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| Peace Ball visits Nosy
Be |
Peace Ball's second event of the 36th Cruise was an
exchange with a group of lively Nosy Be high school students. The
day began with the students coming aboard the Olvia and taking a tour
of the ship; this included an impromptu basketball game on the sports
deck, a quick visit to a few cabins, and a buffet lunch, where it
became clear that chopsticks and tofu were a bit of novelty in Madagascar.
Everyone then boarded the small boat that served as a shuttle to shore.
This boat was very hot with sparse ventilation and the waves were
quite rough, it looked to be a painful half hour ride. But a few minutes
into the journey one of the high schoolers pulled up a cardboard box
and began to drum out a rhythm, and the others burst into song. The
team had an impressive repertoire, and soon the Japanese passengers
were tapping and singing along creating an impromptu jam session so
that the boat was really pumping by the time it reached the shore.
Once on land, we boarded buses for the short drive to the stadium,
totally unprepared for what awaited us. About 1000 fans (together
with a few dozen cows and pigs) were waiting around the field in anticipation
for the match to start. Two children hanging numbers from a large
billboard kept the score; unfortunately the child assigned to keep
track of Peace Boat's points had little to do. Perhaps unaccustomed
to such attention (or the tactical implications of the various animals
droppings on the field), the Peace Boat side lost the match 2-0. A
friendly match followed, in which a few players from each team traded
jerseys, and despite our lack of French and Malagasy and their lack
of Japanese, by the end of the event it was smiles and laughter as
we all crammed in together for photographs.
After the event, we accompanied the students back to their high school
for a small party, where Peace Ball presented them with 100 soccer
balls and several pumps collected in Japan. We were surprised when
they presented us with a large bag of balls they had collected, requesting
that we deliver them to those in need at future stops on our journey.
The day ended as everyone drummed and belted out the songs we had
learned on the boat - we shared sodas in a classroom as we sang, our
voices echoing around the high school, and the warmth of our new friendships
more than made up for the setting sun in the distance. |
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| Mombasa-Cape Town
/ Peace Boat's 36th Voyage |
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PEACE BOAT is an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. |
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