Everything comes down to this

Last Saturday I took my soccer team, 18 girls in all, to a soccer tournament in Richmond,which is about 30 miles away from Hanover. The tournament was sponsored by Grassroot Soccer, a non-profit organization that educates kids on HIV/AIDS prevention through soccer. The girls were extremely excited to go to the tournament, even though it meant they had to sacrifice sleeping in on Saturday. I told the girls to be at the school by 7:30, expecting all of them to be there by 8, but when I got to the school, about 8 minutes late, the entire team was there, and was making their way down the main street to get me, singing at the top of their lungs. I had to hire 2 “taxi’s”(14 passenger vehicles) for their transportation, as the school does not have a bus or a bus system. At the tournament, the girls played a lot of games that had a motif of not being able to tell who has HIV, in addition to playing soccer. The games were 7v.7 so I had two teams of 9. One of the teams got second in the tournament, but the other one didn’t do as well.
One of the girls hurt her knee, and the trainer on duty couldn’t do anything, so I had to go to the hospital. The hospital didn’t have an x-ray machine, so the only thing the doctor could do was assess her leg to make sure it wasn’t broken. The girl was in extreme pain, so they gave her a shot to assuage the pain, but there was nothing they could do to treat the problem without knowing what the problem was, so we left. That made me feel far more helpless than anything I have ever experienced thus far. There was nothing I could do to help her, and there was no way to diagnose her without driving an hour away. Nobody should have to be in that situation, no matter how third-world their country is.
I have 3 days left at Phakamisani, and my students are just reviewing their mistakes from their term test. I told them that they would have to retake the test until they had 60%, even though a passing score is technically a 30%. I don’t think the students thought I was serious, and on the first try only one girl passed. Once they realized I was serious, they all buckled down and committed to learning the material. I conducted extra classes every day after school for a week, but they all managed to pull through and get 60%. I don’t think any of their previous teachers had pushed them to succeed, so they weren’t expecting me to be any different. One boy who told me at the beginning of the term that he was going to fail the term got the 2nd highest grade on the test, a 72%. All he needed was someone to think he could succeed. So it’s been a great run and a very trying one as well. I hope the students keep up the standard I set after I leave, because they all have the potential to succeed.