow and we wanted a least a few complete hours of sleep ;)
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