Feriados and Football

Feriados and Football

• Posted In : morado-kasa , Stories , English Classes, ESL, Football, JUSIBA, morado-kasa, TEFL
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As is so often the way in Boliva, my plans were scarpered by a feriado (public holiday). I would not be going out to Morado K’asa to deliver the second clase de ingles after all. Instead, making the most of my unexpectedly lengthened weekend, I made the trip out to Uyuni for the tour of the salt lakes.

Returning at 4am on the Sunday morning, I only had a few hours in Sucre before turning around and leaving again. At 10:30am the same day, I took the micro to Morado K’asa for the annual football tournament that takes place there, organized by JUSIBA, the youth group who initially requested a library in the village. BiblioWorks had agreed to donate some prizes, so I was going out there to deliver them, and had rescheduled the English class for the Monday.

After the two hour micro journey, I walked straight over to the football pitch that is just outside the library. The village was alive. Lots of the community had turned up to watch, music played from a speaker perched just outside the library, which all created a great atmosphere. Before long, Marisol, the librarian in Morado K’asa, came over to greet me, and told me that the girls were also playing over at the school, which had its own football pitch. As such, I spent my time alternating between the school and the library – not much more than a three minute walk apart, and had a great afternoon watching the football.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was not going to get away with having a quiet afternoon, as the president of JUSIBA asked me to help with the prize giving, which was a truly confusing ceremony, delivered in a combination of Spanish and Quechua, which left me speechless when it came to saying a few words. I did not struggle for long though, as it was an incredibly day, and it was great to see the community organizing an event like this for themselves, and carrying it out with such enthusiasm.

This enthusiasm carried through to Monday’s English class, which had a higher turnout than the first class, with everyone having revised what we had already covered – a great start! Their English at present, as in all of the communities we work in, is extremely basic, despite studying it in school. As such, the second class focused on numbers 11 through to 100, with a few games of bingo in English thrown in afterwards, as well as some vocabulary from around the library. Again, the enthusiasm of all the students did not fail to impress – It was truly a pleasure to be teaching here.