Looking at SolarWorld’s Sun-TV Project

I arrived just in time to watch the first match at the communal viewing station located in the church directly across from the Zwelenqaba School.  There were well over 100 people watching the game and the atmosphere was great.  Since this was the first time most people in the village had seen Lutz and me, we were pretty conspicuous and there was not much interaction with the locals beyond a bunch of people asking us to take their pictures.  The lighting inside the church made photographing the scene quite difficult. 

For the next few days, Lutz and I got acquainted with the area and watched most of the matches.  Siphiwo helped with transportation and also controlled the viewing schedule at the church across from Zwelenqaba.  After the opening match, there was never the same huge turnout at any of the televisions.  We watched as many matches as we could at the communal TVs during the first few days. 

Early on in my stay, I explained to Siphiwo that I wanted to organize a soccer camp for local kids.  He assured me that there were lots of interested youth players and promised to help me organize the training sessions.  For several days, he kept telling me that he would make calls and set up a meeting with the local kids and some important older community members.  Eventually, Lutz and I were introduced to the tribal chief of the village and met some community leaders (most of whom seemed to be teachers).  After I explained to these older men what I had in mind for the kids – a daily training session to build on and enrich the soccer experience of the World Cup using balls I had brought with me – they seemed enthusiastic for it to happen.  The tribal elites introduced me to a large group of young boys and explained, in Xhosa, my plan to train them everyday. 

Each morning for the next four days I met with the same group of boys on the local soccer field.  The language barrier made communicating very difficult and I was forced to simplify many of the activities I had planned, but the kids kept showing up each day and seemed to have a lot of fun.  We worked on passing and shooting and finished each session with a match and penalty kicks. 

During my stay I also accompanied a local soccer team to a tournament in Eliottdale organized by the Eastern Cape Department of Sport and Recreation for boys and girls between the ages of about twelve or thirteen and seventeen.  The referees never showed up, so I ended up refereeing all of the matches.  Later on, I learned that there was an older under-eighteen team based in Nkwalini.  I met them and gave them jerseys and some balls that I had brought from my home before a match of theirs in a neighboring village.             

During my last few days in Nkwalini, I spent much of my time trying to confirm the delivery of the SolarWorld equipment to Mthatha.  Unfortunately, Siphiwo’s contact (at the delivery location) did not notify us of the parcel’s arrival until a day or two after the drop-off.  It took an entire day to drive into Mthatha and back.  On my final day in Nkwalini, Lutz and I distributed the SolarWorld balls and jerseys to the kids who had trained with me during my practice sessions.  After a brief meeting during which I tried to explain a bit about SolarWorld to the kids (although I’m not sure how much of my English they understood), Lutz and I organized a full eleven versus eleven match for the kids.  This experience was detailed in my final blogpost for soccerblog.com.  In the closing minutes of my stay, I interviewed two of the kids I had been working with during my stay about the experiences of the soccer training sessions and watching the World Cup.  A local teacher translated while Lutz filmed.  Both boys said that the two experiences were very beneficial and that watching the World Cup complemented the soccer training sessions.

The experience of living for several weeks in this environment gave me a glimpse into the daily interests and struggles of the people of Nkwalini.  In that respect, the most shocking adjustments for me were the lack of electricity, running water, and transportation.  It was amazing to me how the pace of life was slowed by the fact that, for the most part, to get anywhere one had to walk.  This was compounded by the reality that at sunset, village life essentially stopped.  Very few people seemed to have generators and so light after dark was an extreme luxury.  Given that it was winter and got dark around six o’clock each night, the days seemed very short.  The darkness was quite daunting.  Any type of productive activity had to be postponed as soon as night fell. 

In this respect, the solar TV sets were an interesting anomaly, as they often seemed to be the only activity available after dark on any consistent basis.  This, however, did not necessarily work to attract more viewers to the televisions.  The World Cup matches had smaller viewing audiences than they might have because they were on after dark.  Because people generally preferred not to walk long distances on the roads at night and also because most people seemed to return to their homes directly after their daily tasks, the evening (8 pm) matches were not especially well attended.         

In general, the solar TVs do not seem to be utilized to their full potential.  In addition to the timing issues, there were many times when games were being televised and the TVs were not open.  Generally, Lutz and I would find people who were interested in watching the matches at these times (during the day).  It was sometimes disappointing to see that the schedule and personal preferences of the people who controlled the televisions played such a large role in determining when the televisions were open.  As a result of this system of tight control, much of the World Cup went unviewed. 

It was always a guessing game about which matches the televisions would be open for.  Sometimes the two o’clock game was shown at the Tafelehashi Arts Center, and sometimes it was not.  There seemed to be no consistent practice that determined where locals could watch the games on the solar televisions.  This seemed to limit the audience that consistently utilized the communal viewing option. 

Since the television sets had to be opened by specific community members, access to those televisions was subject to the schedule and preference of these community members.  This system also ensured that only people who were acquainted with the particular television controller learned about when a television would be open for viewing.  Unless people walked by and saw the gathering of people around a TV, most people had no way of knowing that the match was on and being shown. 

According to the SolarWorld website, the Sun-TV project has goals that extend far beyond the World Cup, providing access to educational media, like HIV information.  I think there is huge potential for this type of outreach.  The villagers were generally fascinated with the television sets and were enthusiastic about watching whatever was on.  On this point, however, I noticed something quite interesting when one night during halftime of a match (I believe it was France v. Mexico), someone changed the channel from the soccer commentary to a channel that was showing a Harry Potter film.  Almost immediately, the audience became quieter and more attentive to the TV.  When halftime was over and the channel was switched back to soccer, there was actually a distinct mood of disappointment amongst many of members of the audience.  Perhaps this had something to do with the particular makeup of the audience that evening (there were a lot of kids and an unusual number of girls at the television that evening as I remember), but I think there is a tremendous interest in the television as a medium of entertainment.  It seemed that most of the people watching that evening were more fascinated by the giant spiders they were seeing in the Harry Potter movie than by the soccer.  The World Cup may have barely scratched the surface of this community’s interest in television watching.  If this fascination with television programs can be used to for good it could potentially be a very powerful development tool.