Senna in South Africa

Name
Senna
 
How long have you been volunteering?
8 weeks
 
Short biography
I am 18 years old and will graduate in 2023. I decided to take a gap year and wanted to do volunteer work. That’s how I ended up at the power of sports.
I can often be found at the athletics track in my neighborhood to train or give training myself.
 
I am really happy that I went to South Africa. Every day I woke up happy, looking forward to going to school again
 
How satisfied were you with the guidance in your home counrty?
 
The guidance was good! I always got a quick response and all my questions could be answered well.

My Story

On April 25th I left from Schiphol for PE. I knew more or less what everything would be like from Ruben, but you don’t really know what to expect in advance. When I arrived at PE airport I was picked up immediately and taken to the house. The house was bigger than I expected with a swimming pool, a room with a pool table and table tennis table, a large kitchen and living room and many rooms. I immediately felt at ease there.
 
The first weekend we had an introduction to get to know each other, but it was also explained what we were going to do. There are three different options:
 
– Coaching, here you do a certain sport with the children
– Teaching, you go to a school to help a teacher or teach yourself
– Childcare, here you go to a kind of daycare and help the teachers there with feeding, crafting and playing outside with the children
 
I chose to coach 3 times, teach 1 time and childcare 1 time per week. You can indicate what you want to do and if you want to change it in between, you can always do that. For coaching, you can also indicate your preference for which sport you want to do. I chose netball and hockey, two sports that I have never done myself, but that doesn’t matter at all. I really enjoyed learning more and more about these sports myself.
 
On a day that you are going to coach, the first hour is learn to move. That was always one of my favorite moments of the week. You then go with children from grade R, so the toddlers, to play all kinds of different games. The children are always incredibly excited to see you. I will never forget the smile they always had when they came running.
 
After coaching, we came back to the house around 3 o’clock. Then everyone could do what they wanted. Go to the gym, lie in the sun or take a nap, for example. From the second week onwards, I started boxing with a group at a boxing school in the neighborhood. That was really great to do. It was nice to keep exercising like that and also nice to get out of the house for a while during lunch.
 
During the week there were all kinds of different activities outside of coaching. On Mondays the coordinators always organised a games night. On Tuesdays we always went to Barneys together. This is a bar that first organises music bingo on Tuesdays and then karaoke. Everyone always looked forward to this. It was a really fun evening with the whole group. On Wednesday we rented a 5v5 field for social soccer. On Thursday a team of volunteers played 5v5 so people always went there to support. There was also a beer pong tournament every Thursday at a bar, so that was always an option to go to. On Friday or Saturday evenings we often went to Poolcity. There are all kinds of pool tables on the side and a DJ and dance floor in the middle. The nice thing about all these things was that they didn’t feel like obligations. It’s not like we have to follow a strict schedule. Everyone does what they feel like, but usually everyone was there everywhere.
 
UTS organises an activity every weekend. We went to Mosselbay, Jeffreys Bay and on safari for a weekend. Other activities that often lasted a day were skydiving, bungee jumping and visiting an elephant sanctuary. All these activities made the weeks even more unforgettable.
 
Our group did the Garden Route last week. Ashie drove us in the bus from place to place. This week was a super fun ending. We saw and did everything and ended in Cape Town. On the last day of the Garden Route we had to say goodbye. I stayed in Cape Town with about half of the group and the rest went back to PE. I never expected this goodbye to be so difficult. Because you spend so much time together, you become super close. You really build very good friendships.
 
I am really super happy that I went to South Africa. Every day I woke up happy, looking forward to going to school again. It is so special to see how happy the children are to be able to play sports with you for an hour. That also gave me a lot of energy.
Living together in a house and doing activities creates a very unique bond. I am very grateful that I was able to have this experience with my group.

 

What advice would you give to future interns/volunteers?

Go as long as you can. If you have the opportunity to go long: do so. My 8 weeks flew by and I would have loved to stay longer. Really enjoy every moment!! It is such a special experience and before you know it, it is over.