We may not share a continent, but we share the love of the game.

I have found a miracle… In the back allies of Lugogo cricket field I found a sign that despite a world of corruption and calamity, fate and fortune still exist.  I found a group of Ugandan’s playing the sport that brings people together in coexisting values, attitudes, and a love of zanye (playing)… that sport being... Cricket…

But it was behind the cricket players where I found the Ultimate Frisbee Team of Kampala, Uganda!!!!

Well, besides the fact that I am super duper out of shape, and I have tossed about 4 times since I got here with a warped from my luggage Ruckus disc (For those of you who don’t know, Ruckus is the University of Vermont Ultimate Frisbee team I play on), I was able to crank out some good ol’ Ruckus-skills.  The discstration (equivalent to frustration, but worse) that has been bottled up inside for the past 8 weeks found me drooling with excitement (literally drooling).  The players were fantastic, there were about 20 of them, they played a simple stack force flick, and apparently have been playing at this field three times a week!!!  Where the hell have I been?? 

They opened up to me with those warm muscular Frisbee arms, and invited me to play in their hat tournament on November 20^th!!!!!  This all just happened so fast, who WOULDN’T drool??? They even told me where they go after pick-up to eat, and I happened to be going to Bubbles for trivia night anyway!!! It was true fate.

I rushed home as much as you can on a slow moving, jammed taxi, to share my experience with my roomies.  I ran inside and started screaming and jumping, and drooling, and lets just say they though that I had just solved the problem to world hunger. 

Now, for the past two weeks I have been playing every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, making great friends, and re-learning the skills I yearned for the past 8 weeks. 

Of course, communities seem to be a theme throughout my life.  I study community development, I visited the Jewish community of Uganda, I am working with a self-help community in Mityanna for my independent study, and now I find an unlikely community of Frisbee players (40 people wide might I add) in Kampala!  The power of communities in my own life is what inspires me to work with such complex community development issues in my lifetime, and is inspiring me to continue work every day with ADAM, despite its complexities and the slowness of the process.  It takes time to develop a community to its fullest potential, but the communities I am a part of today just prove how strongly and endlessly those communities can prosper for generations to come.