We die only once, and for such a long time!

Every morning when I drive into Langa the head line posters from The Daily Sun are flashed in front of my eyes. They're attached to trees and street lamps and the message is always the same; death, death, death; “Teen girl's dead body found in bag” “Pupil guns down alleged bully” “Baby infant chopped to pieces”. This newspaper is indeed one of the noisiest in South Africa and like any other bill with head lines the purpose is to draw attention. Still, I can tell that I'm raised in another culture where death more or less has been put aside.

When I first came to Project Playground, one of our employees just survived a gun attack. I was chocked. One month later a man that used to help us with transportation was killed on the street. No motives, no questions. The week after a baby was found in a trash can with a chopped head, and yesterday it was time again. A boy that attended one of our classes in the past was stabbed to death by a working college in Langa. They had an argument and a fist fight over something. But that wasn't enough. When the boy was walking home afterwards he was attacked from behind by his college and stabbed deadly in his 19 year old heart.

I'm not used to this confrontation with death. Not at all. Most people that I know are terrified of dying, and I guess I am too. Thinking about death is for me similar as to looking at the sun; I can only do it for a couple of seconds and then I have to turn my eyes away. I get confused and then I have to think about something different. Everything else than short moments is unbearable. I have learned to always focus on life and leave the rest to the future, but I realize that this is something that not everyone can do. In fact, this might as well be very dangerous, because sooner or later we will all be confronted, and then we might stand or lie there without any idea how to handle it, because death is unpredictable and something that we all can count on. For me it's still something unimaginable. I can't imagine not existing. The thought. The void. The silence. How come it's so hard to accept a world without me in the future, when I can understand the world existing without me before I was born?

I believe that death more or less has been put aside by the Swedish society. At least for my generation that no longer have an institution or sacred place where it's possible to get exposed to existential thoughts and anxiety. Most people have probably attended a funeral once, but it was most likely an old relative that died a natural death because of age or any of our modern diseases. But here, in Langa, death is more than that. Death is normal and something that you can't deny. Some people from home and even in South Africa tell me that life has a different meaning and a different value here than in Sweden, but for me, every life serves the same purpose no matter where and who you are. We get born and then we die. That's it. This is all we know and the rest is only speculations. We are all given one life and the intrinsic value of that is to be alive. That boy had one life yesterday and today he has none. Just like Moliere said it; “On ne meurt qu'une fois; et c'est pour si longtemps! - We die only once, and for such a long time!”

Death is something extremely mysterious for me, and is something that in contrast to life can be taken for granted. Life is not working without death, they're part of the same circle, the same phenomena, and if I choose to deny death, then I also choose to deny life. I understand that death is a fundamental condition for the existence of life, but at the same time there is a paradox existing that I can't seem to solve in this age and at this stage, and that is that life is also driven by death. Death drives us to create love and belonging, and this is why it's so much harder to die. I have to die from everything that I once created and be separated from everything I love.

This thought is making me very vulnerable. 

Friendly game in Bonteheuwel

Project Playground has four different football classes - the under-11, under-13, under-15 and under-17/19. The teams consist of almost 90 players all together and we practice four times a week. Yesterday our oldest boys played a friendly in Bonteheuwel against a senior team with players way older than they. It was a tough game against a good opponent with a constant annoying wind blowing over a bumpy pitch. We lost 2-1 but played good football. The future is looking good.

Before the game in our new A.C.  Milan track-suits 

Smiling faces even though we lost

The Power of Football

When I came to Langa I was told that Project Playground had its own football team, and this made me very happy and excited. I stopped playing football in 2009 and I really missed it. When I then found out that the football team was in need of assistance, I became even happier, because I knew what this meant. It happened so many times before. Football is the ultimate chance to get to know new people. 

I started to play football when I was 7 years old, not really early, not really late. Some people are said to be born with the ball at their feet. I was not one of them. It’s hard to remember what kept me busy before that age, but it was apparently not football. I guess I was just busy being a kid. Free from anxiety and doubt about the future, happy to exist for the moment and live for the day.

My first real football memory is from the hectic summer of 1994. For most Swedes, this summer is something that is very precious and associated with joy and happiness. The Swedish football team flew to the United States of America without any bigger plans of success, unaware that they would become immortal heroes and holy icons for Swedish nostalgia. People were camping, grilling hot dogs, wearing funny hats and listening to the radio while Sweden played amazing football and won a bronze medal that in my tiny eyes shined like purest gold. I was blessed and blissful by the show. Not only by the graceful pirouettes of Tomas Brolin, and the long fingers of Kenneth Andersson, even though they were my biggest heroes. There was also something else there. Something that seemed to exist in another dimension and was bigger than words. Something sacred that not necessarily was painted in the Swedish colors of yellow and blue. What mesmerized me existed in every team that competed and sweated together in the World Cup that warm summer, and I felt how a holy force hit me all the way from Los Angeles, Dallas and Washington D.C. straight through my parents thick TV-screen and into my little body.

Two years later I felt it again. I was once again touched by the force, and this time it was so strong that I wanted to change my hairstyle, all because of the charismatic footballer Karel Poborský, that on his own almost managed to win the Euro 1996 for the Czech Republic. What a player! Two years later I felt it again, and this time it made me paint my face in red and white checkers, so I could show my devotion for the Croatian striker Davor Šuker that with his amazing skills managed to become the top scorer in the 1998 World Cup in France. In 2000 it hit me again and I refused to wear anything else but my Portuguese football shirt with Luis Figo's name on the back - no smell in the world could change my duty and obligation that I now owed him after his magical goal against England in the Euro 2000. After that it happened again. And again and again. It never stopped. Last time it happened was this week when Sweden played against England in Stockholm and Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored four goals, and even though it was a friendly the goals meant so much for Sweden - both on and off the pitch. 

Football is more than a sport. It possesses a power that can build bridges between different cultures and language barriers. It consists of a force, strong enough to unite the poor with the rich, the friend with the enemy and the stranger with the local. This force exists in every football team on the planet - in F.C. Barcelona, ​​in Kaizer Chiefs and in IFK Arvidsjaur. It unites people from all around the world, everywhere in the world, of all ages, classes, genders and nationalities, on the stadium, in the changing room, in the pub, on the street and in front of TV. 

My work together together with the Project Playground football team has only started, but I can already feel that something magical is about to happen. Something from another dimension. Something sacred.

Heroes

Attention! It's the Tuesday after the first Monday in November...

Every four years something very important happens on this day. It's election day, and I'm extremely excited finding out if Barack Obama is getting a second term as President, or if the American population decides for Mitt Romney. In order to highlight this huge political happening, that has an impact on people living in Ohio, South Dakota, Cape Town and Stockholm, I decided to give a small lecture about U.S. politics to the Project Playground debate class. I told them a bit about the American history; how they also were colonized by the British, how Lincoln abolished slavery and about the American dream. After that I tried to explain how the U.S. electoral system is structured without making things too complicated, however I realized quick that this was close to impossible and that it get's tricky no matter how much I twisted and turned. Anyways, here we go; 50 states, 1 President, 100 Senators, 435 Representatives and 538 electoral votes!

The children listened carefully and asked interesting questions, and this was a great feeling for someone that never gave a lecture to a class before. It also made me realize how precious, important and skilled the teaching occupation is, and that we (at least in Sweden) don't pay enough attention and gratitude towards our teachers. It can be so hard to make an impression, and children can be so hard to charm sometimes! Luckily, the children of Langa are the most charming in the world, and I felt respected all the time. No cell phones rang, no one fell asleep and no one started to talk when I was speaking.

After one hour of republicans and democrats I packed my American map together and finished class. I asked about their opinion regarding South African politics, about what was good and what was bad. This is such a political country, and most people have an opinion or at least a clue about the contemporary situation. This class was surely not an exception. All of a sudden ten mouths spoke at the same time, first calm and slow, and the faster and faster and faster, until a huge debate with passionate opinions about ANC and South Africa's future broke loose turning our little classroom into a parliament. Some of the participants truly know how to argue, and I was very impressed, even though some moments brought us closer to the Polish parliament (I hope that's a universal saying).

Politics are so much fun and I promised to return to class soon with a similar lecture about Sweden.
Time to make another coffee. I don't want to miss when history is written!