Coaches Across Continents: Martabaks and ministers
After our arrival in Jakarta, Coaches Across Continents had a rare evening of having more people present than our hosts. With six CAC coaches in one place (three full-time and three volunteers), we went out for a delicious meal with some of the leaders and coaches of our partner programme, Uni Papua. A full stomach and a good night’s sleep later, the CAC Coaches went their separate ways while Turner and I stayed in the big city to spend a week with some of the core Uni Papua coaches. We worked each day in a roofed basketball court of a local primary school. It was a small group of coaches, but because of that we were able to give more one-on-one attention than we typically can.
To get around the city we were introduced to a new friend named Rudolph (as fitting a name for a guide in an unknown country as I’ve ever heard). Among his many gratitude inspiring actions, I don’t think I can thank him enough for introducing me to the Indonesian dessert, martabaks. The closest I can describe a martabak is as an inch thick pancake thickly coated in butter, sugar, crushed peanuts, more butter, chocolate, then folded over and handed to you in a box. I could have sworn I heard a few arteries close as I devoured this food. Some things should not be allowed to exist in a healthy world. Its times like these I can’t help but appreciate a little indulgence.
CAC has put me in two of the most formal settings of my life. One was a meeting in a conference room of one of the ministers of the Katanga Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The other was a debriefing in Jakarta’s Ministry of Housing. Serious faces on serious people speaking Bahasa (a language I’m practically limited to counting to six, saying “thank you” and saying “slow down”). In the inevitable bureaucratic fashion, snacks were distributed to ease the delay of the proceedings (a rice-ball filled with something savoury wrapped in a banana leaf). Once Harry, the leader of Uni Papua, began to speak, Turner and I could pick out enough words to see that he was introducing the concept of sport for social impact to the group of 50 well-dressed members of the community. The people in this room had gathered to hear about this new way to coach and how Uni Papua would be using it to host the Jakarta Football Festival – Rusun Cup, a massive youth tournament to take place the following month. An impressive endeavour that gained the much appreciated help of the governor himself.
[This article has been edited by the Operating Team
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