Sterling Adapting

I’ve started soccer already with the Hillcrest soccer team here in Jos. The players here are very skilled because they have been playing soccer all of there life and they play in their freetime here. There are a few boys on the team that could possibly have soccer scholarships if they played in America. Having not played in two years I am far behind most of the kids. There are a few boys that I am better than but they are Americans. I have also met a guy named Gabe Dvorak. He is also interested in baseball and his dad is trying to get two teams together to play against each other so that we don’t have to give up baseball for a year whenever we come. Gabe is also very much into basketball, and he and I plan on practicing a lot during the year to build up our skills so that we can be starters on the varsity team.
I am still adjusting to the poor plumbing in our house. Every morning we have to run our water for a few minutes to get all the dirt and rust out. The water is a dark reddish brown when it is clearing out and then turns pretty clear for the most part. The tap water is not safe to drink, if you drink it you are likely to get typhoid disease, also you could probably get tetnus from all the rust that is in the water. We have a water filter that purifies the water and we store that in water bottles that we have purchased here in Nigeria. My water heater is also malfunctional. There is no device on it that will stop it from overheating, and it ends up boiling very hard. I discovered this the hard way one morning when I tried to use hot water from my sink and it shot out the usual reddish brown dirt water and then cut off. Within a few seconds a horrible smelling, burning hot steam was shooting out of my faucet. My room smelled strongly of sulfur for a few hours. I have learned my lesson, though I am still too scared to even try to use the hot water for fear I will forget to turn the water heater off and have a similar experience to my first.


Sterling Mitchell (15)