Crafts, Bajaj, Soccer

This is a Bajaj.  It's a small 3 wheeled vehicle that we rode around in most days.  It's supposed to fit a driver and 3 people in the back.  It's engine probably isn't more powerful than a large lawn mower.  We thought it would be fun to see if we could get all of our team in it.  We did.  We had 10 including Endala the driver.  It was pretty cramped but also awesome.  

 One of the afternoons, we went to Zion to see their women do "crafts." This is actually just a small group of women who work on and teach each other a valuable life skill.  While we were there, they were pulling and spinning cotton into thread.  It requires a very delicate and special touch.  We tried and were unsuccessful at actually making any progress.  It was fun to try anyway.

A native Ethiopian is called a Habesha.  Anyone who is white is called a Ferenji.  This includes us obviously but also Chinese, Indians, the Dutch and all other visiting nationalities.  On the day before our last days there, we had a Habesha vs. Ferenji soccer game at the school.  

Ethiopians take their soccer, which of course they call football, very seriously.  Most small children are much better than we could even pretend to be.  They kept asking us, "Why aren't you very good!?!?" Needless to say, even though it was kids against adults we didn't really stand a chance in the game.  We did however do our best to even the playing field by having an Australian who once played semi-professional soccer and Mussie who of course is one of those Habeshas who grew up playing soccer.  We also had the Tiatias and Bajaj drivers on our team.  In other words, we cheated by pitting the few adults who did know anything about soccer on our team against small children.  Mostly, it was Mussie, Glen, and the Tiatia kids running around, yelling at us, and trying to score while we stayed back and just tried to kick the ball in the opposite direction if it came near us.  We weren't always successful and Will even scored a goal for the Habesha team.  Despite our attempts, we still needed some extra "help" from the BCI principal who gave us the benefit of the doubt on at least 2 of our "goals."  They were definitely too high to be in but somehow it ended up tied anyway.  

 Penalty kicks ensued which is obviously what is going on in the pictures below.  You would probably think that we would of course try to make it fair and put one of the actual Ferenjis up against the kids, but we didn't.  Instead, we let Mussie and Glen plot together and then score the game winning goals.  Oh yeah, and I think I forgot to say that even our goalie wasn't one of us.  We recruited one of the 15 year old boys to be on our goalie.  And we STILL had to cheat to win.  Yeah, Americans might dominate a lot of sports this Olympics but winning the World Cup isn't going to happen anytime soon.