The American Dream – Part 1 How it happened …

As this happened over the course of 3 months I’ll be doing this bolg in 4 parts.

Part 1 - How it happened, Part 2 - A long ass 3 Months, Part 3 - Competing Together, Part 4 - The Holiday

August 2017– As I was in my final year of studying education and had to do my practicals which consisted out of 6 months of working at a school full time, taking part in extra curricular activities and helping with  functions after school, I was so busy. Doing my practical  in the morning till about 2pm unless there was something after school I had to do like sport coaching or something of that kind, having to do assignments and varsity work in the afternoons and training full time in the evenings, this schedule left no room for a part time job making money really tight.

With the last ranking around the corner in East London of which Daniël had to attend to be eligible to fight national trials the following year, East London is a good 10hour drive and not knowing how we will be paying for this trip we set out planning as usual. We had just enough money left that month to get us there by car, plain tickets were out of the question as it was so expensive. We managed to get a place to stay at a friends parents house at no cost which came as a blessing to us. But we still had no idea how we would get back.

This brings me to the competition. A normal national ranking which turned out to be one of the best opportunities of our lives. We drove trough the night on Thursday arriving on Friday just in time for weigh-in. We both made weight and had a good dinner and went to bed, the next morning still feeling extremely drained from the drive Daniël was not in high spirits for the competition but he had to pull his socks up and do his job. Something was different about this event there was  a buzz at the executive side and a prominent figure in our Judo community was there with a big smile on his face.

Like I said something was up, and I was right, lets call him Mr P. , Mr. P donated R5000 which is just under $400 to a new category for this competition. An open category was created of which any weight could compete and Daniël loves a challenge. He took part in the ranking winning his own weight category with ease, but he still had the open weight to deal with, as all the exhaustion of the traveling faded away he took on this challenge and came out on top.

He did not just get us enough money to go home and manage trough the month but he impressed Mr. P so much that he received an offers to go to the USA for a 3 Month tour, we were ecstatic!  Then came the realisation and the doubt about how long he will actually have to be away from home. this came as a shock but I reassured him that this opportunity only come once in a lifetime and he has to take it.

Needless to say, he was on a plane 2 weeks later…. and gone for 3 months….