Volleyball Mania

One exciting event that took place during the first weekend after Chaminade went on break was an afternoon volleyball game with all my housemates, the Feldmeiers (our Australian friends who work at Lusubilo, [“Hope” in Ngonde] the orphan care center in town), and the Marianist brothers.

We invited the Feldmeiers to come over with the plans to play a game of volleyball with them the same way we played volleyball the first night we met them at Chris and Anne’s (an Australian couple working for Paladin, a Uranium mining company) house. Well, since Br. Chola, the Marianist District Superior of East Africa, and Fr. Gabriel, another Marianist from the District Office, were in town, we invited them to play with us as well. Though they were shocked by the time we silly American Muzungus chose to play—2:00PM on a Sunday afternoon, close to the hottest part of the day—they actually showed up, geared up in athletic shorts and sneakers, ready to play.

Since Br. Hanson is probably the only brother under 30, I was at first not expecting them to show, and at second was not expecting them to be any good. I was wrong on both accounts. In total, 6 of the 7 Marianist brothers showed up to play, including Br. Bill, an American Marianist who is probably in his late 50s. And even more incredible, they were all really good! I was absolutely astonished by how our games were actually quite competitive! Not in a million years did I expect to come to Africa and find so many volleyball enthusiasts!

We ended up playing for about three and a half hours, and everyone had a blast. Since Br. Chola and Fr. Gabriel were going to be in town for the rest of the week, the volunteers decided that we wanted to challenge the Marianists to a game against just us later in the week. The losing team would be responsible for making a dessert for the winning team. We scheduled the game for 4:30PM on the following Wednesday. Unfortunately, however, we never got to play that game, but the reason why deserves a whole different post.