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"Girl Power" or "Wasichana pata nguvu!" Those words have been our calling card as we have provided some of the first girl-only soccer sessions in Kigoma history. Our partner Nico Pota -- the Municipal Director of Sport for the entire Kigoma region -- has worked tirelessly to establish opportunities for girls to participate in sport in order to combat teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS in this remote fishing town. The community has found sport to be an effective tool in teaching boys about certain issues and Nico asked us to come to Kigoma to assist with training his teachers and girls on these issues while keeping the atmosphere light and fun to allow for free discussion. With a focus on health, respect and equality issues, we have run two weeks of instruction for teachers in the morning and have run afternoon sessions for girls. While the Regional Director was worried about a lack of attendance, we have seen a rise from 45 girls in our first session to over 150 girls in our last. While the words were humbling to hear, we appreciated the statement that by next year, they were confident rates for teen pregnancy and HIV would be down!

In addition to the sessions, I was lucky enough to hand out some beautiful orange soccer shirts for 50 of the girls. As many of you know, when I departed from Boston on this journey to Africa, I had a backpack and one duffel bag. In the backpack were my clothes and supplies for 6 months. In the duffel bag were 50 soccer shirts and 50 pair of soccer socks as well as 2 soccer balls and 20 cones, totaling roughly 30 KG. For 3 months that bag rode in many a dala-dala, plane, pick-up truck and even rickshaw. However, when I handed out the new shirts for the girls, there was disbelief from them for a bit until someone who actually speaks Swahili was able to "clean-up" my attempts at an explanation. Getting hugs and smiles made all the effort worthwhile. Granted this photo does no justice to their joy as we had to stop the games to take it, but believe me the shirts were loved.

From the shores of Lake Tanganyika,
Christian

PS – I would like to wish the Happiest of Birthdays to my big brother Andy. He celebrates a special birthday for him this week and I hope he has a wonderful day. I love you man.