Week 3 - Mozambique

We have come to the end of week 3 now and I feel very much at home.

The 6.30 coaching starts, the barely bearable heat around noon, the sadza and fish for lunch, being called muzungu (white) by surprised kids, the rice and beans for dinner. All seem like the norm now.

On Saturday though we did something that definitely wasn’t in our normal routine as we climbed up Vumba mountain with some of our friends from GDM.

Vumba mountain shadows the town of Manica, its jagged rocks pierce the green beast. Us gappers and the other visitors here, Jake and Kinvara, have had our eyes on it since we got here. Today we were going to explore it. Luis, our friend and my English student, picked us up over 2 hours later than planned (that’s about right in Mozambican time keeping) and off we went.

The way up was tough due to the intense heat, thankfully there were little cold waterpools that got us through the journey. Happening to be climbing alongside us was a group of Mozambicans, they showed us this discrete little pool, which we all dived into with the locals, as we started singing ‘MORALE, MORALE, MORALE’ *clap clap clap clap*. After this we carried on our ascent. As we got further up I was more and more amazed at the fact people actually live this high up in the mountain, in these tiny self made huts. They were friendly and very surprised to see us, you don’t get many tourists going this far up Vumba.

A group of about 8 or so young boys had continued to follow us up after we left the pool. They ran ahead of us leading the way and before we knew it we had entered into a jungle. I couldn’t believe it.

The jungle was beautiful; branches grabbed us from all directions, waterfalls appeared around every corner, streaks of light broke through holes in the canopy above.

The boys with us had found their playground. They climbed and danced on to fallen logs, swung off branches like monkeys and hopped from rock to rock with ease. Pretty impressive, especially considering we were taking extreme caution with each step on the slimey rocks.

On the way down, the boys decided to play a one sided game of hide and seek. They would run down the steep slope ahead of us, (bare footed mind) hide in between the maize crops and then jump out at us, before running ahead and doing it again. My reaction on the first scare was quite embarrassing! They didn’t get me again though. The journey finished with a few selfies with the boys, to top off a great day!!!

It has been positive from a coaching perspective this past week. After GDMs narrow win last week, we have been working on what needed to be improved on, this included playing out from the back and combination plays in the wide areas. Us gappers and Pingy the head coach, have been experimenting players in different positions and trying out different combinations of players especially going forward, as we try and work out the strongest team before the start of the season. We will test these ideas out in upcoming friendlies.

With the U17s we have mainly worked on possession this week. The main focus with them has been on them lifting up their head and scanning the pitch, when on the ball and without. As too often when on the ball they just look down at the ball and run into the opposition, and without the ball they just charge into the play not thinking about space, making for some very scrappy plays. ‘SPACO, SPACO, SPACO!!!’ is repeated many times in our sessions!

Thats all from me for now. Writing this from the start of the following week, I have a feeling the next report will not be so positive, let’s hope that changes…..

#Mozambique