You've Got To Move It, Move It!

Revival of the parochial family in Kiabakari in the Year of Family includes holistic revival of various apostolic groups and movements. Among those - vocation groups (altar servers and non-altar servers), youth groups and associations.

Our altar servers decided to get rid of laziness and started regular training before any serious attempts to check their skills with other football youth teams in Kiabakari and the area. Luckily, we have several sets of football jerseys, so their internal test matches can be played in full 'combat' attire. The older boys jerseys came to us through courtesy of our former German volunteers - Denise and Thomas. The younger boys jerseys I got years back, even before I was transferred to Musoma Cathedral in 2002. The pictures below I took before their training matches a couple of weeks ago. The little ones played in small teams on small pitch.

Girls' vocation groups is not forgotten either. I have just finished laying out of the netball court with professional goal posts, traced the lines and checked on the stock of netball jerseys. We have plenty of netballs courtesy of Australia, seven sets of netball jerseys. Some of them will go to our primary school, the rest will stay with parochial girls' teams. 

We plan to have a all-parochial tournament in football and netball starting in September with the climax and finale on the Feast of the Holy Family on December 28 this year.

Ulysses

I had a bread roll with Blue Band spread and  honey this morning for breakfast...So what? Is this worth writing a post about? Hmmm...

This ordinary event triggered a whole world of memories...going back to 1997... This was the year my parochial netball team VIWAWA FC (VIWAWA is an abbreviation of Vijana Wakatoliki Wafanyakazi, meaning Catholic Working Youth) participated in Nyerere Cup in Dodoma, Capital City of Tanzania. And won Fair Play Cup which - on our arrival back to Kiabakari - we handed to Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, former President of Tanzania, who agreed before to be our Patron and Sponsor of the team.

We were based in diocesan guest house in Dodoma. Every morning, breakfast was the same. Bread rolls, Blue Band spread and honey (Tanzanian honey which I love, so yummy!). We spent there some ten days, having the same morning ritual for breakfast...

So, whenever I happen to have the same stuff for breakfast since then, my mind goes back in fond memories to 1997 year, to Dodoma, to netball tournament (see pictures from that event here), to our great effort as a small, rookie parochial team who dared to challenge national league teams on equal basis and won hearts of people back then by our discipline, fair play, excellent behavior and smiles...We made friends with a lot of people there and these friendships last till now...

It is amazing how simple, unassuming things have power to trigger high emotions, memories, reminiscences, pictures in my mind...It feels like reading 'Ulysses' by James Joyce (one of my favorite novels of all times; you can download the book for free here)...This stream of consciousness flows through me all the time and flows out, pops up, bursts into life triggered sometimes unexpectedly by those little things in my life...