Shot Put Hole in One

SHOT PUT HOLE IN ONE

The new school year began on January 8th, and with that the start in earnest at our primary assignments: the junior (8th through 10th grades) and senior (11th and 12th grades) secondary schools based in Goodhope.  My primary assignment is at the junior secondary school, and there will be more on that in future blog entries.

I am treated like a faculty member at the school – even though I am not.  I do want to participate in a number of school activities in order to integrate myself better with the students and teachers.  That may include helping to teach some classes, raise money for school projects and advise after school clubs.

Of course, sports are part of life at schools, and I plan to help out there as well.  The first term (through March) has one offering, “athletics”, known to us as track.  The second term (through June) is dedicated to “ball sports”: soccer, softball, netball and badminton.  The third term (July through early November) does not involve formal sport activities.

Since I ran track in secondary school, I decided to volunteer to help out.  All students are expected to participate, but only some compete in interscholastic events.  Therefore it is a combination of intramural and competitive activities.  The coaches are teachers at the school, with a couple of the teachers having greater skill in specific events.  The school is divided into three houses (roughly 175 students in each) and the practices for the most part are also divided along house lines.

I tied myself to one of the houses.  When they practice distance running (usually about a 2k run around the perimeter of the school campus), I run along with them.  I am the only faculty member to do so, and therefore I am a bit of a celebrity.  Since our job here is to teach Batswana “life skills”, seeing an older man running for exercise is probably not a bad example.

The students are a rag tag group.  Remember that everyone is expected to participate, so the level of interest ranges greatly.  Only a few students wear sneakers.  Most just run in their black leather regulation school shoes, or barefoot.  Some may leave their sneakers at home, but others cannot afford a second pair of shoes.  Some also do not change out of their school uniforms, but all students do have play clothes at home that they can wear.

  One day I helped out with throwing events (javelin, discus and shot put).  I have no experience, except for watching others during my middle distance running practices 40+ years ago.  I learned that my fellow teachers (with one or two exceptions) have no real experience either.  I coached the shot put, boys and girls, and some had not touched such a sphere before.

The athletics fields occupy several acres behind the main school campus.  It looks much like the surrounding bush, except there are fewer thorn trees.  The ground is a mixture of red dirt and (in the current rainy season) a mixture of grass and weeds.  The short distances are run on the dirt around the soccer pitch; the field events share space off to the side, competing with the agriculture department’s student garden plots and its herd of goats.

I was designated a plot of dirt for shot put practice.  I worked mostly with the form 1 (8th grade) students, most of whom had never put a shot before.  I drew a circle in the dirt and demonstrated how to do it: start from the back of the circle, turn slowly around and throw with the force of your entire body.  Then they tried.  Some of the boys tried to show off in front of the girls.  Most of the girls were disinterested -- in the shot put.  Everyone had trouble with the correct form, but several got the hang of it quickly.

After each student had a couple of turns, the serious shot putters demanded more practice.  That’s when things got interesting.  One first form boy started from the back of the circle, turned himself around and let go of the shot with a loud grunt.  It got some good air, fell to the earth, rolled in the dirt a ways and then – disappeared.  The boy had kept his eye on the “ball” and ran after it.  What happened to it?  It turns out that after hitting terra firma, the shot put careened along for a short distance, then sunk into an 8-inch diameter hole plummeting deep into the earth.  Golfers eat your hearts out: the kid got a shot put hole in one!  The boy quickly dropped onto the ground, prone, and forced his right arm and shoulder all the way down into the hole.  Still, he could not reach the shot.

The boy started laughing and called his classmates over, yelling something in Setswana that I did not understand. Several students took turns reaching into the hole, again with no success.  I then called over another teacher who happened to be coaching discus.  I told her about the shot put falling into a hole.  It was not that shocking to her, since holes are relatively common in the bush, and created by many different sorts of creatures.  I asked her what animal had dug it and she replied that it was – a snake hole.  I paused for a moment, and then asked whether it was a good idea for the boys to be reaching down into snake hole.  She said that it might not be.  She told the students to stop, that she would get a groundskeeper to use a spade to dig out the hole when the dirt softened.  That would be after a rainstorm.

After all this excitement, a few more students took turns with the shot put, being careful from then on to aim away from the snake holes (it turned out that the shot put hole had neighbors close by).  Practice soon came to an end, so we picked up the shot puts and walked with the other students back to the main campus.  Along the way, I pondered the size of the snake that managed to dig that hole, and what it might think about the presence of a heavy piece of iron in its domicile.  But in the end I decided it was just better not to think about it.

Becoming a Botswana Lawn Jock

BECOMING A BOTSWANA LAWN JOCK

            I feel that we have turned a corner in our community integration here in Goodhope.  Since we are in the festive season (the “Holidays”), most work places are closed or on skeleton staffs.  So I have time to get things done around the house. 

            Water and drainage piping runs from the ground outdoors along the back wall of our house, turning and entering through the stucco wall into our kitchen and bathroom to meet the appropriate fixtures.  There was air space around three pipes, one of which allowed a lizard to get into our below-sink kitchen cabinets.  Lizards are not a problem, but we don’t want to encourage that sort of behavior.  So I bought some all-purpose patching powder at the hardware store, mixed it up and added a bit of gloss paint and sealed up the outside area around the pipes.  Then I painted it to match the stucco paint.  I’ve also painted some in the kitchen.  The homemade kitchen cabinets made of fiberboard were unpainted, and I have remedied that.

            The biggest project, however, involved our fenced-in yard.  We have no trees and a couple of small shrubs.  When we arrived, over half of the yard was red earth, and the rest a mix of grasses and weeds.  There was some left over construction debris scattered in places as well.  You might think that we needed to plant grass seed and get a lawn started, since, after all, this is the so-called rainy season.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

            Batswana consider a grassy lawn to be unhygienic and unattractive.  Supposedly snakes and scorpions are attracted to grassy areas.  Our landlord, more delicately, suggested to us that grass attracts mosquitos during the so-called rainy season.  The ideal Setswana lawn is nothing but red earth, devoid of any grass, with a few carefully planted shrubs and, perhaps an old acacia tree.  A few adventurous souls might build a structure with plastic shade fencing to grow some vegetables.  Years ago, Batswana women would mix liquefied cow dung with the top layer of dirt, drawing some patterns as it dried.  This would harden up the surface.

            I thought that we would leave half our yard bare and half grass covered.  But with the rain over the past month, the bare yard portion has gotten smaller and smaller.  The grassy area has expanded and gotten taller and less attractive.  On a hot day after rain has fallen, you can almost see the grass grow.  In the common lands just beyond our fence, cattle, donkeys and goats keep the grass trimmed.  We have toyed with that solution, but then you have to deal with the excrement and the risk that the animals will make mischief with the house itself.  Our landlord also reminded us about proper yard care.

            So, last Saturday, a woman who works in the grounds keeping group at my school arrived with her adult son at 7:30 AM.  We had a square-edged spade and a metal rake for them.  They brought some other tools.  They set about scraping the earth around the tufts of grass/weeds, apparently cutting or loosening up the roots.  It was slow work and it got to be a very hot day – 35 degrees C (95 degrees F).  We supplied a steady stream of cold water, a big bottle of orange Fanta and cookies.  The mother walked to her nearby home around noon to bring back a pot of bogobe (sorghum porridge) for lunch.  After about 6 hours of working all around the yard with the shovels, then they started work with the rakes.  By then, the grass and weeds had lost their green color.  Raking up the grass and roots was relatively easy.  They then raked the grass into piles and used a wheelbarrow to dump what was by then hay into the common land outside.  They finished at 6 PM, exhausted.  We paid them the agreed price, which may have been a bit above market, but well earned.

            Our yard now looks like it got a buzz cut. It is all red earth, and it takes some getting used to. It definitely needs shrubs, and our landlord has promised to plant some for us.  Our neighbors approve of our efforts.  We got thumbs up from several of them walking by. 

            I’d like to think that this takes care of the grass for at least a year.  Our next-door neighbor cautioned me that the yard would likely need attention (but not as much work) in a month’s time.

            So, I am thinking that this may be a good solution to my lawn problems in Manchester.  No need for annual fertilizing and constant mowing.  No need to worry about grubs or crab grass.  Just remove everything and enjoy the gray/brown dirt.  I am just not sure whether my neighbors would approve.