Lotte in South Africa

My story

On 25 January 2018 at 14:00 the moment had come: my two friends and I left for South Africa for 5 weeks. From Schiphol to London, from London to Johannesburg and from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth (PE). A hugely tiring journey, but the next morning we finally arrived at the location. Later that day we went to a rugby match with all the volunteers. I was in the Uber with 3 other girls. We arrived at a football stadium in PE. We gave our tickets to the security staff and walked straight in. When we got inside we saw that a football match was going on, but we definitely had tickets for a rugby match. It turned out we were in the wrong stadium. What I just couldn’t understand is how we were ever let in with the wrong tickets, something that would never happen in Holland. In the end we got to the right stadium, but it really was a very special first day.

At the start it was very overwhelming to join a group of volunteers, all working for United Through Sport, who had already known each other for 2 weeks, but we were made to feel really welcome and quickly made lots of friends. The volunteers were all different nationalities, 7 to be exact: Germans, English, Americans, Australians, Scots, Swiss and then us Dutch. I loved this! Everyone spoke English to each other, which is really educational. It was a really close-knit group of lovely people, and they made my time in South Africa 10 times more fun. Beforehand you could choose between coaching, teaching and childcare. I did 5 weeks of coaching. For coaching you could choose from 5 sports: football, hockey, tennis, basketball and rugby. I chose to do different sports. There were also volunteers who did the same sport every day. I really enjoyed doing different sports; it meant I worked with different coaches and so always had something different to do. I had football on Monday, basketball on Tuesday, hockey on Wednesday, tennis on Thursday and football again on Friday.

Every day we went to 4 different schools in different locations, so the Monday schools were different from the Tuesday schools, but the following week you had the same schools again on Monday. This was really nice, as you saw lots of different schools with different children. But it was also nice to come back to the same schools the following week, because that way you got to know the children better and they recognised us too. The pitches at the schools were really not a pretty sight; some were worse than others, but there really were pitches with holes and stones and even glass scattered across the ground. When I wanted to join in with football at one school and tripped over a stone, my whole knee was cut open. That was awful to see. The townships we sometimes drove through on the bus were also very hard to see. The severe poverty was clearly visible there. The children were always cheerful and over the moon to see us. That sometimes made it hard to get the children to be quiet. They were so enthusiastic and so keen to do sport, which did make them very lively and restless. I got loads of hugs and girls who wanted to play with my hair. No one around them has my hair texture, and being blonde is even more special. In the first week one girl came up to me, looked at me and said: You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. The cutest thing I’ve ever experienced.

At most schools the children spoke Xhosa, the click language most people in Port Elizabeth speak. There were also schools where they spoke Afrikaans. This was really funny for us, because we could understand them. In general all the children spoke good English. There were some poorer schools, though, where you noticed the children’s English was really not as good. So at those schools it was also genuinely harder to coach.

At the weekends we were free to do fun things. And we certainly did: going to the beach to watch the sunset, going on safari, surfing, swimming, eating out: there was plenty to do. During the week there were also plenty of fun things to do. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings we always had games night. The coordinators would come up with a game that we then played as a whole group. After a while the coordinators ran out of ideas for games, and we came up with some fun things ourselves. At one games night, one of the other Dutch girls and I came up with live Stratego across the whole complex. This was great fun! There was also always a karaoke night at Barney’s on Tuesday evenings, a bar in PE where we always went on Tuesdays for a good sing. After that you could go on to a club nearby, White Tiger or Beerschack. This was always great fun, but after a while it did get a bit boring, because it was more or less the only place to go out in Port Elizabeth.

I found it an incredibly beautiful and educational experience in which I saw and experienced so many special things. And I met really lovely people I’ll definitely stay in touch with. This is an experience I’d recommend to everyone who has the opportunity to do it.

Love, Lotte

My name is Lotte Berndsen, I’m 18 and I live in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel. I’m in the 4^th year of CIOS, a sports college in Haarlem. This year, together with two friends, I chose the elective ISO (International Sport Development), for which you had to find an internship abroad. The three of us soon chose South Africa. That’s how we ended up at United Through Sport; we were convinced straight away and soon after bought our tickets to Port Elizabeth.