The kids at Nyaragugu Primary School love to play. No matter what the game. If you drop by the school grounds before school, after school at lunch or on a break, you’ll always catch at least on group playing something.
“The challenge is we have 1,700 students,” said Alex, a teacher at Nyaragugu. “But our play spaces are not good for so many children.” Nyaragugu’s futbol field is in particularly bad shape. Alex and his fellow teachers thought it would be a great idea to fix the futbol field so that it gave the children one more safe place to play.
So, on Day 201, we got to work on the Nyaragugu field. Parts of the pitch didn’t look much like a field. There were anthills rising up out of the field and potholes large enough to swallow up a few futbol players whole. We put a team to work knocking back the anthills, filling in the holes and just generally smoothing the surface of the field.
We also brought in our favorite welder who has been keeping busy with all our various projects around Nakivale Refugee Settlement. He got to work repairing the missing crossbar on the goal post.
And the final touches were the lines…sidelines, midfield lines, goal box. When the day was over, Nyaragugu had one more play space ready to receive the students.
“There’s so much space here on this field,” said Alex. “The children won’t need to fight for a chance to play any more.”
Special thanks to Dimitris Lappas, Bella Wordsworth and Clif Bar for making Nyaragugu’s new and improved futbol field a reality.
