Sports Day!!

My weekends are reserved for the mornings that I get to relax in bed, take my time getting up, and enjoy my coffee or tea. But yesterday (Saturday), I got out of bed at 6:30am, ran around getting all of my things together, and ran off to go to Sports Day.

Sports day is what Basotho call any day that schools meet for a sporting competition – this sports day in particular was for track. The students have been meeting after classes Monday – Thursday, going to the field and having track practice for the past month or so. The students who qualify will continue on to the next sports day, which is next Saturday, and those who qualify there will go to the following one. This happens all over the country so the last one is with the best students from all over Lesotho. (This is really cool because it’s the best in the entire country, but the country is so small that it is more equivalent to the best in the Bay Area – which is actually more populated than Lesotho)

We are supposed to meet at the main road to take a taxi to the competition at 8am. I get to the field with the students in the first taxi and we are the very first students there at 9am. One student tells me races won’t start until 10am, another tells me it won’t start until 11am.  It starts at around 11:30am.

All of the students are dressed in their school uniforms. The athletes change into their “running outfits” – basically anything that isn’t their school uniform (boys try to wear running shorts, but girls mostly wear leggings or skirts) and barefoot. They just change on the field; women’s breasts aren’t a huge deal, so girls just take off their tops and boys don’t even notice.

During the races, teachers are supposed to volunteer for different tasks which they are paid for. My task was to write down the scores. (I’m not allowed to generate any income as a volunteer, so the money I got will be donated to my class for materials, which is a nice bonus.) Since there were 4 people assigned to this task and only 2 people needed to write, I just sat there. But it was nice to have a seat in the center of everything, to know what was going on for the most part, and just observe everything.

There are so many differences between this sports day and track meets that I’ve been to in the US. For score keeping, there are no timers or watches, so a couple people watch and give a number (1-2-3) to the person who comes in at their respective place, and they come to the record keeping table (where I was) to report their name and school. It’s sad that they don’t record all of the students who run; many of the students who know they won’t finish in the top 3, just drop out. I haven’t ran track since 6th grade, but I would never have even thought of giving up, even if I was embarrassingly dead last. I also think the students are severely malnourished and since they are there so long without food, it is kind of brutal, but many of them just collapse at the finish line and the teachers/coaches just carry them off.

Me and 3 other teachers from my school at Sports Day

 After all of the races were completed, it was the teachers’ time to race. The women teachers went first – I got a slow start and the lanes are not clear at all so I was blocked by a few teachers, but passed almost everyone and came in a close second (if I had 10 more meters, I would have come in first).  It was fun – once I crossed the finish line, I was immediately surrounded by all of the students cheering loudly. I guess I need to practice the 100m….but everyone thinks that I’m really fast! It makes me laugh because while I enjoy running, I would definitely disagree. One of the teachers from my school was the fastest male teacher. One of the men came up to me after and complained that the male teachers should have been split based on belly size.

This is a group of students from my school, mostly girls,  who are singing and marching/dancing/walking around the field as a celebratory cheer.   Chanting is a cultural tradition.   All of the schools are doing this around the field after the races are over.

 After all of the cheering and singing and dancing, we ended at around 5pm – luckily, we don’t have any jumpers because our school doesn’t have the resources, but they were still going when our taxis finally got to the field at 6. I got home at around 7pm exhausted. I barely ate anything and was in the sun basically all day, but it was nice to see all of the students so excited and running around.