The Pemba-wide basketball tournament, called the Thabit Kombo Cup after the Minister of Sports, kicked off last week. The opening ceremony took place on Thursday last week. Unfortunately, the weather didn't quite agree with our intensions. I downpoured before, during and after the ceremony.

Thabit Kombo was there along with other various government representatives. Speeches were given, and then it was time to kick off the opening game. Two teams from Chake Chake played the opeing match, and considering the weather I was glad that we weren't playing.

One of the teams that played was the team that won the cup last year, Tornado. They out-shot, out-manouvred, and out-played their competition. The final score was 45-26. However, at the same time players were falling and losing the ball left and right.

Then the Mkoani girls' team took to the court to play against the women's team from Chake. I use women's because the Chake team players are all in their 20's or early 30's, where as all of our players are still in high school.

Our girls played well considering the rain. Our first match against them the previous week ended at 26-0. We got whooped on, but this week it was better -- 16-2. It may seem like they were still beatup pretty badly, but our girls have been playing basketball as a team for 2 months. The Chake team; 5 years. You give us five years and I'm confident that we will be the number one girls' team on Pemba.

-- Mike